Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga/Evangelion/Archive 2

Project Anniversary

Oh haha, for what its worth I was looking through the history tabs and realized that its been one year since I founded WikiProjectEvangelion (June 2), and created the Evangelion Portal (June 6). Well since then Wikipedia has really tightened its "no fair use" and "no original research" policies, eliminating the episode guide etc. Still, lets make sure that we keep the crazies and the fanboys from vandalizing articles, as well as updating stuff with "Rebuild of Evangelion" information (keeping the wackier stuff off) and possibly Live Action Eva stuff if that ever comes to anything. Thanks for your efforts, though much of this Wikipedia Admin policy stuff is beyond our control. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Eva at school/petite Eva

They actually made a new Eva TV series, a chibi-SD parody set of 3D shorts; I'm not sure what the "official" title is: "Eva@School" or "Petite Eva" or what? Need more info so we can make an article about it. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Vote on terminology standardization: NERV, SEELE, GEHIRN, N2 Mine

I'm calling a formal vote/discussion to standardize the terminology we use on English wiki articles based on translation from Japanese originals. There has been some confusion, and what I fear most is that people go "oh, well this is what wikipedia says so it must be right" when in fact we're...further propagating misconceptions.

Capitalization issues: "NERV" and "SEELE" are not acronyms. They don't stand for anything. Spelling them in all-capitals is simply a translation mistake/stylistic choice by the Japanese production team. Further, they aren't *universally* spelled in all-caps; i.e. in episode one, the "welcome to Nerv" pamphlet Misato gives Shinji spells it "Nerv". They do this with other words from time to time which obviously shouldn't be all-caps; such as "ADAM" and "SECOND IMPACT". We should no more spell it "NERV" than we should spell it "SECOND IMPACT", and we're kind of incorrectly propagating a mistake made in translation and dubbing.

Thus, I move that we establish it as a convention that the words are to be spelled consistently in all wiki articles as "Nerv", "Seele", "Gehirn", and "Magi", and never in all-caps. Of course, this means noobie one-shot editors will near constantly be coming onto wikipedia and changing them back whining "heyyy! It's spelled in all-caps!" and yes, this will make a lot of work and possible annoyance in constantly cleaning up their changes. But my motto has always been that I'd rather be right than popular.

Nextly, we have the smaller matter of "N2 mines". This is really a translation confusion on the part of the English dub: the word used for them is actually "heiki" in the original Japanese dub: the problem is that Japanese has no separate words for "bomb" and "mine"; both are just called "heiki". Now, there are different variants of N2 heiki, such as the aerial ones used in episode 12, depth-charge variants used in episode 9, normal "bombs" such as used against Tokyo-3....but the first time one was used in the series against Sachiel in episode 1, it just happened to be used the way a land-mine is used: they lured Sachiel into walking over it then detonated it. The result was that the English dub got confused and thought "oh, they mean "heiki" in the sense of "land mine"....even though it was just use that way in that instance. I mean "mines" aren't offensively dropped on things. As such, I feel that we should consistently refer to them as "N2 bombs", in all articles, and not "N2 mines", and just leave a note in the glossary explaining how the English dub is incorrect.

Everyone please weigh in on these. We've not done many formal votes or debates in the past, so I guess we'll cap this off at a week after it was introduced, and it will go into effect on Tuesday July 22nd. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 16:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I can definitely agree with we should standardize on the lower-case versions, with two provisos: lower-case only when it isn't an actual acronym (so Nerv, Seele, and Gehirn don't count as they are words and not acronyms), and when quoting we obviously leave entries alone.

