The typography in Evangelion's titlecards is a tribute to Japanese film pioneer Kon Ichikawa. For instance, Ichikawa lets diagonal and horizontal layouts coexist in the titlecard to bring more dimension into typography (as opposed to being just linear). In his masterpiece "The Inugami Family"[1], the opening title is just 90 seconds of white Gothic typeface on a black background, but the layout is playful, letting the font speak more than just the text themselves.[2] In fact, director Anno Hideaki drew inspiration from this in Evangelion.
Ichikawa was very keen on layout. While Ichikawa mainly focused on live action features, he began his career as an animator, where he honed his craft of laying out "deliberate" camera shots. Later in "Brother",[3] he was even criticized for a jarring camera layout, where characters sometimes bifurcate the shot composition by standing in the middle. [4]
Ichikawa continued with his "jarring"
style; he would insert sudden bursts of opposite shots in the middle of characters speaking. The influence of Ichikawa's cutting style is evident in Anno's works too. For example, in the expository scene in the "End of Evangelion", he would also insert brief shots of the subjects the characters are talking about. (e.g. "Second Impact", "Adam", and such jargon)
Anno is like a Japanese Tarantino; he absorbed much influence from his predecessors, and refines their qualities in his own works. Right now in Tokyo, the Anno Hideaki exhibit is gathering much fanfare. A good portion of the exhibit is devoted not to his works, but the prior art he was heavily influenced by. Clearly, he wants to give more credit to his predecessors by giving them the spotlight they deserve.
[4] Ichikawa also innovated in film color processing, where he and cinematographer Kazuo Miyakawa left the silver while processing film, giving an eerie lush glow to the colors.
Thank you for this! I know NGE parodies/tributes a lot of other media. Do you know if the computer interfaces were also influenced by other similar media?
Ichikawa was very keen on layout. While Ichikawa mainly focused on live action features, he began his career as an animator, where he honed his craft of laying out "deliberate" camera shots. Later in "Brother",[3] he was even criticized for a jarring camera layout, where characters sometimes bifurcate the shot composition by standing in the middle. [4]
Ichikawa continued with his "jarring" style; he would insert sudden bursts of opposite shots in the middle of characters speaking. The influence of Ichikawa's cutting style is evident in Anno's works too. For example, in the expository scene in the "End of Evangelion", he would also insert brief shots of the subjects the characters are talking about. (e.g. "Second Impact", "Adam", and such jargon)
Anno is like a Japanese Tarantino; he absorbed much influence from his predecessors, and refines their qualities in his own works. Right now in Tokyo, the Anno Hideaki exhibit is gathering much fanfare. A good portion of the exhibit is devoted not to his works, but the prior art he was heavily influenced by. Clearly, he wants to give more credit to his predecessors by giving them the spotlight they deserve.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074691/
[2] Opening title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkAryQPocLA
[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054151/
[4] Ichikawa also innovated in film color processing, where he and cinematographer Kazuo Miyakawa left the silver while processing film, giving an eerie lush glow to the colors.
P.S. I've also commented on Evangelion in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15906758