Neon Genesis Evangelion:
S² Works Music Menu

Precisely what is a "music menu"? Here's how I understand it: During the preproduction of an anime, one of the bigshots in charge (in this case, almost certainly Anno) produces a list of the individual musics (s)he wants the composer to create -- the music menu. Each letter (A, B, C) is a general category and each number (1, 2, 3) represents an individual composition. Every individual entry has a short description of what the piece is intended for, the mood it needs to capture, and sometimes even suggestions for the music style or instruments to be used. For cinematic productions, all of the pieces are designated "M-##". "NGE" is not the only anime to employ this system -- I've seen the same thing going on in "Fushigi no umi no NADIA", "Shoujo Kakumei UTENA", "Kokaku Kidoutai" (a.k.a. "Ghost in the Shell"), and no doubt many others of which I'm not aware.

This is a transliteration and translation of pages 12~14 from the S² Works booklet. I had a worse time with this than I usually get, so the endnotes are plentiful (37 in all!). At least some of them are random factoids or comments instead verbosely relating the point "ARGH! I CANNAE TRANSLATE THIS!!!"

ENDNOTES A-PLENTY!

01: Shin Seiki EVANGERION literally translates to "New Century Evangelion" (with "evangelion" being Greek for "gospel" or some such thing). However, Anno's official English equivalent for the title is "Neon Genesis Evangelion" -- and, contrary to popular myth, he didn't create the alternate title for ADV's sake.

02: Lots of these entries contain references for (A) the sorts of situations in the anime a music piece is intended for and (B) the sorts of qualities the piece of music ought to have (assuming the music menu was penned before Shiro-san got to work composing). For example, in this entry, "serious and mysterious" refers to the piece, not the character for whom the piece is intended (though both words certainly describe Rei herself, as well).

03: Asuka, "optimistic"? Well, in the first half of the series, maybe. Odd how this piece ended up being delegated to Shinji's S-DAT and Asuka ended up with the delightfully hokey B-17 as her "theme" instead.

04: But we all know which song ended up being the angels' collective "theme"... ::starts 'singing' "Angel Attack"::

05: Gawd, this was a tough one. I could only find DOHADE on a page called Japanese slangs you won't find in a dictionary (how appropo), though the only meaning listed was "extremely bright and colorful clothes (with a very busy design)." Er, okay, how does that apply to a piece of music? I took a guess, anyway. DON is one of those annoying onomatopeia words -- and a staple of manga sound effects -- though it evidently can refer to the sound made by a taikou drum.

06: Omoku is, I believe, the adverbial form of omoi, "heavy", "serious", etc. If it appears AS an adverb, that's all well and good, but what about when it appears completely by itself, which it has a bad habit of doing in this music menu?? Gwar.

07: "Beautifully illusionary past", huh? Sounds terribly suspiciously dodgy to me! As for ARUKA, I have no idea -- I couldn't find any possibilities that made sense in context.

08: Another trouble one. The whole sentence "GACHAGACHA to wake no wakaranai kanji" is just mind-boggling for some reason; the "translation" is the most coherent thing I could wring from it, though it's probably wrong.

09: This is a little awkward, because, in English, "description" is often used in lieu with words or pictures, not music. Though when you think about it, music can indeed be used to describe something -- such as, in this case, an emotion or psychological state.

10: There's that bloody GACHAGACHA again. Yeah, "clatter" is the only meaning I have available that might work. I doubt they're talking about the noise some kind of cricket makes here.

11: Dagnammit, how come sometimes they separate things with that floating dot and othertimes with a big space? It all confuses the hell outta me! ::dizzy::

12: And here, they're actually using a to to separate the two items in the description! So why not a floating dot this time? ::head explodes::

13: In one of my earlier attempts to translate the music menu, I somehow came up with "catalysis". ::chortle:: Now, what the he11 is "catalysis"?! (Almost sounds like it could be a real word, though.)

14: "Spirited felicity with cheerful vigor"? Okay, I'll admit, some of this Japanese stuff sounds extremely cheesy when you translate it directly, but I'm not skilled enough to make it sound more natural, know what I mean? So put up with da cheese!

15: ARGH! The endnotes never end! Couldn't find choi by itself anywhere (though choi-choi means "often" or "frequently", which doesn't make too much sense in this context). Jimi is "plain" or "simplistic" -- though what the frell does the me on the end do? ::shrugs:: I sort of BSed the "translation" here. ::p

16: Okeys, this is confusing. Nichijou seems to be normally used in an adjectival sense, as it means "ordinary", "regular", or "everyday". But here, it has nothing to modify; it stands on its own. I'm interpreting it in the sense of "the everyday" (sort of like, er, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" -- that sort of thing). Dunno if that's right, but whatever.

17: Gawd no! Not more cheesy-sounding translation work! NOOOOOOOooooo!

18: Literally, something like "a night sky that seems like you can see straight through it" -- not quite sure how that you na is working here. However, there's an obvious correlation between the menu description and Anno's final title for the piece. "A Crystalline Night Sky" pretty much means whatever the Japanese here is trying to say, anyway, so why not use it for the translation?

19: Shiten no hirogari didn't translate too well... It's literally "spreading of viewpoint", but that doesn't make much sense, does it? I think I have a sense of what it's really referring to, but it's pretty difficult to verbalize. Drat.

20: "Light" probably in the sense of "non-serious" here. Though karuku is an adverb, so I guess that would be "lightly"...? ::p

21: Literally, "superior power". Evidently, music for a battle where the good guys have the upper hand. Ended up being used only for Nigouki's debut, though.

