Rebuild of Evangelion and Devil Hunter Yohko
Last night I watched the cam-sub of Rebuild of Evangelion. While the movie doesn’t suffer as much as the Zeta movies do from compression (the Zeta movies were damn near incomprehensible) it does rob the earlier installments of the show of their lighter charm. Naturally, since this movie is an anime-blogger-like summary version of the first six episodes, it constantly punches you in the face with all the “important stuff” leaving the lighter moments of the opening episodes on the cutting room floor. These lighter moments are important, I find. People accuse Evangelion of having a lot of filler at the beginning, but let’s be honest, it needed it. The series gradually eased you into the real meat of it, and didn’t just drop you smack dab in the middle. This is what makes it work well for me, and I find it a lot better than, say, Bokura No’s approach, which was forcing tales of death upon you week after week. That said, redone Operation Yashima is great.
Also, there’s something of a small plot hole in the movie, and I hope it gets addressed in the form of added footage in the DVD release. I made this point earlier, but I’ll touch on it again– the movie introduces Toji with him smashing Shinji’s nose in. I found this introduction to be quite awkward since it never really had any sort of build up. Now, the plot hole here lies in how Toji knew Shinji was the Eva pilot in the first place. I figured I might have missed such a detail watching it raw, but with subs it seems there’s never a scene showing how he came across such information. If I recall correctly, the original series had a scene in which the entire class finds out Shinji is the pilot (it was established that there was a rumour going about that he was the pilot) and ask him a bunch of questions in the middle of class. In the movie, they don’t have this scene at all, let alone tell you about the rumour. It strikes me as quite clumsy of Gainax to overlook this. Hopefully they’ll fix it.
Finished Devil Hunter Yohko last night, and it was good. The show doesn’t go out of its way to impress you with a complex plot or original story telling, but it’s well done popcorn action plus T&A that any guy can get behind and ride for a few hours. As such, you can’t really write much about the show, but I do have a few observations, one of which lies in the style change that happens between episode 5 and episode 6. There wasn’t that much time between the production episodes 5 and 6, so why does the last episode look all angular and late 90s all of a sudden? Not that I have any problem with that, as I find the designs of the last episode to be the best, but it just strikes me as odd. Also, the last episode is like an episode of Tsukuyomi with action, except for instead of Neko-Mimi-Vampire lolis we have girls in China dresses cutting up demons. Good to see Shinbo exercising his weirdness as early as the mid 90s.
My other observation has to do with the promo art for the series. The two other girls on this cover that aren’t Yoko and Azusa don’t show up in the show at all. Well, the pink-haired one looks like a re-coloured Haruka, but I’m drawing a blank on the other. Any hardcore Yohko fans have an idea?
What are those wrappers? Candy?
“They’re a girl’s best friend”
“My other observation has to do with the promo art for the series. The two other girls on this cover that aren’t Yoko and Azusa don’t show up in the show at all. Well, the pink-haired one looks like a re-coloured Haruka, but I’m drawing a blank on the other. Any hardcore Yohko fans have an idea?”
Ok, for the record, the two girls did show up in the series. The girl at the right side is Madoka Mano, Yohko´s grandmother, but at a younger age. She is on ep 5, but the character design is different. The other Mamono Hunter at the top of the group image is the ancestor of Yohko, Haruka Mano. The art is different because the cover is the conceptual art, but the final art, the character design is different. Since this is the original cover for episode 5, it makes sense that both girls in the cover are the girls I mentioned since both appears in this particular episode, episode 5 that is. Hope this answer your question…:), and yes, I am a hardcore fan of Yohko and I would love to see someday a new series about her. She is one that introduce me to anime in the first place after all.
Ah, thanks. I kind of figured out that the pink-haired one was Haruka, but the other one is so detached from the final design that I couldn’t figure out who it was.
Yeah, if you notice the weapon (spear with chain) in the poster that Madoka carries, is the same weapon that she uses in episode 5, when she is fighting Tokima along with Azusa chan in the last third of the episode….That really confirm me the information about her identity in the poster…Also in the poster, Haruka is wearing a ribbon and has some tails, so Haruka in the episode, same thing…except for her hair color and dress…:)
I remember emailing Toho in Japan (The company responsible for the production) to see if there were plans for a new Mamono Hunter Yohko series, but they told me that there were no plans in the future but they were grateful that are still Yohko fans around…guess the 90´s were her time…
Ah yes, I see the chain now.
A Yohko revival would be splendid, I think.
Condoms, roast-beefy, condoms.
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The manga of Bokurano is great, but, as you may know, the lead for the anime hates the manga. Not exactly the best view to have on the work you’re adapting. I haven’t seen much of the anime, but I think it’s pretty admirable how the manga goes about with its death and destruction. It’s a take on realistic super robot action that isn’t just a knockoff of EVA for every bloody scene.
I do like that anime theme though: “Uninstall, uninstall, what does this have to do with the show, uninstall”