c/o Viz Comics P.O. Box 77010 San Francisco, CA 94107
viz@j-pop.com
Dear MFSC,
Imagine my surprise when I finished Book Three, Issue 5 and saw a big black-and-white picture of myself in the back! Yaiee! Yes, that's me as Dr. Ritsuko Akagi at Anime Weekend Atlanta 4. (I borrowed the white lab coat from the Chemistry department, wore my own black miniskirt, pumps, and reading glasses, and made the top myself. Would you believe the zipper pull actually came from a teething toy?) Hee hee! Thanks for the compliment on my costume! (By the way, Carl, I remember you fixed me a gin & tonic on my 21st birthday at AWA! Sorry for interrupting your movie! Thanks for the drink!) Congratulations on a great job with the Evangelion translation. I'm probably the biggest Eva fan in the South—well, okay, that's debatable—and in comparing the original tankôbon with Viz's English translation, all I can say is, "Good Work!" I especially like how Toji's Kansai dialect was translated as a "tough guy" Brooklyn accent.
Also, I had the opportunity to catch the episode of KareKano which made it to AWA (I believe that was your doing—if so, three cheers!), and loved every minute of it. I don't think I ever stopped laughing. Hopefully this show will be acquired in the U.S. soon... I'm keeping my fingers crossed, since I haven't been able to find the original manga ANYWHERE... You may want to mention this in your lettercol: For fans who have seen the entire series and want more, there is a great online multimedia fanfic Neon Genesis Evangelion: R. It's located at http. You can read the illustrated fic, download opening and ending animations, and listen to dialogue (in English) from various scenes. It's a real treat for any Eva fan. (I'm also working on my own fic, entitled The Bitter Glass, but I've only gotten the first couple of chapters written... if you like, you can check it out at http.)
One more thing to note: as of December 23, the End Of Evangelion laserdisc box set will be available in Japan. Hopefully you've put in an advance order already... if not, there's bound to be a second release soon. In previous columns you discussed music which seemed to "fit" Eva. I always thought Nine Inch Nails' "The Becoming" and "Mr. Self Destruct" suited Shinji rather well. also, the eerie tones of Bjork's songs complement the series... "Human Behavior", "Hyper-Ballad", and a few others come to mind... I did a music video to "Army Of Me" with footage from the TV series for AWA 4. If you're at A-Kon or AWA 5, I'll have another, with footage from EoE, set to "O Fortuna" from Karl Orff's Carmina Burana. (Don't worry, just the first two minutes...) But enough shameless plugging... Another fun online resource for Eva fans—if you have access to AOL—is the Eva message board at Keyword: Japanimation. Things get pretty wacky there, but if you're looking for any info, whether it's move rights negotiations or the tech specs of Ritsuko's truck, you can find it there if you ask.
Anyway, thanks for a great translation of a great comic! I'm looking forward to seeing more of Sadamoto-sensei's interpretation of Eva. (Seeing how differently the crew first encounter Asuka, I can't help but wonder how later events will be handled in the manga.) Just out of curiosity, how far along in the story have the Japanese comics come? I don't have any past Book Four, and every manga store seem to be sold out... Thanks for reading this letter! Sorry about ye olde fashionde typewrytre, but I'm on vacation in a non-computerized household. I'm enclosing some artwork. Hopefully you can print it; if not, enjoy! Congratulations again on a great comic!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Kirkindall
Madison, AL
P.S. If other Evangelion fans wish to contact me via e-mail, you can write to me at: unit_03@hotmail.com. Thanks!!
P.P.S. If you're in the mood for a laugh, I have some translated Eva aniparo (A Japanese contraction of "anime parody"—in this case, 4-panel gag strips—C.G.H.) up on the Web at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Garden/7436/eva/funny.html Or you can get to my Eva page from http://come.to/JobsTurkey.
Thank God for someone who laughs "hee hee" instead of "hehe". You may feel it was superfluous of me to repeat that anecdote about alcohol. But now that Preacher has moved its letter column online, I feel the need to pick up the slack. As you yourself point out, Ms. Kirkindall, it's Sadamoto's world; we only live in it. Evangelion was considered an unusually difficult manga to retouch, but all difficulties have been overcome by the brilliant Wayne Truman, whom I hope will forgive me for all those times I wrote instructions with those near-invisible fluorescent pens. As for how far into the story the manga is in Japan, Sadamoto certainly feels free to create his own continuity (did you notice how the events of episode #7 are not portrayed in the manga?), and two installments after the end of Book Four, he's doing events from episode #15, accelerating from the two episodes per book pace of before. Carmina Burana, eh? Always makes me think of Arnold praying to Crom. And don't worry about the typewriter; I have an old Royal manual—heavy, like that one in Misery—which I'm planning to bring in to the office to beat Y2K.
