The indescribable anime series that Wes Anderson calls a favourite
It’s not hard to see why the world of anime appeals so much to the American filmmaker Wes Anderson. The frenetic pace, gorgeous art styles, and potential for artistic expression seen in the Japanese form of animation work side by side with the work of Anderson, a director well known for his attention to detail and snappy script writing style in which words are exchanged with the same rhythm of an exuberant song.
Vocal in his love for such animations, the mind behind such wonderfully colourful movies as Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Asteroid City, once picked some of his all-time favourites. On the list were a couple of well-known Studio Ghibli works like 1988’s My Neighbour Totoro and 1997’s Princess Mononoke, as well as Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal 1988 film Akira, but one other stood out from the crowd, a TV series called Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Released from 1995 to 1996, Neon Genesis Evangelion tells the story of a teenage boy who signs up to be in an elite team of pilots who take control of a giant mecha. Once inside the humongous contraptions, they are tasked with taking out giant malevolent monsters called Angels, or Evangelion, with the visually extraordinary series going on to inspire countless Hollywood blockbusters, most notably Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 film Pacific Rim.
He mentioned this same series while speaking to Gwyneth Paltrow’s curious company, Goop, about some of his favourite movies and shows at the time. “This is a Japanese cartoon that is very difficult to describe,” he stated, “and might not sound that great if I tried anyway. It is 24 episodes, and we watched them all in less than a week because you start to want to believe it’s real. This could spawn something like Scientology”.
Recognised as one of the greatest anime series of all time, alongside the likes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, One Piece and Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion has gone on to receive several spin-offs and movies. The 1997 movie The End of Evangelion is considered to be one of the finest animated sci-fi movies ever made.
Speaking further about the series on a separate occasion, Anderson compared Neon Genesis Evangelion to a religion, stating: “This is a strange series…sometimes, someone makes a fiction, and it’s so complicated that people will get so absorbed in it that they could turn it into a religion. Like Scientology, you know, I think it’s the work of a fiction writer. But he’s created something that people can get so interested in that they, sort of…they’re not interested in quite the reality anymore”.
Take a look at the trailer for the celebrated anime series, which is available to watch on Netflix in the UK, below.
