Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance review

 

Last week I had the chance to watch Evangelion 2.0 at the Asia Filmfest 2009 in Munich, and it was even better than I anticipated based on the high-class staff credited for this movie. It reminded me of the huge possibilites the medium offers and managed to impress me like very few other animated movies before. Eva 2.0 marks a great comeback of the famed franchise which changed anime once and for all, and this new incarnation carries its legacy over to a new generation of viewers. This is as close as anime gets to perfection and undoubtedly among the best animated movies ever produced, anime has rarely been that visually accomplished and cinematically perfected, so to speak imposing evidence for Hideaki Anno’s talent. Here he really shows what the art form is capable of achieving in the hands of talented artists who he gathered from all over the industry to work on the Rebuild of Evangelion series. After watching this movie, I have no doubt that he goes into the right direction to carry out his ambitious goals of ‘connecting anime to the future’, like he called it in his statement from nearly three years ago.

 

 

Despite being basically a remake of the TV series or more precisely a retelling of episodes 7 to 19, you really can’t tell because the structure and pacing have been perfectly adapted to this format with very little time that isn’t purposefully used. Also, there are some profound changes which will surprise many long-term fans – and I don’t only mean the new character Mari Illustrious and EVA models with that. Especially towards the end Eva 2.0 presents some unforeseeable suprises which give the movie a more original taste and leave you clueless about the progress of the story in the upcoming sequels, so it’s in no way a simple remake like Eva 1.0.

 

As for the characters, there have been some changes compared to the original series with some interesting new interactions and moments, particularly Asuka and Rei are depicted in a more authentic fashion which really adds to their overall credibility. Both have some slightly different personalities what makes them even more interesting, and both play quite a large role in this movie (of course?). In contrast to Eva 1.0, where the absence of Asuka lead to a somewhat uneven balance of the characters since a more active counterweight with strong presence was missing, Eva 2.0 really shines in this regard with a perfectly balanced cast and character interplay like rarely seen before in anime – be it comedy or dramatic scenes. Anno’s writing is absolutely brillant in the way he expresses the characters’ personalities and adds subtle messages. I really like how the light-hearted scenes are written and directed, they certainly show Kazuya Tsurumaki’s (FLCL) influence with cunning ideas as well as funny and exaggerated animation and faces. Several calmer scenes between the relatively frequent and stunning action sequences lead to a successful compensation and let the audience catch a breath, ranging from beautiful impressions of Neo Tokyo 3 to a look into the characters’ everyday life. Such new insights into the Eva world add additional substance and authenticity to it and make you feel that there’s more to it than just giant mecha and cute girls.

 

 

As for the technical side of Eva 2.0, it really reflects the absolutely awesome line-up of artists working for Studio Khara. Beginning with Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki, whose directing is on a level hardly ever seen in Japanese animation, with powerful visuals and measured scene compositions leaving no space for declining excitement. I don’t know if they handled the layout process themselves like they did with Eva 1.0 (where the three directors supervised the layouts), but it certainly looks that way as the shots and perspectives are that intriguing. This time many famous directors created the storyboard, including Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Masayuki, Shinji Higuchi, Junichi Sato (Aria, Princess Tutu, Kaleido Star, etc.), Masaki Tachibana (Tokyo Magnitude 8.0), Soichi Masui (Scrapped Princess) and Sayo Yamamoto (Michiko to Hatchin), who did great work in setting the basic mood without anything feeling out of place. Noteworthy are also the two art directors Hiroshi Kato and Tatsuya Kushida who did an amazing job in creating the beautiful art and scenery of the movie. Together with the large line-up of skilled designers (Anno, Tsurumaki, Mahiro Maeda, Takeshi Honda, Atsushi Okuda, Shunji Suzuki, Shoichi Masuo and Hidenori Matsubara among others, what shows how deeply involved the directors were in the project) they gave the Eva world profound and substantial aesthetics that make the movie a real work of art.

 

 

The animation itself is nothing less than spectacular and sometimes even beyond imagination, the animation directors paid high attention to create lots of exciting and believable movement, be it for the action sequences or the calmer scenes. The character acting is overall very convincing though not quite on the level of Ghibli or Satoshi Kon’s movies, sometimes I felt that they consciously took a shortcut to save some troubles. But then again, in some scenes I was amazed at how sensitively the animation expressed the characters’ nature, be it the lively body language of Mari, the prideful and dominant presence of Asuka or the felicitous depiction of Rei’s reserved personality.
It’s hard to describe the epic battle scenes with words as they were realized with a care for details, realism and complexity not often seen before in anime (with Asuka vs. the MP Angels in End of Evangelion being pretty much the only comparable sequence), a truly unique cinematic experience with some shots that have never been attempted that way since they can’t be created in the usual boundaries of TV animation. You can clearly see Anno’s influence in the battle scenes as nobody can match him in depicting action on a grand scale, that and Masayuki’s fine sense for spectacularly choreographed and fast-paced action leads to a stunning and powerful mix that draws the viewers into the battles.

