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Short Answer: Anno Until their depiction in Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, power lines were virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when th

Short Answer: Anno Until their depiction in Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, power lines were virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when they take up more time and effort during a time-packed production schedule? However, Hideaki Anno, the director of the aforementioned anime, began to implement them in backgrounds, bringing in a new kind of mechanical urban aesthetics. Anno has a certain kind of obsession with mechanical structures, such as power lines and rail tracks, as he likes the way they continue into a distance. He continued depicting them in his later works, such as Kare Kano as well as live action features such as Shiki-jitsu, Love and Pop and his recent blockbuster Godzilla Resurgence[1]. Given how Evangelion revolutionized anime, the industry quickly followed its influence including its aesthetics. Source: I've interviewed him. [Link](http://rickyreports.com/archives/annohideaki/ http://rickyreports.com/archives/annohideaki/) [1] Well, it is rather an essential feature to portray destruction within this long-running monster franchise.

da02 9y ago
Which article(s) do you recommend for going into more detail on "Evangelion revolutionized anime"? I remember reading on how one of the people involved was surprised at its popularity despite all the "characters being messed up".
- k__ 9y ago
  I don't know where to read, but it seems to me that end of the 90s, TV shows (real and anime) became less episode based but got a whole story arc, like we know from current TV shows like "Game of Thrones", "Breaking Bad" or "The Wire". I always hear people talking about how "The Sopranos" was the first TV show that did this, but anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Cowboy Bebop" came out years before it.
  - blincoln 9y ago
    AFAIK, J. Michael Straczynski was the first person to get a successful arc-based television series on TV, with _Babylon 5_ - the pilot aired in 1993. He had tried earlier with _Captain Power_ in 1987, but that only lasted a single season, and it was kind of doomed to be thought of as a kid's show because of the toyline tie-in.
    - aidenn0 9y ago
      Soap Operas?
      - da02 9y ago
        I was thinking of that too, especially of all the personal problems the characters had in Evangelion. I had to stop watching because of the main protagonist repeatedly asking why his father doesn't show any love for him. A lot of people are into those story-lines, and I guess it partly explains Evangelion's popularity with women too.
        aidenn0 9y ago
        This was also part of the point of the show; it was setting itself opposed to all the Mecha anime from the 80s and 90s with teenagers piloting robots, often with no parents around, but showing no external signs of trauma.
        JohnBooty 9y ago
        Yeah, Shinji is not a lot of fun. Though, he's not really "supposed" to be likeable. Over the years I've warmed up to him, though. He'll never be likeable but he's definitely sympathetic and actually rather realistic, considering the hell he's put through.
        ZenoArrow 9y ago
        Personally, I identified heavily with Shinji when watching the anime for the first time, and binge watching the box set ended up being some form of catharsis, finding someone relatable to myself at the time. I wouldn't say that was the only reason it became one of my favourite TV shows, but it certainly helped. I can understand other people finding him annoying, just wanted to give an alternative perspective from someone who didn't.
      - chc 9y ago
        Babylon 5 was even called a "space opera."
  - bitwize 9y ago
    Macross and Gundam did this in the 80s. Macross was even viewable here, as Robotech.
    - labster 9y ago
      And Rose of Versailles did it in the 1970s. Don't forget the shoujo demographic, everyone. This whole myth of invention being a singular moment rather than a gradual stream of improvements infects creative works more than other fields. But we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
      - k__ 9y ago
        But who did it first?!?!? xD
- ordinaryradical 9y ago
  So, this doesn't have the best translation to English, but it's probably the most useful Japanese perspective on why Evangelion was such a revolutionary work for its time. It contextualizes the series as a cultural event and shows how Anno compares with the other convention-breaking directors of that era. http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic018/intercity/higashi_E.html http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic018/intercity/higashi_E... Keep in mind that Azuma has his own slant as something of a pop philosopher in Japan, but I think he nails exactly what made Evangelion a surprise and a trendsetter. Let me know if you enjoyed the article—I can post more links on useful reading or you can PM me for more.
  - Tyrek 9y ago
    Could you post more links? This has been great reading.
    - gwern 9y ago
      If you have a lot of free time, I have an anthology of mostly out-of-universe discussions by people directly or indirectly involved in Evangelion from 1994 on: https://www.gwern.net/otaku https://www.gwern.net/otaku
      - ordinaryradical 9y ago
