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Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

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Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#81

Post by rolltiide »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #21
rolltiide wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gurren Lagann goes way off the rails in the last few episodes too. I enjoyed that as well. Never thought of it spoiling anyone from enjoying a trendsetting predecessor.

TTGL definitely gets whacky plotwise in the last few episodes but I don’t think it ever lost focus on its central themes at any point. From all the buzz I’d heard from friends and on the internet about NGE, I was ready to be bawling by the end with a tsunami of emotion. Not that it’s without precedent: TTGL, Kill La Kill, and Darling in the FranXX, to give some examples, have had me (and my partner) in tears at sever…

I see, I just enjoyed it and the mystery, the attention to detail, animation, direction choices

No tearjerkers from the twists or relationships, maybe just from the fun and perplexing outcomes rendered awesomely

Whiny angsty awkward teenagers are annoying, Gurren Lagaan doesnt have a main character like that which is refreshing but I never really considered comparing them - do a lot of people put them in the same category because mecha?

I would recommend NGE for the entertainment and mindfuckery

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#82

Post by bigger_cheese »

ethbro wrote: post #61
jandrese wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the pace killing scenes where nothing happens for minutes at a time. They paid for those incredible fight scenes with interminable shots of the interior of elevators or close ups of Shinji's walkman.

I liked the shots of power lines with cicadas chirping. Best part of the series.

One scene that sticks out to me after all these years is a brief 2 minute scene from 'End of Evangelion' where Rei is talking to Shinji about the nature of dreams.

In the background you can hear Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring being played on a piano and it transitions from animation to filmed live action footage which I think was shot around Tokyo it shows things like train lines, buildings and an empty swing set in a playground and yes there is a power line shot. Then it cuts to an audience watching a film inside a cinema as handwritten letters flash up on the screen, which were death threats the studio had received from obsessive fans.

I was blown away by the aesthetics of this scene watching it as a 15 year old and it's stuck with me.

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#83

Post by aasasd »

wodenokoto wrote: post #71
aasasd wrote: post #44

Regarding mechanical compression: it's probably not 100% so, but afaik in kanji/hanzi and likely many other SEA scripts, proportions of a character don't matter much―they're just strokes in a grid that you can squish without harm to legibility. That's why labels on cheap Chinese goods often had deformed quasi-monospace Latin type: the author just had no idea anything is wrong. It's likely less true of sorta-calligrap…

> proportions of a character don't matter much―they're just strokes in a grid that you can squish without harm to legibility. I'd say that's even less true than it is for latin letters.

Specifically, apart from observation of hanzi and kanji being written with random proportions instead of square, I can't help noticing some patterns, like in the following cases:

日 月 明

女 子 好

金 不 鈈

虫 古 月 蝴

As far as I can see, all these keep the same proportions and occupy the same space.

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#84

Post by aasasd »

jandrese wrote: post #55
oweiler wrote: post #51

For me, NGE was both the best and the worst anime had to offer. On one hand, the music, art style and the fights were amazing. On the other hand, I found most characters downright disgusting (mostly Shinji and Asuka).

Not to mention the pace killing scenes where nothing happens for minutes at a time. They paid for those incredible fight scenes with interminable shots of the interior of elevators or close ups of Shinji's walkman.

> They paid for those incredible fight scenes with interminable shots

Almost literally, since the still shots happened after the budget was cut.

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#85

Post by _lffv »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #82
ethbro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the shots of power lines with cicadas chirping. Best part of the series.

One scene that sticks out to me after all these years is a brief 2 minute scene from 'End of Evangelion' where Rei is talking to Shinji about the nature of dreams. In the background you can hear Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring being played on a piano and it transitions from animation to filmed live action footage which I think was shot around Tokyo it shows things like train lines, buildings and an empty swing set…

Just rewatched that scene (happens at around 1:16:00). The first time I watched that scene in particular I had to pause it because I was flabbergasted that they were so clearly breaking the fourth wall.

After the... unfortunate opening scene of the movie I hadn't rewatched it but every time I see even a small clip of anything from Eva (the movie or the show) I'm just enamored. Hideaki Anno is one of the greatest artists of our time just from NGE and Shin Godzilla. It felt like every frame of the original anime was perfect.

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#86

Post by swebs »

oweiler wrote: post #51

For me, NGE was both the best and the worst anime had to offer. On one hand, the music, art style and the fights were amazing. On the other hand, I found most characters downright disgusting (mostly Shinji and Asuka).

>On the other hand, I found most characters downright disgusting (mostly Shinji and Asuka).

Good. That was the intent.

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#87

Post by swebs »

lprd wrote: post #73
sleepybrett wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a fan of title card sequences check out cowboy bebop.

Hah, I just started that show last week and I an loving it so far! Any other recommendations?

Gurren Lagann

Trigun

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (better remake of the 2003 series)

One Punch Man

Demon Slayer

Akira

Redline

FLCL

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#88

Post by xsmasher »

pthomas551 wrote: post #52
rolltiide wrote: post #4

Typography is such an art I watched End of Evangelion for the first time in 15 years Still entertaining, great animation that stands the test of time, but wow I wish I can go tell my teenage self that it actually doesnt make sense, the symbolism has no point whatsoever but Judeo-Christian dogma is “foreign and cool“ and the writers eventually admit it and everyone had a good time making it

not sure Westerners are in a place to criticize given that we love to thoughtlessly appropriate Hindu/Buddhist imagery all over the place in our culture personally I love this aspect of Evangelion because it makes me examine my own orientalist biases

The anime "Haunted Junction" is fun in this regard.

The main characters are the son of Buddhist monk, a Shinto shrine priestess, and the son of a Christian minister; they protect their school from spiritual dangers.

If an eastern monk can be a D&D class, then why not Christian minister?

Re: Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion

#90

Post by aasasd »

watt wrote: post #47
aasasd wrote: post #44

Regarding mechanical compression: it's probably not 100% so, but afaik in kanji/hanzi and likely many other SEA scripts, proportions of a character don't matter much―they're just strokes in a grid that you can squish without harm to legibility. That's why labels on cheap Chinese goods often had deformed quasi-monospace Latin type: the author just had no idea anything is wrong. It's likely less true of sorta-calligrap…

Here's a great article why so many Chinese goods are printed with those ugly latin characters: https://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/183/

One point that the article doesn't make very clear is, Chinese fonts have Western characters that occupy the same space as the hieroglyphs—seemingly so that mixed-language text follows the hanzi grid. (Afaik Unicode even has wide-proportioned versions of some punctuation—dot and comma—specifically for embedding in hanzi text. But dunno if it had widespace Latin or other Western letters.)

Not sure, though, if monospace Latin characters are really a requirement for mixed-language texts in the Chinese market. If it is, then new fonts will have to incorporate it. However, typesetting on exported Chinese goods should follow Western practices, and that will probably mean convincing the designers that Western letters work differently.

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