By Bob Clark
When Hideaki Anno began his Rebuild of Evangelion series, retelling the story of his infamously popular anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, it would’ve appeared at first to be nothing more than just another stab at “Special Edition” filmmaking, the kind of approach that George Lucas took when he revisited his original Star Wars trilogy back in 1997 with updated CGI special-effects and a few revisionist edits– irrelevant and harmless changes for most viewers, but anathema to anyone who guards the films themselves as closely as an Otaku’s collection of toys and souvenirs. Fans of Evangelion might’ve had reason to react just as jealously to the news of Anno’s decision to go back to the series that had won him droves of support and just as many droves of criticism as well, usually from the very same people– like Lucas before him, Anno tends to bring out the more bipolar tendencies in modern fandom. To a large extent, that passive-aggressive appreciation has been somewhat mutual on the director’s part, as evidenced by the End of Evangelion film, which saw fit to wrap the original program’s already confusing storyline with even more confusing hallucinatory and apocalyptic imagery, culminating in a series of disturbing sequences that seemed tailor designed to upset the massive fanbase built up over the years, symbolically and literally crucifying the characters they’d come to know and love and stranding them into their own private wastelands of existential and global collapse.
Therefore, when 2007’s Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone was released and mostly stuck close to the original series’ first six episodes in everything from the story to shot-for-shot recreations, albeit at a much grander scale for theatrical production, it seemed as though all we’d be getting from the Rebuild series in general would be a mere retread of all the old familiar places, with perhaps a somewhat more unified vision by pulling together all the disparate strands of the franchise’s animated incarnations, however welcome that might’ve been. If fans really do feel married to the franchises they follow, it looked like all they’d be getting would be something borrowed, instead of something new. Well, not quite, as it turns out. If 1.0 was a mere “Special Edition” of the first arc of the show, then Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance is closer in spirit to the wildly revisionist, yet authentic take of a franchise’s spirit of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, recasting all the same archetypes and mis-en-scene into a wonderfully bright and new visual and narrative palate, recycling just enough of what was in play from before in order to better confound, surprise and delight audiences who think they know what they’re in for.
Dedicated fans of Neon Genesis will recognize the key points of the architecture which forms 2.0‘s plot, from Asuka’s introduction battling a monstrous Angel at sea to the devastating assaults on NERV’s headquarters and hardware, which leaves all three of the young-teen pilots in critical and uncertain fates, and while plenty more dots between those are connected in familiar ways, the film in question here is far more diverse and unique in the way it reaches those places than the previous feature. In many ways, it’s not surprising– though it hewed a little snuggly to the television version, You Are (Not) Alone was by most accounts wise in adhering to the feature-friendly plot of the series’ first six episodes, focusing largely on the relationship between the perennially depressed and antisocial Shinji and Rei, allowing Operation Yashima to serve as an emotionally satisfying climax, with both the young pilots connecting with one another on the battlefield and privately, fighting with all of the electrical power of Japan coursing through their mecha-units. Even in the televised versions, there was a natural dramatic progression in those installments which provided an easily identifiable beginning, middle and open-ended conclusion, with the tragically withdrawn Rei finally mustering a smile for the first time. That’s not quite the case with the rest of the series, which grew more episodic and purposefully repetitive after the inclusion of the more outgoing, but no less troubled Asuka to the cast, and this difference in the quality of the source-material is likely the deciding factor in Anno’s creative course-correcting throughout You Can (Not) Advance, as major incidents from the series are either dramatically changed or abandoned altogether in order to better serve a feature-length theatrical adaptation.
Furthermore, many changes which at first glance may appear to be nothing but time-saving measures or outright fanservice (something Anno has been decidedly two-faced about whenever he indulges in it) can at great length turn out to help foster a deepening of characters, themes and plot than even the television series had at similar points. There is a new emphasis on the attempts by the three children to connect with one another and those around them that was absent in the original, a creative measure which provides an overall narrative arc for this installment of the Rebuild series that continues the examination of social behavior from Neon Genesis in a manner that is somewhat more accessible and emotional, but never outright sentimental. Sometimes, Anno builds from existing subplots from the series, like Shinji’s search for approval from his uncaring father. At others, he fashions new storylines, like the attempts by Rei and Asuka to form new bonds with their peers by learning how to cook. At the best of moments, however, Anno finds existing material and takes it into strikingly new and different directions, at times almost completely changing the way we look at a character, event or institution that we believed we previously had a firm grasp on, but instead of redefining them past the point of recognition, reworks them just far enough to inject a sense of vitality into the old while pushing it closer to its true nature, giving us just that much more insight and understanding into the mysteries at hand.
