Oh, wow. How did you manage to interview Hideaki Anno?
Despite the fact that his best works are anime TV series, I always thought Anno was one of the best filmmakers alive. His works in the 90s are absolutely amazing, particularly Evangelion and Karekano. He is a complex artist on many sides; formally he is the first (and mainly only) modern anime director: he uses the long-shot substantially less in favor of close-ups, which are just harder to use (almost anything can be OK-explained by a long-shot, while close-ups are pretty limited semantically). Aesthetically he is very original, with how he plays with music (Haendel in Evangelion 22, Beethoven in Evangelion 24, Bach in the "sex scene" of Karekano) or my favorite aesthetical treat, the use of text.
Love and Pop, and then Shiki-jitsu were a very promising start for him as a live-action filmmaker... but unfortunately, it looks like personal issues got to him. In the 90s there was a trio of Japanese filmmakers with similar approaches and amazing talent: Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon and Shunji Iwai (who is also the main actor in Shiki-jitsu). For different reasons, none of them seems to have used their whole potentials.
I know: that's why I wrote "for different reasons". I understand that in the case of Kon it feels more unfair, as he had a great career before his death; of his 4 movies, 3 are typically considered great/masterpieces. Kon didn't use his whole potential in the same way that James Dean did; Anno and Iwai are a bit more like Nicholas Cage.
Despite the fact that his best works are anime TV series, I always thought Anno was one of the best filmmakers alive. His works in the 90s are absolutely amazing, particularly Evangelion and Karekano. He is a complex artist on many sides; formally he is the first (and mainly only) modern anime director: he uses the long-shot substantially less in favor of close-ups, which are just harder to use (almost anything can be OK-explained by a long-shot, while close-ups are pretty limited semantically). Aesthetically he is very original, with how he plays with music (Haendel in Evangelion 22, Beethoven in Evangelion 24, Bach in the "sex scene" of Karekano) or my favorite aesthetical treat, the use of text.
Love and Pop, and then Shiki-jitsu were a very promising start for him as a live-action filmmaker... but unfortunately, it looks like personal issues got to him. In the 90s there was a trio of Japanese filmmakers with similar approaches and amazing talent: Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon and Shunji Iwai (who is also the main actor in Shiki-jitsu). For different reasons, none of them seems to have used their whole potentials.