Evangelion 05 06 Television 

Five Thoughts on Neon Genesis Evangelion’s “Rei, Beyond the Heart” and “Showdown in Tokyo-3”

By | June 27th, 2021
Posted in Television | % Comments

ELEVEN

The animation in Neon Genesis Evangelion is nothing if not ambitious. From the show’s first moments, from the very opening credits, it’s clear Hideaki Anno and his team at Gainax wanted to push the boundaries and capabilities of traditional television cel animation. We see it in how they block the scenes, in how they layer the frame with numerous moving elements, and in how they use the process’s limitations and restrictions to generate tension and energy.

Evangelion was created at the end of an era, when the primary form of animation production was still done on paper, with ink and paint and cellulose acetate. Digital drawing methods had just stared to appear on a larger scale and advancements in that technology surged forward at sonic boom speeds. Toy Story, the first feature film to be entirely animated in 3D, premiered the same year as Eva. The French production house, Studio Fantome, broadcast Insketors in 1994, a television series animated with computers and looking like it just jumped off of a PlayStation console. The propaganda cartoon, VeggieTales, released shortly afterward, also experimented with various software packages, and became part of the genesis of this method.

Beyond the initial wave of 3D animated projects, many traditionally animated titles had begin exploring digital tools in their productions. Eva flirted with 3D imaging, notably in the massive display readout at NERV HQ. By this point, for instance, Disney had transitioned to using the Computer Animated Production System, or CAPS, program, developed by Pixar, where, instead of laying out individual cels, animators scanned their drawings directly into the computer, and proceeded to ink and paint, and finally composite everything virtually. The last movie Disney released with handprinted colors and India ink lines had been The Little Mermaid. One of the final feature films to be physically painted altogether was Princess Mononoke.

(All of this, of course, is film and television related. Video game studios had always worked digitally, and some of their first three-dimensional images were created as far back at the 1970s. By the mid-’90s, Link and Mario and Sonic ran around 3D environments.)

It took much longer for digital compositing and coloring to spread throughout TV animation — Spongebob Squarepants and The Simpsons continued to use these methods long past the time most other shows transitioned to CAPS-like programs — especially Japanese animation. Which gives a lot of ’90s anime, in my opinion the best age of anime, this distinct, timeless, and tactile feeling.

At this point in the production, Evangelion was flush with cash, or at least with as much cash as the show ever saw. Budges and production issues reared up in later episodes, forcing the animators to come up with more creative and abstract ways to tell the story. Gainax would also eventually become so overwhelmed in production turmoil, the animation was outsourced to another studio, with maybe only three Gainax staff members working on any given episode. But at this moment, at the time of “Rei, Beyond the Heart” and “Showdown in Tokyo-3,” the studio felt free to experiment and go wild.

And it’s glorious.

TWELVE

Cel animation is a time intensive and expensive process. It’s also one of the most efficient ways to create traditional 2D animation. For over 70 years most of the technological developments in animation, and by extension, filmmaking in general, were made to help make this process less arduous.

In the early days of film animation, artists would have to draw out every element in the frame. Windsor McCay’s office was stacked with the drawings for “Gertie the Dinosaur,” where he drew every stone, every mountain face, and every tree on each new frame. He believed it gave his cartoons more life. Most of the time, however, in the wider industry, this meant shots consisted of sparse backgrounds. When the assembly line animations started, animators would use celluloid to draw the backdrops, then layer the characters over those using rice paper.

In 1915, Earl Hurd and John Bray basically got the idea to flip those around, with the characters and malleable objects now slated for the transparent sheets and the background often painted. It broke down so the animators drew out a scene or an action on paper, which was then sent to the Ink and Paint Department. The teams here traced the images onto the transparent sheets of cellulose acetate with India ink, before sending them to the color department, who added color by painting the backside of the sheets in acrylics. When this was completed, the transparent sheets would be stacked on top of each other, and then photographed. One frame at a time. For Pinocchio, Disney created the multiplane camera, this hulking machine that needed something like a cathedral to be housed. Here, the frames were set on enormous layers, and the photographer, after he climbed a ladder to set the picture in place, slowly moved each element, to manipulate the character, background, and camera movement.

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Cel frame animators soon discovered shortcuts. They found they didn’t always need to draw one figure for every frame, but rather, could manipulate one element of the drawing. If a person was speaking, they created an overlay where only their mouth moved or their eyes blinked. Sometimes they might raise and arm and point. They also discovered that having 24 individual drawings per second made for an impossible workflow, and they animated instead on twos, where each picture was photographed twice, at 12 frames per second. Smaller productions used even less drawings per second, veering toward six or eight frames per second. And then, to save on costs, the studios cleared off the transparencies and used them again once they had been photographed. It’s that chemical they used to kill the toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

This limited animation made TV cartoons possible, especially Japanese animated cartoons. And those restrictions only added to their charms.

THIRTEEN

Anime is made up of a lot of cheats. In Speed Racer, cars shifted back and forth laterally. In Space Battleship Yamato, the star cruisers rose and fell through the cosmos in rigid straight lines. Often, the camera pans over a still image, with sound effects added in the background to imply the liveliness of a scene. Long dialogue sequences are intercut with seemingly random glimpses of the environment. Characters shift straight into frame with exaggerated expressions and wild background images.