 

 

Chief animation director is once again Shunji Suzuki with Hidenori Matsubara, Atsushi Okuda and Takeshi Honda (mechanical animation director), who supervised the animation of the incredible line-up of key animators, ranging from Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki themselves to other veterans like Mahiro Maeda, Shoichi Masuo and You Yoshinari to Tetsuya Nishio, Tadashi Hiramatsu, Hiroyuki Imaishi, Akemi Hayashi, Sushio and the animation directors. Shoichi Masuo, famous for great effect animation, is correspondingly also the special effects director and did an incredible job as the explosions and such were among the best I’ve ever seen in animation, I suspect he did key animation on the final scene as it reminded me of a certain scene in Nadia #21 and it clearly showed his work style of using many different layers. There were also some incredibly detailed explosions which looked Anno-ish to me (purple). Near the end I also felt some Gurren Lagann vibes and think that Hiroyuki Imaishi (GL’s director) might be the reason, but otherwise it’s not easy to identify any individual styles as the directors assumedly intervened with the layouting and the animation directors created a strong uniformity (with some minor exceptions). So I have to wait for the key animation book to get to know who did which outstanding scene…

 

CG and computer effects are used even more extensively than in the first movie but are well integrated for the most part, only sometimes I felt that they are misplaced (like some scenes with CG background people). But remarkable are particularly the digital coloring and processing that really add a great deal to the visual perfection and overall impact of Eva 2.0.

 

 

The soundtrack by Shiro Sagisu (who also composed the music of the original series) offers a wide variety of music, from epic orchestra pieces for the battles to cheery songs for light-hearted scenes, and it’s overall one of the best scores I’ve ever come across in anime – with “Tsubasa wo Kudasai” getting a special mention, a worthy successor of “Komm, süsser Tod” in my book. There might be people who don’t like the way certain pieces are used in the movie, but I feel that these choices by the directors are more than justified, and it’s Anno after all.

 

I usually don’t care much for the voice actors in Japanese animation as they are generally good, but Eva 2.0 has just so many outstanding vocal performances that I have to mention them. These performances truly enrich the experience for the audience and in combination with the great animation it’s absolutely amazing how the characters come to life on the screen. It’s hard to highlight any particular voice actors since all did a superb job in expressing and capturing their respective character’s nature, but Megumi Ogata’s acting as Shinji is once more incredible.

 

 

Concluding I have to say that Evangelion 2.0 is an extremely enjoyable movie and recommendable for everyone, it’s a shining example of how far Japanese animation has advanced and what Japanese animation artists are capable of. Not many anime movies have reached this level, and it’s once more Hideaki Anno’s vision that shows us the possibilities of the medium, like he did with the original series 14 years ago. I really look forward to the Blu-ray release and the two sequels which will introduce us to a completely new storyline, even though the final scene of Eva 2.0 makes the waiting hardly bearable…

Fall Season 2009 Impressions: Part 2

 

♦ Kuchu Buranko

The first episode undoubtedly meets my expectations of an innovative and refreshing visual experience with interesting script and concept, so it comes as no surprise that Kuchu Buranko is the most convincing anime of the fall season in my book. It’s interesting to see anime which push the medium into new directions, and this one belongs to that category for sure. I especially like the combination of different animation techniques and also live-action segments to a lovely pool of visual variety and richness, which stands out from the generic and reused imagery of most other anime these days. Kenji Nakamura manages to compensate for the middling animation quality through inventive directing to establish a strong bond with the audience, and I feel that he’s even more accomplished in that technique than other directors with the same kind of approach (like Akiyuki Shinbou). But not only the presentation displays imaginative ideas as the narratives are also pretty unusual. The story is still a mystery at this point but makes me curious how it will eventually unfold, and judging by Nakamura’s former projects it won’t disappoint in any case. Episode #1 is directed by Kouhei Hatano with Kimitoshi Chioka as assistant, who realized an interesting vision best described as a mixture of bizarre humour and psychological gimmickry fitting to the premise of the series, and I really like the way the hilarity is presented here with this strange balance of absurdity and seriousness.

