Ask John: Has Evangelion Always Maintained Public Interest in Japan?

Question:
I heard somewhere (possibly in your column) that the Japanese don’t generally have a lot of loyalty to anime titles and always want to see something new. I also read your recent comments on “Renewal of Evangelion.” It seems like Neon Genesis is the exception to the rule, as far as people’s continuing interest in Japan goes. Do you think this is the case?

Answer:
Based on my very limited, second hand knowledge of Japanese fandom, I wouldn’t call Evangelion exactly an exception to the rule. With roughly 75 new anime TV series released in Japan every year, it’s certainly understandable that Japanese fans would tend to forget about older programs in favor of new ones. In the same way that American TV programs from the past like Twin Peaks, for example, still have small and very devoted American fan followings, anime programs like Evangelion, which is now an 8 year old show, still have small cult followings of hardcore otaku in Japan. The extensive character popularity poles published each month in Animage Magazine prove that 10 year old anime characters still have a following among devoted Japanese fans, but these hardcore fans represent only a small minority of the millions of Japanese viewers that watch current anime broadcast on Japanese television who care very little about shows that were broadcast five or ten years ago. A little bit of legwork will further support this theory with the fact that it’s relatively rare for an anime TV series to get a second season if it’s been more than a year since the prior season has ended. In simple terms, what’s out of sight is out of mind, and a series that’s been out of the mainstream public eye for more than a year in Japan has probably lost 85% or more of the audience it had when it was current.

Evangelion is an unusual case, but not really an exception. Allow me to clarify that I like and respect the show quite a bit, but I’m not nearly as devoted to Evangelion as many American fans are. Once again, a little bit of research will adequately prove that Evangelion is Studio Gainax’s golden cash cow. For the past eight years, Gainax has perpetually kept new Evangelion merchandise and video games filtering out to the relatively small market of hardcore Japanese otaku that continue to buy them. In a brilliant marketing strategy, Gainax has managed to turn the third Japanese DVD release of the series into a media event by utilizing a massive multimedia advertising campaign. Renewal of Evangelion contains no new animation footage, and it is at least the third time the Evangelion TV series has been released on DVD in Japan, but full page Japanese newspaper ads, free promotional DVDs included in Newtype Magazine, a TV re-broadcast, and the catchy tag-line “An Evangelion no one has ever seen” have managed to turn what would normally be a mundane marketing ploy into a highly anticipated event. Gainax Studios does produce exceptionally well written anime, and few studios can match the animation quality of Gainax drawn action scenes, but Gainax is also a studio will an easily documented excessive love of profit, capped off by the studio’s 1998 criminal investigation on charges of tax fraud and subsequent arrest of studio president Takeji Sawamura on charges of concealing 1.5 billion yen in profit by falsifying company business records. Gainax Studio’s continued release of Evangelion merchandise, including multiple remix CDs of previously released music, repaint and alternate versions of previously released Evangelion toys, and not one but two Evangelion typing tutorial video games, in addition to the heavily hyped Renewal of Evangelion, all seem to suggest that Evangelion is not so much a legitimate exception to the Japanese trend of mainstream interest in old anime titles cooling off as it is a masterfully orchestrated marketing scheme successful in taking advantage of a small cult following and turning it into a major, mainstream international event.