As for N2 mines: I don't really care. Call them bombs, mines, whatever. But quotes are sacrosanct as before. --Gwern (contribs) 20:12 16 July 2008 (GMT)

...I don't understand what you're saying; yes, only when it isn't an actual acronym. What is an actual acronym? Are you saying the same thing I originally said and you're agreeing? "Quotes are sacrosanct"; you mean back things up with quotes? --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I mean exactly that. If 'nerv' wasn't a quasi-german word, but an acronym ("New Evangelion Research Volk", say) then we should use NERV. Similarly, if we are quoting something, as a quote or just stuffing it away in a reference, we don't edit quotes. There's no point to a quote if one feels free to edit it willy-nilly. --Gwern (contribs) 00:50 23 July 2008 (GMT)

I'm fine with un-capitalizing the names, but it's gonna take some getting used to. I'm also fine with calling the N2 weapons bombs. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 03:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

It's been a week: then it is settled: the new standards will now go into effect. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 23:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I've started to mass-convert the articles' uses of NERV, SEELE, and GEHIRN to their non-capitalized versions. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, try to get to whatever I didn't in the initial wave; I changed most of the official stuff but its kind of everywhere; just sort of do it in dribs and drabs, i.e. if you happen to be editing "Rei Ayanami", while you're at it change the capitalization, etc. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 13:41, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully, I can get the rest of the articles changed tonight...I'm going to Hawaii for two weeks tomorrow and I may not have internet access. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 13:50, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I think I've got all of the changes done. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 18:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Live-Action movie project article deleted

The higher-ups on Wikipedia declared that there was not enough to justify an article on the live-action Eva project and deleted it. I'm sorry everyone.

However, at AnimeExpo2008 ADV at its panel confirmed that they are actively still trying to make the movie, that is, still actively shopping around from studio to studio to see who will front the money. Actually, they report people are more receptive to the idea now that Transformers made a lot of movie(actually I considered it awful both as a movie and as a Transformers story) it kind of showed Hollywood execs that a "Japanese cartoon about giant robots" can in fact be very lucrative in the US market. Does this justify resurrecting the article? Hmmm...actually I think wikipedia's higher-ups told us that only when "pre-production" (i.e. casting and/or set construction) begins can we actually make an article on it. Our hands are tied. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Topics page up for AfD

The article List of Neon Genesis Evangelion topics has been put up for AfD on account of redundancy. Since there's an active work-group for the Evangelion articles, I figure you guys ought to be notified at least. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_topics —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gelmax (talk • contribs) 17:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

revival

Revival of Evangelion has a merge tag on it... if it has significant sales/boxoffice in Japan, it probably should not be merged...

is there any foreign (non-Japan) releases of this? 70.55.86.100 (talk) 20:17, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

"Revival" is really an artifact of the release schedule of the series, rather than a "film" in its own right. I do believe the information there should be merged. (Frankly, even Death&Rebirth is just an artifact of the release schedule, and there's really only one real "Evangelion movie", End of Evangelion). --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 18:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

shortcuts?

You guys need shortcuts, I suggest WP:EVANGELION, WP:NGE, and you can takeover WP:EVA (since the wikiproject it's attached to is inactive). 76.66.198.171 (talk) 05:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure taking over the shortcut for another project is such a good idea, regardless of whether they're inactive (speaking of which, I shudder whenever I see an entire project devoted to one musical group, television show, etc.). 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 20:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's fortunate then that this project covers dozens of things! --Gwern (contribs) 00:30 10 January 2009 (GMT)

Or hundreds, or thousands... depends on how you count. ;) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 19:21, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

This isn't 1984, and we're not trying to use NewSpeak and gut the language and thus shorten our attention span. No, we do not need shortcuts. What is so wrong with writing it out in full? We're not here to make "a wiki only wikipedians can edit" but "a wiki anyone can edit". if we make lots of shortcuts in shorthand like "WP:NGE"...how are people supposed to know what that is, who aren't already working on it? It's exclusionary, and I will have none of it. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 13:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That attitude precludes the possibility of good usage of such shortcuts - there's an excellent essay on using these shortcuts intelligently, with carefully crafted text, instead of just forcefeeding the acronyms to everyone else and expecting them to sort it all out. The shortcuts themselves actually provide several benefits, not the least of which is being able to link to project pages without having to remember the exact title, which can be quite a chore considering the haphazard construction of the project namespace here. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 21:04, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

