
Typography of Neon Genesis Evangelion - beefhash
https://fontsinuse.com/uses/28760/neon-genesis-evangelion
======
basseq
I _love_ the level of detail in this analysis. Just typographic nerdiness at
its finest. And I have never watched NGE or have particular interest in anime.

I found the mechanical compression the most interesting part of this. I
suspect it started out as limited technical aptitude and/or an "efficiency
hack", but has since morphed into an actual stylistic decision that both makes
thematic sense[1] and sets NGE apart. To the point now that it might be
_harder_ to do mechanical compression than just use a condensed font
variant[2].

[1] "[the mechanical compression's] ubiquitous occurrence did evoke haste and,
at times, despair—an emotional motif perfectly suited to a postapocalyptic
story with existentialist themes"

[2] "... loads the normal Matisse Pro EB and then uses the CSS transform
property to achieve the compression effect."

~~~
AceJohnny2
> _I suspect it started out as limited technical aptitude and /or an
> "efficiency hack", but has since morphed into an actual stylistic decision
> that both makes thematic sense[1] and sets NGE apart._

I forget which famous modern composer said it, but there's the wonderful
observation that "the artifacts of your medium will become its defining and
desired characteristic".

See how we have systems trying to emulate CRT scanlines, or Synthwave style of
music that not only reproduces the limitations of early synths but applies
those limitations to newer sounds.

Edit: I think it was Brian Eno, though I can't immediately find the quote

~~~
MivLives
It was Brian Eno, here's the quote:

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium
will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital
video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated
as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art
is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits
and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too
loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked
voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that
releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white,
is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned
to record them.”

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/649039-whatever-you-now-
fin...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/649039-whatever-you-now-find-weird-
ugly-uncomfortable-and-nasty-about)

------
rootsudo
I'm just excited to finally be able to read the fonts and Kanji/Kana.

When I first saw Evangelion - the text looked cool, foreign and amazing. I
never thought there'd be one day when I would be able to read the kana
phonetically and know what it means or actually recognize kanji.

------
wodenokoto
What does "mechanically compressed" mean in this context?

To me, the fonts looks either squished or stretched horizontally throughout
the series, especially the logo [0]

EDIT: If you've never watched it, it is on Netflix and it is really good.

[0]
[https://wiki.evageeks.org/File:Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_logo....](https://wiki.evageeks.org/File:Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_logo.jpg)

~~~
frostburg
It means squished as if it was a image, without regard for kerning, weight
etc.

Usually a official condensed version of a typeface is adapted more subtly.

------
aasasd
Regarding mechanical compression: it's probably not 100% so, but afaik in
kanji/hanzi and likely many other SEA scripts, proportions of a character
don't matter much―they're just strokes in a grid that you can squish without
harm to legibility. That's why labels on cheap Chinese goods often had
deformed quasi-monospace Latin type: the author just had no idea anything is
wrong.

It's likely less true of sorta-calligraphic lettering of Matisse EB―but I
still wonder if compression just wasn't seen as much of a deal.

~~~
watt
Here's a great article why so many Chinese goods are printed with those ugly
latin characters:
[https://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/183/](https://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/183/)

~~~
aasasd
One point that the article doesn't make very clear is, Chinese fonts have
Western characters that occupy the same space as the hieroglyphs—seemingly so
that mixed-language text follows the hanzi grid. (Afaik Unicode even has wide-
proportioned versions of some punctuation—dot and comma—specifically for
embedding in hanzi text. But dunno if it had widespace Latin or other Western
letters.)

Not sure, though, if monospace Latin characters are really a requirement for
mixed-language texts in the Chinese market. If it is, then new fonts will have
to incorporate it. However, typesetting on exported Chinese goods should
follow Western practices, and that will probably mean convincing the designers
that Western letters work differently.

~~~
dfox
Unicode has two additional copies of whole ASCII, fullwidth and halfwidth with
the expectation that the widths would match the Han character grid (strictly
speaking the halfwidth variant is somewhat redundant, but it is there).

On the other hand I think that the ugly latin fonts on chinese goods (and also
the amount of completely redundant and nonsensical labels like “Fan”,
“LED”...) has completely different reason: nobody simply cares about that.

------
lprd
I just finished Neon Genesis: Evangelion last month and was completely blown
away by it! The intro alone is by far one of the most iconic in the genre.

Really neat to see this!

~~~
sleepybrett
If you are a fan of title card sequences check out cowboy bebop.

~~~
lprd
Hah, I just started that show last week and I an loving it so far! Any other
recommendations?

~~~
swebs
Gurren Lagann

Trigun

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (better remake of the 2003 series)

One Punch Man

Demon Slayer

Akira

Redline

FLCL

~~~
hinoki
Also, Kill La Kill.

