Toho Announces a New Godzilla Film for 2016

Toho’s promo image for Godzilla 2016.

Back on April 1st, Toho Film Studios announced that production was underway on a brand-new Japanese Godzilla film. This news alone would be enough to cause a stir among G-fans around the world; but nothing could top the reveal of the two men behind the new production.

Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi.

Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi in front of Toho Studios.

To anyone familiar with these names, having them even tangentially connected to a new Godzilla film would be amazing. To have them working together as co-director’s on the film is as existentially significant to a Godzilla fan as it would be to personally witness the big bang. Well, to me, at least.

Now, for those who have no idea who these two people are, let me explain.

Hideaki Anno has been a giant in the Japanese animation industry for decades. His most well-known work is as director and screenwriter of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) and its more recent incarnation in the Rebuild of Evangelion film series (or Evangelion: New Movie Edition). Anno has also directed many other notable works, such as Gunbuster (1988), Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), and several live-action projects such as Cutie Honey (2004) and Love & Pop (1998). Anno began as an animator and worked on the key God Warrior sequence for Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984). Anno also gave his voice to the lead character of Miyazaki’s 2013 film, The Wind Rises.

Anno has been very outspoken of the importance of animation and Tokusatsu (Japanese special effects films or television programs) in his life and has countless references to his favorite stories in many of his own works.

Shinji Higuchi is a talented artist who was one of the founding members of studio Gainax along with Hideaki Anno. Higuchi served as a writer, storyboard artist/director, and assistant director on Neon Genesis Evangelion. He created storyboards for Gunbuster and Otaku no Video (1991) for Gainax as well. I know Higuchi best for his work as the director of special effects for the ’90’s Gamera trilogy directed by Shusuke Kaneko.The incredible work he did on these films proved Higuchi to be a special effects master. He has gone on to direct several live-action films such as The Sinking of Japan (2006) and the upcoming two-part film adaptation of Attack on Titan.

Gamera 3 Japanese Poster

In 2012, Anno curated Tokusatsu- Special Effects Museum-Craftsmanship of Showa and Heisei Eras Seen Through Miniatures at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. This exhibit really put Anno’s love for the genre on display and at the center of it was a short film produced by Anno and directed by Shinji Higuchi entitled Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo. This amazing short film gave a very nice taste of what these two friends could bring to a live-action giant monster project.

Godzilla from Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Film

For the 2016 Godzilla film, Anno will be serving as the Writer and Supervising Director and Higuchi will be Director and Special Effects Director. This may seem to be a curious way to split up work duties on the movie but I feel it speaks to how closely the duo is working together. Godzilla is set to film in the fall for a release in the summer of 2016.

It is difficult to summarize how important and exciting it is to have Anno and Higuchi working together on a new Godzilla film. I think it shows how serious Toho is taking Godzilla after the successful release of Gareth Edwards’ recent american Godzilla film from 2014. Edwards is also set to direct two more Godzilla films to complete his own trilogy. The next film in the revitalized american series is set to open in 2018. Legendary, the production company behind the new american Godzilla films, also revealed at last year’s San Diego Comic Con that they had purchased the rights for King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan to appear along with Godzilla in the next two films from Edwards.

Toho has also commented that the new Godzilla in Anno and Higuchi’s upcoming film will be the tallest incarnation of the monster yet, towering over even Legendary Films’ 108-meter tall beast from last year.

Overall, it’s a great time to be a Godzilla fan.

Sources: Crunchyroll, Oricon, The Good, The Bad, and Godzilla (Tokusatsu expert August Ragone’s has an excellent write-up on the new film with translated comments from both Anno and Higuchi. Required reading.)

Evangelion Sparkling Wine Released

To cheer fans up about recent comments surrounding how much more of a wait we have for Evangelion Q, ANIMATE’s online shop has begun taking orders for three different kinds of Evangelion sparkling wine.

This limited edition wine comes in three flavours: EVA-01 BRUT is a dry, not very sweet wine, EVA-00 SEC (featuring Rei Ayanami) is a semi-sweet wine, and, EVA-02 DEMI SEC (featurying Asuka Langley) is a sweet wine. Each type of wine is a limited prodution run of only 333 bottles and can be purchased online or through select ANIMATE stores for 50,000 yen (US $624) each.

If you feel so inclined, here is the official website for the Evangelion sparkling wine from ANIMATE.

 

Early Hideaki Anno Animation Released on Youtube

After a two month break from posting on Teatime, I’m back! Here’s a video.

