My Neighbour Totoro was probably my first exposure to anime. The scratched up old VHS that had no doubt been copied off a family friend was dubbed in Cantonese, so my three year-old self knew the titular character as "龍貓" and like may children I was completely enamoured by the fantastical adventures on my TV screen. Several years later, Sailor Moon (dubbed in English) burst onto the scene, and to say I was obsessed would probably be an understatement. I would rush home every day after school to catch the newest episode and I still mourn the sizable card collection I had cajoled my poor parents into helping me acquire. But if Sailor Moon paved the way for anime in the North American market, Pokemon opened the flood gates and suddenly there was an embarrassment of riches when it came to family-friendly anime being available on TV. Aside from a special few though (namely Digimon and Cardcaptor Sakura), most of the series that came and went failed to hold my attention.
Then I discovered through a new friend (a crush, if I'm being honest) that the local kids' channel played the "cooler" and "more mature" anime when I (a deeply shy, uncool and rule-following teenager) was already in bed. As someone who loved to sleep, staying up late was a big ask, but the pretty boys and political intrigue of Gundam Wing managed to entice me into sacrificing sleep. And so I was pulled into the vortex, never to fully escape from the grasp of anime again. I started visiting my new friend's house where we would watch his anime VHS tapes (copied off friends, as is the Asian way. See: Totoro) and we scoured the internet looking to find what our next emotional investment should be.
It should surprise no one that in 1999, the talk of the internet world was Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Between all the online anime sites telling me this was a must watch and the "cool girl" anime fan at school dedicating a whole section to the series on her Geocities website (all the rage in 1999-2000), I was determined that I would get my hands on this series. Knowing only that there were giant robots and teenagers piloting them, I convinced my parents to let me spend my little bit of cash on the first VHS tape through an online anime store. $50+ dollars for a measly two episodes.
I know how old this truly makes me, but man! Kids today really have NO idea how good they've got it.
My friend and I waited with bated breath for the package. When the VHS tape finally arrived, we arranged a viewing date. I still remember the shivers I felt down my spine when the opening song and animation started. This was going to be something special.
Needless to say, we devoured the first two episodes in one go.
It was a foregone conclusion that I was going to have to purchase the next installment. With each VHS costing $50 and my cash influx consisting only of birthday/Christmas money, Chinese New Year Money, and $20 per "A" on my report card (no weekly allowance for me!), I was going to have to do well in school and live a comparatively frugal teenage lifestyle in order to afford them all. I had enough saved to commit to the next tape immediately, but we were going to have to wait until the following report card to see about any further purchases.
Thank goodness, then, for the advent of DVDs. Not long after I managed to get my grubby little hands on the second tape, ADV Films announced that they would be releasing the series on DVD. $50 for 3-4 episodes seemed to be a much more economical option and the fact that it would be months between releases meant that I could relax a little bit in saving money, even if it was excruciating to wait for new episodes. But over the next year and a bit, I would purchase the newly released DVDs whenever they were available and our little viewing group grew from just the two of us to four or five (depending on scheduling availability). It always felt like an event, the anticipation for these next installments and what they would deliver, soaking in all the visuals and dialogue and music because we only got three new, precious episodes every few months. I remember all of us laughing a little when we couldn't help singing along to the opening and closing themes. We were absolutely hooked.
I'm not sure if I can accurately remember my feelings about the ending. It's no secret that Evangelion is a deconstruction of the mecha genre, and so when things started to take a turn into a downward spiral I was prepared and probably even appreciated it - what with being in the melodramatic throes of being a teenager in high school and wanting things to be "gritty" and "real". Still, while I loved the characters and was emotionally invested in their journeys, I was equally invested in the grand underlying plot, intrigue, and conspiracies that seemed to coming to light. So when the last two episodes rolled around, I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed that most of it fell by the wayside. But, I had also paid $50 for this last DVD so I also felt compelled to like it because it had cost me so much! I suppose that's where End of Evangelion comes in. While many fans feel this was a satisfying conclusion to the story, I was left a bit whelmed. It's been nearly two decades since I've watched it, so I can only say that I loved Komm, Susser Todd and felt otherwise ambivalent and maybe even a little frustrated with the oppressively negative and almost nihilistic ending.