 

♦ Kobato

The first few episodes left me with a good impression alike the former Clamp/Madhouse works. It has its share of funny moments and fun character interactions, even if some of the characters are a bit reminiscent of other Clamp characters. The main character Kobato is a somewhat naive girl and most of the jokes are based on her ineptness or misunderstandings derived from it, but I have to admit that it works very well and doesn’t feel overly forced or something. I also enjoyed the visuals despite the sugary presentation with lots of chibi/SD sequences, because these devices are used in a way that isn’t repelling but brings some visual diversion and supports the gags. It certainly has the typical dreamy mood of the previous Clamp anime and looks very close (esp. regarding color design, backgrounds and overall design) to the “Clamp in Wonderland 2″ music video, but not surprisingly, since Kobato’s director Mitsuyuki Masuhara and character designer Hiromi Kato worked also on that one. The animation is decent with some nice parts like Kobato’s song performance in the second half of episode 1, though one shouldn’t expect too much in that regard.

 

♦ Fairy Tail

I didn’t expect an outstanding opening episode à la Soul Eater in the first place, but nevertheless something better than this rather uninspiring outcome. Speaking of Soul Eater, I could sense some influence from it, which probably originates from director Shinji Ishihira’s work on it. But that doesn’t mean that they are really comparable concerning quality, meaning that Soul Eater is much more convincing animation-wise due to the looser approach, while Fairy Tail has stiff and hardly appealing animation reminiscent of long-running shounen series. The directing is also surprisingly spiritless and lacks any uniqueness, what leads to the uninteresting presentation of the rather decent source material. All in all I don’t have any hope that the quality will turn for the better.

 

♦ Winter Sonata

Nothing too outstanding despite the unusual scenario. The animation work by G&G Entertainment and JM Animation is hardly worth mentioning, but what really puts me off is the awful directing (besides the corny script). I can clearly see that they try to abandon typical anime exaggerations and behaviour to create a balance closer to a live-action drama, but it doesn’t work that easily. Of course the stiff to non-existent character animation/acting doesn’t help with that and the unfitting editing as well as the frequent pans over the static backgrounds slow down the flow too much, it might work in live-action that way, but as animation it gets easily boring and isn’t engaging at all.

 

♦ Cheburashka Arere

The original Russian animated film series by Roman Kachanov and famous studio Soyuzmultfilm is rather unknown among anime fans, but has been very popular in Japan since the Cheburashka movies were shown in some cinemas, it was even inducted into the Ghibli Museum Library. As a result, a Japanese version was announced some years ago, which currently airs during TV Tokyo’s “Nori-Suta 100%” show. The new version is produced by Go Hands, a relatively new studio known for their recent anime “Princess Lover!“, with Makoto Nakamura supervising the project and Susumu Kudo as director. The designs, animation and content are pretty simple as expected of children’s program, but sometimes less is more.

 

Altogether a very disappointing fall season with very few highlights and lots of cookie-cutter anime, so I’m hoping for betterment next year. The winter season has some interesting titles like Gainax‘ “Hanamaru Youchien”, A-1’s “So-ra-no-wo-to” and assumedly Brainbase’s “Dhurarara!!” in the line-up, at least some promising anime to look forward to.

Needless #13 & #15

 

I actually haven’t paid much attention to Needless so far since it’s pretty much standard fare by Madhouse as they tend to outsource “low priority” shows (usually manga adaptions) to their Korean affiliates, but recently there were two episodes which caught my interest, to be exact #13 and #15.

 

I checked out episode 13 mainly because of Seiya Numata’s participation as he’s one of my favorite animators, his very obvious style with much exaggeration, energetic distortions, fancy effect work and somewhat simplified drawings is very appealing and stands out from the otherwise so powerless movement which dominates anime these days. This style is of course not Numata’s very own creation since he’s a follower of late animator Yoshinori Kanada and adapted this special approach from Kanada like many other animators before and after him, who are the so-called “Kanada school”.
This episode is basically a two-man work, Numata directed and storyboarded the episode and did key animation, while Kyuuta Sakai is animation director and the only other key animator on this episode. It’s no secret that they tend to work together as happend in many cases in the past, especially when Sakai did the character designs (Zoids, Ichigo Mashimaro, Higurashi). They did also the fanservice-y ending for Needless, which has consequently the same kind of drawing style and feeling as #13.

