Now when it comes to Hideaki Anno, it is estimated that most viewers will first think of the god work "Evangelion", which will always dominate the top three of various animation lists.
The success of Evangelion can be said to be unprecedented, and it is unlikely that there will be any comers after that.
It not only allowed the original GANAX to pay off the 800 million yuan of investment owed to Bandai's father in one fell swoop, but even relied on various strange linkages to survive to this day.
However, if you ask about the first anime that Hideaki Anno supervised, very few people may be able to answer. Compared to the famous work, this debut work is almost lonely and nameless.
And this debut is the animation I want to recommend to you today-
"Leap to the Top"
Leap to the Top is an OVA produced in 1988 with a total of 6 episodes, each of which is only half an hour long.
In 1988, the most popular anime was Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Gundam 0079, and Space Battleship Yamato.
Not only do otaku like beautiful girls as always, but they also have a soft spot for giant robots and starships.
For these elements that otaku love, Hideaki Anno's attitude is "I want it all"!
In this short period of 6 episodes, he tells the story of a group of beautiful girls JK who sit on a starship, fly to outer space, and drive giant robots and cosmic monsters.
You see, beautiful girls, giant robots, starships, all alive.
As an OVA animation that does not need to be on TV, there are also shots of explosive clothes in "Leap to the Top", without any concealment.
Even, this group of old evils in the industry also put the picture of several female protagonists in the bath, without hitting any holy light, and directly placed it in front of the audience.
I think that anyone who has watched "Leap to the Top" will not deny the fact that it is "charming".
You know, at that time, these GAINS otaku had not yet made "EVA", and the 800 million yuan they lost in "Wang Li Cosmic Army" had not yet been paid off.
This real problem is very urgently placed in front of these young people. It's only natural that they'll cater to the audience so eagerly.
However, even if they cater to the audience like this, "Leap to the Top" still does not reduce their debt, and even makes them have more debts on their butts.
Judging by the performance of Episode 6, they are once again seriously underfunded.
Whether the black-and-white picture is short of funds or to set off the atmosphere is still debated, but the most tragic battle in the middle directly puts the original PPT, which is undoubtedly the embodiment of the lack of funds here.
Of course, from these original manuscripts, I believe you can also guess the main reason for their arrears.
It's really not because the OVA discs don't sell well, but because this group of people who love animation are really too bad at money!
Every original manuscript is painted like this, and the cost is not up to the point.
While Leap to the Top didn't directly help them pay off their debts, Leap To peak did get them to the first bite of their meal in another way.
A few years later, almost desperate, they chose to do Xiaohuangyou, and the heroine in Xiaohuangyou was the heroine in "Leaping to the Peak".
Their delicate painters simply formed a dimensionality reduction blow to other small yellow tours in the industry at that time, and successfully made them the first bucket of rice.
Although, the price behind this is to sell one's own "kissing daughter"...
After talking about the tidbits behind "Leaping to the Top", let's come back and look at the animation itself.
The first time he served as a supervisor, did Hideaki Anno hand over a beautiful answer sheet?
The answer is yes, even from today's point of view, Leap to the Top is a "comprehensively excellent" animation.
Its usual budget-burning production doesn't need to be repeated, and its story is equally fascinating.
The story of "Leap to the Top" is a story that advances layer by layer, and every time you watch an episode, this story will show a completely different side in front of you.
Watching the first episode, you will feel that this is a very typical youth campus story.
There is a very wasteful and hard-working heroine, there is a brilliant predecessor, there is a vicious and jealous female partner, and there is a strict coach who does not smile.
The difference is that the school they are in is a girls' military school, with the purpose of training qualified mech pilots, and the daily course is to learn to operate mechs.
Two of these girls will eventually be chosen to fly into space and go to the forefront of the battle against the monsters of the universe.
In the end, the heroine rose from ridicule and malice, and successfully joined the "brilliant predecessor" sister, was selected as the official pilot, went to the new space battleship EXELION to take up the post, and became a member of the TOP force.
The first episode gives the overall impression of being a bit retro, the beauty warrior-like bodybuilding heroine, the silly training machine...
However, an unfolding of the second episode directly refreshed my understanding of Leap to the Top.
An unidentified object is approaching the solar system at the speed of subluminal light, and because of its speed, human detection methods are ineffective against it, and the most reliable method is only naked-eye observation.
The heroine and her sister must fly the mech to the sub-speed of light, keep up with the unknown object, and then make a close-up observation with the naked eye.
The result of the observation made the heroine collapse, this unknown object, it was actually her father's space battleship!
She lost her mind and plunged into it and rushed to the bridge.
She wanted to rescue her father, but the news of his death had actually been returned to Earth many years ago.
Maybe, sitting in front of the computer screen, you think that a few minutes of delay is not a big deal, but the two of them are in a sub-light state.
According to special relativity, their time flows far faster than the outside world, so their tasks have strict time limits.
If you do not get out of the sub-light speed state in time, the time of the outside world does not know what year and month it has reached.
They eventually broke away from the subluminal speed state after half a month of outside time and returned to normal time and space.