Entitled ‘Explosion!’ this short film was animated by Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shikijitsu) a year after 1983’s stunning DAICON IV opening animation. This is pretty awesome.

The Real Operation Yashima

After the earthquake and tsunami on March 11th the Tokyo Electric Power Company has created an unofficial campaign to encourage people to conserve electricity inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Several power plants are offline or not fully operational due to last friday’s events and TEPCO has announced that rotating power cuts will occur to providing homes and important facilities with electricity. In response to this an unofficial campaign has begun on Twitter as a public service to help conserve electricity.

The campaign is entitled ‘Operation Yashima’ after the events depicted in episode six of the Evangelion television series and Evangelion 1.11 film in which the Evangelion units defeat an enemy using a sniper rifle which can only be fully-powered using Japan’s entire power grid.

Here is the Japanese link to Operation Yashima.

From ANN.

Evangelion Manga to Return in April

After being on hiatus for over a year Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion is set to resume in Kadokawa Shoten’s Young Ace magazine on April 4th. Sadamoto had previously announced that the manga would return sometime this winter.

Viz Comics also recently published the 12th and most recent volume of the series here in America. Sadamoto is currently in the middle of adapting The End of Evangelion movie finale of the series for his manga.

Although a ton of different promotional projects for Evangelion have been going on in Japan since the release of Evangelion 2.22 on home video last summer, there still has been no word on the upcoming third film that is currently in production.

The last word was that Evangelion 3.0 is currently in the key animation stage and has a tentative release date for sometime in 2012.

Hideaki Anno Evangelion Sketch

Hideaki Anno, the director of Evangelion and Gunbuster put up an original sketch in a park in Japan. I’m having difficulties translating the Evafan blog where the pictures originated from so I’m not sure where in Japan this is or why the picture was put up, but for now I’m just going to enjoy the image.

Since the Blu-ray and DVD release of Evangelion 2.22 there has been very little news pertaining to Evangelion aside from some side events taking place in Japan such as Evangelion World and the construction of the life-size bust of Evangelion Unit-01.

I presume that production is underway for Evangelion 3.0. Anno and his team can take his time though, as I am in no hurry to see this current Evangelion movie series conclude.

Life-Size Evangelion Being Constructed

After the awesome success of the life-size Gundam last year, this year Japan is building a life-size Evangelion Unit-01 along with replica’s of the cockpit and even some of the characters. Short videos are being released once a week by Studio Khara covering the construction of Unit-01 up to its eventual release later in the summer. This is pretty awesome.

End of Evangelion Alternate Live Action Sequence

In this primary trailer for Hideaki Anno’s film The End of Evangelion no actual animation from the movie is shown and instead we are treated to a sequence of live action scenes featuring the actresses behind the characters of Asuka, Rei, and Misato from the series combined with various lines of dialogue. Upon viewing the actual movie, although there is a live-action sequence in the third act of the film few of the scenes in the trailer are shown. In fact, a completely alternative ‘live action sequence’ was filmed but was cut from the final version of the movie. This sequence then became something of a legend as it wasn’t included in any of the home video releases of The End of Evangelion until the 2003 remastered ‘Renewal’ set in Japan where this scene was included as an extra on the DVD. Sadly, although the remastered version of the television series was made available in the states, the remastered version of the final movie never got released stateside. The reason behind this was that ADV Films owned the rights to the Neon Genesis Evangelion television series but not the rights to the subsequent movies which were bought by Manga Entertainment. So although ADV Films released the an American version of the remastered TV series, Manga Entertainment never bothered to release the newly restored version of the film. ADV Films has currently gone under and Manga Entertainment has long since lost the distribution rights to the films so I happened to find the ‘lost’ live action sequence from The End of Evangelion and I decided it needed to be posted on here.

This alternate reality is in fact ‘our’ reality in which we don’t have giant robots or giant creatures attacking us fairly frequently. All of the characters are as they would be in ‘real life’ and interestingly, this alternative reality doesn’t include Shinji. I actually prefer the live action sequence which they kept in the final cut of the film itself but this alternative version is worth seeing if just to see what the voice actresses who perform as Rei, Asuka, and Mistato (Megumi Hayashibara, Yuko Miyamura, Kotono Mitsushi) in Evangelion actually look like.

Gainax’s Hiroyuki Yamaga at Fanime 2010

A very interesting article popped up on EvaGeeks.org forum discussing an appearance by Studio Gainax founder Hiroyuki Yamaga at the Fanime convention in San Jose just this past weekend. Yamaga is the director of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Mahoromatic, and Wings of Honneamise, which is the first original film by Gainax from 1987.

