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Later on, Shinji remarks that this is the first time anyone has told him they love him. This translation change is not only emotionally meaningful but dramatically so. The top row is the original translation, followed by Netflix’s new version on the second row. Below is a comparison between the original English translation of the series from the ’90s, originally released by the Japanese studio Gainax, and Netflix’s version, illustrating the type of translation shift that fans are particularly unhappy about. Now, 24 years after Eva first debuted in 1995, the new, official Netflix translation of the anime has significantly altered some of Kaworu and Shinji’s most famous interactions to be less, well, gay.

That makes it particularly significant that the hero Shinji has a close friendship with another boy, Kaworu, who openly declares his love for him. Eva, is a dark, complex anime series that spends a lot of time focusing on sexual exploration and the development of sexual and romantic relationships. (I’ve reached out to Netflix for comment.) The new Netflix translation waters down the homoerotic nature of one of the series’ significant relationships And that has only stoked debate about why that queer reading of the original series wasn’t seen as the most accurate one in the first place. But a long, systemic tradition of queer erasure has prompted the most vocal fans to criticize the Netflix translation for seemingly diminishing what they call the series’ previously unambiguous queerness. There are other differences to the show that longtime viewers have taken issue with - most notably the removal of the series’ famous ending theme, variants of the classic jazz standard “Fly Me to the Moon,” due to licensing issues. Given that the boys’ relationship is an important turning point for the series and its feature film continuations, it’s a strange choice, and one that has alienated many fans. The late-series love expressed between the main character, Shinji, and his close friend Kaworu, seems to have been inexplicably reframed as a less overtly romantic kind of friendship - to the extent that in some scenes, the word “love” has been replaced with more euphemistic words.

Netflix’s biggest and most troubling edit to the show, for which the platform created a new English-language translation and voice track, dials back its famous homoerotic subtext.

Netflix’s highly anticipated rerelease of the 1995 anime masterwork Neon Genesis Evangelion was supposed to be a triumph for the company and for anime fandom - but the show’s streaming debut has already been met with fierce backlash from fans, due to two major changes from the series’ original version.

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