so, shouwa genroku rakugo shinjuu - if like me you were impressed with the evangelion seiyuus and the compelling performance they brought to their roles, rakugo features a whopping 5 members of the evangelion cast - in fact i don’t think i’ve seen an anime feature so many evangelion seiyuus together. what’s more, the entire main cast is made up entirely of evangelion seiyuu:

kikuhiko by akira ishida (kaworu), sukeroku by koichi yamadera (kaji), miyokichi by megumi hayashibara (rei and yui and pen pen), and yotaro by seki tomokazu (toji)

outstanding cast aside, the show is incredible, embroiling itself with showa-era history, storytelling, and adult drama involving a salient gay romance between two rakugo performers. watch it!

evangelion (and its manga series) were committed to realism to the extent that family members actually looked biologically related - in general, this is difficult to achieve in any animation medium, where stylistic convention can contribute to same face syndrome. 

shinji is a perfect composite of gendo and yui’s features, but in a natural, effortless way - he’s not a random synthesis of “gendo’s eyes” and “yui’s chin” or whatever. rei looks like a young yui, but again the facsimile isn’t forced - it’s just enough to color naoko immediately suspicious, but not enough to arose suspicion from everyone everywhere. ritsuko and naoko share the same power brow and pointed chin - the show even went out of its way to explain ritsuko’s blonde hair as a result of repeated hair coloring, a slight of authenticity not often broached in anime. in the manga, kaji and his younger brother look so alike yet apart, and you can easily pick them out from a crowd of other nameless kids - this is really impressive, considering the medium.

rebuild isn’t interested in having relatives’ looks cohere. sakura and toji don’t look related - which is especially heinous considering toji’s looks are so pronounced and iconíqq (flat chin, dark skin... compared to sakura’s boringly petite and pale features) anno is on record saying his only goal for sakura was for her to be “cute”, so maybe he thought he couldn’t succeed if she looked too much like toji. trash.

anno wanted to kill toji off - he was supposed to die in episode 18 when unit 01 crushed his entry plug. but anno was forced to uphold two conditions on the part of eva’s production company, king records, to ensure his show would get airtime:

Takekuma: Toji lost his leg. Why didn’t he die?

Anno: I couldn’t kill him.

Takekuma: Of course.

Anno: No, um, I made a certain promise, though I think I might have broken it by now. From the start, when we drew up the plot, I met with the producer, from King Records, who told me, “I will approve the plan you submit, whatever it is, because I have faith in you. However, there will be two conditions. The first one is that you will remain with me for five years. You cannot, for example, do a film version with another producer. The additional condition is that you will not kill any children. The adults can die, but I don’t want children dying.” Because of that condition I couldn’t kill Toji. (interview excerpt from schizo/parano by mitsunari oizumi)

as anno alludes, sometime between episode 18 and episode 24 anno went fuck what da teacher said proper and killed off kaworu on a 6:30 primetime weekday timeslot. king records reportedly lost it and demanded to clear all storyboards before subsequent episodes would be aired.

Official Charlie Brown x Evangelion parody strips distributed by Gainax with the release of Neon Genesis Evangelion on VHS.

More rare scenes from Neon Genesis Evangelion: Second Impression, a 1997 Sega Saturn videogame distributed in Japan.

recurring visual imagery: tracksuit + aggression
evangelion: 1.11 you are (not) alone, dir. hideaki anno (2007)
evangelion: 3.33 you can (not) redo, dir. hideaki anno (2012)

Rare animated scenes from Neon Genesis Evangelion: Second Impression, a 1997 Sega Saturn videogame distributed in Japan.