#hs!

Grand Exit:

An unfinished piece for Holy Shito!, intended as a follow-up to this one. Planning began in January 2002; the Photoshop composite was done in August; and then... nothing. Damned if I can remember what happened. School, maybe? School is always a perfectly reasonable distraction from the frivolous things.

The intent here was to launch the fic in a big way, with most of the gang rushing out of the theater -- following the Eden premiere of EoE --  in a mad frenzy. Judging from my earliest thumbnails, the title “Holy Shito!” would have been featured top and center in the final version. That certainly explains all the empty space. I assume the matter had temporarily slipped my mind when I put Arael’s layer where I did, and would have eventually corrected itself.

Most of the featured figures are self-explanatory to the seasoned NGE fan. I’ve attached solo drawings for the more straight-forward Angels to this post. Drawings for the Evas and the remaining Angels, along with my delightful rambling commentary, may be found here and here.

Note #1: All of the humongous Angels are made much, much smaller in HS! on purpose. Though, true to NGE scaling tradition, sizes continue to fluctuate dramatically depending on the scene...

Note #2: “Alephel” and “Bethel” are fabricated names for the Israfel twins. In Japanese, they’re only called Kou ( 甲 - the gold one) and Otsu ( 乙 - the silver one), which roughly mean “(Target) A” and “(Target) B”. To make those sound like Angel names, simply convert A to Aleph and B to Beth, and add the “-el” suffix (”of God”) to both. 

Out of the Theater:

Let’s get to it, then! If I’m going to post old weird Eva fan shit, I may as well start at the beginning, with this quirky excuse-setting called Holy Shito! (Y’know, like “holy shit!”, only not, because in Japanese the Angels are called shito, and also angels are holy... “Do you get it? Do you get my joke??”) 

HS! started out as pure nonsense and cheese with no pretensions toward anything else. (It very rapidly evolved and grew out of control, but we’ll get to that later.) So, there’s this place called Eden that’s a whole city of Angels. Somehow or other, the Angels from NGE lived there before the events of the show, and when they’re defeated on Earth they go back. Now the defeated Evas are there, too... for some reason. In keeping with this total absence of logic, Eden somehow has access to Earth things, like its entertainment and recreational drugs. Case in point: after developing the setting for a year, I had decided to open the story with all of our old buddies leaving the theater from the Eden premiere of The End of Evangelion. 

These three -- the Asari Trio, as I call them, after their mutual designer Yoshitoh Asari -- leave the movie together before everyone else. Why together? Because they all share an apartment. Money isn’t a concern in Eden, so clearly the trio do this in order to increase the likelihood of amusing antics. Sachiel and Zeruel were pretty obvious choices for central Angel characters, due to already having well-established (as Angels go) personalities in the show; not to mention, being humanoids with faces plays up to the instinctual biases of human viewers like myself. I played them up as a couple of brothers (Zeruel older, Sachiel younger) with a rather stereotypical jock vs. geek/stoner dynamic. Shamshel, well... Poor Shammy started out with not much of a personality at all, basically relegated to the brothers’ “dog”. You can see Sachi using the whips as a leash here.

[EDIT: My memory tricked me. The Asari Trio actually leave the screening last.]

“Grand Exit”: Angels

The first of two promised follow-ups to this post, here are four Angels whose designs I would like to comment upon individually.

Tabris: That I actually, at one point, thought Tabris could be a separate Angel -- not just Adam’s soul in a Lilin-shaped vessel, but a whole entire Angel-Angel that we never saw -- attests to the information-starved darkness of those times. The design is a fairly obvious fusion of the MP Evas and the Diemay Angel. The legs on the end of the tail have something to do with my at-the-time explanation for Kaworu’s body. (I’ll eventually scan and post the short comic that details this aspect further.) 

Arael: Straightforwardly Arael, though some liberties were taken -- namely, the proportions fudged around with to make her more cute, and to prevent the wingspan from dwarfing the head and body. That’s right -- head and body! No actual model sheets for Arael’s design have been released, but careful study of the available materials reveal that there is something very avian at the center of that mess of wings: beaked head, streamlined body, long tapering tail. 

On a final note, if you look carefully, you’ll see Arael holding spectacles in her left arm-wing. The reason for this is, erm, well... I thought it would be funny if Arael worked as a psychotherapist in Eden. I mean, it’s a terribly obvious corny joke to make, isn’t it? So, she has you lie on the couch, puts on her glasses and some light classical music, and has you start talking about your childhood. (Or the nearest thing to a childhood that Angels possess.)

Bardiel: The drippy tentacles are a visual allusion to Bardiel’s hyphae in the show. The brain part of the design is a shameless reference to Krang from TMNT. You know, always going on about the body he lost... I have Bardiel covet Eva-03′s body while constantly lamenting that he lacks much of one. (You abandoned your human form for fungus, Bard; you have no one to blame but yourself.)

Year 1 Spring Characters: HS!BF PoPr!BF PoPr!GF PoPr!Pico

FULL STORY ◀⏹▶

Year 1 Spring Characters: HS!BF PoPr!BF

FULL STORY ◀⏹▶