You have failed to persuade me. There simply aren't that many Evangelion articles. Adding in more templates and shortcuts in the name of "improving efficiency" is too frequently wikipedia-speak for "let's make a bloated bureacuracy no one can understand, to show off how we know how to use wiki-code to make fun templates!".....what I'm focusing on here is "intuitively, can someone who never edits articles and is purely read-only, understand and navigate these articles?"....and the answer is....pretty much "yes", actually. We've already got the templates on the bottom, we've got links to the Portal, and on the main Portal it says "join the work group". This isn't "WikiProject Middle-east" or something; we simply don't have enough volume to justify such rampant over-complication. Its...its like trying to convince the citizens of Springfield to build a Monorail, even though they have a small and centralized population. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 06:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, in regards to the essay you linked, I think you are ignoring large parts of it yourself. It does say they are for "improving efficiency"...well and good for things like deletion tags and so forth. But you yourself ignore the "don't scare off the noobies" section. Quite simply, a 26 episode popular anime series doesn't get heavy enough traffic, for the benefits of "efficient shortcuts" to outway "noobies won't understand it". Frankly, all of this insistence on "you need shortcuts!" reminds me of Aristophanes' play "The Birds", during the scene in which on founding their new city, all manner of lawyers converge on it insisting that they must use all sorts of complicated legal codes that they really don't actually need. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 07:02, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Wait a second, could you clarify exactly what you're talking about here? It sounds like you think this is about creating shortcuts for one or more of the Eva articles. (and BTW, which Springfield?) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 19:16, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The Simpsons, episode "Marge vs The Monorail". What I am talking about is that if we put a link "WP:NGE" it would be needlessly confusing and would NOT indeed, speed "efficiency". We aren't a big enough project to merit shortcut acronyms; it should be understandable to a person who doesn't even edit wikipedia. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:58, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I fail to see how such a shortcut could be confusing, unless it was used in a confusing manner. However, you seem to have the mistaken notion that I've been arguing in favor of shortcuts for this work group (let's please stop calling it a project, I keep thinking you're talking about WP:ANIME), when in fact I've merely been talking about the usage of shortcuts in general. Personally, I couldn't care less if this work group has one shortcut, none, or a dozen, since I never have any need to link to it. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 22:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The fact that someone like you or I who edits wikipedia alot might understand what it is, does not change the fact that other people probably wouldn't understand it. Just let it go. Yes, I consider shortcuts in general to be a monument to the clique-yness that has descended upon wikipedia. And if you don't care, there's no reason to keep replying. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 09:14, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

What, don't you enjoy talking with me? *grins* In any case, I suppose you are just as set in your position as I am in my own, so you are right in that further replies would simply be a waste of words and time on both our parts better spent actually improving the encyclopedia. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 18:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Verily. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

RCB

Red Cross Book has been nominated for deletion at WP:AFD 76.66.198.171 (talk) 05:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The article has been merged into The End of Evangelion per the results of the AFD. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 23:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Susan Napier's "When the Machines Stop" article

"On the plus side, JSTOR now apparently has Napier's "When the Machines Stop", which might be let us source some of the psychology stuff"

I have read the full article in JSTOR. And I can say with conviction that it is utter rubbish. Not to say simply that I disagree with the points she makes (which I do) but it's really just a thin once-over of the series that actually provides none of the in-depth psychological analysis you were looking for; it's really a description of the series which frankly the current wiki-article for "Neon Genesis Evangelion" outperforms. It's simply a basic description of the series. It's a very weak article...in the sense that it has nothing to do with the short story "When the Machine Stops" but she tries to shoehorn it in with that. The first 5 pages are just...fluff. Complicated fluff. But don't take my word for it.

