Here is an old article brought to us by the wonderful Azreal. Enjoy.

Title : Orient Expressive
Author : DAVID M. WALKER
Date : unknown (sometime during 1999)
Intro : Forget Bugs Bunny- take a look at Neon Genesis Evangelion,
the Japanese cartoon series that SBS is hoping will garner
a cult following as big as South Park's. DAVID M. WALKER
reports.
Pictures : All of the pictures are 2 (print) columns wide. The hight
is given for each.

P1. Top right hand corner of page 19. Approximately 10cm
high) Shows Robert Brophy holding an Astro Boy(I think)
Comic, which appears to be in Japanese.
Caption [Top: Robert Brophy enjoys the challenge of anime.
It's a far cry, he says, from the predictable nature of
Wester-style animation.]

P2. Left hand side. Slightly lower that the middle of the page.
A frame taken from the episode with the big cube thing. The one
where Shinji has removed the entry plug form Unit 00, opened it
and enters. It shows Shinji (from close to Rei's point of view)
crying slightly inside the hatch of the entry plug. Very blue
frame that one.
Caption [Above:Shinji Ikari is the main character of Neon Genesis
Evangelion.]

P3. Top Right corner of page 20. Shows the 3rd Angel from the
waist up. I think it's a frame from the time that the angel
spends regenerating after being struck by an N2 Mine.
Caption[No Caption]

TEXT:
[main article starts here]

[T]AKE CHILDREN to The Lion King or A Bug's Life and they will
marvel. Take Philip Brophy and he will tell you "Western
animation is the pits."

Brophy, a lecturer in media arts at Royal Melbourne Institue of
Technology, sees the malaise plaguing mainstream Western animation
produced by Disney and the like as rooted in an all-too-predictable
use of mythical heros on quests, coupled with an "obsession with
computer animation".

"It's like watching a big ad for breakfast cereal," Brophy
says.

Brophy prefers to look to the East
[column ends here]
and series such as SBS's 26-part offering, Neon Genesis
Evangelion, produced by the Gainax animation house in Tokyo and
screening on Saturday nights at 8:30pm.

Neon Genesis is, Brophy says, one of the best examples of
anime (the name given to animation produced in Japan) made.

The program can be seen as a simple action-cum-science-fiction
romp through a futuristic Tokyo, but Brophy says it also poses
deeper questions about the nature of existence, which often
requires its audience to perform strenuous mental gymnastics.

Publicity material for Neon Genesis says the series' extensive
use of symbolism from Christianity and Zen Buddhism leads viewers
to ask such weighty questions as "Does evolution exist?" and "What
is humanity's relationship to what we call the divine?"

It frequently portrays the personal and existantial loneliness
of its fragile human characters cut adrift in inhuman surrounds, as
well as the isolating effects of the metropolis they inhabit.

Neon Genesis's 14-year-old protagonist, Shinji Ikari, lives in
Tokyo without contact with his family, and his mood is often
illustrated by the use of scenes shot from above, animation cells
washed in drab blue, and passages of extreme action interspersed
with reflective passages of stillness or close-ups of Ikari's face.

Brophy points out that Neon Genesis passes harsh judgment on
the society Japan's youth will inherit -- Ikari inhabits a world
destroyed by machines and he must battle a race of machine-monsters
called Angels.

But Neon Genesis is not the first anime to discuss the
problematic relationship between humans and machines -- Brophy says
that Tezuka's Astroboy was tackling the theme in 1950s post-war
Japan, a society devestated by the deployement of American
"cutting-

[column and page ends here]

edge technology" with horrific consequences on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.

With such a traumatic wartime experience underlying Japanese
consciousness and anime, it might not be supprising much of Neon
Genesis and anime shuns the courages-hero-overcomes-hurdle
storylines of Western animation.

Brophy explains anime's alternative approach: "In anime there
is no clear good or evil; charcters all charcter states, there is
never justice, and revenge is caotic and haphazard."

This might alientate some Western viewers, but the Japanese
market has an apparently insatiable appetite for anime and its
printed cartoon equivelent, manga. In 1984 almost one-third of the
five billion books and magazines Japan produced were comics, or
manga. About 100 new anime productions for television, cinema and
video appear in Japan each month.

[column ends here]

This popularity caused Neon Genesis, which was first screened
in Japan in 1996, to be moved to from a children's 6:30pm timeslot
as a cult following grew around it. The series has spawned two
theatrical sequels, as well as related merchandise sales worth more
than $400 million.

SBS may hope to attract viewers for Neon Genesis from its
other animated success, South Park. But Australia already has a
dedicated anime following -- a three-month symposium and exhibition
of Japanese animation and cartoons Brophy organised at Sydney's
Museum of Contemporary Arts in 1994 attracted 87,000 visitors, and
subsequent screenings of anime at the Melbourne Film Festivals in
1995 and 1997 also drew sizeable crowds.

"Neon Genesis is a challenging series," Brophy says. "Perhaps
the most metaphysical anime I have seen. But I like having to pay
attention and work when I'm watching a film or animation."
[main article ends here]

[Column "Neon Genesis Evangelion: the story" starts here]
[column starts here]

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The story

THE YEAR IS 2015 and more than half the Earth's population
is dead, victims of the first attack by a mysterious race of beings
known as the Angels. To save what remains of mankind, the human
race must place its trust in the mysterious NERV agency and its
giant bio-mechanical Evangelions. These creations are humanoid is
formn and the only force on Earth that can break through the Angels'
absolute terror field long enough to tackle the invaders in
hand-to-hand combat. Only a handful of teenagers are capleable of
piloting an Evangelion, each of whom was born exactly nine months
after the Angels' first attack. Are these children the product of
accelerated evolution or of much darker forces at work in the
depths of NERV?

[column ends here]
[Column "Neon Genesis Evangelion: the story" ends here]

This arcticle was taken from the West Magazine, part of The West Australian
Newspaper. All TM and (c) materials are owned by their respective owners.
The entirenty of this article is owned by The West Australian and/or the
articles authour. This transcription is (c) Azreal, 2000.