Criticism
On August 9, 2019, Sadamoto criticized on Twitter a statue featured in the "After 'Freedom of Expression'?" historical art exhibition at the Aichi Prefecture Museum of Art, Statue of Peace (2011), by Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sang memorializing comfort women, girls who worked in wartime brothels in World War II for the Japanese military. The statue was first installed by its creators in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul as a form of political protest. He also criticized a movie in the exhibition that showed a picture of the Emperor of Japan being burned and then stomped underfoot, he referred to it as "indistinguishable from a certain country's style of propaganda". Sadamoto said "I wanted it to be an art event with academic contemporary art at its core...Remove the crazy [propaganda]-affirming media and the exhibition could still be redeemed." he follows "I'm not going to completely reject the act of turning propaganda into art, but honestly speaking, it did not speak to me at all on an artistic level." His comments have been criticized by some Koreans and English speakers who replied to his tweet with displeasure of his views.[2]
Later, Sadamoto claimed he merely disliked the statue's design, but liked Korean idols and even had Korean friends.[3]
After 3.0, Sadamoto did not return to work on the final Rebuild movie, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time, and has had a diminishing role in the tetralogy. Character design, as well as authorship for the spin-off manga Evangelion 3.0 (-120 min.), was instead handed to Hidenori Matsubara for most of the Rebuilds, with Sadamoto being credited instead as "original character design" in 2.0, 3.0 and 3.0+1.0, with diminishing involvement in a supervisory role for 2.0 and 3.0. He was also not interviewed for the last two films.[4] Many fans, primarily Korean ones, protested at Sadamoto's statements, and asked if he was still involved with the new Eva movie. Sadamoto denied this and stated he had completely resigned from Khara and had "no involvement whatsoever".[5]
