Advances in digital technology have overcome the weaknesses of celluloid
Interviewer
One of the things that you gained this time was the joy of finding out that digital technology is useful enough.
Anno
In the end, we were able to recreate everything that we were able to do in the celluloid era, and we were also able to clear most of the weaknesses that celluloid had. With today's technology, I think digital will be enough to compete in the future.
Interviewer
In my interviews so far, I've found that one of the advantages of digital is that light processing has become easier. For example, the green light emitted by EVA-01. At first, it was said that it was difficult to express transmitted light digitally, wasn't it?
Anno
I think it was about ten years ago, when RETAS and Animo (software used in the process of coloring pictures) started to appear and the work switched to digital, it was difficult to express light digitally. No matter how I tried, I couldn't reproduce the feeling of transmitted light between the shooting stand and the film. In the end, I thought that digital was only suitable for cartoon-like animations like "Helitako Pu-chan," where the picture is painted evenly over the entire surface. I thought it would be impossible to create a serious drama with it.
When Photoshop first came out, the transparent light expression was a circle of brushes that looked like a lens ghost, and everyone was using that. It didn't matter who did it, the result would be the same. With digital effects, when you express water, all the plug-ins are the same, so they all look like the same water. I really didn't like the fact that no matter who did the fire or smoke, the result would be the same.
Nowadays, the range of expression has expanded, and I think that the expression of light and atmosphere has finally become a merit of digital technology in the past few years. Nowadays, the technology has advanced so much that we can freely control the size of the flare and the transmitted light. When I realized how far we could go in expressing light, I decided to create the first image for EVA-01.
Interviewer
When you say "first," do you mean the image drawn by Ikuto Yamashita?
Anno
Yes, I do. At the very beginning he said, "I want EVA-01 to have only green and orange glow in the pitch black darkness, and I want the base color of the Evangelion itself to be pitch black. I want only the light of EVA-01 to be visible on the all-black screen."
I agreed with him that this was a good idea. I really wanted to go for that expression. It would make the process of coloring the picture easier if the plane was all black (laughs). But there were a lot of objections, so I gave up at the time.
If you paint on the cels, it's really only black, and it looks very flat. This was fine if you wanted to use stop-motion pictures, but there were many disadvantages such as not being able to show movement. This time, with digital technology, we were able to express subtle blacks instead of perfect blacks, and we were able to express light without difficulty, so we were finally able to create the original image on the screen.
Interviewer
In the first trailer, that was what surprised me the most. There were only green and orange lights shining in the nightscape. I'm also a big fan of electric lights in special effects (laughs), so when I saw that, I changed my mind and realized that digital technology can change the expression to such an extent. I realized that light is the key to digital.
Anno
That's right. I grew up watching "Ultraman", so I can't help it (laughs). I was greatly influenced by the impact of seeing a giant standing in a darkened building district. I also like the second episode of "Kamen Rider".
Interviewer
Ah, the episode where he gets wind pressure on his belt in the dark and his eyes light up and he transforms into Kamen Rider.
Anno
I heard that the night scene in that episode was considered by the producers to be a blooper because you couldn't see very well, and that was the reason for the white lines on the sides of the Kamen Rider's body later on. However, when I saw it as a child, I had a very grotesque image of it, and I liked it. In the dark of the night, there were strange people dressed in black and suddenly blood was spilled all over the place. At the time, I was watching it on a black-and-white TV set, so I didn't know what was going on, and it was really scary. I liked that sense of fear.
Interviewer
The fact that you can't see clearly makes your imagination run wild, doesn't it?
Anno
Even if you don't see them clearly, you can tell that there are people dressed in black. That's the image of Shocker that I have in my mind, and episode 2 is amazing. Episode 4, which is in the same rotation, is also good for night scenes.
Interviewer
Is the fourth episode the one where the Sarracenians appear?
Anno
Yes, it is.The last battle is a night scene. My visual image of Kamen Rider is that he is doing something scary in the dark of the night in the city. Of course, I also love the first appearance scene and the battle scene in the first episode where he is standing against the blue sky.
The first Ultraman (1966-) also goes well at night, as do Alien Baltan and Green Monse. I especially like the night scenes in the episodes directed by Toshihiro Iijima. The lights in Ultraman's eyes are pure white, aren't they? It's really scary to see a giant with glowing white eyes standing in a dark building district. That's what I like about it.
Interviewer
It's true that in Ultraman, especially in Type A, there's a sense that there's a creepy person with glazed eyes standing there, and there's no direct connection to the hero of justice.
Anno
Yeah, a silver giant with slanted eyes and a scary wrinkled face, just standing there in Marunouchi (a lively business district in Tokyo) late at night. It's very scary. I wanted to recreate a different kind of scary atmosphere in an anime. I've had this feeling ever since I was working on the TV animation version. EVA-01 was originally intended to be a "scary existence" like a demon. In terms of scary existence, it conveys the original image of the early first-generation Ultraman and Kamen Rider.
Interviewer
In "Rebuild of Evangelion", you can see that the higher up the camera goes, the darker the color of EVA-01 becomes, and that's the reason why it looks so much bigger than the TV anime version, and why it looks like you're looking up at it.
Anno
The upper part of the body has been shadowed. I had originally imagined footlights. I also darkened the sky as much as possible to make the entire screen darker, which is an image Tsurumaki wanted to do during the TV animation version, so that scene is a burst of his obsession. The sense of perspective from the air and the sense of immensity from the light in Eva are mainly his obsessions.
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