These shortcuts appeared throughout cartoons well into the ’90s. Consider how Sailor Moon never flows into a new expression, but rather shifts between expressions. Or how Spike Spiegel is hidden by his hair when he speaks. Or how, in so many of these shows, the characters’ lips never form sounds but kind of jerk up and down.

This is because cel animation is an inherently imperfect method. When animators lay too many images over each other, the bottommost layer, which receives the least amount of light, appears fuzzy on camera. The shortcuts sometimes create glaring and rigid and stiff actions. Smudges might appear within the frame. Despite the assured hands and practiced movements, there are invariably variations in the line. The camera itself can only offer a limited range of motion. Paint quirks might appear for a fraction of a second. And if one element is off by a fraction of an inch, the whole thing looks wonky.

Also because these are handdrawn, different animation directors take their own approach to model sheets. Shinji looks similar between episodes, but sometimes, he might be somewhat chonkier. Or Rei Ayemani’s body may be drawn in with a more lustful intention here and then a pitying sadness there.

On paper this might sound like a fundamental disadvantage, a crippling and damning set of shortcomings, but even the cheapest, most rapidly produced traditional animation holds up stronger than 3D animation from five years ago.

FOURTEEN

With the advent of digital animation technologies, animation production has become cheaper, quicker, and simpler. As computers’ rendering ability has become more powerful, from the lighting to the texture emulations, the line between animation and live action has blurred. Huge franchise movies are basically animated films, not unlike Roger Rabbit or Mary Poppins, where physical actors are inserted into a digital environment. Films and series that market themselves as animated stray close to realistic environments. There are moments in Raya and the Last Dragon that look like the production team took a crew to Southeast Asia for background plates.

Not only that, but digital tools have made it easier for anyone to make an animated cartoon. Small teams can create great looking productions. More creators are able to have a seat at the table. ToonBoom, Animate, Blender, FlipaClip, this proliferation of available animation softwares, at various price points, make cartooning accessible to everyone, with looks that resemble traditional animation or the current trend for more rounded characters.

In Japan, there’s still a desire for a traditional look, even if they’re using digital tools. Same goes for a lot of television animation. It’s because the sets can be more elaborate, the camera can move on an theoretical and therefore infinite axis, the characters don’t always have to stand still, and the frame can be loaded to the point of breaking. These cartoons can be produced economically but not sacrifice anything in the motion or fluidity of the sequence.

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Yet, there’s something missing in all these productions, something that can only be accomplished by using physical materials. That’s the weight in the image. The tacitle nature in the drawing. Every pencil stroke is visible. Every movement planned out. When you look at a traditionally animated cartoon, there’s a part in the back of your head that knows this was made by people, made painstakingly by people. It has life. It has a soul. At any moment it might go totally out of control.

It’s tangible. It’s textured. It feels authentic because it’s so imperfect.

FIFTEEN

It’s here Evangelion shines. Like other anime of the era — EscaflowneSailor MoonCowboy Bebop, Berserk (the good one), Revolutionary Girl Utena — it captures the audience’s imagination, which takes it further than the endless code we see otherwise.

Take a look at the scene in “Rei, beyond the Heart” when the Angel Ramiel unleashes it’s attack. The beat bursts through a nearby building, melting the structure, before it crashes into Unit-01.

The final showdown with Unit-00 and Unit-01 is an abstract swipe of light and colors. The impact of the beam, the failure of the first shot, the countdown tension feels so much more intense because of it. Anno and his animators cut between the gun cocking, the NERV control room on edge, Shinji in Unit-01, and the incoming drill from Ramiel, and it’s so quick, the movements so considered, that you’re waiting for release until the very last moment. It’s a scene, one among many, that works because of the traditional methods.

Though I suppose you could argue it’s impossible to know that, how the animators would approach the scene with digital tools instead of physical ones and how a sequence like Ramiel would play out with 3D animation.

Except we can!

In 2007, Hideaki Anno and Studio Khara launched the Rebuild of Evangelion series, with Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone. A reimagining, alternate take on the original cartoon series. The Rebuilds are movies, with the first couple borrowing more from the series before finally veering off into their own territory by the third and fourth installments. These films were animated digitally.

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone ends with the Ramiel attack. Whereas in the series, each movement, each beat, felt calculated and precise, used the limitations of its budget and its resources to generate tension, the film goes for more visual flourishes. The camera sweeps across Unit-01, zipping in and out of the cockpit while Shinji disintegrates. Ramiel, now with a reflective surface, splits apart into eldritch geometric shapes and fires its laser blast from a clear source at its core. It’s louder, bigger, and more elaborate, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as intense or effective. In the film version, there’s so much going on, the battle becomes a confused mess of colors and cuts. The animators were able to do anything, so they decided to try for everything. You can see Ramiel’s power, but I don’t think you can feel it.

Cel animation is impractical and laborious. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see the return of it on a large scale. Even shows animated on paper, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, WolfWalkers, end up composited within the computer. Yet, as Eva continually demonstrates episode after episode, the care, the thought, the precision pay off into these heavy experiences. It can carry that weight because it has that weight.


//TAGS | 2021 Summer TV Binge | neon genesis evangelion

Matthew Garcia

Matt hails from Colorado. He can be found on Twitter as @MattSG.

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