Um...in terms of "useful quotes"...not much. She does a basic job of noting the Recession and the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

but much is just basic description:

“Constructing a mythic universe that is almost Blakean both in its complex mythic vision and in its dizzying array of Christian and Judaic religious symbols, the series questions the construction of human identity, not only in relation to the technology that the series’ plot and imagery insistently privilege, but also in relation to the nature of reality itself. Providing more riddles than solutions, the series takes the viewer on a journey into both inner and outer reality before ultimately leaving both its characters and its audience floating in a sea of existential uncertainty” (page 424)

“the other strand of the narrative is far more complex and provocative, as it becomes increasingly concerned with the problematic mental and emotional states of the main characters, all of whom carry deep psychic wounds and whose psychic turmoil is represented against an increasingly frenzied apocalyptic background in which it becomes clear that the threat from the Angels is matched by the machinations of various humans connected with Nerv” (page 435)

Napier barely understands the series and while she does seem to have watched the whole thing, she’s trying to shoehorn it into her own paper on existentialism. My point being, she focuses on all of the Christian and Gnostic symbolism, which Anno and other Gainax people have openly stated was just fluff they put in to look cool and not actually relevant to the plot. She point-blank says “they never reveal what the Angels are” (we here know the Red Cross Book ultimately said they’re from Adam as humans are from Lilith, etc.)

She didn’t understand that Rei *is* Lilith’s soul, so she misinterprets Rei’s interview in episodes 25 and 26 as being on a literal level.

She seems to think episodes 25 and 26 were seriously meant t be the ACTUAL finale, when they were not (though her analysis of them isn’t really affected by this).

Most of the time she’s just stating the obvious and things we knew already.

Worst of all….mid-paragraph she jumps from the Alternate Reality to the end. That is, she goes right from “he’s in this high school sex comedy happy version of his normally disturbing reality” to “I am me, I want to live in this world!”….ignoring that Shinji *rejected* the Alternate Reality even within episodes 25 and 26 itself. He goes through several mental shifts between the AR sequence and the final scene: she’s just conflating all of this together.

She mentions End of Evangelion in literally one sentence, in order to instantly disregard it as “just Anno’s revenge on the fans who didn’t like the TV ending and more of a parody of what they were expecting; using over the top violence” etc. She utterly disregarded End of Eva; we now know that End of Eva was more or less the originally intended ending (cell animation and scripts obviously in existence long before, Evangelion Proposal’s ending while different from EoE is more like it than the TV ending, etc.)

In short, she simply proved my long held theory: The Evangelion TV ending was high-grade pornography for philosophy majors, who then took it and championed it as the “real ending” and dismissed End of Eva as trash. In reality, Evangelion is a psychodrama (she does admit that it has very well developed psychoanalysis) and End of Evangelion faithfully delivers the full message….the TV ending is basically “we don’t have enough money to make the movie….let’s take the Third Impact scenes and show them out of context as TV episodes”

She doesn’t seem to grasp that “the world of Edenic bliss” offered by Instrumentality is explicitly presented as a BAD thing; there’s no pain but also no joy, and ultimately Shinji chooses to live in a world of flawed human beings because of their inherent “realness”, which is superior to any fantasy-world he can come up with, no matter how nice.

I think these are the words of a woman so shocked by the violence in End of Eva that she wrote it off instantly as “a parody” (LITERALLY one sentence) and utterly disregarded it. (for that matter, her works cited says she was using ADV’s “Perfect” collection DVDs and thus she never saw the Director’s Cut episodes.

13 years on, people have to let go of the “the TV ending is the only ending! And End of Eva was an insult! “ ideology, and embrace that End of Eva was indeed the originally intended, “real ending”, and the TV ending is an ‘’essential supplement’’ to End of Eva, essentially an extended version of the Third Impact scenes.

