This cult was inspired by anime, and Evangelion followed nerd-logic to it’s painful end to try to disjunct fans out of a similarly hapless tragic destiny.
Evangelion was grounded in a disturbing vision of the future glimpsed perhaps most painfully through the terrible AUM fan-cult nerve gas attacks that killed twelve people in the Tokyo subway. But it portrays a vision of the future world that comes from deep privilege and is unmoored from history. The Beginner’s Guide, if read as apocalyptic in intent, could also be part of this genre. While perhaps the capstone of this genre, Neon Genesis Evangelion is unique that that it leverages the dark logic of fandom to subvert its perfect apocalypse and decry the passivity and literalism that threatened to stifle the future of anime fandom.
The interior becomes the all-consuming exterior. This character’s psyche alone gets to remake the world, but only as it burns to ashes. This genre places a single character, almost always male and young, as the center agent in the future apocalypse. “It’s hard to create a narrative of success when you’re the dark matter against which the stars shine, but I find that it’s important for artists to be able to articulate what is valuable about art beyond prices and the market.” -William PowhidaĬontinuing last week’s discussion of the The Beginner’s Guide as an attempt to trigger an apocalypse to wipe clean the slate of video games, it is useful to note that in Japanese creation circles, there is a genre of animation and comics called sekaikei (literally: “world type”). This is the final part of a four-part essay on The Beginner's Guide - the previous parts can be found here
FOSTERING APOCALYPSE FAN ART SERIES
Bridging Worlds is artist Eron Rauch’s ongoing series of in-depth articles on the curious places of connection between video games, contemporary art, and culture.
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