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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

NGE has always been a favorite of me because of the UIs that are represented throughout the series. The new(ish?) movies are just gorgeous, I highly suggest you give them a try if you haven't already.

If you like this, you may as well enjoy: https://scifiinterfaces.com/

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Evangelion uses graphical interfaces very effectively in its story telling. My favorite example is in episode 8: there are two pilots inside EVA-02, leading to problems. We know they've won when we see the synchronization gauge maxing out.

https://wiki.evageeks.org/images/e/e1/Nigoki_synch_graph_low...

https://wiki.evageeks.org/images/2/2c/Nigoki_synch_graph_hig...

Episode 13 also has programmers saving everyone against an enemy hacking attempt:

https://wiki.evageeks.org/images/1/18/Ireul_Hacking_Magi.jpg

I always liked the pseudo-realistic stack traces in Evangelion. Like, when an error happens a literal stack trace runs through their digital screens. It's realistic enough to be immersive and nostalgic, but sci-fi enough to not warrant deep examination or to poke holes through.

The UI is pretty timeless in that regard.

The NERV facilities capture the "rushed research facility" vibe quite well. Not only the UIs are spartan but they have a team of scientists running even the most basic systems and still looking at every issue, and you can also see cables laid out on the floor and everything. It's more realistic than the usual "pristine facility that deploys giant robots" on other shows.

I always liked how they portrayed the EVAs, too. Unit 0 was a prototype, which in most shows would mean that it has some awesome special capabilities. But no, in Evangelion, unit 0 is a flaky but very expensive piece of equipment that's dangerous to operate, doesn't even work half the time, and no one really trusts for anything important. Unit 1 is more reliable but the pilot isn't, so it kind of evens out.

It's also a nice touch how, as the series goes on, the EVAs end up with different colored parts because they just use whatever replacement was on hand at the time. The city, too, goes from being a semi-normal modern city to barren, dystopian landscape. Not all at once, but in stages.

Yep. It reminds me of the striking difference between most space travel sci-fi (in which the pilot of a spacecraft is the captain of their vessel and can go wherever they please) and, say, the Space Shuttle (which required meticulous planning and a large ground support staff for every single mission). Evangelion does a great job of visually conveying how the pilot in the robot's cockpit is, in part, just a focal point for the efforts of thousands of other people.

And then, of course, it subverts that portrayal by revealing that (ROT13) gur Rinf jrer npghnyyl perngrq ol na bpphyg frperg fbpvrgl hfvat napvrag nyvraf, naq abar bs gur grpuavpvnaf be bcrengbef unir n pyhr jung gurl'er ERNYYL pncnoyr bs.

That was an era thing wasn’t it? Serial Experiments Lain has that same feeling. The best modern example was probably the opening in 2.22, which felt very rushed.

Yeah Lain and also Ghost in the Shell have similar portrayal of research facilities, they still look more surreal than Eva on those animes though. But I wouldn't say they are giant robots animes. Bubblegum Crisis and of course Gundam are and there the facilities are more pristine and everything is more like military run.

Eva isn't surreal? SEL was pretty good at guessing, but they held CRTs too long lol.

I feel like it is also due to the relentless decrease available slack[0] in growing industries and how artsy styles have higher logistic and managerial costs.

[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/12/studies-on-slack/

Sometimes close examination pays off though. Jet Alone boots up version 2.2.1c, nearly melts down and then reboots back to 2.1.1c seconds before it explodes, confirming that it was sabotaged.

Its virus protection also indicates "Chech" instead of "Check"[1].

Evangelion is full of amazing thoughtful details, I love how they mixed the pseudoscience with the pseudo-mystical concepts of the series[2].

[1] https://i.imgur.com/dx2QQy7.jpg

[2] https://i.imgur.com/uYV2WiD.jpg

53 TB of UMB :)

Tangent, but the first episode of Golden Boy has a number of almost-but-not-quite realistic contemporary 1995 computer details, including this weirdly garbled rc script:

https://youtu.be/R7jXJ1UfOvo?t=1195

(i should note that while this is a terrible but entertaining lightweight comedy anime, as wikipedia puts it, "while the OVA is not strictly a hentai animation", it might not be something to watch in the office)

I'm just surprised to see that someone else knows about ‘Golden Boy’. It rides such a wacky edge between the mainstream and the weird that it's difficult to imagine an audience for it. Probably the only reason I've seen it is because in the early 2000s I and some people here watched just everything anime, whole hdds of the stuff. Now I just vaguely remember a couple of popular series, plus ‘Golden Boy’ and ‘Lunatic Night’.

