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krpalmerWith all the video streaming services online these days, being picky about subscriptions seems the frugal solution. When it comes to the “older anime” service RetroCrush, though, much of its catalogue leaves me aware “I’ve already bought that title on Blu-Ray from Discotek,” an older and possibly more enduring yet also more expensive path. An announcement a Japanese TV special about Hideaki Anno working on the final “Rebuild of Evangelion” movie would stream on RetroCrush did start me thinking all the same. With Sony’s consolidation of the anime industry over here resulting in it winding down the Funimation brand name it’s owned for a while for the sake of the Crunchyroll brand name it’s just acquired, I could at least keep from renewing a Funimation streaming subscription and suppose that money redirected towards an independent option. A “new subscriber special” for RetroCrush was the last push I needed.
The special was easy enough to find once I’d logged into RetroCrush’s web site, but finding a video to be played on its subpage seemed harder. I tried different browsers and installing RetroCrush’s Apple TV app, but nothing seemed to work. For a while I just stopped trying, but then I checked again on a whim and the video was accessible.
There seemed a good bit of “artistic temperament” in Anno’s thinking and rethinking how to bring things to a close again. I was intrigued by seeing him fussing with a model village and directing people with motion capture equipment to “previsualize” things with computer animation (recognizing the early moments of the movie anticipated), but after a while I did start wondering a bit about not seeing any obvious signs of “animators drawing.” Then, in between the two parts of the special, I was pointed to one particular fan video analysis of Evangelion that both drew on footage from the special and insisted the whole decades-long saga of the anime could best be interpreted as an argument for “the difficult necessity of engaging with the world.”
For all of the assorted not-quite-satisfying and half-satisfying interpretations I’ve tried alongside others to apply to Evangelion over the years (at certain points I’ve wondered about Evangelion poking at “only you can save the day” by asking what happens when those few protagonists aren’t suited for their challenge, although the risk there can be sliding into assuming “they’ve been set up to fail in a diabolical scheme”), I will admit to thinking at this point of a certain comparison I’ve seen just a few people make. Comparing Hideaki Anno to George Lucas, perhaps mentioning their different “references to other things” as something a little more neutral than making accusations of “people apply shallow readings based on all the cool designs and then get dissatisfied,” is at least a bit more pleasant than certain past sighs that “like George Lucas, Yoshiyuki Tomino should realize he’s just ‘an idea guy.’”
I did, anyway, pay some attention to background details around Studio Khara (even if the books around Anno’s own desk were blurred out). It got my attention early on seeing a poster for “Cassette Girl,” one of the “Animator Expo” shorts and one I just happened to experience again through another eclectic streaming show. Seeing people wear Marvel Comics-branded apparel might have got me grappling with “what I don’t bother to take in” and the risk of snobby judgments fuelled by mere substitutes. Later on, in any case, there was something to seeing DARLING in the FRANXX posters given the enduring indignation towards that series over here at the very least, but I might be able to say a little more about that later.
The special was easy enough to find once I’d logged into RetroCrush’s web site, but finding a video to be played on its subpage seemed harder. I tried different browsers and installing RetroCrush’s Apple TV app, but nothing seemed to work. For a while I just stopped trying, but then I checked again on a whim and the video was accessible.
There seemed a good bit of “artistic temperament” in Anno’s thinking and rethinking how to bring things to a close again. I was intrigued by seeing him fussing with a model village and directing people with motion capture equipment to “previsualize” things with computer animation (recognizing the early moments of the movie anticipated), but after a while I did start wondering a bit about not seeing any obvious signs of “animators drawing.” Then, in between the two parts of the special, I was pointed to one particular fan video analysis of Evangelion that both drew on footage from the special and insisted the whole decades-long saga of the anime could best be interpreted as an argument for “the difficult necessity of engaging with the world.”
For all of the assorted not-quite-satisfying and half-satisfying interpretations I’ve tried alongside others to apply to Evangelion over the years (at certain points I’ve wondered about Evangelion poking at “only you can save the day” by asking what happens when those few protagonists aren’t suited for their challenge, although the risk there can be sliding into assuming “they’ve been set up to fail in a diabolical scheme”), I will admit to thinking at this point of a certain comparison I’ve seen just a few people make. Comparing Hideaki Anno to George Lucas, perhaps mentioning their different “references to other things” as something a little more neutral than making accusations of “people apply shallow readings based on all the cool designs and then get dissatisfied,” is at least a bit more pleasant than certain past sighs that “like George Lucas, Yoshiyuki Tomino should realize he’s just ‘an idea guy.’”
I did, anyway, pay some attention to background details around Studio Khara (even if the books around Anno’s own desk were blurred out). It got my attention early on seeing a poster for “Cassette Girl,” one of the “Animator Expo” shorts and one I just happened to experience again through another eclectic streaming show. Seeing people wear Marvel Comics-branded apparel might have got me grappling with “what I don’t bother to take in” and the risk of snobby judgments fuelled by mere substitutes. Later on, in any case, there was something to seeing DARLING in the FRANXX posters given the enduring indignation towards that series over here at the very least, but I might be able to say a little more about that later.