        Pretty much everything I'd point you to is all in here (thanks gwern, the fandom truly doesn't deserve you). I highly recommend the 1996 interview with Toshio Okada for a perspective on Anno's mindset, the history of the medium, and the uniqueness of the work. https://www.gwern.net/docs/eva/1996-animerica-conscience-otaking https://www.gwern.net/docs/eva/1996-animerica-conscience-ota... Also read Azuma's interviews with Anno and especially with Krystian Wozniki--these are very illuminating and will recontextualize your views of Okada and the show as a whole. If you can hold all of these views in mind, you'll start to understand how Evangelion absorbed so much cinematic power from its cultural moment and forebears. It's a culmination of the medium in some ways. That it did all this while remaining an intensely personal work with an auteur's sense of vision and originality makes it that much more impressive.
- JohnBooty 9y ago
  The best way to understand Evangelion's uniqueness is to become familiar with all the tropes in anime/manga. Then it becomes obvious how Evangelion turned them all on their heads in some of the darkest possible ways -- and became one of the biggest hits of all time in Japan; something truly "generational" like Star Wars. Anime and manga had long excelled at high drama; the space operas and melodramas and such. And the creators of anime and manga were certainly not lacking in self awareness; there were lots of parody and comedy in anime and manga over the years, much of the light parody focusing on other works in their own genres or the general tropes found in those works. But Evangelion was arguably the first major work in which those worlds collided. It never breaks the fourth wall, but the subversion of anime's tropes and conventions is utterly central to its drama. 1. The protagonist is a teenage boy. No surprise there -- the protagonist of any show is usually representative of the target audience. But instead of a simple "boy becomes a man" narrative, he more or less descends into depression and PTSD. The act of piloting a robot in bloody combat against incomprehensible is not healthy for him (because it wouldn't be, for anybody) and he is simultaneously loathable and also incredibly sympathetic because god damn is he put through hell. He responds to these traumatic events in ways that we might - imagine if your abusive father abandoned you and then forced you to become a child soldier? How screwed up would you be? He's probably the first anime protagonist to say: "Wait, this isn't fun. This is seriously fucked up." (And going further down the rabbit-hole of self-awareness, Shinji is painfully aware of how messed up he is) 2. Giant robots. They are a staple of anime for a number of reasons, chiefly because they sell toys, and toy sales help to finance these shows. Evangelion give you "robots," alright, but they are utter nightmare fuel in ways both visual and psychological. 2a. A trope in anime is when the pilots of giant robots "feel" their robots' pain. Evangelion takes this to the darkest and most literal extreme possible, with damage to the robots resulting in physical and emotional damage to the pilots. 3. Weirdest. Love triangle. Ever? It would be spoilers to say more, but it makes Game of Thrones look wholesome by comparison. Romantic tension is a given in... just about anything... but maaaaaaan does Eva make it weird. Another expectation, subverted, darkly. 4. Misato is something of a surrogate mother to Shinji. That gets, uh, interesting. That said, Evangelion is not good just because "it's dark." There are lighthearted moments, and happiness, and some characters grow and become better people. It never feels "dark for the sake of being dark" in the way that some series like Game of Thrones are, where you almost dread the happy moments since those happy moments because they are immediately followed by some sort of gruesome tragedy, as if the viewer themselves is being punished for daring to be happy.
nudpiedo 9y ago
Actually many old manga draws these power lines too, it is just a way to show the way Japanese cities are in the reality (in the present.) However it does not recreate itself to much in this details of the urban landscape. E.g. 歩くひと, (the walking man).
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Manga have done this but many manga are created by folks with obsessive traits and a history and culture of depiction of great detail in the backgrounds. I can buy an argument that this wasn't the case for anime for a long time, perhaps because of time or budgetary reasons.
- stordoff 9y ago
  I've found manga to generally have more detailed backgrounds than anime. I wouldn't be surprised if that is just a reflection of that.
unabst 9y ago
I can't believe I found it, or rather, that someone uploaded just it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ When I heard power lines, for some reason one scene from Patlabor came to mind. It's the quintessential Tokyo city view from the window, and the quintessential view inside a window from the city. Outside there are power lines. You cannot avoid them. And looking in, you see the tatami flooring and dudes in their underwear. I thought it might have been Patlabor 2, but it was the original movie. So that's 1989. Both movies are staples of Japanese anime. But power lines can also be found in episode 1 of the TV series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTs97NpnUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTs97NpnUo So my short answer would be Patlabor, but that's just from my own memory. I think the commonality here is that the power lines are used to portray a sense of scale for the robots. A kid growing up in Tokyo knows exactly how high those lines are.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  It's not just that - both Patlabor and Evangelion often would take a slow, languid tone to observe the city. Evangelion spends a lot of time on Shinji grappling with his depression - scenes of him just sitting on a train back and forth listening to a mix-tape on an endless loop. Patlabor The Movie, similarly, is about Hoba taking them on a tour of the city with their investigation. Half the movie is a travelogue of futuristic Tokyo. I think both in general were representative to of the change from the faster-paced action shows of the '70s and '80s to the languid artsy style we see in 90s anime.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  I just checked out Bubblegum Crisis (1987), and that also has multiple shots with crazy power lines in the background. For instance, 11:38 here: https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698 https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698
