Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I was part of an anime club in the 90s where the main guy was importing laserdiscs from Japan, downloading fansubs, and generating subtitles with an amiga. So we watched NGE as it came out, and it was such a perfectly executed troll. It starts out as yet another anime mecha fantasy, and by the end of it is showing you what that world would be like if it was actually real in a very adversarial way.

I remember when we watched the finale (the first version) one of the members of the anime club lost his cookies so hard he stood up and screamed a rant and walked out of the house in a state of rage.

View on HN

I find this funny because now it’s pretty much just NGE, a deconstruction, and Gurren Lagaan (sp?) that have maintained significant cultural appeal in western audiences imo. As anime has gotten more mainstream, the original mecha shows have not.

Somewhat similar for magical girls in Madoka Magica and Kill la Kill.

Yep. It's funny how so many anime follow this sort of "tropy premise with backstory strip-tease" formula, where they start out in a well-worn theme, but then gradually reveal a dark backstory. Madoka Magica is the absolute pinnacle of the form, each new revelation being as staggering as the last, and yet it never feels opaque and cryptic like Evangelion, and it all makes perfect sense together at the end.

Trigun is another show that does it well. It's a sci-fi western that slowly reveals the origins of the hero and the villain and the philosophical underpinnings of their conflict, as well as the miserable desert planet all the characters live on.

Elfenlied does the same with harem animes, but nobody should ever watch Elfenlied.

Can't forget Utena, the proto-Madoka. It IS as cryptic and opaque as Evangelion, while covering similar ground as (but also completely different ground from) PMMM. It also stands in opposition to Madoka in that it seems almost immune to ongoing commercialization: Rebellion and Magia Record, in its multiple forms, exist, but beyond Adolescence Apocalypse (perhaps in part because of Adolescence Apocalypse), Utena is probably one of the most popular magical girl franchises (very, very few anime have had as much written about it) to never be further capitalized on - and avoids thematic sliding in the process (looking at you, Precure).

>> Elfenlied does the same with harem animes, but nobody should ever watch Elfenlied.

Care to elaborate ?

Large amounts of gratuitous lolicon.

The story is about girls who are born with a mutation that causes telekinetic powers and sociopathic impulses, and the shadowy organization trying to contain and control them... and a teenaged orphan boy who has multiple stay at his house, including one prolific serial killer recovering from a massive concussion, as an ultra-dark subversion of the harem anime template.

The premise is ruined by a grotesque amount of lolicon.

Fair enough - I have tendency to ignore lolicon in anime (unfortunatelly it comes with the turf) so I dont remeber it beiing so off-putting. But I have some vague memory that the violece and gore was quite creative and that there was some intresting contrast created between it and any expectations viewer may have towards normal anime with this kind of premise.

Gundam is still popular I suppose but there hasn't been a massive hit in the IP in a long time.

I loved the original Mobile Suit Gundam show, but I found the other series a lot harder to get into. The WWII-flavoured drama applied onto Space Battleship Yamato's formula hit me just right. I sometimes wonder if there's a different magic in the franchise for other fans.

You might like Gundam Origin. It's a prequel to the OG story that explains Char's backstory

I don’t think it’s popular in the west though? It went through (still in?) an unusual phase where the target audience shifted to women and the protagonists became vaguely gay effeminate young men iirc

Let’s all just watch Gunbuster and be happy ok?

I'd describe TTGL as the reconstruction to NGE's deconstruction

Warning: TVTropes links

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Deconstruction

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Reconstruction

Yep yep. Same for kill la kill.

>It starts out as yet another anime mecha fantasy, and by the end of it is showing you what that world would be like if it was actually real in a very adversarial way.

This is what I didn't like about it. It reminded me a lot of Christopher Nolan's work: way too meandering and stoner-bro-what-if

Reply on news.ycombinator.com