Of all the classic elements to undergo this kind of change, perhaps the boldest and most satisfying is the transformation of the red-haired and fiery tempered Asuka into something more than just another anime pin-up girl with a bad attitude, as she had a tendency to be portrayed throughout the original series. Though she eventually grew more complex as the show progressed, there was always something about her aggressively egotistical personality that felt a little one-note (though one could say that about the other characters, as well). For the first half of her appearances, she seemed less a complete character of her own, and more of a foil for Shinji and Rei, seemingly confident and capable in every way that their more introverted souls were not. By the end, of course, it could be argued that she was the most genuinely psychologically damaged of the three children, with emotional scars far deeper and more down-to-earth than either young Ikari’s rote conflict with his father or Ayanami’s typical sci-fi existential crisis. 2.0 wisely fastforwards through a good deal of Asuka’s character arc, and even excises large chunks of stuff that defined at least her confident and capable facade from the series– no longer is she the super-popular gadfly of the group, but instead just as anti-social as the other Eva pilots in her own Queen Bee way, and no longer does she swoon over Misato’s longterm love/hate object Kaji, exchanging that for an implicit crush on Shinji. The biggest change may come in how her introduction effectively alters her entire character arc. In Neon Genesis, Asuka often boasted about her skills as behind the controls of her fire-engine red Eva unit, but seldom actually demonstrated herself as a solo-pilot. Either with somebody else shoehorned into her cockpit or forced to work as part of a team, her successes are always shared with others, as opposed to Shinji’s frequent one-on-one fights against the Angels– it wasn’t really until End of Evangelion that she finally got to show what she was made of.
Now, however, she bursts onto the scene slaying one of those abstract-looking monstrosities of Biblical naming all by herself, in mid-air, and in record time. For the first time, Asuka is set up as truly deserving the hyperbolic praise she assigns herself, and becomes less a stuck-up drama queen and more an overachieving diva. She’s less cheerleader, this time, and more Reese Witherspoon’s character from Election, only here she’s obsessing over becoming the best and most independent Eva pilot, instead of becoming school president. It helps make her more abrasive characteristics easier to relate with, and even turns her into a sympathetic figure much quicker than in the narrative arc of the series– right from the start we see her isolating herself from her peers, sulking off into a corner to talk to herself with her puppet-doll from childhood or zone out playing video-games on her Game Boy (a little like Shinji listening to his Walkman over and over again). It helps make her increasing realization of how much she depends on the other pilots more touching, and even allows her to reach out for some kind of human company before she’s called out for a pivotal mission– everyone, in fact, makes greater efforts to connect with one another this time around, enjoying sweet little moments of social happiness before things come crashing down against them all over again. Like the series, 2.0 is a poignant portrait of the trails and tribulations of growing and maturing in a desperate and hostile world, but for all the hardships there are a few more quiet periods of comfort and contact that help serve as bittersweet contrast to the tragic failures and make them feel all the more painful. This is still a picture of the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, only this time there’s just enough skin-to-skin contact before the needles sink in to make that bloodletting even more awful to behold.
Of course, there’s a whole host of prerequisite stuff throughout that I haven’t even gotten to yet, the big flashy moments you expect from Anno and Evangelion— the awesome, epic-scale battles between Eva-units and Angels, leaving so many trails of city-wide destruction in their wake; the long, drawn out periods of brooding where the agents of NERV investigate and collaborate with what might turn out to be an apocalyptic conspiracy, traveling from what’s left of the polar ice-caps to the moon itself to unravel the mystery; and of course, mind-bendingly surreal moments of body-horror transformation played out at a tremendously ambitious scale, like the end of Akira played over and over again until it becomes an avant-garde performance piece of animation, with Shinji, Rei and Asuka diving into the uncharted waters of their subconsciousness to face fears and monsters far bigger than any mere end-of-the-world scenario. With those liquid-filled cockpits, there’s an element of the same kind of sensory-deprivation tanks and hallucinatory imagery in Ken Russel’s Altered States, the stuff that was so instrumental in influencing the theories of Walter Bishop on Fringe, and it helps turn so much of the Evangeliion experience into something far richer than mere rock’em-sock’em mecha duels. Locked inside those artificial womb-chambers and driven to ever more desperate circumstances by the doctors and researchers above them, the kids are shown to be nothing less than lab-rats in some globally scaled experiment aimed at transforming humanity into something utterly perverse and unrecognizable, something that not only invites instant sympathy but also helps contextualize all the madness on display. If Shinji and the others are poor kids plucked up by mad scientists and experimented upon in the throes of puberty, then the world being transformed into an extinction-level planet of red-seas, bizarre creatures and dwindling populations is one in the midst of its own growing pains.