I'm not sure I expected much when the Rebuild of Evangelion series was announced. I knew I would watch it, but more out of mild interest and fond nostalgia rather than any true excitement. The first movie offered beautiful animation, but there wasn't much that was new to explore. And then I went away to Australia for veterinary school and pretty much lost track of its progress. Sure, I would hear occasional updates that a new movie was out (or a new song, as the case may be), but I honestly didn't know until this year about its prolonged and troubled production (14 years!)
-------------------
And I return almost 3 years later to finish this rambling, stream of consciousness about Evangelion! Fitting - I think - given the subject.
My mom got an Amazon Prime account, and with that came Prime Video. She generously shared her login with me, and in one of those mind-numbing, doom-scrolling fits, I happened across the fact that Amazon had the "exclusive" rights to streaming the Rebuild of Evangelion movies! And all 4 of them were available for my viewing pleasure! What!
Honestly, I'd picked a good time to stumble across this (September 2021) as the last movie had only just been made available in North America a month earlier. After - I cannot emphasize this enough - 14 years of production from the release of the first movie until then.
Despite my own feelings of ennui and disappointment in the human race with the pandemic still very much a part of our daily lives, I decided to give it go. Misery loves company after all, and this universe in particular was populated with characters that certainly existed in miserable circumstances. And whoo boy, did the first two moves deliver that misery in spades! I remember commenting on a Plurk Post I'd made about it that "this seems more... brutal than I remember". Evangelion is not exactly a series that inspires warm, fuzzy feelings as a rule, but as an adult, with the movies deliberately leaning into the horror of watching these pre-teens be subjected to this level of violence and trauma as "military assets"... well, it was bleak. Which was impressive in its own way, given I went into this expecting nothing less.
The third movie - honestly - was an exercise in frustration for me. Like many, it's a pet-peeve when conflict arises from characters refusing to communicate with each other for absolutely no good reason, and the third movie was filled with this. I have also never been particularly attached to Kaworu as a character. I supposed they did a good job placing me in Shinji's perspective of not knowing what the hell was happening around him and the frustration this would inspire. But to me, the third movie is a bit of a wash, all set-up and little payoff.
... was it worth it? I'm going to say it was a little worth it. Because even as someone who truly has a lot of nostalgic affection for Evangelion, I was shocked by how emotional the 4th movie made me. I had been promised catharsis, and that promise had been delivered.
It's well-known that Hideaki Anno was struggling with depression during the production of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and that he has (mostly) been in a much more stable and happier state of mind since then. I've seen jokes that the Rebuild of Evangelion movie - at least the final one - is "Evangelion on anti-depressants". It's a little funny... but also it's true? My main reaction immediately after the credits started rolling was "I'm not used to so much hope in my Evangelion franchise??"
Mostly though, it gave me time with these characters that I had craved without knowing it. The whole village sequence was so lovely, getting to just spend time with people, really focusing on characters and their inherent humanity, the importance of forming connections and just how precious life really is, why it was so worth protecting and fighting for. As a self-professed Asuka fan (yes, I bought into that whole thing back in the day), the time we got to spend with this version of Rei was incredibly rich and rewarding. She was adorable, her genuine enthusiasm to learn how to live was extremely effective. I loved her. I have never loved Ayanami Rei before.
I also loved Asuka - older and broken and embittered by everything that had happened to her, but still Asuka. She has rougher edges (as hard as it is to believe since she was never soft to begin with), but the closure she receives with Shinji was so important to me. Almost as important as the fact that Asuka gets a semblance of a "good ending" for once.
And Shinji. The "third choice" female character really didn't add much for me, so I'm ambivalent about that. But in this one it just really felt like Shinji had autonomy in his own choices and motivation for once. Seeing him at the end as an adult, happy and confident and whole. Maybe it seems like a fantasy, but I will take it, because you know what? A life that has moved past the events of Evangelion? That is all I want for Ikari Shinji. And seeing it on my screen - an unequivocally content and well-adjusted adult Shinji - made me verklempt.
I'm not sure there was a point for this ramble that took 3 years to complete. Maybe it's just about how changing perspectives with age and experience impact how we look at something and how we feel about it upon reflection. But I think it's that choice to reach for hope - after everything - that hits me the most.
Thanks for everything, Evangelion.