She focuses so much on “wow, there’s a million possible realities to choose from!”….ignoring the series’ ultimate message that basically yeah, Shinji can choose a million different audio tracks to play on his SDAT player and then crawl inside that world, just as otaku crawl into anime. But its all fake; there are millions of fantasy worlds, yes…but only one real world.

In conclusion, Napier's article says nothing particularly new or original about the series or in-depth. She ignores End of Eva, literally mentioning it in once sentence, in order to disregard it. Now, even if you are an ardent supporter of the TV ending and hate the movie ending.....she doesn't even grasp the TV ending that well. She randomly skips from the "Alternate Reality" scene to Shinji saying "I deserve to be here!" etc., mixing up events even from within the final episodes themselves. That said, she misses the entire point of Evangelion (which was made more clear in End of Eva) : yes, there are a million possible fantasy-world realities, but they're not "real" at all; they're just fantasy. What made the "Real World" have value was its real-ness. Just as Neo in The Matrix preferred the harsh reality of the Real World (and Cypher couldn't handle it), Shinji realizes that the flawed real world is more valuable than any fantasy world, simply because of its "realness". (This would seem to be a rejection of existentialism, actually). That's why he rejects Instrumentality at the end. The Point is that I doubt that any of the Napier article is usuable as a source for anything--Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 07:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Any chance of a link, dear? — ラビット The Black Rabbit of Inlé_{(This post is literally one sentence.)} 18:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

It's on JSTOR and you need a paid subscription for that. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:56, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a good analysis Veni. Way back when I was only using her article for Lain refs, but this sounds about right.

But I think you're missing the point. Reference-nazism is ultimately a very cynical, insulting, rules-lawyering point of view. You and I know EoE is not revenge on fans, we know the RCB and Secret Files contradict many popular views, etc. etc. But a reference-nazi cares only if the letter of the law is followed; they couldn't care less about whether something is true or common knowledge or anything - just whether it has a ref meeting RS.

The proper response to such mindless skepticism is an equally cynical employment of references as needed. If I were writing an essay on Eva, I certainly wouldn't use Napier because her level of understanding is far below even the average poster on eva-monkeys, say. But if I were writing a WP article, I certainly would. A published academic work, probably republished in one of her books... it meets the letter (but not the spirit).

Napier does some basic summary? Very good, then she provides a non-episode ref for some in-universe (oh noes!) plot summary.

She dismisses EoE as a parody? Very good, then we can introduce that as a criticism of EoE without fear of that snide {{who}} template.

She discusses imaginary worlds? Very good, then we can now add the most basic interpretation of those episodes without being tagged OR.

She covers Judeochristian imagery in too much detail, tracking down allusions? Very good, then now we can cite her when she's right and quietly ignore her when she's wrong.

She speaks in vague review generalities about how Eva "takes the viewer on a journey into both inner and outer reality before ultimately leaving both its characters and its audience floating in a sea of existential uncertainty"? Very good, we can quote her on this and perhaps readers will take away some understanding of the mindfuck-qualities of Eva.

So you see V, Napier is just fine for us. From a certain point of view. --Gwern (contribs) 20:05 23 January 2009 (GMT)

So in short what you're saying is, unfiltered, that Napier wrote a really bad article about Evangelion that obviously does not grasp the series at all and makes several major errors, but nonetheless that she at least touches upon several topics means we can quote segments of her writing out of context in order to make improvements to various articles, thus beating the "reference-nazis" at their own game?...Cool. But really I don't think any of it is incorporatable, beyond say, that quote I provide above where she's giving the most basic descriptions, like "it's almost Blakean" etc. Yes, that's a great idea: chop it up for out of context quotes to support stuff while not acknowledging that she barely even touched on the series (seriously, Eva has nothing to do with the "When the Machines Stop" short story she cites at the beginning, and she spent the whole thing trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Yeah use the quotes if you want, though I really can't think of any way to salvage information from it. Thank you. Furthermore (this is not directed at you but my general feelings) : THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW ALWAYS SUPERCEDES THE LETTER OF THE LAW --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 23:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically what I'm saying. I agree it's a bad idea, and mining it for quotes is about all that can be done with it. I hope I demonstrated just based on your particular points that the quotes would do yeoman's service in multiple articles.