These are the big things, the stuff we come to expect from an anime-provocateur like Anno. But what’s really surprising this time around are all the little moments that get peppered amidst the larger picture, the smaller and more intimate details that you usually only see in the more family-friendly efforts of Studio Ghibli or the fetishistically obsessive imaginings of Madhouse, home to Mamoru Hosada and the late Satoshi Kon. They’re often fleeting moments, stuff you may not even notice at first glance if at all, yet they wind up injecting not only a welcome dose of random human elements into the mix, but even some kind of thready heartbeat, as well. It’s the bandaged cuts on Rei’s and Asuka’s fingers from their cute attempts to learn how to cook for Shinji; it’s the way that Asuka’s handheld gaming system uses the outdated tech of cartridges, and loads them sideways instead of from the top or bottom; it’s the way that even incidental background characters are drawn and animated in crowd scenes during montages in city life, giving them such detail and personality that you might be forgiven for mistaking them for important new characters being introduced. Finally, it’s the way that Anno finds ways to recycle or rechannel so many of the most familiar and iconic elements of the Neon Genesis series into this new incarnation of Evangelion, from the big stuff (the fate of the pilot in Eva-unit 3, or the monstrous transformation that occurs when Shinji awakens the sleeping beast inside Eva-unit 1 to save his friends and protect the Geo-Front) to the little things (Kaji’s garden, Shinji’s Walkman, even fanservice nudity). Even Pen-Pen gets a terrifically cute little moment to shine early on in the film, reminding you not only of the ways in which Anno finds the time to mix the larger concerns of his apocalyptic sci-fi with smaller bits of humor, but also of the whole idiosyncratic vision of the enterprise itself. In many ways, Anno’s work is about what it means to grow up in a hostile world and the survival instinct of friendship– I may not have had to deal with the end of the world looming over my head when I was that age, but it sure as hell felt like it, especially when I didn’t have a clique to hang on to.
In the end, what’s most beautiful about the Evangelion experience is how it creates a community for all the outcast anime freaks, a place they can call home in unfriendly waters. That spirit of togetherness is what you tend to look for in sci-fi and fantasy fanbases, but over the years there’s been so much divisiveness and hostility pervading through so many of my favorite franchises that I’ve only seldom been able to really experience it. Sooner or later, it seems that every following turns against what it professes to love– so-called Star Wars fans bemoaning Lucas for the Special-Editions and the Prequels; fair-weather Lost-aholics whining about wheelspinning midseason lulls or the series’ less-than-stellar finale; even die-hard Metal Gear Solid addicts rolling their eyes in Hideo Kojima’s direction whenever he indulges in an hour-long cutscene or pretentiously crafted breaking-the-fourth-wall boss battle– and for the most part Evangelion is no exception. From its earliest days, you could sense Anno’s frustration at seeing his personal expression of psycho-social hardships being watched by so many viewers purely for the cool robot battles and sex-appeal (with all the unlicensed hentai manga that’s been made over the years, one’s first exposure to the series might very well be of the pornographic kind, something that Anno exorcised in a disturbing moment of End of Evangelion where Shinji visits a comatose Asuka in the hospital), leading him to push his audience’s buttons over and over again by putting beloved characters through wringers even the NERV scientists wouldn’t have the balls to contemplate, and offering only the most painfully ambiguous endings imaginable, like Patrick McGoohan’s famously impenetrable conclusion to The Prisoner. Just as Lucas’ blend of mythic space-opera and cinematic pastiche was lost in the translation on the way to becoming a piece of essential Americana, Anno’s Evangelion has more or less become one of the largest, most beloved and omnipresent icons of modern anime, but only at the expense of drowning itself out with ubiquity. The sooner something becomes a classic, the easier it is to take it for granted.
