continued.

sunday

After two days of showings and signings, Okada returned to an early-morning press session. It was 8 a.m., and out of a convention-wearied audience, only a handful of people showed up. (Including transcriber Carl Gustav Horn and several Japanese industry personnel). In an out-of-the-way meeting room, the question-and-answer session began.

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AUDIENCE: I wanted to ask: at Otakon, you said that you thought that Gainax was now almost a regular company, that they had control over their work, better control than in the old days--

OKADA: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: --But, I've heard many stories about how on EVANGELION--

OKADA: [SMILES] Yes!

AUDIENCE: --there were many problems with budget, and time, so do you think things have changed, really?

OKADA: Not so. It's almost the same, from what I said to you at Otakon. You must remember that EVANGELION is produced at Tatsunoko, so the schedule is out of the control of Gainax--it's the responsibility of Tatsunoko. Tatsunoko almost rules, when it comes to control. So, I think, the responsibility was not with Gainax. People say, "It's the responsibility of Mr. Anno," but they're wrong. Control over schedule is the responsibility of the producer. But Tatsunoko and T.V. Tokyo couldn't handle it. It was out of Gainax's control.

AUDIENCE: I talked to a person from Tatsunoko. He said he does does not blame Mr. Anno, but he blames other people at Gainax, who might be telling Anno about his schedule, and--

OKADA: Oh! I think producers always say that. But I talked with Mr. Anno about this a month ago, and then he said, "I'm *almost* the producer of EVANGELION, but I must be so, because Tatsunoko did not do anything for EVANGELION." See, he is very disappointed with Tatsunoko, and some rumors have said that Tatsunoko lost the film, or cels before they were shot.

AUDIENCE: Wow!

OKADA: And I asked Mr. Anno, "Is it the truth?" And he says, in a dark voice, "Yes."

AUDIENCE: Oh, wow.

OKADA: But that was in the middle of the episodes. That wasn't the trouble with the last two episodes, the confusion. It was just Mr. Anno's teleplay. He said to me, "I can make a schedule on my own." At that time, I heard from Mr. Anno about his new plans, so maybe you want to--?

AUDIENCE: Of course.

OKADA: After EVANGELION, his next plan is to make a STAR TREK. Not *that* STAR TREK--a sort of anime like STAR TREK, a crew in a spaceship, who go to every planet, and each planet has its own culture. For example, one planet will have a very democratic culture, and everyone will approve, so they'll board, or they say, "no," and they talk with the crew about everything. And the spaceship crew will sometimes fall in love in some way on the planet, or something will happen--*maybe* some robots fight [LAUGHS]. He wants to make that film, because Mr. Anno thinks it will be a very good experience for the Japanese animation world. But the sponsor says, "It's not so good," because, in Japan these days...of course, you know, several years ago, it was the toy makers, like Bandai, who had a very strong control over the production of anime, and what they would want would be something like, "We need three new robots in this film," and so the anime was made with the three new robots. But right now, it's the record companies, like King, Polydor, or Sony Music Entertainment, who have very strong control over the production of anime. And what *they* want, is, "O.K., we've got two new idol singers, and we want to promote them." And so the anime is made with two new characters.

continued...