Yes but Evangelion is so massive and popular it'd be enough to sustain a studio. Gainax does not have the rights to NGE though. They only produced the original series back in the 90s.
Doesn’t have the staying power of Gundam which has survived postmodernism by producing spin-off shows about people who build Gundam models. (Gee I gotta build that Haro I have sitting around…)
Gundam is usually a recycled stories (teenager ride an ace robot to war) with new toys.
How can Evangelion recycle their stories? Nobody want to see depressed, horny teenager forced to ride a robot so everyone can be turned into orange paste every two years.
Exactly, Evangelion is about the end of the world which can only end once. That may make it poignant but it doesn't have the staying power of Gundam or Macross or Pretty Cure where they can keep telling variations of the same story in different places and times indefinitely. (Funny to think how they weren't sure if they'd finish the first season of Futari Wa Pretty Cure so their budget for writing and direction was zero for a few episodes in the middle that were mostly incomprehensible scenes of people being corrupted, turned into monsters, and walking around doing things Kung Fu masters would do in Dragonball Z until suddenly the show started making sense again... And of course they went on to make another 20+ seasons)
> Exactly, Evangelion is about the end of the world which can only end once. That may make it poignant but it doesn't have the staying power of Gundam or Macross or Pretty Cure where they can keep telling variations of the same story in different places and times indefinitely
Various Gundam series take place across different universes, there is no reason a series based on "the world is ending" can't do the same thing - share thematic elements across different sets of characters.
Heck you could even make each series explore a different element of the human psyche.
IMHO the real issue is Evangelion is such a mind fuck that finding ways to reach that level of WTF is hard, and also the cultural zeitgeist moves on, and I doubt if Evangelion was related today it'd have the same impact. Kind of like how a lot of cyberpunk stuff is still around, but it has to be somewhat re-invented for each decade, because while some of the themes of the original 1980s stuff is still relevant, you can't just cut and paste, today's youth feels a different sense of hopelessness than what was felt in the 80s!
Same thing with 1990s material, super edgy goth cyberpunk vampires don't hit the same in 2024 as they did in 1994.
So finding writing staff that can keep up with making Really Good Stuff decade after decade, and who also want to do rehashes of the same material, may prove hard.
But still, a series of Evangelion universes all focused on different types of trauma would be interesting to see!
>Various Gundam series take place across different universes, there is no reason a series based on "the world is ending" can't do the same thing - share thematic elements across different sets of characters.
NGE has done that plenty. The early works, dating sim games, plastic models, fan fiction, manga, etc have all had 'alternate universe' entries -- which suits the series just fine since that concept is explored even in the original series via Shinji's 'instrumentality scenes'.
Gundam (MSG, in particular) is sort of about the world ending. Colony drop killing billions right off the bat.
Yeah the other spin-offs not related to the UC storyline are definitely more in the "angsty ace pilot teen with completely-overpowered-weapon-as-a-plot-device" category but there's so many of them, who's counting at that point?
While the mecha are all cool as heck, definitely felt the OG series and the spinoffs (008th MS Team, 0079: Stardust Memory, Zeta Gundam etc) are the best because they tell different aspects of a larger story.
NGE isn't really about the world ending, it's about the forced ending of humanity as we know it; we're even left to see what the world looks like post-humanity in EoE.
There's also another channel that is in the "I wish I had the time / talent / inspiration to do those things..." Two Expensive Models, One Epic Diorama! https://youtu.be/q7vCFKRHloE
The Gundam model build shows up in my YouTube feed occasionally despite me not looking for them.
Eva is pretty sustainable, just not for Gainax. Studio Khara has been selling Eva merchandise and related materials through brands like Radio EVA for a while.
Gainax just kind of doesn’t have any of the IP anymore, for various reasons.
When I say it could sustain a studio, I just mean revenue from merchandise sales etc... It's such a popular IP there's an entire theme park devoted to it.
I'd say NGE is absolutely more popular than Gundam. I think there's a perfect "target age" to get into NGE, and that age is 13-15 and new generations discover it. Quentin Tarantino once said the same thing about a lot of his old movies.
It's also the oldest anime in that top 50 list, which I think is really indicative of how popular it is. The only other one that's even from the 90s is Cowboy Bepop.
OT, but: I really don't understand why Death Note is so popular. It was an above average first season that went downhill super fast. I gave up on it the first episode after the recap episode (26 if Wikipedia is right), and nothing in my conversations with other people have led me to believe the last dozen or so episodes would change my opinion on it.
MAL's demographics is probably the answer. Anime had a big wave in the 00s, and Death Note, Code Geass, Toradora, FMA and Gintama are all probably beneficiaries of that for higher ratings in MAL than in forums populated by younger or older fans.
That's part of it, but Death Note is, IMO, the worst series that you mention in your comment (Gintama is definitely not my cup of tea, but I can understand the attraction to it by those for whom it is). I ought to be in the target audience for Death Note, and I found it to be mediocre.
Which aspects of postmodernism threaten which aspects of the Gundam franchise? Or are you just alluding to the dominance of digital goods over physical hobbies such as model-building? I'll admit, I don't know where the money comes from. Is it really 80:20 merchandising:media?
I think their point is simply that a Gundam series about building model Gundams is a very postmodern thing (and, perhaps, that the rise of postmodernism has made it harder for a 100% unironic Gundam series to succeed).
Hideaki Anno literally setup a brand new studio specifically to do the rebuild films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)