And I do wish the old spirit of Wikipedia was still around. There was no need for this cynical approach back in late '03 when I first started editing anonymously. --Gwern (contribs) 02:11 27 January 2009 (GMT)

Vote on terminology standardization: "Lilim" vs "Lilin"

Since at least 100 years ago, fans have been spelling the word "Lilim" that Kaworu calls humans, who are the "Children of Lilith" (just as Angels are the "Children of Adam"). However, it might be a case of Engrish; we never actually see it written down in English characters in the original series. In the preview at the end of the first Rebuild of Evangelion film, they actually spell it "Lilin" with an "N". It's unknown if this was a deliberate change or if the line was just always slurred before. However, mutatis mutandi, the Rebuild of Evangelion instance is the first time its actually appeared in Latin characters. Therefore, I put to vote that we standardize the translation as "Lilin", using an "N". Vote ends a week from now. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 20:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Both Lilin and Lilim appear on the web in roman and hebraic forms (and -im is generally the plural form in hebrew). Apparently, Lilin is the most used in ancient texts (but this would need to be confirmed with more research) and by scholars. But anyway, the japanese word used in Evangelion is Lilin, and if we stick to the katakana there is no reason to romanize them otherwise, the use of "Lilim" in official translations is certainly due to the sources used by the translators to understand the word.

But to make it short, if Rebuild officialised the spelling Lilin, we should avoid confusing readers with two different spellings. And it would seem weird to contradict a spelling that directly appears in the movie. However standards at WP:ANIME recommand to use the names most known to the english speakers (and that would be the one used in the DVD subs, Lilim). I guess that since the name is only used in one episode this doesn't really matter, so I agree with you, V, but it is important to wait for other opinions.Folken de Fanel (talk) 11:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

edit : After reading the discussions at WP:ANIME, it appears that even in cases like that when official japanese romanizations and official english translations differ, the english translation (ie "the most commonly known") does have priority. Thus, I think this issue would require discussion directly at WP:ANIME, since chosing "Lilin" over "Lilim" is a direct contradiction to the general consensus about anime articles (which also apply to Eva).

I just wanted to clarify that if I reinstated "Lilin +" in the Eva 2.0 article, it's only because that's what is actually written on-screen.Folken de Fanel (talk) 15:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

...The original series never established what the proper spelling, Lilim or Lilin was. The original Japanese slurred the line (compare to the "Arucard" fiasco) and the English dub just made a mistake. By that logic, Misato's infamous "Adam came from Lilith" line in the English.....oh to heck with it I'll ask on WikiProject Anime and Manga...--Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 03:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

As stated, the version used in the official english sub/dub takes priority over any japanese useage. For example the pilots should be referred to as "First/Second/Third Child" and not "first/second/third children" as used by the japanese. Unless you can find a legitimate, reliable source to say the english teams made a mistake, it's just a guess. Also it's not uncommon for Anime to feature incorrect English or other languages simply because no one spotted the mistake. I believe there are other cases of this within Eva Dandy Sephy (talk) 04:15, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

....it makes no sense to perpetuate confirmed mistakes the English subs made, if we are certain they were mistakes. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 04:56, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

As I've said it's not a mistake since both spellings are attested. It's just that the translators read books or document that only used "Lilim" and overlooked the katakana. But it's not a mistake in romanization, since the translators didn't romanize, but chose instead to go with one of the attested spellings in western culture. So even if it doesn't stick to the japanese word, in the end it's the same.Folken de Fanel (talk) 14:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