Yamaga appeared on stage at the end of a screening of Evangelion 2.22 and had plenty to say about the past and future of the studio. Yamaga said that the newest upcoming work by Gainax, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is “very dirty” and that he isn’t working on that but is instead directing another new project which is “more refined” and takes place in early 20th century England. Apparently it is to early in the production for a formal announcement of the project although Gainax has been looking for staff to work on it.

Yamaga then commented that Daicon IV (the very first work done by all of the founding Gainax animators, pictured above) was intended to be a last, big fun project done at the end of college before they all went off and got ‘real jobs’. After Daicon IV was completed they realized that they had too much talent to just leave animation behind, so they decided to form Gainax. After awhile of just meeting up and having dinner together, they approached Bandai about making a Mobile Suit Gundam OVA but were turned down because they were ‘just a bunch of amateurs’. After being rejected they then asked Bandai to sponser an original film and ‘for some reason’ they did which resulted in Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise.

interview goes on to discuss many interesting facts about Gainax and its subsequent works but Yamaga answered questions about two particular points of interest and conflict for American otaku about Gunbuster and Neon Genesis Evangelion. One audience member asked Yamaga if the final episode of the original Gunbuster series (pictured below)was almost entirely in black and white due to budget constraints but Yamaga answered that the style of the final episode had nothing to do with any issues with the budget.

One of Gunbuster's Most Memorable Scenes

Of course, another audience member asked if the original television ending for Neon Genesis Evangelion (which takes place entirely within the minds of the main characters) was the result of more supposed budget problems but Yamaga answered that the problem was with time, not with the budget. Yamaga then commented that the television ending was what was planned from the beginning and that the creators all agreed that it would be interesting to conclude the story in such a different way.

Another fan said that this ending was ‘not well-recieved’ by fans of the series and asked if the subsequent film ‘The End of Evangelion‘ was created as some sort of ‘revenge’ towards the irate fans of the series to which Yamaga responded that everyone at Gainax was satisfied with the television series ending and that the movie was just the result of the desire “to do more Eva” and had nothing to do with being angry with the fans’ reaction to the final episodes of the television series.

Shinji Feeling Whimsical in episode 26 of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Yamaga’s answers to these questions about Gunbuster and Neon Genesis Evangelion I feel puts to rest the complaints and conjectures by many American fans about the endings of these stories that have become major points of discussion over the years.

I am even guilty of jokingly commenting that the ending of Gunbuster must have been the result of budget constraints. Anyone who watches Evangelion is left with strong emotions after viewing its various endings but it was nice to hear that the original television ending was always the one that Gainax had intended and that the story that The End of Evangelion was the ‘true’ ending that the studio was unable to do originally because of budget constraints and censoring was just the result of rumors made up by the fans.

These comments will of course not stop the wild imaginations of the fans or the fact that we would all have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the production of that series just to see what those crazy people at Gainax were really getting up to, but for now it is just nice to have such a clear ‘official statement’ about topics that have divided fan’s for years.

 I have included below the videos for both Daicon III and Daicon IV. These were originally shown at a yearly convention of the same name in 1981 and 1983 respectfully.

Evangelion 2.22 Blu-ray Improvements

This is priceless. This is why we have flat-screen televisions and 1060p Hi-Definition picture quality. For fanservice of the highest animation quality. Evangelion 2.22 hits shelves in Japan this week and pictures are already popping up online of the changes that have been made to the film since it’s inital release to Japanese theaters last June. There are several brand new scens that have been added to the Blu-ray that were not present in the film before but also most of the film has been touched up with added detail or smoother animation.

One excellent example of this is shown in the images above. The top picture is from the new Blu-ray release and the lower image is from the theatrical release. I will leave it to your own eyes to discern the obvious changes that have been made in the scene but I just wanted to comment on how much I appreciate the fine work that directors Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki and the other animators of Studio Khara have put into this work. Hooray for Mari’s butt in Hi-def!

Another poster has been put out for Evangelion 2.22 covering all of the scenes in the film and showing some images of a few of the new scenes that have been added to the work. Shown below are some photographs of the poster taken from a shop in Japan.

The DVD version was leaked online this past sunday with a relatively low-quality release of the film. The fans, including me, subsequently went crazy. This is fun and all but I strongly suggest that fans of the series buy the Japanese release off of Amazon.jp (The Blu-ray is region free and will work on any Blu-ray player including Playstation 3’s) or at the very least pick up the American version of the film when it eventually gets released stateside by Funimation. I will be posting later this week with a more in-depth review of the film.