  - sirmarksalot 9y ago
    The shot has power lines in it, but they're not really the focus. It's a busy nightlife scene, and the power lines serve that effect. In the Patlabor shot, the detailed power infrastructure is a bit more purposeful, adding to the atmosphere of an average suburban neighborhood full of average people. But again, it's not the star of the shot -- it's just one of a handful of choices that create the mood. In Evangelion, the shots are framed to draw your attention to a wooden pole with a transformer box that was probably designed in the '60s, serving as a stark contrast with all the futuristic technology around it.
cplanas 9y ago
Oh, wow. How did you manage to interview Hideaki Anno? Despite the fact that his best works are anime TV series, I always thought Anno was one of the best filmmakers alive. His works in the 90s are absolutely amazing, particularly Evangelion and Karekano. He is a complex artist on many sides; formally he is the first (and mainly only) modern anime director: he uses the long-shot substantially less in favor of close-ups, which are just harder to use (almost anything can be OK-explained by a long-shot, while close-ups are pretty limited semantically). Aesthetically he is very original, with how he plays with music (Haendel in Evangelion 22, Beethoven in Evangelion 24, Bach in the "sex scene" of Karekano) or my favorite aesthetical treat, the use of text. Love and Pop, and then Shiki-jitsu were a very promising start for him as a live-action filmmaker... but unfortunately, it looks like personal issues got to him. In the 90s there was a trio of Japanese filmmakers with similar approaches and amazing talent: Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon and Shunji Iwai (who is also the main actor in Shiki-jitsu). For different reasons, none of them seems to have used their whole potentials.
- hitekker 9y ago
  Did you see Shin Gojira which he directed? Uneven, overburdened but still the most thrilling and authentic Godzilla film I've seen since the original.
- bsder 9y ago
  > Satoshi Kon Death has a way of putting a crimp on using your whole potential. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon
  - cplanas 9y ago
    I know: that's why I wrote "for different reasons". I understand that in the case of Kon it feels more unfair, as he had a great career before his death; of his 4 movies, 3 are typically considered great/masterpieces. Kon didn't use his whole potential in the same way that James Dean did; Anno and Iwai are a bit more like Nicholas Cage.
JohnBooty 9y ago
I can't believe you interviewed him. That is amazing! The rest of this post isn't directed at you specifically, you probably know this and much more. Evangelion perhaps popularized this kind of shot, but there's an interesting broader history and context. In general, this kind of shot is called an establishing shot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishing_shot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishing_shot [An establishing shot] establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects.[1] It is generally a long or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place Some directors like Yasujiro Ozu used a more enigmatic or abstract sort of establishing shot (or quasi-establishing shot) dubbed "pillow shots" by one film critic: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/yasujiro_ozu_and_the_enigmatic_art_of_the_pillow_shot https://dangerousminds.net/comments/yasujiro_ozu_and_the_eni... A "pillow shot" is a cutaway, for no obvious narrative reason, to a visual element, often a landscape or an empty room, that is held for a significant time (five or six seconds). It can be at the start of a scene or during a scene. At a minimum, in Ozu’s work, these pillow shots inject a sense of calm and serenity and contribute to the elegant and stately pacing of his movies. The term “pillow shot” was coined [...] by the critic Noël Burch in his book To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema: “I call these images pillow-shots, proposing a loose analogy with the ‘pillow-word’ of classical [Japanese] poetry.” At least several of Ozu's works feature power lines in these shots: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/category/directors-ozu-yasujiro/ http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/category/directors-ozu-yas... This context is something I feel a lot of people miss when discussing those shots of power lines in Evangelion, perhaps ascribing to them more symbolic significance to them than Anno intended -- they are a stylistic hallmark of Evangelion, but aren't unique to Evangelion.
the8472 9y ago
I recall characters often standing on top of telephone or power line poles for dramatic effect, even before NGE. Hopping from pole to pole or walking over powerlines also is a form of fast travel for superpowered or magical characters. It's not quite the same as simple scenery shots emphasizing the powerlines, but they were significant before too.

