I’m about 17 years late to the party here, but I’ve been really enjoying watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, a Japanese anime series about giant robots, Christian symbolism*, and teen angst. It’s really atmospheric and intense a lot of the time, although given what I’d heard before the thing that’s surprised me the most is how funny the more comedic scenes are.
Also, Does anyone have any recommendations for good anime series? Apparently I’ve been missing out.
*Or possibly Christian literalism depending on how the main plot arc works out—I’m only halfway through.
Thanks. I’d had the series sitting around on my hard drive for a while, and it was noticing on your site that you apparently thought that it was worth writing a large amount of material about that pushed me to finally start watching. What point should I get to before I read any of your analysis, by the way? Presumably at least I should watch The End of Evangelion, but is there anything else?
PS I just finished episode 21 and jbj Zvfngb, V jnf whfg fgnegvat gb yvxr Xnwv :/
I don’t really have any finished ‘analysis’; right now most of my material is still in the nature of source-gathering, translating interviews, that sort of thing. (You would not believe how hard it has been to track down some of this material.)
But yes, if you haven’t watched EoE, much of the material will be uninteresting.
It’s probably not necessary to watch Rebuild first (unless you want to read the translated parts of the 2.0 CRC which, as it’s all about Rebuild’s 2.0, will be less interesting if you haven’t seen said movie).
I gather this means you’re fluent in Japanese. What would you recommend as the optimal course of learning the language that feels more like fun gallivanting than tedious study; I realise your answer will be idiosyncratic to you.
That’s a good educated guess, but actually no: I retain a decent bit of my highschool French (excellent visual memory), and I translate the occasional key French interview. (France is a huge anime/manga market, which has supported anime magazines, and for some reason Gainaxers seem to like going to France and giving interviews or roundtables much more than going to the USA.)
At the start of my researches, I thought hard about whether not learning Japanese was a good idea; I decided it’d suck up at least 2-3 years to gain enough proficiency to make sufficiently high quality translations and that there was enough English language material which had simply become lost or obscure that it was better to search & compile than translate anew. I have had reason to question my original decision since then...
While hardly optimal, I found coordinating with Japanese on dialogue-supplemental team based activities develops a joy for speaking (thus learning?) the language, though some foundational speaking ability is a prerequisite for that method.
Most importantly, I think, one should take pains to develop an intuitive sense of proper grammar, rather memorize sets of rules, as one can then during conversation direct understanding towards picking up new sentence forms and vocabulary rather than parsing sentences.
Anime is pretty broad. What type of fiction do you like in general?
edit to add
I’ll go a head and start by recommending Gurren Lagann as it is awesome, about giant and by the same people as Evangelion, but with a rather different take on the genre.
That’s actually an interesting question because just saying “Science Fiction” doesn’t seem specific enough. But with that recommendation plus the others who replied, I think I’ll have enough for now. Thanks.
I’m about 17 years late to the party here, but I’ve been really enjoying watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, a Japanese anime series about giant robots, Christian symbolism*, and teen angst. It’s really atmospheric and intense a lot of the time, although given what I’d heard before the thing that’s surprised me the most is how funny the more comedic scenes are.
Also, Does anyone have any recommendations for good anime series? Apparently I’ve been missing out.
*Or possibly Christian literalism depending on how the main plot arc works out—I’m only halfway through.
I am pretty nuts about NGE, so you may find my anime rankings of use (or just enjoy my anime-related writings).
Thanks. I’d had the series sitting around on my hard drive for a while, and it was noticing on your site that you apparently thought that it was worth writing a large amount of material about that pushed me to finally start watching. What point should I get to before I read any of your analysis, by the way? Presumably at least I should watch The End of Evangelion, but is there anything else?
PS I just finished episode 21 and jbj Zvfngb, V jnf whfg fgnegvat gb yvxr Xnwv :/
I don’t really have any finished ‘analysis’; right now most of my material is still in the nature of source-gathering, translating interviews, that sort of thing. (You would not believe how hard it has been to track down some of this material.)
But yes, if you haven’t watched EoE, much of the material will be uninteresting.
It’s probably not necessary to watch Rebuild first (unless you want to read the translated parts of the 2.0 CRC which, as it’s all about Rebuild’s 2.0, will be less interesting if you haven’t seen said movie).
I gather this means you’re fluent in Japanese. What would you recommend as the optimal course of learning the language that feels more like fun gallivanting than tedious study; I realise your answer will be idiosyncratic to you.
That’s a good educated guess, but actually no: I retain a decent bit of my highschool French (excellent visual memory), and I translate the occasional key French interview. (France is a huge anime/manga market, which has supported anime magazines, and for some reason Gainaxers seem to like going to France and giving interviews or roundtables much more than going to the USA.)
At the start of my researches, I thought hard about whether not learning Japanese was a good idea; I decided it’d suck up at least 2-3 years to gain enough proficiency to make sufficiently high quality translations and that there was enough English language material which had simply become lost or obscure that it was better to search & compile than translate anew. I have had reason to question my original decision since then...
While hardly optimal, I found coordinating with Japanese on dialogue-supplemental team based activities develops a joy for speaking (thus learning?) the language, though some foundational speaking ability is a prerequisite for that method. Most importantly, I think, one should take pains to develop an intuitive sense of proper grammar, rather memorize sets of rules, as one can then during conversation direct understanding towards picking up new sentence forms and vocabulary rather than parsing sentences.
Anime is pretty broad. What type of fiction do you like in general?
edit to add I’ll go a head and start by recommending Gurren Lagann as it is awesome, about giant and by the same people as Evangelion, but with a rather different take on the genre.
That’s actually an interesting question because just saying “Science Fiction” doesn’t seem specific enough. But with that recommendation plus the others who replied, I think I’ll have enough for now. Thanks.
We had an anime thread a couple times:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ahe/march_2012_media_thread/5xvb
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/9t4/february_2012_media_thread/5u0l
There is now a Church of NERV in India. Make of that what you will.