So - once again - I turn to the highs and lows of D&D.
Today we (hopefully!) concluded Praxana's major backstory arc. I joked that Veit Copperlark was her very own "Princess Peach" - unfortunately plucked out of their grasp right back into mortal peril every time they thought they'd pulled him out of danger. While I generally play Praxana as quite brash and confident in most situations, the absolute terror of possibly losing her dad again after decades of him being MIA absolutely paralyzed me. I couldn't bear for him to die because I knew that she wouldn't be able to handle it. Praxana knew how absolutely devastating that would be, how much it affected her world-view. At one point she had pulled another party member - Zanner - aside, admonishing him for his reckless actions in battles that endangered both himself and others. She didn't want him dying for her family's problems, especially knowing that he had his own quest to find his missing wife. "I've been a bard long enough to know stories like ours more often than not end in tragedies," she told him, "But I'm banking on things being different from us. I want us to have happy endings."
In today's battle, the wits and efforts of my friends in-and-out-of-game absolutely saved my fake dad's life. A brilliant move by John's character - a frog-like wizard - got Veit out of the villain's grasp and the party absolutely decimated the bone devil that was after him. An unlucky (or poorly planned on my part!) sequence of event resulted in Veit suffering so much damage that he had two failed death saving throws and when he rolled an absolutely abysmal "4" on his third death saving throw, I was panicking. Luckily, having placed Praxana close to Veit and by the good graces of our DM, I was able to give Veit my "inspiration" for the game to re-roll, and with a "19" he had managed not to die.
I actually shed a few small tears and had to hide my face because I was so relieved about an imaginary character in our make-believe game.
In any case, this was about as much of a "good end" as we could have had, jumping feet first into a hellscape and escaping with none of our party dead with a hundred or so prisoners released. Sure, some decisions we've made are likely to come and bite us in the ass later, but for now Praxana and her family are alive, no one had to make any major sacrifices, and now she has a possible spell-induced proposal from a dwarven prince????
Ah, D&D!
It was also fun hopping back into the comfortable shoes of Praxana and immediately emotionally terrorizing her charismatic and shifty younger brother when it looked like a quest for a lost father was actually going to be some sort of crazy heist for his own purposes. It made me laugh when - after going to a "private room" to work out this issue - everyone else was joking about how expressive we had looked in our brief interaction where Praxana rolled a 20 on intimidation and did her best to make her little brother pee his pants in fear.
Ah, D&D!
Well, here we are.
I love Dungeons and Dragons.
If you'd asked me five years ago whether I would ever see Dungeons and Dragons as the highlight of my week, I would have laughed. I have never really fallen under the thrall of "high fantasy", turn-based battles always seemed to lack any kind of urgency to me, and dice are my natural enemy in any game I've ever played. I was convinced that there was absolutely no way the combination of all three together was going to do anything but bore me to tears. But - as is so often the case - I didn't want to miss out on spending time with my friends, especially as our work commitments and adult responsibilities often made it difficult to find time to see each other. So I begrudgingly agreed to throw together a character for our first attempt at a D&D game. I approached the character creation itself with some enthusiasm, putting together a druid gnome mostly so I could turn into animals on a whim and cast spells because that sounded more fun than just fighting.
And thus, Ninove Loopmotin Cottontail etc etc was born. (I had read that gnomes were given something like five names so I made an effort to be "authentic". I cannot for the life of me remember the rest.)
I don't remember much of her backstory, she possibly didn't really have one. Our friend had volunteered to be our DM and followed the story laid out in the official book. A lack of preparation and his propensity for showing up 30 minutes to an hour late severely dampened my little spark of enthusiasm for the game. It was a slog to get through each session, and we accomplished very little in the 4 hours it would take to play. We did little to no roleplaying and fights took an excruciatingly long time to finish with very little tension. I often sat there at the table, committed but also bitterly wishing we were playing a board game instead, which would at least guarantee some kind of fun. Suffice it to say, I was trying to get my character shipped off to study with some other old druid or - a more permanent solution - have her killed in battle. I could never quite manage either.
The game fizzled out eventually, and I was honestly a little relieved. We went back to whatever our regular meet-ups were and I assumed that was the last of it.
Not so!
