Anno 2020(+1)

<div align='center' style='font-size: 200%;'>\ Anno 2020<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">(+1)</div></div> <div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/v7op8TJ.jpg" alt="Boy howdy was this a long time in the making" align="center" width="541px" height="413"></div>\ <div align='center' style='font-size: 120%;'>[[An @aliveinthewired tragedy|Intro]]</div> \ [[I'm sorry]]

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When I saw Evangelion was scheduled for release on 25 June 2020, I felt an indescribable sense of horror and foreboding. I’m going to attempt to explain why. <div class="speaker2">So this essay has been in production for a while in case you can’t tell.</div> [[Index]]

<div class="speaker1">Green</div> <div class="speaker2">Red</div> style="display: inline" <div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">Green</div> <div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">Red</div>

in any order that feels best to you [[Menstrual Blood (a woman who doesn’t bleed)]] [[War, Oil, Empire]] [[Evangelion 2020<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">(+1)</div> |Evangelion 2020( + 1)]] [[<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">中止だ中止|中止だ中止]] [[Why the Olympics?]] [[<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">すべての it didn't need to be this way</div>|すべての it didn't need to be this way]]

The nation-state loves the idea of the soldiers. Not the individuals themselves but the idea of their selfless commitment to an ideal that supports the agenda of whomever is praising the soldier. But soldiers nominally have a function, a role, and that is to make war, and wars can be won, or lost, and is then a reflection on the efficacy and worth of the soldier, and by extension, the nation state itself. [[Next|Blood 1]]

Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion is, at this point, basically irrelevant as an actual work. You can, of course, enjoy it in the fashion intended by its creators: getting angry at it and hating it. You can enjoy the visuals and performances, or you can ignore it entirely. None of that really matters as compared to its commercial success, ubiquity, longevity. Refusing to have a take on Evangelion, is a take, a statement about that ubiquity and your indifference to its legacy. Many pieces of culture get popular or last a long time but few manage to achieve this. [[Next|Eva 2]]

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<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">In much the same way that the 1964 Olympics was meant to symbolise the beginning of something, we see the recurring theme of a second Tokyo Olympics used in order to symbolise the end of something. Akira is probably the most notable example. This might seem like it's simply reactionary but it runs deeper. The original Olympics was super controversial, and controversial for many of the same non-pandemic reasons.</div> [[Next|Chuushi 1]]

<div class="speaker1">The majority of this section was written before the very idea Olympics became significantly more hellish than it was at the time now. The very idea of criticising the Olympics as being bad seems quaint and unnecessary.</div> [[Next| Why 1]]

The Showa era covers an extremely long and diverse period of time, 1926-1989, where it's almost as if no two years could be said to be even remotely alike. Many people, however, do use it as a byword to describe a distinct and cohesive aesthetic. What people mean when they say Showa is: Not here, and not now. The [[good bits]], but not the [[bad bits]]. Nostalgia, the absence of pain. The idea that things are bad right now, but once weren’t so bad. [[Next|WOE 1]]

Well, obviously as the representative for the worth of a nation-state, with no war to fight, in that situation you put down your rifle and pick up a [[volleyball]]. [[Next|Blood 2]]

[[Volleyballs, to mean the ball used in the sport, were originally made of leather but now are universally petroleum-by product|Blood 1]]

Daimatsu Hirofumi’s life was changed when he was drafted into the Japanese army in 1941 at a mere 20 years old and sent to what at the time was the [[British Colony of Burma]]. You can look up the details if it interests you, but the campaign didn’t end well for Japan, and in fact Daimatsu was lucky to come out of it alive. [[Next|Blood 3]]

[[The Japanese empire at the time presented themselves as the liberators of a united Asia, throwing off the colonial oppressors and liberating the colonised states. Of course, Japanese rule was no less ruthless than European, and they simply felt that they should be at the top instead of someone else.|Blood 2]]

