![]() ![]() For example, try to find a column or a review of Ideon that doesn’t mention that it inspired Evangelion. Spelled out more clearly, we don’t talk about Ideon outside of the context of Eva. There is a fundamental problem with this comparison. Matteo at Full Frontal Moe is not the first person to trot out Space Runaway Ideon when talking about whether Eva is influential. That’s because influence is not a function of art, it’s a function of commerce. When we’re talking about the influence of art, it doesn’t matter if future artists drew inspiration from it. Let me repeat that because that is at the heart of my problems with this discussion. We often think about auteur directors, but more often a TV show or movie is a collaboration between dozens, so picking out one particular creator can be a fool’s errand.īut beyond their lack of trustworthiness, what the artist was thinking at the time doesn’t matter. So outside of the grip of that artistic fugue, I don’t think artists are really any better than the rest of us in coming up with why they did the things they did.Īnother issue is that these works are not made in a vacuum. I believe it’s more instinctual than analytical. Sure they might have a goal, they might even have idols, but there is a certain amount of alchemy that goes on when those are combined. I’m not convinced that any creative person really has a full grasp of what motivated them until after they’ve finished. One of the main reasons is that we can’t really trust creators to give us honest accounts of what they cribbed and what they came up with on their own. While it might be true, it’s also equally dismissive of the dozens of other artistic influences the creators might have as well as their own ingenuity.īefore anything else, we need to move the conversation about whether a particular piece of work is influential away from the artistic influences of the creators. Someone will see Eva and then see the similarities with Serial Experiments Lain and they will automatically jump to the conclusion that Lain’s creators were influenced by Eva. The problem is that we will often attribute a cause to the pattern. They’ll look at a television show and then they’ll see another show and see the similarities. People often confuse art and commerce when they talk about whether something is influential. ![]() I will let you decide.Īlso, I apologize for how many times I’m going to write influence, influenced and influential. The same thing goes for calling a show groundbreaking and genre-defining.Īlso, the gulf between what I know and what I think I know is far and deep, so I could be totally off base with what I’m saying here. I could easily stand on a hill and say that Eva defined anime for the later part of the 90s and the early part of the 2000s. I’m just as guilty of these over generalizations as the next person. Without criticizing the idea that either of them put out, I want to get my own ideas about this subject out.īut let’s start with a little bit of table clearing.Ī lot of people descend into hyperbole when they talk about influential shows. One was this post over at Full Frontal Moe criticizing the idea that Eva is a deconstruction of the mecha genre, and the other is this tweet thread from Thaliarchus about how we judge newer examples of a genre as more mature than older ones.Īll of this got me thinking about how we (as fans and critics and critical fans) talk about influence and impact when it comes to a genre. #AniTwitWatches 91 Days adaptations Akame Ga Kill analysis ani-blogging anime art Back Arrow blogging blogs characters Christianity cinematography coronavirus critique Dororo Eighty-six Elder Scrolls Eva Evangelion Existentialism fantasy Galaxy Express 999 gatekeeping GE999 geek culture genre Girls' Last Tour harem Haruhi Haruka Shitou Higurashi history humor internet culture Isekai Kanon Kill la Kill Leiji Matsumoto loli love mecha Meta Mu music Nadia navel-gazing Neon Genesis Evangelion NGE Odd Taxi Oregairu Otome politics RahXephon Real Neat Blog review reviews romance School Days science fiction sexualization shoujo Tag Posts Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann The Big O The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya themes Toradora Trauma travelogues video game Visual Novels War Writing Blogrollįor the last week or so I’ve had two discussions bouncing around in my head taking up space. How Bad is Fate/Stay Night? An #anitwitwatches Post.Talking about Real Girl and Higehiro and bad endings.In Search Of … Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit.Why is Sound of the Sky so Bad? An #anitwitwatches post. ![]()
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