It’s by the same director as Gurren Lagann, and is a strange mix of excessive
fan service and reverse Bechdel Test failure.

~~~
Corrado
These are all great suggestions but I think it would be helpful to give a
small intro to some of them as they are not quite what they seem on the
surface. For example, "Kill La Kill" is mostly about exposing the absurdity of
fan service in Anime. "One Punch Man" shows that being the best at something
is actually the worst thing ever. And "FLCL" is really weird - I truly don't
know what it's trying to say.

------
throwaway66920
One thing I love about anime is that when the authors really want to drive
home a thematic concept they throw in these humble observations about the
human condition and demonstrate it in the most absurd contexts.

Evangelion does this. I would highly recommend Mob Psycho 100 for this as well
(by the one punch man guy, and similar but not sarcastic)

~~~
claudeganon
The first season of Psycho Pass is really good in this regard as well (second
season not so much). Some of the best sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time.

~~~
mjevans
I really enjoyed one of the more subtle points the Psycho Pass movie made as
well, reflected in the dynamic between two different shots involving two of
the main characters in the film. It drives home the point about the difference
between a technical victory and a lasting cultural victory.

------
40acres
Just rewatched the series now that it's out on Netflix, I really loved the
aesthetic of NERV HQ digital screens. A nice mix of digital and older style
fonts.

~~~
bobo_legos
Had no idea this landed on Netflix. I've been in search of somewhere to
rewatch for years now. This might be enough to get me to resubscribe for a
month.

~~~
flyingfences
It's on Netflix with poor-quality subs and missing soundtrack pieces, though -
you'd get a better experience from "other" sources.

~~~
ohithereyou
What on earth possessed them to commission new subtitles? I can understand
replacing "Fly Me to The Moon" in the ending - clearly licensing cost - but
the new subtitles radically changed the meaning of some scenes, and not in a
way that seems to match the original intent of the writers.

------
oweiler
For me, NGE was both the best and the worst anime had to offer. On one hand,
the music, art style and the fights were amazing. On the other hand, I found
most characters downright disgusting (mostly Shinji and Asuka).

~~~
jandrese
Not to mention the pace killing scenes where nothing happens for minutes at a
time. They paid for those incredible fight scenes with interminable shots of
the interior of elevators or close ups of Shinji's walkman.

~~~
ethbro
I liked the shots of power lines with cicadas chirping.

Best part of the series.

~~~
jandrese
Well, I have some good news for you! You may also be interested in literally
every anime that came out after Eva with a city setting.

May I recommend Serial Experiments Lain for more power lines and cicadas
goodness? As every Anime sound director knows, those obnoxious bugs are the
only available auditory shorthand for "it's summer".

~~~
gwern
Excellent recommendation. SEL always tops the lists of cicada connoisseur
lists like [https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/we-ranked-animes-
top-10-s...](https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/we-ranked-animes-
top-10-static-shots-of-power-lines-with-cicada-noises/)

------
jhedwards
Interestingly, the thick vertical strokes and skinny horizontal strokes you
see in the Chinese characters in some of those fonts are the result of one
individual's[0] personal style being adopted as the standard for non-cursive
calligraphy;

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Zhenqing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Zhenqing)

~~~
jhanschoo
The famous calligraphers' styles were used in early woodblock printing, but
the Song/Ming style you see nowadays are more rightly said to be influenced by
the constraints of printing.

A way to think about this is that Western serif typefaces come from unical
script, but their present standard forms are more rightly said to be
influenced by the limitations of metal type.

file:///home/jhanschoo/Downloads/PJACNS-1(2015)-3-Lin.pdf

[https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/shotai-
printed.html](https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/shotai-printed.html)

~~~
jhedwards
That makes sense, I guess I was focusing in on a particular font in the
article that clearly has the mark of Yan Zhenqing's style. I'm talking about
whatever font is used in the characters 使使 over the red background. Even the
shape of the downward left pie strokes is distinctly Yan's style.

Maybe that's just a testament to the distinctiveness of his style that it is
still clear even after being adapted to the constraints of printing, or it
might also just be that particular font?

------
Paul_S
Or maybe, just like all the symbolism, it was chosen at random because it
looked cool. More work went into this analyses than the original font
selection process.

~~~
gwern
That's sort of how art works, though. You hone your sensibility as an artist,
and then you 'know it when you see it'. Anno et al looked at the fonts, and
they saw it was good. Explaining _why_ it's good is quite another thing
altogether. Artists are always being surprised by how things 'click' or how
the viewer notices patterns the artists weren't even (consciously) aware of
putting in. (And to a certain degree, if you could adequately explain and
convey it in words, why would you bother with the art in the first place?)

I've been using NNs to generate poems and Irish music lately based on pairwise
comparison of poems/music (based on [https://openai.com/blog/fine-tuning-
gpt-2/](https://openai.com/blog/fine-tuning-gpt-2/) ), and it's definitely
striking how fast I can make the evaluation of which one is better, but then
how long it would take to reread or relisten to them and verbalize what
exactly made one better than the other.