“Alive” but not well necessarily, as (albeit anecdotally) it would seem the mental scars of it never really left him. Whilst working at a [[factory]] producing plastics and fibreglass he began to coach the women’s volleyball team, and did so with so much ferocity he acquired the nickname “Demon”. It wasn’t complimentary, or at least I don’t take it to be. [[Next|Blood 4]]

[[The company he worked for would, in the new millennium, be best known for producing a plastic of even greater carbon emissions than industry standards.|Blood 3]]

Daimatsu was so obsessed with victory in volleyball he developed punishing training regimens which deprived the players of sleep and free time in favour of relentless practice. He berated them when they menstruated, telling them he could smell it, and tell by the greasiness of their sweat. Daimatsu’s training regimen was so punishing that the women lost a great deal of weight and even stopped menstruating all together. [[Next|Blood 4.5]]

“This is nothing, I saw worse things during the war” I imagine him saying, as a collection of exhausted factory works practice the underarm pass over and over and over as the sun threatens to rise. Perhaps the worst thing about trauma is it doesn’t go away, it merely perpetuates itself unless stopped, and through an active ability to recognise what it is and then stop it. [[Next|Blood 6]]

An obsessed old man forcing young people to suffer in pursuit of his own ideals, his own revenge. [[Next|Blood 7]]

[[If you think I’m trying to make you feel bad because you like the Olympics, or sports, or volleyball, I’m not. And admittedly I’ve been pretty negative towards all those things, so I don’t think blame you for thinking that. Allow me to apologise. Sports are fun! You have to take your pleasures where you can get it, and it's not like anime or manga or books or anything at all is a perfect and entirely ethical choice of entertainment. |Title Screen]]

Every future generation caught in an endless loop of suffering for crimes they didn’t commit, weren’t even alive for. For what? [[Next|Blood 8]]

For volleyball, for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, to prove that Japan, the [[nation-state|Why the Olympics?]], with borders and a government and passports, is great. [[Index]] <img src="https://i.imgur.com/PFGVz1E.jpg"align="center"align="center" width="550px" height="309px">

In 1936, the Olympics were held in Nazi Germany, and served as a showcase for white supremacist ideology. It’s everything white supremacists love after all: Neo-classicist, a clear display of colonial wealth and power masquerading as fair competition, deeply capitalist. [[Next|Why 2]]

The next summer Olympics, 1940, were scheduled to be held in Japan. After the 1937 invasion of Manchuria, however, they were stripped from Japan and set for Helsinki, and then were subsequently cancelled as Europe descended into war. [[Next|Why 2.5]]

Japan’s imperial ambitions in the first half of the 20th century were unfathomably terrible, but didn’t come from nowhere. The United States occupied Haiti during the same period, and The Philippines, the British and Germans in Africa, so on and so forth, countless other examples, horrible atrocity after horrible atrocity in the name of enriching a small number of people at the expensive of everyone else. [[Next|Why 4]]

The desire was to stand on the world stage, to be recognised as having the prestige and influence of the British Empire and obtain the [[wealth]] that comes along with it. The wanted, in a very real sense, the first Olympics held outside of Europe and the United States and what it represented. An ostentatious display of the uniqueness of their nation state, and the inherent uniqueness of that which takes place inside that nation state’s border. [[Next|Why 5]]

[[The blood wealth, the cup of black tea with milk and sugar generated by unseen hands halfway across the world who will never experience the wealth they create|Why 4]]

But that chance was taken from them for the simple crime of, well, crime, following the pattern set by the European powers. [[Next|Why 6]]

This attitude is crystal clear in contemporary accounts, but also means a lot to the ruling class of today. Japan’s current Prime Minister Suga was born in 1948: Abe, the previous Prime Minister, in 1954, more than half the Diet is above the age of 50 and 22% are above the age of 65. The Olympics isn’t a weird distraction to them, or a fun sporting event, it’s a matter of pride and worse, of nostalgia. Unpopular as it may be, ruinous as it looms charging ahead during the pandemic, the people in charge are committed to the Olympics going ahead because they’re chasing the same feeling I am when I boot up an old version of an internet browser with flash installed to watch a [[Strong Bad email]]. [[Next|Why 8]]

[[As in NATO the wartime state actors are simply recycled into new positions in the new post-war Japan|Why 6]]]]

In 1948, Sazae-san foraged in the wilderness to get her family enough to eat. In 1964, Mighty Atom, the child of science, flickered across black and white CRT televisions to entertain children whose family could afford one.

