Unusual kanji usage in Eva movies

Japanese Language
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I finally got time to watch the last Eva Rebuild movie and because it’s been a while since I watched the previous movies I am not watching them all again. Now fully in Japanese.

Noticed a weird thing written in the photo (circled in red):

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シンジくん江

I understand it’s just a way to write へ but I find it quite strange. Is that sort of a funny thing? I mean looking at the rest of the writing on the photo the viewer should understand that woman in the photo is a quirky lady, I guess?

Hmm, actually, the same thing is on the NERV onboarding booklet :man_shrugging:

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Not え?
EDIT: Though the Twitter handle is translated as “welcome to” so I guess it’s へ after all.

Either way, it feels like it’s EVA trying to be fancy :smiley:

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It is definitely へ in both cases:

  • “To Shinji-kun,”
  • “Welcome to NERV”

But I didn’t get what you mean, which twitter handle?

Btw, now I see what the hell Human Instrumentality Project is in Japanese:

人類補完計画

Basically it means something like a project of fixing the human race, implying it’s broken in some way.

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Have a look at the names of some of the UN agencies in Japanese :joy:

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EVA never doesn’t try to be fancy. If something can be written in kanji, it will be. If there’s a relatively obscure version of a kanji, it will be used. The episode numbers use the banknote kanji. 庵野さん I respect your craft but can’t なぜ be written in kana?

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The numbers are relatively common, though.

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It seems that Eva didn’t come up with this. Found an article that says that 〇〇さん江 can be seen on gifts, autographs, wreaths etc. There’s no commonly accepted origin for this usage though.

You can read the article here

But that’s definitely a weird way to write へ which must’ve been used for artistic purposes.

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