One of our friends who had joined in our previous campaign (he had one character he promptly killed and replaced with another character not too dissimilar from the first) volunteered to run a game. He'd had experience playing before and had invested a bit of time into world-building, placing us in a scenario where druids were outlawed and non-humans were looked upon with mistrust. Naturally, we had to make lives a little hard on ourselves!
Joining once again mostly because I didn't want to miss out on time with friends, I decided to stick with the druid class because I couldn't be bothered to learn a whole new system. Since I hadn't been that attached to my previous character, I decided to go with human male this time, reasoning that I didn't really have to know a whole lot to play a human character.
And thus Darwin Brightwood IV was born.
I put a little more effort into the character creation this time. I crafted a backstory about Darwin coming from a family that lost its fortune and suddenly had a whole bunch of mouths to feed with no discernible skills to do so. Darwin was so far down the line that his name was an afterthought, sharing it with his father and his eldest brother. When the opportunity came to pawn him off on a traveling druid who was grateful for their begrudging hospitality, the family did so in a flash, and suddenly this hermit druid was saddled with a new charge who was none too bright nor studious. I decided that he was trapped on this island that was so hostile to druids because he had spilled soup all over a very important Arch Druid at some sort of druid gathering and had been cursed with a fear of water, and his mentor had run off with vague platitudes about Darwin having all the skills he needed.
It started off promising enough. We had a core set of players that were all game to have a good time. But while our DM this time was significantly better prepared and crafted an overarching storyline and a few recurring NPCs, he was impatient with us and handed out great boons and harsh punishments with little reason, like killing off a character's missing mother within the first few games because of our out-of-character indecision. We had some fun moments and he introduced some interesting mechanics (Jenga towers as a skill check was one), but overall I fell back into the same resigned feeling that I could probably be having more fun than those four hours tended to provide.
Eventually that game fizzled out too, with none of us really seeming too upset. I liked Darwin, but I never really had the chance to develop him beyond clumsy and good-natured, and there was nothing too compelling about his backstory to keep me invested. I didn't necessarily want him to die, but I wasn't going to be too torn up if it happened. When we quietly stopped scheduling games, I thought that surely this was the end of it. We'd given it two decent attempts, and maybe Dungeons and Dragons just wasn't for me.
To her credit, our friend Jessie was not going to give up that easily.
From my understanding, Jessie had had several very positive experiences with various D&D games and was convinced it was something that we could really enjoy together as a group. Having been part of campaign with friends from work under the guidance of a professional DM, she felt that we were owed a more "typical" experience with D&D than the ones we had been afforded so far. Seeing it as a kind of "last shot", she cajoled us into trying a one-shot game with the same DM and a few of her friends. I agreed, but was wholly unconvinced that it would be something I would want to continue. When it came to characters, we were given the option to create our own or pick from some profiles that the DM could randomly generate. Not really wanting to go back to my previous two characters and also not wanting to invest any time into the character creation process again, I opted for the latter. One week before our one-shot game, Jessie forwarded us the character profiles. I asked "Siri" to pick a number between 1 and 12 to help me choose a character.
And thus, Praxana Copperlark was born.
Or adopted. Whatever.
I'm sure I could have made do with whatever character I ended up with, but I was somewhat delighted at the idea of playing a bard. In my attempts to understand the potential of D&D for our second go, I often had episodes of Critical Role playing in the background while I did chores, cooked, or did crafts. While Percy was probably my "favourite" in terms of characterization and overarching storyline, it was hard to deny that Scanlan was the scene-stealer of the show, and the episode where he single-handedly took down an entire household of enemies with ingenious play was probably the first time I had felt truly invested. I had no misconceptions that I would ever match the truly comedic, inspiring, and improv-heavy heights that Sam Riegel reached with this character and class, but I recognized the flexibility and freedom in a bard character. I was pretty sure - at the very least - that I could probably have some fun with this character.
The character sheets prepared for us gave us all we needed to play our one game. Praxana was a Mountain Dwarf Valor Bard who had a Lawful Good alignment. My weapons and spells were picked out for me. I walked in having decided only that her goal was to collect stories and that if the opportunity ever arose, she was going to be very bad at accents. The DM helped establish a few relationships between characters to give us more of a "bond" and had us roll for tokens; Praxana ended up with a "butt earring" that made her more attractive to the opposite sex. All the better for a bard, really.