<div class="speaker1">It’s kind of weird to have had this essay percolating in my brain for two years only to slowly watch the Olympics inch closer and closer, as the pandemic rages, each day a new horrible scandal or completely foreseeable and preventable horrible thing, and then actually go ahead despite massive protests and things predictably go poorly.</div> [[Back|Index]]

[[My theory is that once you set yourself to making a work that is entirely a response to another work, generally speaking you’re setting yourself up to fail. If you’re making something, and the intended message is that this other work is bad or flawed, you aren’t really making a piece of art that deserves to exist on its own merits.|Eva 3]]

I’m not convinced there’s a lot new to say about Evangelion, at least until we can all go see the new film. <div class="speaker2">Ha.</div> [[Next|Eva 2.5]]

It equally well for me as a teenager attempting to ignore my undiagnosed mental illness as it does as a broken and worn down adult. It’s place within (Japanese) popular culture can never be replicated or equalled, even if many, many other works have tried to respond to it directly or [[indirectly]]. [[Next|Eva 4]]

<div class="speaker2">This part was meant to discuss the new Eva film, for when I could get out and see it. It probably would have contextualised some of the things I have to say about the reaction to it a bit better.</div> [[Next|Eva 5]]

<div class="speaker2">I have no idea when I'll get to see it, I had a holiday planned for Japan in 2020 and was thinking I would get to see an Evangelion film in the cinema for the second time ever. Fuck me, I guess. That travel insurance place still owes me a lot of money.</div> [[Next|Eva 6]]

The fact that<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline"> all of Evangelion</div> is still as vital and expertly crafted a work as ever is impressive. Age and success reliably breed indifference, inflexibility. It’s not like Anno has to try. He doesn’t have to care, he doesn’t have to sweat over art, Evangelion has probably caused grief equal to or in excess of the amount its enriched his life. But its still deeply personal and important to him. Evangelion might have made a comically large amount of money but it wasn’t safe in the sense that most of the entertainment available in 2020<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline" >+1</div> is [[safe]] for shareholders and broad release in countries where certain types of human affection aren’t allowed to be shown in cinemas. The fact that it's still as vital a work as ever is impressive. [[Next|Eva 7]]

It's inspiring to see someone take their work so seriously. <div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">And one day I'll be able to say that about the final rebuild film.</div> <div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">Oh you will, will you, you piece of shit?</div> [[Back|Index]]

[[Maybe its continued financial success is the safe part?|Eva 6]]

[[There have been quite a few of these. Perry opening Japan in 1864. The Russo-Japanese war, the end of the unequal treaties, the Versailles accords, invading Manchuria.|中止だ中止]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">The 1964 Tokyo Olympics was (at the time, at least) widely seen as Japan’s [[re-entry]] into the world stage following the cancellation of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics due to the outbreak of the European theatre. Occupation, reconstruction, the so-called “Economic miracle” and finally, Japan getting to host the Olympic games. We’re ready to play nice now, it says. Buy Japanese goods, see our sparkling, clean cities with no homeless.<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">Green</div> [[Next|Chuushi 2]]

[[City Pop, Mazinger, Hoppy at a ramen stand|War, Oil, Empire]]

The promise of the Olympics, much like that of the rapidly deteriorating neoliberal capitalist order itself, is that it affords each country an opportunity to compete on an equal stage. All humans are equipped with the same resources, and so a contest of pure human physicality will inevitably allow the best and brightest to succeed regardless of other factors. In reality, Olympic success tends to correspond to whether your country benefitted from or was exploited by colonialism, and subsequently with GDP per capita. [[Next|WOE 2]]