da02 9y ago

Which article(s) do you recommend for going into more detail on "Evangelion revolutionized anime"? I remember reading on how one of the people involved was surprised at its popularity despite all the "characters being messed up".

k__ 9y ago
I don't know where to read, but it seems to me that end of the 90s, TV shows (real and anime) became less episode based but got a whole story arc, like we know from current TV shows like "Game of Thrones", "Breaking Bad" or "The Wire". I always hear people talking about how "The Sopranos" was the first TV show that did this, but anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Cowboy Bebop" came out years before it.
- blincoln 9y ago
  AFAIK, J. Michael Straczynski was the first person to get a successful arc-based television series on TV, with _Babylon 5_ - the pilot aired in 1993. He had tried earlier with _Captain Power_ in 1987, but that only lasted a single season, and it was kind of doomed to be thought of as a kid's show because of the toyline tie-in.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    Soap Operas?
    - da02 9y ago
      I was thinking of that too, especially of all the personal problems the characters had in Evangelion. I had to stop watching because of the main protagonist repeatedly asking why his father doesn't show any love for him. A lot of people are into those story-lines, and I guess it partly explains Evangelion's popularity with women too.
      - aidenn0 9y ago
        This was also part of the point of the show; it was setting itself opposed to all the Mecha anime from the 80s and 90s with teenagers piloting robots, often with no parents around, but showing no external signs of trauma.
      - JohnBooty 9y ago
        Yeah, Shinji is not a lot of fun. Though, he's not really "supposed" to be likeable. Over the years I've warmed up to him, though. He'll never be likeable but he's definitely sympathetic and actually rather realistic, considering the hell he's put through.
        ZenoArrow 9y ago
        Personally, I identified heavily with Shinji when watching the anime for the first time, and binge watching the box set ended up being some form of catharsis, finding someone relatable to myself at the time. I wouldn't say that was the only reason it became one of my favourite TV shows, but it certainly helped. I can understand other people finding him annoying, just wanted to give an alternative perspective from someone who didn't.
    - chc 9y ago
      Babylon 5 was even called a "space opera."
- bitwize 9y ago
  Macross and Gundam did this in the 80s. Macross was even viewable here, as Robotech.
  - labster 9y ago
    And Rose of Versailles did it in the 1970s. Don't forget the shoujo demographic, everyone. This whole myth of invention being a singular moment rather than a gradual stream of improvements infects creative works more than other fields. But we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
    - k__ 9y ago
      But who did it first?!?!? xD
ordinaryradical 9y ago
So, this doesn't have the best translation to English, but it's probably the most useful Japanese perspective on why Evangelion was such a revolutionary work for its time. It contextualizes the series as a cultural event and shows how Anno compares with the other convention-breaking directors of that era. http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic018/intercity/higashi_E.html http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic018/intercity/higashi_E... Keep in mind that Azuma has his own slant as something of a pop philosopher in Japan, but I think he nails exactly what made Evangelion a surprise and a trendsetter. Let me know if you enjoyed the article—I can post more links on useful reading or you can PM me for more.
- Tyrek 9y ago
  Could you post more links? This has been great reading.
  - gwern 9y ago
    If you have a lot of free time, I have an anthology of mostly out-of-universe discussions by people directly or indirectly involved in Evangelion from 1994 on: https://www.gwern.net/otaku https://www.gwern.net/otaku
    - ordinaryradical 9y ago
      Pretty much everything I'd point you to is all in here (thanks gwern, the fandom truly doesn't deserve you). I highly recommend the 1996 interview with Toshio Okada for a perspective on Anno's mindset, the history of the medium, and the uniqueness of the work. https://www.gwern.net/docs/eva/1996-animerica-conscience-otaking https://www.gwern.net/docs/eva/1996-animerica-conscience-ota... Also read Azuma's interviews with Anno and especially with Krystian Wozniki--these are very illuminating and will recontextualize your views of Okada and the show as a whole. If you can hold all of these views in mind, you'll start to understand how Evangelion absorbed so much cinematic power from its cultural moment and forebears. It's a culmination of the medium in some ways. That it did all this while remaining an intensely personal work with an auteur's sense of vision and originality makes it that much more impressive.
JohnBooty 9y ago
The best way to understand Evangelion's uniqueness is to become familiar with all the tropes in anime/manga. Then it becomes obvious how Evangelion turned them all on their heads in some of the darkest possible ways -- and became one of the biggest hits of all time in Japan; something truly "generational" like Star Wars. Anime and manga had long excelled at high drama; the space operas and melodramas and such. And the creators of anime and manga were certainly not lacking in self awareness; there were lots of parody and comedy in anime and manga over the years, much of the light parody focusing on other works in their own genres or the general tropes found in those works. But Evangelion was arguably the first major work in which those worlds collided. It never breaks the fourth wall, but the subversion of anime's tropes and conventions is utterly central to its drama. 1. The protagonist is a teenage boy. No surprise there -- the protagonist of any show is usually representative of the target audience. But instead of a simple "boy becomes a man" narrative, he more or less descends into depression and PTSD. The act of piloting a robot in bloody combat against incomprehensible is not healthy for him (because it wouldn't be, for anybody) and he is simultaneously loathable and also incredibly sympathetic because god damn is he put through hell. He responds to these traumatic events in ways that we might - imagine if your abusive father abandoned you and then forced you to become a child soldier? How screwed up would you be? He's probably the first anime protagonist to say: "Wait, this isn't fun. This is seriously fucked up." (And going further down the rabbit-hole of self-awareness, Shinji is painfully aware of how messed up he is) 2. Giant robots. They are a staple of anime for a number of reasons, chiefly because they sell toys, and toy sales help to finance these shows. Evangelion give you "robots," alright, but they are utter nightmare fuel in ways both visual and psychological. 2a. A trope in anime is when the pilots of giant robots "feel" their robots' pain. Evangelion takes this to the darkest and most literal extreme possible, with damage to the robots resulting in physical and emotional damage to the pilots. 3. Weirdest. Love triangle. Ever? It would be spoilers to say more, but it makes Game of Thrones look wholesome by comparison. Romantic tension is a given in... just about anything... but maaaaaaan does Eva make it weird. Another expectation, subverted, darkly. 4. Misato is something of a surrogate mother to Shinji. That gets, uh, interesting. That said, Evangelion is not good just because "it's dark." There are lighthearted moments, and happiness, and some characters grow and become better people. It never feels "dark for the sake of being dark" in the way that some series like Game of Thrones are, where you almost dread the happy moments since those happy moments because they are immediately followed by some sort of gruesome tragedy, as if the viewer themselves is being punished for daring to be happy.