That first game was a ride. We went to resolve a mysterious wailing well for an old elf who cut our rope and sent us tumbling down to our deaths - a very-near TPK in the first fifteen minutes of our game (Joan's monk survived by sheer luck and grit). We were revived by a very young dwarven girl and journeyed through the Underground, eventually making our way to confront a bad guy in cahoots with the elf. We managed - after various mishaps - to win our fight and escaped to the surface. The DM skillfully guided us through the game, keeping it moving at a brisk pace but never robbing us of our choices. He populated the game with a few interesting NPCs to keep us engaged and left us with enough of a resolution that we could happily end there, but also with the promise of more story.
I wouldn't say I was hooked, but I was intrigued. Although I was in the background more often than not, I had enough small moments that I could get a sense of what I would want this character to be and how she would interact with the other party members. I could see how this could lead to a really engaging experience and a fun thing to share with my friends. The DM was clearly comfortable and confident in his role and I'd had a thoroughly enjoyable time. When Jessie suggested we consider trying a series of six games, I was open to giving this thing one more go. Maybe third time would be the charm?
Jessie sent us a few more resources to help flesh out our characters and prepare for the campaign. I spent a rainy day "rolling" my way through Praxana's life-story thus far with the help of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, piecing together her family tree and her otherwise pretty mundane life given her 107 years. I made a few changes, opting for the more flexible "Lore Bard" and the more forgiving "Neutral Good" alignment. I finished with a clearer sense of her goals and personality and entered our "Session 0" planning night feeling pretty good about what I had. Jessie helped us "roll" for relationships as we had some new players/characters joining where others had departed, and Praxana ended up with an old friend and adventuring buddy in a Cleric Goliath named Thrunk. We sat down and gave each other a few bare-bones important details that we felt our characters would have shared, and away we went, committed to bi-weekly games for the next six weeks.
We are now 21 games in, and I am hooked.
Our "core" group happened to gel nicely and these games have been a bright spot while I worked through my grief and increasing anxiety after my grandmother's passing. They have remained a bright spot as our daily lives were turned upside down by a global pandemic. Sure, playing online through various websites and apps is not quite the same as playing in person, but I'm grateful we get to play at all. While the mechanics of battle are things I am still becoming accustomed to, many years of LiveJournal and Dreamwidth roleplay have made me comfortable with becoming "attuned" to the instincts and reactions of characters and personalities that are not like my own. I have become increasingly more comfortable with Praxana (a more confident, ambitious, and cheeky personality than I am, but also a bit more cowardly in battle than I'd hope to be) and as a result, I am more invested in her story. I have enjoyed her commitment to stardom and the Ampersand Company, her tight purse-strings except when it comes to children and orphans, and her bond with her buddy, Thrunk. I am mildly perplexed but mostly amused that Praxana enjoying trying to get a reaction out of an uptight elf who is the head of the guards has resulted in the majority of the party "shipping" them. I have enjoyed occasionally pulling out songs for spells (I do love musical theatre, after all) and am immensely grateful that the DM has recognized how terrible I am at insults and does not make me come up with them on the spot for my Vicious Mockeries if I don't want to. I was surprised at how emotional I felt when soldiers died in an ambush on a supply escort and I knew that Praxana would feel this loss keenly and want news of their untimely deaths to be sent back immediately, so their loved ones would not suffer the way she and her family had, never knowing the fate of their missing father. I am honestly giddy at how fun her interaction with her youngest brother was - something that was not discussed ahead of time with the DM at all - and I am excited at the prospect of having some resolution to her only big (if rather straightforward) storyline, which was something I hadn't really anticipated. Unlike my other two characters, if Praxana were to die, I would probably be devastated.
Now I write down any songs that come to mind that may be useful in the future. I make sure I know my spells and how to utilize them to what I hope is their greatest effect. Inspired by Jessie, I dress up for our games, experimenting with hair and make-up in a way that I've never been inclined to before. I look forward to the 4 hours every two weeks where I get to forget that our world is falling apart, and instead get to play as a plucky dwarven bard who is hopefully helping to do some good. It has become so important to me that I have asked my boss and colleagues to help me juggle my schedule so as to miss as few games a possible.
I love Dungeons and Dragons.