[[Empire, minamata disease, war, bubble economy, famine, traffic war, oil crisis|War, Oil, Empire]]

The Olympics, we’re told, represent everything that’s [[good]] about the nation-state, international co-operation and competition. [[Next|Woe 3]]

When the largely wood-built cities of Japan were burned to the ground by American fire bombing campaigns during the Pacific War, it fundamentally changed the landscape of Japan's urban centres. It [[erased]] centuries of culture, buildings that were hundreds of years old in addition to the loss of life. Not even 20 years later Tokyo again underwent a rapid transition, this time to prepare for the Olympics. People were forced out of their homes, homeless were rounded up and exiled, and whoever the ruling class deemed undesirable had their buildings and culture destroyed. [[Next|WOE 4]]

The same pattern repeated for the 2020<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">+1</div> Olympics. <div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">You might've seen that story about a man evicted to make way for the Olympics twice, first in 1964 and then in 2021, 57 years apart.</div> Who, then, is the Olympics for, if not for these residents of Tokyo? [[Next|WOE 5]]

[[50 or so years earlier, the Meiji restoration destroyed all of Japan's castles in an effort to (supposedly) modernise and westernise.|Woe 3]]

Obviously it's to take large sums of public money and turn it into private money, in the hands of contractors, celebrities and of course, the IOC itself. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/TxWgRLW.jpg"align="center"align="center" width="570px" height="428px">> [[Next|WOE 6]]

There’s a real gulf between the Second World War as it existed and the Second World War as it is popularly perceived. This is, of course, true of basically all history, but it’s very noticeable with this particular piece of it. It seems pretty widely acknowledged that the immediate post-war generation love it, the idea of it, significantly more than most of those who lived through it. [[Next|WOE 7]]

First-hand sources about the war reveal a wide range of responses, from people for whom it was an inconvenience to be taken in stride after decade after decade of world problems, and people who genuinely thought the world was coming to an end. That was probably an easy view to have watching horrible forces march inexorably forward, hoping that something would stop it even as things grew more and more dire. Still, the conflict wasn’t guaranteed to result in a world where crops wouldn’t grow, at least not in the lifetime of anyone involved. [[Next|WOE 8]]

Conversely, Evangelion takes place in a world where the ruling class don't simply know that apocalypse is coming but are actively setting out to make it happen to further their own ends. They say everything they're doing is necessary, but we, the audience, can tell that it isn't. They've even convinced people within the narrative <div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">and a decent number of people who watched it</div> to believe strongly that everything they are doing is simply unavoidable. [[Index]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">The civil unrest of the era is well documented but also largely memory holed. The Showa-themed restaurants and bars have a lot of Tezuka art and cigarette advertisements and not a lot of daigaku tousou. I don’t know how long it’s going to be until covid, oylmpics, daily casualty numbers and protests all get memory holed. Both as a desperate need to forget this particular period as well as when new, larger, more terrifying problems begin to more fully take hold.</div> [[Next|Chuushi 3]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">With that said it’s hard to blame anyone keen to put this behind them. I mean, I’m keen to put it behind me, for it to be a memory and not a reality, to get annoyed with and correct someone who says well, it wasn’t all that bad was it. It was kind of fun, actually. </div> [[Next|Chuushi 4]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">I really just want to see the new Evangelion film and lie on the floor for a bit. I've done a lot of lying on the floor recently but this lying on the floor will be special and fulfilling.</div> [[Next|Chuushi 5]]

<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">I saw an interesting take recently that Anno wouldn’t have made Evangelion if he had ever held a “proper” job, which would have given him the perspective that sometimes you need to force the mentally ill teenager into the robot because that's your job for the day. Society must go on. At the risk of calling someone more successful in the arts than me out, what about Evangelion struck you as necessary at all, or that it was being done for the right reasons? </div> [[Next|Subete 1]]

