One of the most staggering, almost undeniable examples of similarity is Spike Jonze’s Her and Clamp’s Chobits. Although Del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beachman both admit to knowing NGE, Del Toro also confusedly said “I have the DVDs, I haven’t opened them.”
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Both series feature mechas being piloted by people using a “neutral interface,” and in the 2012 film Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 they even flew dual-piloted “Evas” not unlike the machines used in Guillermo del Toro’s movie. Yet it pays homage to a far weirder, more acclaimed source: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hideaki Anno’s animated clusterfuck that began to unravel into philosophical mumblings as depression set in and animation budgets were slashed. Last year’s blockbuster Pacific Rim owes a great deal to Japanese giant robot shows like Gundam.
That said, Satoshi Kon’s parade of toys and cultural icons is a far brighter, stranger aesthetic than the glum metropolitan vistas of Nolan. Paprika has a huge cult following and Nolan has quietly admitted a similarity.
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Inception, as well as being frighteningly similar to a Scrooge McDuck comic, seems inspired by the 2006 movie Paprika, about psychiatrists who are able dive into other people’s dreams and use this to try and solve crimes. Whether it be the pulpy space operas of Outlaw Star or Cowboy Bebop which predate the likes of Firefly, or Ghost in the Shell, which was a major influence on The Matrix, anime became a crucible for interesting tales of the future: so much so The Matrix even had an anime spin-off movie.īut the last decade or so has seen an increase in Hollywood movies that don’t admit inspiration from or similarity to some of Japan’s biggest exports. It was in this same year that Japan’s biggest dystopian manga was first published: Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, the story of a post-nuclear world where orphan thugs are captured by the government to exacerbate their psychic powers.īut from this point it’s safe to say Japanese animation was often at the fore of producing weird and wonderful visions of a future ruled by technology and dubious morals. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?).
The West has often produced philosophical sci-fi, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 all the way up to the film Blade Runner in 1982 (adapted from Phillip K. Which is not to say they were the only pieces to explore this subject: even Stephen King did so in his novel The Longest Walk. Collins claimed to have never read the book. When Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games was released in 2008 Japanophiles were quick to note the similarities between Katniss Everdeen volunteering to enter a fight to the death for teenagers and Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel Battle Royale, in which every year a random class of Japanese school kids is put on an island and forced to kill each other. But it’s not just Nolan who has been inspired by Japan’s animated pantheon. Hell, even Digimon’s third season explored the dark reality of human computer programs finding sentience in the virtual world. The story of a man who, in death, is granted immortality and omnipotence through technology, is the sort of thing Japanese anime and manga has done ad nauseam. Especially in Transcendence, co-produced by Nolan, which continues the grand theme of suspiciously familiar plots.