~~~
peirantan
Apparently Anno is particularly passionate about Matisse EB. He uses it so
many other places outside of NGE that it's become not just a "NGE font" but
also a "Hideaki Anno font".

------
rolltiide
Typography is such an art

I watched End of Evangelion for the first time in 15 years

Still entertaining, great animation that stands the test of time, but wow I
wish I can go tell my teenage self that it actually doesnt make sense, the
symbolism has no point whatsoever but Judeo-Christian dogma is “foreign and
cool“ and the writers eventually admit it and everyone had a good time making
it

~~~
rllyboredonline
Anno isn't an idiot.

This comment, while oft repeated, is simply not true. There is plenty of
symbolism going on in the show. There is a lot of PoMo "mask on top of a mask"
stuff going on with the biblical references, but some stuff is more on the
nose. There are plenty of articles on this, including this one:
[https://reelrundown.com/animation/Symbolism-in-Neon-
Genesis-...](https://reelrundown.com/animation/Symbolism-in-Neon-Genesis-
Evangelion)

~~~
Inu
I'm 99% sure that I read an interview in which Anno said that he included the
Christian symbolism simply because he thought it looked cool. Of course, that
doesn't exclude the possibilty of it still making sense somehow.

~~~
kipchak
I can't quite get a read on Anno. Sometimes he'll answer a question like who's
his favorite character almost flippantly with "Asuka, because she's cute" and
sometimes he'll describe Eva as being almost autobiographical and diagnosing
himself as stuck at the Fruedian oral stage and fundamentally disliking living
things.

He's also described Eva as like a puzzle, and not wanting to give answers and
instead let people come up with their own interpretations.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I both wouldn't be surprised if he did pull
much of the visual symbolism out of a hat, or if he did come across it while
exploring western philosophy and decided to incorporate it.

There's some great bits in Extra Curricular Lesson with Hideaki Anno, like him
talking about disliking the parts of what he makes he sees himself in or
sleeping through a fire in his apartment.

[https://youtu.be/rGJ_Kq8qifQ?t=429](https://youtu.be/rGJ_Kq8qifQ?t=429)

------
EamonnMR
I ('m apparently the last person in the world who) just watched this show for
the first time recently. It had its cool moments and was an overall positive
experience, but the reliance on outdated (even then) freudian ideas hurts it a
bit. Not to mention the slideshows.

~~~
stefco_
I think that if you read it symbolically it doesn't really matter whether the
psychological model is inaccurate. This is why literary critics still use
Freud in discussions. It's not about whether the model is accurate; the point
is that these symbols provide a set of archetypes that we can then relate
other things to. Freudian stuff in art criticism (when used well) is more of a
shared vocabulary for discussing things than a reductive framework.

Not sure if that's your gripe. I used to dislike Freudian language/themes for
a similar reason but realize now that I was taking it more literally than I
now do.

------
wst_
There is one more anime that comes to mind if we're talking about typography -
Bakemonogatari. Throughout the series still images are shown containing vital
information about the thoughts of characters, events' second meaning, puns,
etc. Sometimes split second only, sometimes in a fast slides. Really novel and
interesting take on animation.

Example: [https://youtu.be/-jm-xrO2c_0](https://youtu.be/-jm-xrO2c_0) (first
30 seconds shows one of the still images and there's much more)

------
dmix
> After starting out as a typical mechanical-robot (“mecha”) anime, Evangelion
> gradually evolved into an existentialist deconstruction of its own genre,
> immediately winning critical acclaim.

What does that mean?

~~~
castratikron
It's a parody of Gundam and other mecha anime.

~~~
jandrese
Not so much a parody as a deconstruction of the genre. It did to mecha anime
what Watchmen did to superhero comics.

------
MrGilbert
Slightly OT: The image "Key poster for Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance."
gives a nice 3d-ish effect on my OLED display. The white letters seem embossed
into the red background.

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cosarara
What does "mechanical compression" mean, exactly? Googling "mechanical
compression typography" turns up this article as the first result.

~~~
ltnublet
Based on this part of the article: _The decision to use mechanical compression
instead of commissioning a compressed-width variant..._

it appears that "mechanical compression" refers to rendering the text in the
standard font, and then reducing the horizontal width of the rendered text
after-the-fact.

------
Yuval_Halevi
When you see the list of fonts used at the end it looks like nothing special.
But the way they used it in context works really well.

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Noxmiles
The Internet is such a beautiful place: Would never thought about that on my
own, but it's great to read this and know about it!

------
Isamu
This is a great, detailed article. Wish I could mega-upvote.

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a0zU
Nevangelion is such a good anime.