[[even though it cripples cities <div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">and now spreads contagious disease</div>|WOE 2]]

<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">It’s “necessary” in the sense that doing the overnight shift by yourself is necessary, so your boss' boss can afford a new home or a bunker in New Zealand. I mean, we all do this we don't like for money, I suppose that much is true.</div> [[Next|Subete 2]]

<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">If you're to take one thing from this, it's not that fiction can, and should, be an accurate prediction of the [[future]]. It's that it didn't have to be like this. None of this had to be like this. </div> [[Next|Subete 3]]

[[I could talk about this a lot, but I guess the only thing there is to say is fictional provides a (sometimes all too real) mirror on reality. And if it is accurate, it's because the creator's grasp on reality is accurate. If you've read my piece on "Welcome to the NHK", for example, it didn't necessarily predict life in 2020(+1) but the problems is so easily identifies and conveys to the reader largely haven't changed.|Subete 2]]

<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">We don't live in the world Anno predicted so much as the specific flaws Anno was able to make a TV anime and films about largely haven't changed. Perhaps it was an accident, or chance, that in the distant pre-pandemic past, two hundred million or so needless sicknesses ago (reader, adjust this number with the updated figure yourself if it's not too much trouble) the causal link between Evangelion and the Olympics was an accident. </div> [[Next|Subete 4]]

<div class="speaker2" style="display: inline">But if I can convey how all these things connected, either explictly stating it or letting you put it together yourself, then this part of me that I've been holding on to for over two years (reader, please update this one as well if you may) when the Olympics and Evangelion were linked, how it made me feel, each of those little threads of history, then I hope you found it enlightening. </div> [[Next|Subete 5]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">One of the things I really do appreciate about Rebuild is it never lost sight of the original’s core themes. </div> [[Next|Chuushi 6]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">Specifically, there’s a tendency for artists to dramatically change after having [[children]]. It often has the remarkable two-pronged effect of both making more apathetic to problems in the world as well as paradoxically making them more optimistic about the future. </div> [[Next|Chuushi 7]]

[[I’m pretty allergic to media about how much parents love their kids in general.|Chuushi 6]]

<div class="speaker1" style="display: inline">You would expect a late sequel to Evangelion to be softer, warmer, gentler, more hopeful for the unfortunate teenagers. That, uh. That’s not true. Anno really hasn’t [[lost sight]] of why adults do to children, where broken children who turn into broken adults come from or how it feels to have a gaping, infecting mental wound that will never heal. </div> [[Next|Chuushi 8]]

By the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the competition had been re-configured to be about that most middle-of-the-previous-century ideas, one which is lost in 2020+1: The common good. International co-operation, friendly competition, good sports[[man|Menstrual Blood (a woman who doesn’t bleed)]]ship. And so the idea of the Olympics as a display of prestige resurfaces, with Japan’s imperial ambitions snubbed. The coloniser has become the colonised via post-war reconstruction and occupation. The denial of the 1940 Olympics still stings [[Japan’s ruling class]] and they work the proles into a lather too. Losing the Pacific War, the denial of the Olympics, fire bombings, ailing soldiers, holding the Olympics will prove that it’s all better. [[Next|Why 7]]

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/3qqVR4m.jpg"align="center"width="550px" height="413px">>> [[Index]]

[[Maybe it has something to do with Anno’s well documented refusal to change from the way he lived in the 70s.|Chuushi 7]]

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/NKfUadE.jpg">>> [[Index]]

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/R7jrP5A.png"> [[Next|Why 3]]

Evangelion concerns itself with catastrophe and apocalypse, both personal and global. The plot revolves around a world already in its death throes, brought about by a nameless, faceless cabal seeking to end existence for their own [[gain]]. The characters live in an already ruined world and suffer greatly for their attempts to survive in it. Characters pilot giant robots to fight off monsters. [[Next|Eva 3]]

[[In the 90s this was considered somewhat fictional|Eva 2.5]]

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/WPuZPoI.png"> [[Next|Blodd 5]]