The joy of Mecha

[phanax]

OK so just what is it every-one loves so much about mecha

come on

any-one

There's gotta be some reason for the vast abundance of the stuff

[phanax]

personally I think it's just a child-like longing to be big and powerful,to control the world around you

basically deep down we all like to pretend we're giant robots!

[phanax]

no it wouldn't, you would cruch cars with yur mighty jaws etc

But seriously, on occasion there is real possibility for this

Potential Eva Spoiler

I've been working on a theory that the relationship between eva and pilot is a metaphore for body and soul or body and mind

just try watching it with that in mind

[Indefinite Description]

As opposed to the view that the pilot is a child in the Eva's 'womb' (LCL=uteral fluid)?

Maybe it's both. Maybe its anything...

[phanax]

oh Anno Hideaki you crazy crazy man

why must you torment us with such difficulties

[Indefinite Description]

Schadenfreude? Maybe it was his sole source of amusement after coming off the anti-depressants.

Or maybe it's awareness of how to generate obsessive fandom.

[phanax]

I really don't think evangelion is just Anno's way of amusing himself with the confusion of others, there's just too much thought gone into it

besides it's not like it doesn't make sense, it's just very very difficult to make sense of it

[Indefinite Description]

No, not just sadism. But it's still possible that he enjoyed tormenting us.

[marshall_banana]

the real problem with eva is that it is so vague that it leads a lot of people to read far too much into it, coming up with complications that Anno never intended to be thought of.

please read the Red Cross book if you can find it. Anno essentially takes a swipe at people's abilities to create pointless theories by going through a lot of the series' conventions and saying bluntly where things stand.

[Indefinite Description]

Ah, but doesn't postmodern literary theory say that creators don't know the real meanings of their works?

Not that I necessarily agree.

[phanax]

true but I must dwel upon an old saying, If you don't know where you're going you wont know when you get there ( or, you'l be lost when you get there)

just because som-one interprets something a certain way doesn't make it true, this is what bugs e about eva, people assume ther is a perfect answer, which is what rthe creatoe intended but jus because he idn't mean something to beso, doesn't stop it's possibility existing

ok rant ovcer

[marshall_banana]

however, on that basis, i could link eva to greek myth with ease im sure (for example, one of rei's pieces of music is called thanatos; the god of death if i wanted a literal interpretation).

that would be wrong though, would it not, and missing the point that Anno wanted to be made?

[Indefinite Description]

Well, such a link might reveal something, i.e. shared concerns about the human condition. I tend to regard Eva as the Sartre-esque anime -- not at all because I imagine Anno sitting in cafés, reading Being and Nothingness, planning to create a mecha anime starring characters exemplifying Bad Faith, etc. but because I think maybe Eva is driving at some of the things Sartre's philosophy was concerned with. (I still got worried about trying to link Continental philosophy and Japanese creativity; in Sartre's case I concluded that his ideas about radical personal freedom and choice perhaps stand in strong contraposition to the famous group-oriented nature of Japanese society.)

The intended meaning is special, but there's also the meaning a show has for any given viewer, and there's what it can tell you about the concerns that its creators didn't consciously include. (Eva's Freudian aspects have been commented on a fair amount; and post-Freud, the subconscious just won't go away.) I agree, however, that a subconscious inclusion of links to Greek myths would be pushing it, unless it were found that someone with a substantial infkuence on the project had an interest in them.

And to show how I wouldn't try to construct a plot theory, let me flag up this (on which the blue background appears not to be working on my browser; highlight the text if need be), if you haven't seen it already. Parts one and two are questionable; there are oversights, such as a failure to note Cloud's increased strength in the final battle resulting from his always having the Omnislash, whether it's been previously enabled or not. Consequently the analysis doesn't hang together as well as one would hope; but one can argue against it from within the game's events. (Whereas when it comes to the 'Aeris's resurrection' myth even the creators' reported denials have apparently not been entirely successful, even though of the two 'Aeris's ghosts' it can be established by playing the game that one is a glitch and the other is one of the deleted scenes that can be accessed only via the debug rooms.) But the real example of how to go too far is part three, in which the writer 'discovers' that Square (as was) built the game around the number three, linked to the Kabbalah -- rather overlooking the fact that rather a lot of integers are multiples of three. (About a third, in fact.)

Compared to that, what sins we commit are surely venial.

[phanax]

Ah yes, any-one remember "Bowfinger"

"Just on a whim I put this script through a wordpreccesor and checked the number of K's in it, the answer was 78,453, a number which is exactly divisible by three...What I'm saying is the name KKK appears 26,151 times, the sickness is deep man, real deep!"

[phanax]

Indefinite said:

As opposed to the view that the pilot is a child in the Eva's 'womb' (LCL=uteral fluid)?

Maybe it's both. Maybe its anything...

It's undeniable that there is a lot of womb imagery, and I shant deny there's elements of that in it, but the way the pilot synchronises with the eva, so they feel as if they are it, if the eva is damaged they feel the pain etc...also there's a possible line of argument that the child inherrits the body from the parents, but that may be reading too much into it