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'EVANGELION: 1.0 YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE.' I ...

'EVANGELION: 1.0 YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE.' Interview with Hideaki Anno #1

Sep 22, 2021

2007.12.17

Written by Ryusuke Hikawa

General Director: Hideaki Anno

Our interview concludes with General Director Hideaki Anno. In this interview, I would like to ask him about his vision and wishes for the grand project "Evangelion Again", which was a surprise to everyone. We hope that you will be able to feel the enthusiasm and ambition of this project in this very long interview, which lasted over four hours in total.

I wanted to make Eva one of the important contents supporting the industry.

Interviewer

I think you were able to make "1.0" into a fulfilling film in a fairly short period of time. In this interview, we'll talk about how you were able to achieve that and check what Director Anno's goal is from various perspectives. First of all, please tell us when you decided on this project and if there was any reason for it.

Anno

Well, let's see. I don't know when I first decided to work on... I think it was probably October of 2005 when I decided to do Rebuild of Evangelion. The earliest date I can find in my Word notes is November 10th.

Interviewer

What did you write in that note?

Anno

I wrote a lot of things. The main thing was that I was aiming to make Eva into a Gundam, or a classic. One of the ideas was to create a new series under the title of Evangelion as part 2. My ideal was to create "G-Evangelion".

Interviewer

Do you mean a work that turns over the very concept of Eva, like G Gundam did in the past?

Anno

Yes. Gundam did quite well with "G". It had a breakthrough with "W", but went downhill a bit with "X". Then "S" was the big breakthrough, and it continued. That's the ideal scenario (laughs). Before that, there was "V" though.

Interviewer

So the note was not about the content of your work, but rather about your business concept.

Anno

That's right. It's not so much about business as it is about the future of the animation industry. I don't like to call anime "content," but when I think about business, this term is less misleading than calling it a product, so I call it "content" here. When you think of animation as content rather than a product, I think that animation content other than kids' content is currently on the point of not progressing well.

In terms of kids' works, there is a full range of content such as "Anpanman," "Doraemon," "Pocket Monsters," and "Crayon Shin-chan." The products are constantly being updated, and I think they're working well. Many of the works have already been running for more than ten years and still seem to be doing well in the future. I think this line will continue. However, when I think about it as my concept of animation, I worry about the fact that there is only "Gundam" at the moment.

Interviewer

That's an issue I've been thinking about myself. I worry that there are so few character goods that span a long period of time.

Anno

Right. I wondered what would happen to the anime industry if it continued to have only "Gundam". Even in tokusatsu, which is said to be an industry that is losing ground to newcomers, there are "Kamen Rider", "Ultraman", and "Super Sentai" to support it. This has been going on for thirty or forty years. The great thing about "Super Sentai" in particular is that it has been renewed every year without stopping. This is not the case with "Ultraman" and "Kamen Rider," but in the end they have become a steady line that continues to this day.

The tokusatsu industry is supported by these three, but the anime industry I'm involved in has only one support, which is Gundam. "Space Battleship Yamato," which was intended to be a steady line a long time ago, has not been able to be realized due to various reasons.

Interviewer

The only other anime that I can think of that can be made into a steady line is "Macross".

Anno

Macross is doing well, but it hasn't yet reached the point where it is accepted by the general public. Ghibli anime is also becoming more popular, but I feel like I'm watching Disney anime, so it's hard to say it's a steady line. After all, Gundam is the anime goods that office workers can put on their desks at work. If it's a Gundam mobile suit, even if others see it, they can just think, "He likes Gundam." It's not just for nerds, it's an anime that's approved by the general public. That's the great thing about that work.

There aren't many other anime goods that you can put on your desk at work. That's why I want there to be as many contents other than Gundam that support the animation industry in a different category than Ghibli, or Hayao Miyazaki now. That's one of my main motivations. Eva is an anime goods that you can barely put on your desk at work. So, I want the new "Evangelion" to continue ten or twenty years from now. I hope that young people, not me, will be able to do it one after another on their own.

Interviewer

I see. So the desire to develop "Eva" into something like that was a major motivation for you before "Rebuild of Evangelion", wasn't it?

Anno

That's right. I hope that Eva can help as one of the contents that support the entire anime industry. If there was anything else, anything would have been fine, but objectively speaking, "Evangelion" has the highest potential. It's a work that you can go ahead with as you like without worrying about the original rights or other troublesome circumstances.

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