EVA Unit 01

This is an older drawing but one of my favorites even if I think the colors look a little saturated. You can see the process gif at the bottom of this post. The drawing was rendered with markers and colored digitally.

Sometimes I wonder about the longevity of things. One of the qualities of any work is how long it remains relevant although that's a little bit of a double edged sword; a work that can't help be but shout its place and time has its own merits. When thinking about the longevity of some anime, I think about the landmark works. Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, Cowboy Bebop.

Evangelion is up there, of course. But in the states, it hasn't been legally available for some time, and I wonder if it's notoriety hasnt in some ways actually benefited from its own scarcity. Sometimes popularity increases when access is reduced. For a long time, you couldn't just find it at your local Best Buy or get it on Amazon for a decent price. In the age of immediate access, an element of hard-to-get may have actually helped Evangelion stand out.

I rewatched Evangelion recently. I was coming down from the high of watching Devilman Crybaby for the first time and I couldn't help but see some of the parallels between the works. Oh this is where Evangelion gets that from I thought on a handful of occasions. In some ways, Evangelion looked derivative of original Devilman.

Which isn't a knock against the series. Every work is seeded from other works. Evangelion's often meme'd end is almost a carbon copy of Devilman. However, Evangelion's core story is about depression and alienation. Devilman's protagonist is emotionally driven to act while Evangelion's protagonist collapses under his own emotions.

Admittedly, Evangelion has one of the greatest visual identities I can think of for an anime. It's sleek, gross, violent. Yuasa's treatment may have hyper stylish animation but it doesn't make everyone stand up and say 'woah' like Evangelion's crisp and detailed movements.

When Evangelion finally makes it to Netflix some time this year, I'll rewatch it and maybe I'll get something different from it than I did before. Maybe I'll rewatch Devilman Crybaby too if my heart can take it.