Yes, I was the one who brought in the first episode of KareKano (short for Kareshi Kanojo no Jijô—"His And Her Situation", the new anime series from Eva director Hideaki Anno), although I could only do that because my man Kyle Johnson was kind enough to mail me the tape in two shakes of a lamb's tail. I've now seen up to episode 12 of KareKano—which takes us through about 2/3 of vol. 4 of the manga—and I think it is getting more enjoyable with every episode. I don't know if it's gotten any easier to order Masami Tsuda's manga since the series began. For the record, I got my copies from Asahiya Bookstores U.S.A. Inc., 333 S. Alameda St., Suite 108, Los Angeles, CA 90013 (Tel: 213-626-5650, FAX: 213-626-1746). KareKano runs currently in the Hakusensha monthly magazine LaLa, known for the famous story Emperor of the Land of the Rising Sun, which Fred Schodt discusses in his book Dreamland Japan (from Stonebridge Press, www.stone-bridge.com—you really MUST get his book if you like manga).
(Ms. Kirkindall says of her fan art, "Here's Asuka beating the heat with a popsicle. Like her shirt?" The original character is "Madoka Nikushita... from my fanfic. She's 20 years old, and can't pilot an Eva in combat; only minimally in tests. She's in a rare contemplative moment—usually she's seething with barely-controlled rage... As for the reason for that—and her personal history... that involves a few spoilers—but she does go back a ways with NERV") Well, the personality is right on target, but I thought they retired Eva pilots at 15... I do like the "n" on Madoka's plugsuit. While I assume it stands for her last name, might it also stand for the algebraic "n", as in an unknown number?
"I know the answer/ But I'm looking for the question." -Duran Duran, "The Skin Trade"
Love And Pop, based on the novel by Ryu Murakami (several of his books- although not yet this one- are published in English through Kodansha) is Hideaki Anno's first feature-length, live-action film- and the project he id between his Eva and his current anime TV show, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo. The film itself hit the Japanese theaters on January 10, 1998, was released to the rental video market later that year, in September, and then in November, again, in a much cheaper "sell-through" edition (a standard practice where a video comes out first in an expensive edition meant to be bought by stores so they can make money for a time renting it out, and then later a less expensive version comes out meant to be bought by individuals). Anno made over 20 television appearances associated with the premiere of Love And Pop, but some special measure of the public interest in how he was going to follow up on Evangelion is that Japan's best-known anime magazine, Animage, ran a cover story on its February '98 issue (which hit stands on the premiere date) featuring Anno and the film's cast of four teenage girls: Asumi Miwa, Kirari (one name), Yukie Nakama, and Hirono Kudo. It was the first time ever in the 20-year history of Animage that the magazine didn't have an anime on its cover.
Hideaki Anno is in a transitional period right now as a director. To put things in perspective, when Hayao Miyazaki was Anno's age, Miyazaki was making Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (and watch for its re-release from Manga Entertainment this March, in a brand-new dubbed and subtitled edition, because I can't give Cagliostro a high enough recommendation). But superb as Cagliostro was, just think of this- all his classic Studio Ghibli films were ahead of him, and a generation later he would make his best film, The Princess Mononoke. There may be as much ahead for Anno; especially after the cathartic effect of Evangelion, there is great curiosity as to where he is headed next. Anno seems curious, too, and they may very well be why, beginning with Love And Pop and continuing with the current Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo (or KareKano for short), he's made two significant changes in his approach.
First, unlike Anno's Gunbuster or TV series Nadia and Evangelion, both of these new works are adaptations of someone else's fully-developed story (Nadia was based on a story concept originally developed for Miyazaki in the late '70s; while Miyazaki used the concept as the basis for his 198s film The Castle In The Sky- out this year from Disney/Buena Vista- Gainax took it very much in their own direction). Second, and likely related to the first, is the fact that Love And Pop and KareKano are quite different from previous Gainax productions in that they are set entirely in the present day, involve "ordinary" teenage characters, have no robots- and no fan service. The last point is especially worthy of mention, as Love And Pop is about a contemporary form of casual quasi-prostitution practiced by some Japanese schoolgirls called "enjo kosai"- "subsidized dating." Like out own, Japan is a society today that views itself in moral drift, and Tokyo, like New York City, is a cosmopolitan city full of material temptation and grown-up pleasures. It's not the kind of place parents think of as "a great place to raise kids," yet, of course, it's a place full of parents and children. For a number of otherwise quite normal Japanese schoolgirls, going to a hotel with a businessman on the weekends means quick cash, and a way to buy into a little of that glamour and fashion they see all around them.
Love And Pop, in face, portrays- if in a more subtle style- a situation of youth not unlike that portrayed in Larry Clark's 1995 film Kids, And like Kids, Love And Pop seems to suggest that no guidance will be forthcoming, and that the "right answers" for this generation may relate more to psychological and even physical survival, which will hopefully teach a moral sense- because they're not going to get one from their elders. Anno (who, of course, has used the sex appeal of teenaged girl characters as part of successful anime for years) seems to have been given considerable pause by the notion of real-life teenagers, driven by pop desires, selling themselves, often to men of his age- one of the "clients" in the film is a character who could certainly be taken as an unflattering self-portrait of Anno himself. Love And Pop is also unusual in that it is shot, not on film, but with a small video cameras- whose size Anno takes advantage of to get some unusual shots, such as mounting the camera on a model train! No American distributor has yet announced a release of Love And Pop, though it may certainly happen. For now, you can buy or tent as an import through Starchild/King Records. It's 6600 yen, order number KIVA-410 (VHS), KILA-410-411 (a 2-LD set [T/N: Laserdisc]; the film is one hour and 54 minutes long).
Carl Gustav Horn