However, this time there is no danger, but it has made the audience's heart tighten.
In many sci-fi animations, the wonderful space-time effects of relativity are completely avoided, because it makes many space operas difficult to write.
Spike drove his little plane out for a lap at sub-light speeds, and when he came back, he found jet dead and Faye had become an old woman... Who can bear this?
However, Leap to the Top not only incorporates this setting into the story, but also makes it perfectly integrated into the story and becomes part of the story.
After the two heroines who fought a battle, after returning to Earth, they are still in the form of JK, but the classmates who cheered for the two of them have become young women.
The heroine's girlfriend has become the mother of the child, and the vicious girl is already the principal of the military school.
In the last episode, in order to detonate the black hole bomb in the center of the galaxy, they did not hesitate to use the core of the machine as the last ignition fuel to step close to the edge of the black hole.
Although the super mech GunBuster brought them both out alive, the long sub-light-speed voyage from the galactic center back to Earth dislocated their time to 12,000 years later!
This setting greatly reinforces the grandeur of the story, the outside is the vicissitudes of time, and the heroine, who has almost always flown at sub-light speed, returns with JK.
Perhaps, even without the laws of the Dark Forest, human beings who flew into the universe were like fish that had left the water.
As long as you step into that vast deep space with your flesh and blood, you have become a completely different species.
In addition to the wonderful story, what touched me most about "Leaping to the Top" was the posture it showed, a posture of exaltation and never bowing its head.
Just like the protagonist of this game, Gun Buster, stands proudly in front of all enemies with his hands on his chest, uninhibited and unyielding.
If you remember some of the illustrations in high school biology textbooks, and then look at the appearance of cosmic monsters in Leap to the Top, you'll see a similarity.
Those cosmic monsters are very similar in appearance to protein antibodies under electron microscopes.
These cosmic monsters are actually the "immune system" of the galaxy, and humans are viruses in their eyes.
Their number can no longer be described as "thousands", and their incoming position obscures the brilliance of half of the Milky Way.
And their nest is at the center of the Milky Way.
It's no exaggeration to say that in Leap to the Top, the entire galaxy wants to wipe out humanity.
In the face of malice from the sea of stars, how does humanity respond?
They brought out new warships that could both jump and travel at sub-light speeds, and thousands of hot-blooded young people sat on the mechs of the TOP troops and fought against cosmic monsters in the dark of the universe.
They also sacrificed a super robot like GunBuster, which is one of the few super robots in the literary works that is completely made of human technology.
GunBuster doesn't talk about any physical rules at all, and the fight depends on the driver's momentum.
As long as the heroine as the driver really stepped out of the inner shadow, made up her mind to protect something, and controlled this GunBuster, she only needed to roar.
The louder the roar, the higher the output, and the true output depends on the roar.
Finally, in order to completely eradicate the threat of cosmic monsters, humans directly dismantled Jupiter, rubbed it into an artificial black hole bomb, and sent it to the center of the galaxy.
They are ready to detonate this black hole bomb in the center of the galaxy and take down the enemy's lair in one fell swoop.
At this point, "Leap to the Top" is completely unattainable as science fantasy, and even scientific delusions are not enough to describe the brain holes of those big guys, perhaps this can only be called scientific rhapsody.
I dare say that if this group of crazy people came to write the fandom of "The Three-Body Problem", it is estimated that there will be such an unfolding:
"Isn't it just a piece of two-way foil?" Watch me drive GunBuster and push it back! ”
Comparing "EVA" horizontally, the extinction crisis faced by humanity in these two animations is almost equally severe, perhaps even worse in "Leap to the Top".
The tech trees on both sides are also very exaggerated, and EVA and GunBuster are idealistic super radishes.
However, in Leap to the Top, people are still the top of the world, still capitalized people, even if they face the malice of the whole universe.
"EVA" is the orthodox ending accepted by most audiences, generally based on the theatrical version of the ending: the human completion plan is completed, all life belongs to the sea of orange juice, and only Shinji and Asuka are left.
At the end of "Leap to the Top", 12,000 years later, the two heroines who once saved the world returned to Earth with the broken GunBuster.
On the originally dark earth, a large number of lights suddenly lit up, spelling out "Welcome home".
Even if every star in the sky becomes our enemy, even if 12,000 years of time mercilessly washes away the traces we have left behind.
The glory of mankind will remain forever.
Of course, I did not pull out "EVA" and "Leap to the Top" to hold a step, I believe that some readers have shown the same lack of moral smile as I do, and laughed at the old evil of the industry in GAINAX:
They used to be as ignorant as "Wang Li Cosmic Army" and "Leaping Peak", and then after being beaten several times by society, their mentality was gradually "EVA".
I think that a work like Leap to the Top will never become obsolete in any era, just as EVA will never go out of date.
We need to face the darkest and most twisted corners of human nature, and we also need to maintain the momentum of holding our heads high.
Even if the whole universe were to deny the meaning of our existence, there would be no reason for us to bow our heads and accept our fate.