Please note that this article contains descriptions of the development of the film.
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Don't be impressed by NHK's sloppy work! Here's what's wrong with the Professional Work Style "Anno Hideaki Special"
OTAKING explains _Hideaki Anno
This is the translation of the free part of Okada Toshio's Seminar on March 30th.
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But Hayao Miyazaki, who came to visit us at the studio at the time, preached to us a lot. He said, "That's why Anno is no good." Miyazaki criticized Anno by name. You can see this criticism of Anno in various places, such as in anime magazines: "There is no point in imitating reality." "Animators nowadays use real-life images and videos as references. You can't just trace what you see in a cartoon. You can't trace what you see in a video. You have to look at reality and make a picture of it in your mind." Miyazaki was criticizing Anno almost exclusively.
At that time, illustrators were very much influenced by Miyazaki's words. That's why Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and Masahiro Maeda were actually quite critical of Yamaga behind his back. They were criticizing Yamaga. They said, "I don't think this is the right way to do it. In other words, it's no good to have the animators act in advance and then try to capture it on video, like in Previsualization. "If you're going to do that, then you should do this work in live action." I heard it over and over again from people outside the company, and also from people inside the company. Both Sadamoto and Maeda complained about it a lot. "If you want to do something like this, just do it in live-action." "Aren't we making something in animation that can't be done in live-action?" they said to me. Hideaki Anno was lost between those conflicting opinions. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, or Hayao Miyazaki's opinion is behind this scene though Masahiro Maeda and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, whose core beliefs are shaken by Hayao Miyazaki's words, first started criticizing Previsualization and live action. No matter how much criticism Yamaga received from them, he tried his best to keep his emotions hidden from his face and pretended to be fine. Anno was pretty much lost between them.
In fact, The Wings of Honnêamise was the first animation work in which Yamaga did not draw a storyboard. He said that he didn't want to do it because if he did, everyone would think that the story was explained by the storyboard. Instead, he tried to make anime with image boards. That's why when I saw NHK Professionals, I was really surprised to find that most of what Anno was saying were Yamaga's words at that time. It was so similar that I said, "You're even paying homage to this part?"
The opening animation for DAICON4 was done when Yamaga was an amateur, but even then he didn't draw storyboards very well. In those days of DAICON 3 and 4, Anno used to make fun of Yamaga saying, "He can't draw a storyboard." He said, "He calls himself a director, but he can't draw storyboards." Yamaga didn't say anything about it. He didn't really explain why he didn't draw the storyboards, but I guess he was trying to make it like Isao Takahata-style animation. Anno criticized him for not drawing storyboards. He said that in order to make an animation, the director or director must draw the storyboard and show the staff the image. But 40 years have passed since then..."Come on, that's not what you said." But thanks to that, he was able to reach the layout-focused style, or angles, this time.
However, the layout-focused style has its disadvantages. This is something I felt very strongly about when I was working on The Wings of Honnêamise. For example, this is a simple scene from Mobile Suit Gundam episode 28, "Dyeing the Atlantic Ocean in Blood". The camera starts with this frame. Something shiny appears on the radar, and the camera moves up. Then, there's a radar operator named Oska here. He reports that a missile is approaching on the radar, or that a missile is approaching, or that a mobile suit has been spotted, or whatever. So this is not the layout-focused style. By changing the angle, the beginning of the cut is the cause. The end of the cut shows the result. In other words, something on the radar is the cause, and the radar operator has found it, so there is a result. This makes the cause-and-effect relationship clear.
If Anno were to make this scene in EVANGELION:3.0+1.0, he wouldn't move the camera because of the layout-focused style. He would fix the camera at the coolest angle and shoot it. He shoots with the camera fixed. The composition and the layout-focused style makes the screen beautiful, but it's not as clear as it is now. If you focus on composition or layout, the picture will be beautiful, but it won't be as clear as the scene I just showed you. You can't show cause and effect separately, or with a time lag, so you lose the explanation power.
