"NEON GENESIS EVANGELION" lyrics:
"Everything you've ever dreamed"

• Original Verse by Hideaki ANNO (Transliteration & Translation)
• Translation Notes
• English Adaptation by Mike WYZGOWSKI
• Original Verse by Hideaki ANNO (Original Japanese)

This is the sister piece to "Amaki shi yo, kitare"/"Komm, süsser Tod", created by the exact same people: original lyrics by Hideaki Anno, "translation" (or, one might say, "radical reinterpretation") into English by Mike Wyzgowski, musical composition by Shiro Sagisu, and vocals by ARIANNE. Unfortunately, it -- along with several other original pieces composed by Sagisu for "End of Evangelion" -- never made it into the movie, for reasons I can only guess at. (Anno originally did have plans for an EoE somewhat longer than the one we know, if that's at all telling.) On the bright side, all of these outtakes -- even the pieces that were technically never finished! -- have been published in the CD set "S^² Works", including, of course, "EYED". (How's that for an acronym?)

To my knowledge, no one has attempted a straight translation of Anno's original EYED and made it available for the Internet masses. I have a limited understanding of Japanese (certainly better than none at all, if you're a casual connoisseur of Japanese stuff like me), which permits me to determine at least the jist of the lyrics. So, until a better translation comes along (oh Bochan_bird~!!), here's my own über-dodgy take on "Everything you've ever dreamed". Evidently, the song is about the rather dysfunctional relationship between Shinji and Asuka ("I hate you! Yet, I need you!"), so connoisseurs of those two characters should find the song especially meaningful. Well, in a twisted, slightly depressing sort of way. Rather a shame this song didn't play at the end of EoE, no?

The transliteration is presented in my usual notation, BTW: Lowercase = hiragana, bold = kanji, and ALL CAPS = katakana. Also included for your perusement are my Happy Translation Notes, Mike Wyzgowski's English adaptation, and even the original Japanese, for those of you with Japanese character-friendly browsers. Enjoy!

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This is not the sort of stuff total amateurs like myself should be trying to translate! Oh, the pain, the pain! It doesn't help that Anno's "poetic style" goes less well into English than a lot of stuff I've encountered.

01: Obviously, here, "CHORUS" isn't referring to a refrain or something (the part of the song that gets repeated multiple times). EYED's narrator is in the first person (as indicated by the many occurrences of boku, the humble male pronoun for "I"), so "CHORUS" is evidently designating the lyrics that are "spoken" by a second party, or, perhaps, by the narrator to himself. I can't be certain, as no "you" pronouns are ever used.

04, 05, 07: "tsuk.ete ... kizu", "KIZU tsui.ta", "KIZU o tsuk.eta" -- does the word order and the presence of the particle o have any bearing on the ultimate meaning? For the record, kizutsukeru means "to hurt, injure, damage"; kizutsuku, "to be hurt, be injured, be damaged". There's a good chance I've misinterpreted who's hurting whom (this passive/active stuff is one place where I really begin to lose it), though we'll hope that's not the case. On another note, there are only so many ways to translate this kizu & tsukeru stuff before it begins to sound awkward and redundant in English, so I abbreviated things a bit.

10, 11: Literally, "Hurting her, was it sorrowful? Hurting her, was it painful?" Awkward, no?

12: Chigau is technically the verb "to differ", but it's used very often to refute something. I.e., "No! That's wrong!" People in anime shout it a lot to sound dramatic. ;;> "CHIGAU!"

13, 14: By the same token as 10 and 11: "Hurting her was pleasant. Hurting her was delightful." Maybe I should have left it that way?

15: Confusingly enough, yurusu also means "to forgive". WHICH ONE IS RIGHT? ::fountain tears::

17: Shiru typically means "to know about, to be aware of", but "to feel" works just as fine here. My translation above seemed like a vaguely more eloquent way of saying "Ever since I knew about the pain in my heart" (what I originally got for that line).

19: And a certain theme from "Amaki shi yo, kitare" rears its ugly head... At least Anno's consistent. ;;>

20: "Die, Shinji, Die!" Woops, better watch myself there...

21, 22: Yes, I know. Terribly redundant. -_-; Must just be my translation.

23: "But that girl hasn't met me"?!?! N-nani?! If the narrator hasn't met the chick, how the hell did he "hurt" her earlier? Or does au have another meaning that I'm not aware of...? Are we talking about "meeting with" rather than, say, "meeting (for the first time)"? (Maybe... like... "going to see someone"? Meow... ;;}) There's definitely SOMEthing here I'm not understanding right. E-mail this lamb gone astray and put her back on the right track, otherwise the second half of EYED won't make any sense at all!

26: A lot of tentative guesswork on my part. This line was a biznatch.

27: And on the other extreme of things -- easy as PAI.

28: Tsugunai? Like the video game? ...just kidding. The whole ni wa thing is still a mystery to me. I get ni. I get wa. But ni wa?! Gehhhhh?? I also don't know why there's a comma after the first wa here. What does it do to the sentence structure, aside from making me very confused?

32: "Everything" isn't actually specified (like with minna or something); I just threw it in to make the translation easier. ::p

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Positive stuff, no? Let's see what sorts of creative liberties Wyzgowski-san took with EYED, and sing along with ARIANNE while we're at it. I'm typing these lyrics up exactly as they appear in the booklet of "S2 Works" (well, I do that little "* repeat" thing to be economic, and I made one "addition" in brackets), so, if all goes well, any errors won't be my fault (if you follow my meaning...). ;;>

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And, to bring this spirit-lifting presentation to a close, a carefully-chosen screenshot that encompasses the most positive aspects of Anno's inspiring lyrical!

Hmm, maybe I should just keep my tongue out of my cheek...

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All transliteration and translation work is by, and all original content is the copyright of, Rachel K. Clark. [That's me.]
"Everything you've ever dreamed" page originally posted September 26, 2003. Updated somewhat January 19, 2004.