>>4084615> The reason it's so weird is because apparently Anno has gone on record during the 4.0 anniversary saying Asuka's his favorite character.A lot of that interview references the backlash and harassment against the studio without specifically saying for what reason. He just says the word ‘interpretation’ a lot. To still be belly-aching about fan reaction a year later is pretty telling. But for what it’s worth, I do believe him when he says Asuka is one of his favorites (he also names Misato and Ritsuko of all characters). She factors into two animated sequences that use weird cgi rotoscoping style techniques, which apparently took a long time to animate (the force feeding scene and hair cutting scene). Anno’s a weird one. He also said he has never actually watched the film. So I suspect his outlook on the film is genuinely skewed. If a segment that took over a year to animate goes by in half a minute, then as a director the time and effort put into that scene is going to give you an incorrect impression of how it was experienced by an audience. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt here and saying he didn’t know how the film would be handled by fans because how could he? All the character drama seemed like an afterthought anyway. He seemed to want to focus more on giant flying boats exploding. The character stuff was like pulling teeth for this movie and it’s ironic to hear goobers praise it for being a heartfelt catharsis for the characters when it actually seemed Anno cared the least about that aspect.