In EVANGELION:3.0+1.0, the composition is beautiful thanks to the abandonment of this "explanation". It sure is beautiful, but it somehow becomes more difficult to understand. In other words, it sacrifices the ease of understanding. If a film is beautiful and difficult to understand, the general audience will think it is difficult and wonderful. This is a characteristic of Mamoru Oshii's films. Why are Mamoru Oshii's movies so cool? The reason why they look like they are trying to tell something and have that kind of feeling is that, like Anno's films, they give priority to composition. It's the same with Anno's films, they prioritize composition, they shoot with a fixed camera, and they abandon explanation, so the audience has to think. That's when the audience starts to feel, "This is a difficult film, this is a cool film." So it's just the opposite of Hayao Miyazaki's films. This is also the same point as The Wings of Honnêamise. We did a lot of shooting with a fixed camera, and we didn't do a lot of explanatory cutting. That's why the goal of EVANGELION:3.0+1.0 is also to kill his mentor Hayao Miyazaki.
As you can see from the documentaries about Hayao Miyazaki, he has always drawn the image cuts and image boards by himself. He tries to have the staff draw and create the film according to what he has drawn. However, in the NHK documentary, Anno said,
"The images that I have in my mind are usually boring.”
“There's no point in making a work out of them.”
“It already exists within you. Why do you want the staff to create such things?”
He says that there is no point in creating such a thing. It's a declaration of the disciple killing the master.
In the movie, Misato says, "The only thing a son can do for his father is to tap him on the shoulder (1) or kill him.” That's exactly what it is. Anno criticizes Miyazaki, saying that the staff of Hayao Miyazaki's films are clogs (2), tools. They are tools that are meant to be used by Miyazaki. Basically, it only needs dozens of Hayao Miyazaki to produce Miyazaki's anime. Yet, there is only one Miyazaki in reality. So he uses his staff. So says Anno Hideaki with a laugh in Hayao Miyazaki's documentary NHK. So, in EVANGELION: 3.0+1.0, Anno tried to deny his method. It's really killing the master and killing the father. Anno has said many times in interviews that "there is nothing interesting in my mind", which is his denial to Miyazaki. Anno has said many times in interviews that "there is nothing interesting in my mind", which is his denial to Miyazaki. However, the angle-focused style and previsualization of EVANGELION:3.0+1.0 is not only because he is a fan of Miyazaki, but also, I don't know, a pat on his shoulder. I think it's also a way of saying that it's okay for him to retire.
*1) A tap on the shoulder: A tap on the shoulder to relieve stiffness in the shoulders, and also a recommendation (by a superior) for retirement.
*2) Clogging: Adding a certain quantity to the original quantity to make the overall quantity appear larger than it actually is.
But more than that, it's exactly what Yamaga was trying to do with The Wings of Honnêamise 40 years ago, and it's really the same thing he's saying. I found it interesting. For Anno Hideaki, The Wings of Honnêamise was a previsualization. It's really a previsualization video. It's a test film. It's almost like a homage, in the sense that you are redoing the techniques of a film made by someone else. EVANGELION:3.0+1.0 is a homage to Sci-fi films and historical footage, if you look at it cut by cut. But at the same time, it's interesting that the way it's made is also a homage to the films he's participated in in the past.
The NHK team is not doing their job properly. What I mean by "not working" is that they are certainly filming, but they are trying to figure out why by looking at the material they are filming. They took what Anno Hideaki and Tsurumaki said seriously, without question, and made their footage. That's not the way to make a documentary. There is testimony, and the way a documentary should be is to explore the truth of that testimony, or the other side of that testimony. It's called propaganda if you take what they say in their testimonies seriously, swallow it without question, put it in an easy-to-understand format, edit it, and say, "That's because Anno is a genius" or "He's amazing." I was disappointed to see that NHK has become a propaganda agency that simply interviews people and makes propaganda stories.
If you're going to make something, you should look deep into it, I felt.
That's why they came up with the idea that "Director Anno is such a genius that people don't understand him." There is certainly that aspect, but the content of the program became cheap to make such a statement with the footage they were able to shoot. What a waste! They could have made something more interesting with all the material they had.
There's something else I'd like to say. It's around here. After the preview, Mrs. Moyoko Anno gives Anno a small clap and says, "Well done." It's a scene of praise. Also, this is a partial cut of the screen, but it's very interesting to see Director Tsurumaki looking like he's in deep pain while Hideaki Anno says, "I can't do it." Both of these scenes are too funny, but if I were to explain here, it might be a problematic statement, so I'm going to talk about them in the Premium section as a funny story. I've already talked about the meaningful content here, so in the Premium, I'd like to talk about the meaningless, simple, nasty point of view that I saw.
Thank you for your time. These are my thoughts on watching NHK's professional Hideaki Anno special.