nudpiedo 9y ago

Actually many old manga draws these power lines too, it is just a way to show the way Japanese cities are in the reality (in the present.) However it does not recreate itself to much in this details of the urban landscape. E.g. 歩くひと, (the walking man).

hkmurakami 9y ago
Manga have done this but many manga are created by folks with obsessive traits and a history and culture of depiction of great detail in the backgrounds. I can buy an argument that this wasn't the case for anime for a long time, perhaps because of time or budgetary reasons.
stordoff 9y ago
I've found manga to generally have more detailed backgrounds than anime. I wouldn't be surprised if that is just a reflection of that.

unabst 9y ago

I can't believe I found it, or rather, that someone uploaded just it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ When I heard power lines, for some reason one scene from Patlabor came to mind. It's the quintessential Tokyo city view from the window, and the quintessential view inside a window from the city. Outside there are power lines. You cannot avoid them. And looking in, you see the tatami flooring and dudes in their underwear. I thought it might have been Patlabor 2, but it was the original movie. So that's 1989. Both movies are staples of Japanese anime. But power lines can also be found in episode 1 of the TV series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTs97NpnUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTs97NpnUo So my short answer would be Patlabor, but that's just from my own memory. I think the commonality here is that the power lines are used to portray a sense of scale for the robots. A kid growing up in Tokyo knows exactly how high those lines are.