There is also the possibility of finding sources where they meant to use of demons from Jewish folklore, even if they do not mention Lilin/Lilim by name. NM, it appears both spelling are correct for that as well. In this case what is widely know in the English-speaking world would be used, which is Lilim. If/when the remakes are brought over and translated using Lilin, then perhaps it should be changes, but with a note on its earlier usage.じんない 06:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

On further conferring about the standing wiki rules, it would be wiser to table this issue until the official English translation sub/dub is released, and see what they do now, before proceeding. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 00:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The "Rebuild of Wevangelion" problem

The original series spelled "Evangelion" as "エヴァンゲリオン". However, the "Rebuild of Evangelion" movie series spells "Evangelion" in katakana using "ヱヴァンゲリヲン". The big difference is that the first character is changed from E (kana) to We (kana), which has been obsolete since 1946. You see the idea is that it originally meant "we", but during the kamakura period is shifted to being synonymous with "e"; "ヱ" became redundant in pronunciation with "エ" so they stopped using "ヱ", but they still sometimes use it in spelling out foreign words ("Evangelion" is a greek word, after all). Compare this to when you write the lowercase letter "a" using cursive script, and someone says "that looks like a Q". ------->the problem is that a few fans I've encountered insist "that means it's pronunced "Wevangelion" now!"....which is silly. They're obviously referring to the greek word "Evangelion" and "Wevangelion" is gibberish. Why did they make the switch?.....sometimes its fun to use silly fonts! Anyone on the internet knows how fun it sometimes is to change the fonts. They did this alot in the original series, also; playing around with capitalizing things that shouldn't be, etc. The point is that now, in the 21st century, they spelled it with another character to make a funny logo, but they clearly didn't INTEND for it to be spelled or pronounced differently: the world is still spelled "Evangelion" in Latin script in the film, and *pronounced* "Evangelion" in the film. Actually....compare it to if I take a letter "E" in a logo, and stylize it by tilting it on its side until it almost looks like a "W". That doesn't mean its pronounced differently, that just means the logo was stylized. I mean when i was a kid, for years I thought that "Disney" was spelled with a "G" because the "D" was drawn very squiggly.

My proposal is that we explain this on the main "Rebuild of Evangelion" page but confine it there (not on the individual movie pages), and then for the pronunciation sections at the top of each article, change it to no longer say "Wevangelion" because it's obviously not what they intend, it's just an alternate way to read a character. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 01:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I Agree. If in Hepburn romanization these kana are considered obsolete and assimilated to newer ones, then we'll stick to that. Hepburn is not based on spelling but on pronunciation, and the aim of putting romanization is not to confuse readers with contradicting pronunciation (since, as you have said, V, the japanese still say "Evangelion" then the romanization must correspond to it). I've already seen official japanese romanization charts using "e" for "ヱ", so I don't see why we would have to bother with fan spelling ("Wevangeliwon" primarily appeared on forums as a joke or a misunderstanding). And considering ヱヴァンゲリヲン is a 2007 word and not an historic one like Yebisu, I don't think we should take obsolete Hepburn charts into account. The whole matter of course deserves a note in the article, but in my opinion not to the point of resurrecting dead standards.

I also note that these changes to "Wevangeliwon" are almost always due to anon IPs obviously trying to have fun with articles. So I propose that any change to the romanizations should be considered vandalism (and reverted on sight) unless it is approved after a proper debate.Folken de Fanel (talk) 18:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Well I don't know if we should go so far as to consider it "Vandalism" and consider these people trying to do something malicious: I think many of them are simply mistaken, or they heard it on a forum and thought it was fact. (also, the last IP address making those changes originated in Brazil, so maybe he just doesn't understand enough Japanese or English to understand the subtle difference). But yes: the standard Romanization of the character (following it becoming obsolete) is still "E", and the film clearly pronounces it "Evangelion" and spells it "Evangelion" extensively in Latin characters appearing throughout the film. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 19:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)