 

 

The episode itself is nothing less than a great piece of animation crafted with a good sense for interesting and fun styling and is a very enjoyable watch from the very first second thanks to Numata’s directing, particularly the mix of blood, gags, action and fanservice works exceptionally well, not to forget the amusing character interactions. Animation-wise it’s very appealing because of the more expressive animation style and varying thickness of the (out)lines as well as interesting morphing of shapes and lines, and most movements feel very refreshing due to their rather unrestrained nature. The framing and use of perspective is also pretty impressive, but things like bending space and so on isn’t that uncommon among Kanada school animators. Following a video showing an excerpt by way of illustration (seems to be mostly Numata’s work):

 

 

Episode 15 isn’t quite on par with that, but still has its share of strong points especially concerning the animation. The key animation credits include Hiroshi Ishiyama, Shin’ichi Kurita and Tamotsu Ogawa among others, latter did probably these nice sketchy parts:

 

Fall Season 2009 Impressions: Part 1

 

♦ To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

It comes as no surprise that the first episode features some excellent work both on the directing and animation side of things, certainly one of the most impressive first episodes this season. There’s a whole army of animation directors on this episode (9), what says a lot about the good animation quality since more movement means more drawings to correct, so they apparently needed more ADs to complete it in time. Tatsuyuki Nagai’s directing is interesting as usual, and especially the layout sense throughout the first episode is great with many carefully thought out compositions emphasizing the happenings on the screen and providing an appropriate stage for the characters. The great layout work was supervised by nobody less than Katsushi Sakurabi, known as the director of “Tsukihime” and “Gunparade March”, who did also some good work on Nagai’s former J.C. project “Toradora!”, in particular his job as episode director of #16 and #24.
The final action scene is the stunning climax of this episode, besides the great animation it’s especially the nice storyboarding which gives the scene its tension and Mikoto her stylish and intruding appearance. Since it’s a first episode the key animation credits show some rather famous names like Shinichi Iimura, Satoshi Iwataki, Nozomu Abe and (of course?) Hiroki Tanaka (the opening displays also some work by him).
So as far as the production is concerned, it’s certainly a very satisfying debut as one would expect of Nagai, but I have to admit that the scenario is a weak point due to the generic nature, at least that is my impression based on the very first episode. Nagai has already established strong character images and the cunning character interactions which made “Toradora!” so good are also there, so I hope he keeps that up in the succeeding episodes and manages to pull everything together in a worthwile way to cover for its weaknesses.

 

♦ Seiken no Blacksmith

As expected nothing more than a typical light novel/fantasy anime with rather good manglobe quality. The animation is decent enough with some nice cuts now and then, though the directing isn’t that good for the most part but rather bland like the source material. The first episode is dominated by pretty typical anime behaviour and interactions and correspondingly the characters aren’t particularly interesting or likable at this point, however, I’ll check out some more episodes to see where it’s heading.

 

♦ Kampfer

Despite knowing that Kampfer is another one of those mass-produced anime for bishoujo/moe fans I watched the first episode and naturally wasn’t too impressed. It’s the kind of anime popular among otaku these days, with the usual stereotypical cast of characters and unimaginative storyline/setting as well as absolutely trite character designs and poor directing. At least the animation is a bit better than in the typical Deen/Xebec/Arms/ZEXCS etc. production, but I’m sure that will change in the succeeding episodes.

 

♦ Seitokai no Ichizon

Another “masterpiece” by Studio Deen, this time presented in a more self-ironic fashion with loads of references, but it lines up in the studio’s record of cheaply produced series anyway.

 

♦ Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra

The first episode is neither particularly good nor really bad, but it certainly shows the origins of david production as the execution is strongly reminiscent of past Gonzo works both in a positive and negative way. Miserable CG work is nothing rare in Japanese animation, but in this case the whole integration as well as the realization are simply uneffective and unaesthetic. The hand-drawn animation is decent for the most part, though I’ve never been a fan of these typical “Gonzo style” drawings because they often look too stiff in motion and aren’t particularly expressive, but compared with some former Gonzo and the Beetrain series this problem isn’t that dominant here (at this point) and at the very least I appreaciate the nice variety of character designs and their rather mature look.
I can’t say much about the story yet, but my initial impression is by and large positive, even if the characters and setting feel somewhat familiar. The directing is admittedly not as interesting as I hoped with a pretty typical approach on the visuals.

 

♦ Kimi ni Todoke

In terms of direction and animation it certainly fulfils my expectations and it’s another good example of how a good production can make up for a generic scenario. The excellent animation enriches the characters’ personalities and makes their behaviour more believable, especially in the scenes with nuanced acting like the part before the ending of episode 1. This scene feels very natural with richness and harmony in the animation and was probably done by Kenichi Yoshida, who did all in all 30 cuts for this episode according to a statement on his BBS. The directing is very interesting too, Hiro Kaburaki certainly knows how to establish a distinctive mood with clear and appealing visuals, even though the typical anime overacting in some scenes is a bit too much for my taste.
Overall one of the better anime of this year’s fall season and certainly worth checking out.