Individuals, Groups, and the System

The big presupposition of animation production is that it’s a group operation.

However, despite being made as a group operation, there are TV series that are colored almost entirely by the personality of one individual. Hayao Miyazaki’s "Conan, Boy of the Future" is that way, and many of the series where Yoshiyuki Tomino served as chief director are also the same.

"Neon Genesis Evangelion" is also a series that was shaped by the personality of its one creator, Hideaki Anno. The worldview, character creation, creation of Mecha, the gadgets, the division of cuts, and even to the point of each line of dialogue, everything is inscribed with the name of "Hideaki Anno." For example, the mental landscape of Anno.is, of course, reflected in the story, behavior patterns of the characters and the like. Anno’s mood is reflected and his intent is clear even in trivial places like the name of a department store or the brand of can coffee that appears.

I mean, it was made so that his intent is clear and is reflected.

Well then, appearing in this book are the definitive draft scripts of "Evangelion."

The process of how these scripts reached the point of definitive drafts is exactly as follows.

First, Anno prepares a memo that simply writes out each episode’s idea. The screenwriters write a script based on that memo. Going through staff meetings that center on the director, the screenwriters go through the second and third drafts and for the time being are finished. In addition, Anno directly goes over the scripts that the screenwriters have finished and the script becomes the definitive draft.

Not matter how high their level of completeness is as TV anime scripts, the times when the scripts completed by the screenwriters do not match Anno’s sensibilities or creativity, do not pass.

After the script’s definitive draft, Anno ends up revising and correcting even further in the storyboard stage. You can say there is a thorough system for producing the film according to Anno’s intent.

As might be expected because the director goes over the script’s definitive draft himself, the directions regarding the screen image are meticulous and the action and staging are quite concretely depicted. That is to say, the "wordboard-al" hue is also strong. This tendency is especially pronounced in the inner universe scenes of episode 13 (televised episode number 14) and episode 16 that are included in this volume.

This book includes the definitive drafts that the director revised and corrected almost entirely as they are in order to emphasize the source material. There are annotations in the margin about the parts where there are major changes in the final films.

In reaching the film’s completion, it might also be interesting to try reading about things like how the drama was put together and how Anno’s ideas continued to change.

 

Translator's Notes

- "Ito" which means "intention", "intent", "purpose" is used many times in this article. While I have opted to use "intent", perhaps "vision" in this case may be more appropriate. Rather than "Anno's intent", "Anno's vision" may be a closer English usage for what the author is conveying in the Japanese. This is in regard to Anno's over-arching goal for the series and what he wants to convey and how.

- As in the first introduction, the word "sakkasei" appeared in this second introduction. I wrestled with it in the first article and settled on "authorship", but after translating this article and thinking about the term a bit further, I have decided to use "creativity" in this article. While strictly speaking, this word does not mean "creativity", from the context and a more literal reading of the kanji used, I feel that this is good match for the English version. "Sakkasei" is a kanji combination of the words "sakka" - writer, novelist - and "sei" which in this usage means "nature" (as in "one's nature"). Further breaking down the kanji "sakka" - which use the kanji for "make" and "house" (in this case, the usage of "house" is not the literal, but rather a usage meaning "one who (does)~". So the most literal meaning of "sakka" is "one who makes" - "creator". Adding to this the "sei" (nature) the kanji combination is "creator-nature". This refers to Anno's sense of creation or "writership"; his "creative-ness". I took this a step further and rendered it as "creativity". Perhaps "creative sensibility" might be better, but the word "sensiblity" was used with this word, I simply used "creativity". In the written Japanese, the reader would grasp this "writer-ship" or "authorship" as having above meaning implied thanks to the kanji used, but an English reader doesn't have this luxury and getting a "clean" easy to use word while staying true to the written Japanese was tricky.