22: Well, the JWPce dictionary lists ressei as "numerical inferiority", though it makes more sense here used as the opposite of yuusei. Guess this one refers to a battle where the good guys aren't doing so hot? (In some cases, anyway, that's how the piece DID end up getting used -- though only with the "fast tempo" variation.)

23: Okay, that's an über-literal translation, and it sounds über-crappy as a result. (Well, look on the bright side... Imagine if I'd rewritten it to sound like "natural English"! Er... lessee... "Getting into a real pickle! Our heroes' morale is hit, and hit hard!" On second thought, forget it.) The verbs seemed to make more sense when I simplified them all to "set in"... Literally, they're saying, like, "sets in and pushes toward ... something-or-another" (translating anything "-te kiru" tends to be a biznatch for me -_-;).

24: Something about "time" here doesn't sound quite right, but it was in English to begin with! How many different ways could I translate it?!

25: OH GAWD THE PAIN! TRANSLATION NIGHTMARE!!! I can't figure out this one. Taeru means "to bear" or "to endure", so taete ita would mean "was bearing with" or "was enduring". Tokoro, when it follows a verb, means "on the point of", "almost", or "just when"; i.e., "on the verge of vomitting" or "just when I died", or something. ;;> So, er, "was on the point of bearing with"? "Just when <something> was being endured"? Talk about awkward. And kara no... Crap, kara makes sense to me SOMEtimes, but not here. That dai-gyakuten-geki nightmare, I dunno about that... Dai is "big" or "great"; gyakuten is a "(sudden) change" or "turnaround" (like winning when defeat seemed certain); and geki means "play" (like a drama or something).

So what the hell does all that stuff mean when it's thrown into the same sentence? Damned if I know... The gyakuten part makes sense in accordance with "crisis --> escape" and, indeed, the song itself: It sounds dreadfully ominous until it enters a second part when everything sounds peachy, with an Olympian sort of dignity to it, as if our heroes have just been in a REALLY bad plight but the situation faced a major, well, turnaround. But, with my skills, that sentence (an incomplete sentence at that) is just totally untranslateable. Gomen, folks.

26: An "eyecatch" refers to the screens that pop up in anime with the episode's title or represent the midway point (or, might we say, tell us it's time for a commercial break -- but, then, most of us English-speakers aren't watching our anime on Japanese TV). The eyecatch in NGE is that thing that pops up halfway through the episode with the title of both the anime AND that particular episode -- catches your eye, doesn't it? Hence the name, I guess. It probably goes without saying that NGE's eyecatch is silent, though -- this track wasn't used, and probably for the better.

27: Does, like, a half a second really matter? (Or am I interpreting that "half" incorrectly...?) BTW, I believe the KAKKO yoku here is an adverbial form of the ever-present KAKKO ii, which one usually uses to say "Cool!" ;;>

28: "Bridge"? WTF's that supposed to mean? Evidently, it's used here to mean a short piece of music that, I suppose, bridges between two scenes. So they'd be used at either the very beginning of one (right after the previous scene ended) or at the very end of one (right before the next scene starts), I suppose.

29: "Fushigi no umi no Nadia" -- or "Nadia: The Secret of the Blue Water" -- is the anime series directed by Anno prior to "Evangelion". And, heh, guess who composed the music. ::p

30: "ED" is the abbreviation commonly used to designate the ending theme of an anime. Which means, argh, yes -- yet ANOTHER arrangement of the ubiquitous FMTTM.

31: The second "E-15" is almost certainly a typo for "E-16", being as DISC-03 has E-15 ("MAGMADIVER") followed up by E-16 ("THE BEAST II"), both of which are variations upon E-1 -- and, indeed, the tempo of E-16 is slow compared to E-15.

32: According to AchtungAffen on the AnimeNation "Evangelion" Forum, the Bach piece in question is specifically "Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007". Also odd how ol' J.S. wasn't credited in the appendix section, eh?

33: I received an e-mail at some point informing me that this track is a compilation of different classical pieces -- though I can't seem to locate the message now that I've finally gotten around to updating my "S2 Works" page! ;_; I know practically zilch about classical music (unfortunately), so any help here would be appreciated.

34: Couldn't locate a definite for soushuuhen -- literally, "all gathered compilation". :chortle: Obviously, though, there has be a more defined meaning somewhere. Best I could get was soushuu, "anthology". Probably, this term is referring to "DEATH" before Anno came up with the name for his "theatrical clip show". This works, because the entry under M-12 for Pachelbel's Canon says it's used for the soushuuhen ED -- and, as you might know, the Canon is eventually used for the credits in "DEATH". This piece, alternatively, ends up having nothing to do with "DEATH" and is eventually used for that lovely scene where poor Nigouki is ripped apart. ;_; (The menu seems to suggest that M-8 was originally intended for the purpose, however.)

35: Female chorus, eh? If you've heard this track, you know there ain't no female chorus in it! Then again, the appendix also lists the track as mikansei, or "unfinished". A shame -- what's there in the track is nice, though a chorus would've added a lot.

36: Okay, I'm not sure if "put together" is quite the right verb choice. The whole ni yoru mono desu bit confuses me. ::p

37: Sorry, this is the most cohesive translation I could get, but it doesn't make much sense. I'm not quite sure WHAT this footnote is trying to say about B-11 (an item listed in the music menu as kyoufu -- "terror" -- but missing from the CD set), B-20 (the track "Rei II", which is NOT listed in the music menu), and A-13 (the five variations of "Rei I"). My inability to comprehend really long friggin' sentences in Japanese might have something to do with this. ::p

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All transliteration and translation work done by Rachel K. Clark. Don't use without my permission, please! (But, then again, who would want to?)
This here "S2 Works Music Menu" page first posted October 30, 2003.