Need to rewatch it one of these days, it's already on the watch-list.

Here’s a collection of GIFs showcasing Evangelion’s UIs:

https://imgur.com/a/PF3oA

https://imgur.com/a/uDeBs

I would recommend watching the original, personally. The new movies are sharper and brighter, but lack character.

Only the original series + EoE is worth watching "seriously", rebuilds are sort of a troll commentary on the public reception of the original show, Anno went like "You want more Eva? I'll give you what you want. Are you not entertained?".

They are well worth watching too, but you need to be aware of the context to fully appreciate the message.

This guy explains it perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHIvs0Q-uKI

The new series is not a “troll”. And clearly watching it you can see as much. It feels like the story Anno always wanted to tell but didn’t have the mental or emotional space to do it in. The story is fully realized and I think it’s actually the most faithful telling of Eva of anything released thus far. I’d even go so far as to say skip the original series and just watch Rebuild. It’s that good.

I think the movies are a lot more focused on just on the main characters, which is a bit of a shame because one of the great things about the original show was that in the later episodes it becomes increasingly more apparent that most of the adults have serious issues too. They're just able to hide it better than Shinji, Rei, and Asuka. I can kind of understand though not wanting to just repeat the exact same content, just with a higher budget.

Classsmates got development in 3.0+1.0

That's true.

I have yet to finish the last two movies, but I found the first two a lot more interesting if viewed through the idea that they actually continue from EoE (considering Kaworu's words at the end of 2.22)

I fully support watching the last two movies. Just the recap movies lose so much character compared to the original.

Oh, sure, on the first look at 1.11 it felt dangerously close to losing a lot of the character to me - it was 2.22 that made it work, partially because of what I mentioned :)

1.11 felt completely unnecessary to me, personally. It didn't add anything to the original story, and took away too much. The only real achievement for me was the final battle, since the octohedron angel was otherwise a forgettable villain-of-the-week episode.

The sequels that stop tracking so close to the original is where it takes off. I still prefer the original but it didn't feel like a simple re-make at that point.

If you watched it instead of the episodes it could be seen as a mine death/rebirth, but agreed. 2.22 is the best!

1.11 was IMO important to prepare the ground for 2.22 - some subtle differences exist and by not following exact the original story it makes 2.22 stand out more. But by itself it's not that great - probably helps a lot that I watched 1.11 and 2.22 pretty much back to back.

2.22 was the peak of the rebuild. I’d have loved it way more if it ended right there. Best character development, most interesting angels (except clocky), Mari has potential and wasn’t another caricature, all downhill 3.33 was little more than a drawn out and more boring episode 24 with 2 interesting fights.

The rebuild movies are pretty explicit sequels.

Agreed, the newest movie in particular was borderline unwatchable.

It was entirely technobabble and metaphysical nonsense with no character development.

That's more the weakness of the 3rd than the 4th. The third movie felt like there was a whole volume between part 2 and part 3 that was missing - I get the appeal of telling the story from Shinji's perspective and starting in media res, but you can't just use terms like "failed infinities" and the "chamber of guf" without a little establishing context.

The 4th brings it back somewhat, but ultimately the finale is still the typical Eva "here's a bunch of religious babble half-explaining what happens overlaid with crazy imagery" which imho had its last hurrah in EoE.

3.0 was garbage except the opening rescue scene and the end battle, I would not recommend it at all. The 4th has too much eye candy that wasn’t even babble.

The whole villiage sequence was character development?

I agree that the CGI scenes where kind of weaker than the old animated fights.

As cheesy as it sounds, afterwards I sort of felt like the bad cg (and copy pasting assets) was intentional. Maybe it was meant to contrast the eva specific parts with the rest of the regularly animated sequences with human characters. The scene that made me think this way was near the end the giant Rei head exploded into a bunch of 3d eva models (about 2:20), where afterwards they decided to animate the contrasting scene with humans without 3d, which was probably so much more work that I felt it must have been intentional for some reason.

I thought it was for fakery but I don’t know, 2.22 had excellent 3D.

I’d say this for most digital interfaces in anime. They really hit the “thud effect” perfectly (blame a PM for that absolutely astonishing phraseology), where a UI manages to actually become part of the timing and beat of an audio-visual narrative.

Ex: there are few things in life as utterly satisfying as watching gigantic mechanicals lock firmly into place and a big screen filling digital display say something of the effect of “ENGAGEMENT OK”. I don’t know what it is, but it _works_.

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