Pxtl 9y ago
It's not just that - both Patlabor and Evangelion often would take a slow, languid tone to observe the city. Evangelion spends a lot of time on Shinji grappling with his depression - scenes of him just sitting on a train back and forth listening to a mix-tape on an endless loop. Patlabor The Movie, similarly, is about Hoba taking them on a tour of the city with their investigation. Half the movie is a travelogue of futuristic Tokyo. I think both in general were representative to of the change from the faster-paced action shows of the '70s and '80s to the languid artsy style we see in 90s anime.
Chathamization 9y ago
I just checked out Bubblegum Crisis (1987), and that also has multiple shots with crazy power lines in the background. For instance, 11:38 here: https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698 https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698
- sirmarksalot 9y ago
  The shot has power lines in it, but they're not really the focus. It's a busy nightlife scene, and the power lines serve that effect. In the Patlabor shot, the detailed power infrastructure is a bit more purposeful, adding to the atmosphere of an average suburban neighborhood full of average people. But again, it's not the star of the shot -- it's just one of a handful of choices that create the mood. In Evangelion, the shots are framed to draw your attention to a wooden pole with a transformer box that was probably designed in the '60s, serving as a stark contrast with all the futuristic technology around it.

cplanas 9y ago

Oh, wow. How did you manage to interview Hideaki Anno? Despite the fact that his best works are anime TV series, I always thought Anno was one of the best filmmakers alive. His works in the 90s are absolutely amazing, particularly Evangelion and Karekano. He is a complex artist on many sides; formally he is the first (and mainly only) modern anime director: he uses the long-shot substantially less in favor of close-ups, which are just harder to use (almost anything can be OK-explained by a long-shot, while close-ups are pretty limited semantically). Aesthetically he is very original, with how he plays with music (Haendel in Evangelion 22, Beethoven in Evangelion 24, Bach in the "sex scene" of Karekano) or my favorite aesthetical treat, the use of text. Love and Pop, and then Shiki-jitsu were a very promising start for him as a live-action filmmaker... but unfortunately, it looks like personal issues got to him. In the 90s there was a trio of Japanese filmmakers with similar approaches and amazing talent: Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon and Shunji Iwai (who is also the main actor in Shiki-jitsu). For different reasons, none of them seems to have used their whole potentials.

hitekker 9y ago
Did you see Shin Gojira which he directed? Uneven, overburdened but still the most thrilling and authentic Godzilla film I've seen since the original.
bsder 9y ago
> Satoshi Kon Death has a way of putting a crimp on using your whole potential. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon
- cplanas 9y ago
  I know: that's why I wrote "for different reasons". I understand that in the case of Kon it feels more unfair, as he had a great career before his death; of his 4 movies, 3 are typically considered great/masterpieces. Kon didn't use his whole potential in the same way that James Dean did; Anno and Iwai are a bit more like Nicholas Cage.

JohnBooty 9y ago

I can't believe you interviewed him. That is amazing! The rest of this post isn't directed at you specifically, you probably know this and much more. Evangelion perhaps popularized this kind of shot, but there's an interesting broader history and context. In general, this kind of shot is called an establishing shot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishing_shot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishing_shot [An establishing shot] establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects.[1] It is generally a long or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place Some directors like Yasujiro Ozu used a more enigmatic or abstract sort of establishing shot (or quasi-establishing shot) dubbed "pillow shots" by one film critic: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/yasujiro_ozu_and_the_enigmatic_art_of_the_pillow_shot https://dangerousminds.net/comments/yasujiro_ozu_and_the_eni... A "pillow shot" is a cutaway, for no obvious narrative reason, to a visual element, often a landscape or an empty room, that is held for a significant time (five or six seconds). It can be at the start of a scene or during a scene. At a minimum, in Ozu’s work, these pillow shots inject a sense of calm and serenity and contribute to the elegant and stately pacing of his movies. The term “pillow shot” was coined [...] by the critic Noël Burch in his book To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema: “I call these images pillow-shots, proposing a loose analogy with the ‘pillow-word’ of classical [Japanese] poetry.” At least several of Ozu's works feature power lines in these shots: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/category/directors-ozu-yasujiro/ http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/category/directors-ozu-yas... This context is something I feel a lot of people miss when discussing those shots of power lines in Evangelion, perhaps ascribing to them more symbolic significance to them than Anno intended -- they are a stylistic hallmark of Evangelion, but aren't unique to Evangelion.

the8472 9y ago

I recall characters often standing on top of telephone or power line poles for dramatic effect, even before NGE. Hopping from pole to pole or walking over powerlines also is a form of fast travel for superpowered or magical characters. It's not quite the same as simple scenery shots emphasizing the powerlines, but they were significant before too.