Seeing Evangelion 3.0 made me want to revisit the original Evangelion TV series. I haven’t watched it in full since I introduced it to my sister back in early 2010, so I was about due for a re-watch, and just finished it earlier today, so I figured I’d share a few thoughts on the show.
This viewing marks the first time I’ve seen it since becoming an Eva fan after seeing 2.
I went to see Evangelion 3.0 at the Plano Angelika theatre yesterday, and though it was less fun than it could’ve been since the person I’d planned to see it with had to be out-of-state, I still enjoyed the experience and thought I’d share a few brief thoughts about it.
The highlights: driving down Dallas North Tollway with hardly any traffic was pretty fun; the one cosplayer did a fine job as Gendo; the Angelika is probably the nicest theatre I’ve been in.
Well, now that I’m mostly moved into a new apartment, I’ve had some more time to read. Part of my newfound free time has gone into resuming my study of Japanese, as well as my usual mix of film and anime, but on the literary front here’s what I’ve been up to:
I finally, finally finished Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. For the patient reader, the narrator’s frequent asides, long descriptions, and multitude of characters and plot threads can be quite entertaining.
In short, why do you watch anime?
A few reasons. One is that I enjoy the community. A few problems aside, I like exchanging thoughts with other fans on blogs, forums, and Twitter. Conventions and podcasts can be fun, too, and it also gives me something to share with my little sister.
Of course, there’s also my interest in Japanese culture generally; I’ve studied Japan’s language and history, and seek out Japanese films and literature.
As I mentioned in my Anime Autobiography series, when I first became interested in anime in high school, I couldn’t really afford much of it. However, I could afford the graphic novel versions of these shows. Since this was 2005/6, Tokyopop had standardised the $10 price point, so for the cost of one anime DVD, I could get two or three volumes of the graphic novels.
Once again, I’m not sure how I first encountered this stuff; I’ve always been an avid reader, though, so I probably stumbled on the ‘Manga’ section of a bookstore, and went from there.
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In 2010, my university career ended with a whimper, and I entered the “real world.” Actually, I just continued at the job I already had and spent most of the next year or so wondering what to do for a career. It was a somewhat depressing time, in a way, but hey - I still had my Japanese cartoons.
Now, at this point I’d seen enough that fewer and fewer shows offered really new experiences for me.
<– Previous: Anime Autobiography - Anime Clubbin'
Going into 2007 and ‘08, the combination of university, work, and commuting between them destroyed the vast amounts of free time I’d enjoyed in high school, though having my own car and a decent income for a college student did take some of the sting off that. My hobby of collecting hobbies, though, had to go. I dropped the time-consuming video games, especially the RPG’s I liked, as well as my attempt at learning to play guitar.
<– Previous: Anime Autobiography - serial experiments lain
Moving into 2005, though lain had inspired me to seek out more anime, I faced a couple roadblocks that prevented me from fully immersing myself right away. First, I lacked time. Though I had loads of free time in high school, I’ve long had a hobby of collecting hobbies, so anime had to compete with comics, video games, literature, guitar, film, and whatever else grabbed my interest.
I’ve been pretty busy lately, forcing me to slow down a bit on my reading schedule. However, I’ve continued to find time for a few things, so I thought I’d share a couple highlights.
The comic that’s most commanded my attention lately has been Akira, by Otomo Katsuhiro. I re-watched the film adaptation for the first time in years a couple months back, and liked it far more than I remembered, and since I’ve also read and enjoyed another of his works, Domu, I figured I’d try out the graphic novel.
A theatre about an hour’s drive away from me was showing the first two Evangelion Rebuild films, so after some deliberation I decided to go.
I had modest expectations, going as much to support the industry and encourage studios to release more animated films in theatres as I did to see these particular works. The original series has always struck me as decent, but highly overrated, Death and Rebirth is one of the worst films I’ve seen, and End of Evangelion, though gorgeous to look at, still seems like a disjointed mess.