The Nerv of Gainax
By The Eva Monkey on Monday, September 22nd, 2008
At this year’s Otakon, I picked up this old comic book style magazine called “Mangazine” published by Antarctic Press. What I found interesting was not that it featured Evangelion, but that it featured Evangelion and was from May 1996. Whenever I come across something from the early days of Evangelion fandom (in English), like Carl Horn’s Speaking Once as They Return: Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, or Lawrence Eng’s In the Eyes of Hideaki Anno, Writer and Director of Evangelion, my ears instantly perk up. I take notice and scour over it, expecting to find new or insightful information. This is not always the case, but there’s something about the early days of the fandom that is very intriguing to me. The article found within this magazine, entitled The Nerv of Gainax: Neon Genesis Evangelion, may not be the most insightful article written about Evangelion, but it has a very unique feel to it, partially due to the fact that at the time, Evangelion was very new to American anime fans, and the writing reflects that. There are a few details that I found particularly interesting, for example, the writer indicates that episode 19 & 20 were supposed to be reworked similarly to 21′-24′, and that part of the pressure put on Gainax was preemptive constraint that spilled over from an incident with another program on the network. The descriptions of the who, what, and where also contain a few interesting bits, and in general, the article is a fun trip back to the early days of anime fandom, complete with all the whimsical charm you would expect.