Feel the Burning #4: The Eva Effect
As I’ve mentioned before, the late ’90s were a rather sparse era for properly Burning robot shows. This wasn’t just a wasteland for musical cheese, though. It was a result of the marketing juggernaut known as Neon Genesis Evangelion and the quest for the quick buck.
Eva had an effect on the anime industry that was very much the same as the effect Watchmen had on the comics industry and The Lord of the Rings had on Hollywood. It was so popular, so critically well-received, and most importantly, so hand-over-fist profitable that other companies fell over themselves to imitate it and make “the next Evangelion.”
The time period that followed was quite accurately described to me back in 2000, when I spoke to a member of the GONZO staff (this was right after they made Blue Submarine no. 6) at Anime Expo. He said to me, “Everyone wants to be the next Eva. So nothing makes sense.” In the wake of Evangelion, you saw shows like Gasaraki and Brain Powerd, which concentrated on what they thought were the main selling points of this new style of robot anime: extreme plot obfuscation. It was hard to tell what was going on anymore, and just like M. Night Shyamalan movies, everyone kept trying stranger and stranger concepts with even stupider twists.
Existential angst, which had previously mostly been limited to things like “Oh my God, I killed Lalah by accident,” “I don’t like you and won’t combine robots with you until you admit you’re a prick,” and “My parents named me goddamn fucking Camille,” became an all-encompassing emotion that colored every frame of animation. Life sucked. The world sucked. Robots were stupid (or were Mom, but that’s a different discussion entirely).
This wasn’t entirely the case, of course. At the same time you had kabuki robots and mysteriously translucent space jubblies, you had such gems as GaoGaiGar, which taught people the meaning of courage, and Nadesico, which questioned the black and white moral simplicity of its predecessors while also paying homage to them.
But honestly, if a robot show came out between around 1995 and 2001, there’s about a 90% chance that it wanted very hard to be Evangelion and as a result sucked donkey balls. I’m completely serious about this. Don’t try to look for them.
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November 17th, 2007 at 5:53 am
How about FLCL? It wasn’t totally about robots, but it did encompass them in the show. So are we saying that between the release/end of the Evangelion series to about 2001 the robot animes are few and far between? What about afterwards?
November 17th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
FLCL isn’t a robot anime, even though it has robots.
From the release of Eva until about hmm…2002 is probably a better year to measure until, all the robot animes were trying to be Eva. More about confusing plot twists and angst attempting some to achieve some deeper philosophical meaning and less about the actual fighting and robots blowing shit up.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:40 am
FLCL is made by gainax ( who made evangelion) and not only is it not a mecha anime (please stop calling it robot anime folks =D makes me wanna cry..) but the story was written(well manga novelised) long before evangelion (i think…im quite certain…) anyhoo, gainax made flcl as a way of testing all their new animation techniques, the 5 (?) episode long series cost the same amount as an average 26 episode series to make.
ps: the guys at gainax hate people who say F.L.C.L, its furi juri! =D
~Dee~
November 30th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
furi kuri, typo sorry =D