A Rebuild of History: Anno Hideaki's Shin Godzilla and Evangelion

Abstract

After the Great Hanshin Earthquake and Tokyo subway sarin gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995, Japanese society was thrown into a turmoil as cracks in their postwar social institutions were revealed, and the anxiety and uncertainty arising from these tragedies, along with the long economic recession, manifested in many narratives – with new genres such as sekai kei emerging to indicate a shift toward more inward consciousness. Furthermore, the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 once again rocked the nation, and the effectiveness and competency of the government is brought into question as it struggles to deal with the disaster, revealing more flaws in their contemporary systems. In my case study of Anno Hideaki’s films, including the original Shin Seiki Evangelion television series in 1995, Shin Godzilla in 2016, and the Rebuild of Evangelion movies from 2007-2021, I intend to illustrate how he reinterprets and rebuilds the historical narratives of Japan after the respective crises, which he pinpoints as historical ruptures. Again, Anno rebuilds historical narratives in the wake of the disaster as an attempt to both tackle the social anxieties that arose, as well as foster a cooperative and community-focused spirit at the grassroots level. Despite Anno’s critique of the government and consumerist culture, his “Rebuilds” tend to construct nationalist narratives to promote cooperation and grassroots activities as near utopian alternatives to the aging and outdated social institutions.By tracing the differences in the media Anno Hideaki has produced over the years, I intend to locate historical ruptures emerging out of his work, and demonstrate how his rebuilds are metacommentaries of the process of historical revisionism, as well as the historiography of apocalypticism.