And yet, in some kind of cinematic masochism, so many of us eat it up, and eagerly await the next mindfuck as if it were the next thing to come spiraling out of the minds of David Lynch, Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noe combined. He may be largely unknown outside of anime circles, and he may still yet go unrecognized by cinephiles who are long overdue to know about guys like Miyazaki, Otomo or Kon, but a work by Hideaki Anno is something of an event film for anime fans, and especially if it’s connected to the storied franchise of Evangelion. I may have waited on line for midnight screenings of stuff like The Dark Knight or paid $600 for a week-early charity screening of Revenge of the Sith, but making the trek to see You Can (Not) Advance might just’ve been the most outlandish thing I’ve ever had to do to see a movie in league with my geek affiliations– scouring the Internet long hours just to find a theater within travel distance and a decent time, and arriving by car, train and subway to a small mid-town arthouse that usually only screens Bollywood and live-transmissions of opera from Lincoln Center. But while I was there, sitting before the screen and waiting for the movie to start, I was surrounded by too many Eva-fans to count, some of them playing tracks of music from the original show on their MP3 devices or talking about how much they hoped “Fly Me to the Moon” would be featured in the film, some of them talking at great length about their personal theories about whether or not Rebuild was a remake of Neon Genesis or an even more mind-bending sequel to it. There were no complaints, no whining or bitching, no cries of anguish against the things that Anno was changing or throwing away altogether. It was a moment where you could really feel the true nature of a fanbase’s community spirit– a family away from the awful hostilities of the big-bad real world. Running away from reality, as Shinji often does, may not be entirely healthy, but even if you do, having some company helps. More than any other sci-fi work out there, Evangelion in any form expresses a perfectly toned message for troubled youths everywhere, assuring them that no matter how dark, desperate or depressing their lives may seem at any given time, there is something that binds them together, both on and off the screen—you are not alone.
“Otherwise, this was an incredible movie. Miss it at your own peril.”
When I went over to read about the availability of the DVD set, I found this comment among other praise at Amazon. Your review is excellent, but it doesn’t mean too much too me, without my having seen it. This is the set that’s offering me some serious temptation:
You’ll need to see “Evangelion 1.11” first, at least, to catch up, Frank. Checking out the original series would be best, of course, but the current DVD sets are either out of date or overpriced, same with the “End of Evangelion” movie. You can also try to check them all out on Google video, I think, but the quality is a little substandard.
At the very least, check out “1.11” before even dreaming of watching “2.0”. Not only does it give you everything you need for the new movie, but it’s damn fun on its own.
Frank is always costing me money. But so is Bob for that matter! I just attentively scanned through this mega-review, and let’s just say that the “subject” has always fascinated me. But like Frank, I have NOT seen this (either on in fact)
What I find incredible is that the blu-ray DVD set is so much cheaper than the standard DVD. Am I reading this right?
“Locked inside those artificial womb-chambers and driven to ever more desperate circumstances by the doctors and researchers above them, the kids are shown to be nothing less than lab-rats in some globally scaled experiment aimed at transforming humanity into something utterly perverse and unrecognizable, something that not only invites instant sympathy but also helps contextualize all the madness on display.”
That’s what struck me the most about the series and you encapsulate it very well here. Young and vulnerable people and bodies that seem to be both strengthened and broken (you do get a strong sense of the physical in the series, which is rare in animation) by their giant metal bodies.
What I liked about the series (which I am not a massive fan of but like) is how everything is grounded in reality. There are not the same flights of symbolic fancy that are used in the works of other Anime directors – the little dreams and nightmares and hallucinations that artificially ramp up a psychological imbalance.
Like precious few TV Series do it does make you want to see the next episode, makes you sort of addicted to it. Your piece here has made me want to go back to it and give it another go. Your enthusiasm and affection (as well as insight) for the various incarnations of Evangelion is great to see and read.
So, is this film OK for people who haven’t seen the show (or have forgotten much of it!)? It might be a good way to get into Evangelion without committing to a good chunk of time and money.
I often get confused by animes that have so many series and films (Ghost in the Shell too).
“You are not alone”
Films and television shows that are uplifting without sentimentality or overt moralising are rare and to be cherished.
If you want to enjoy “Evangelion 2.0”, all you have to watch before hand is “Evangelion 1.0” (or really, “1.11”, but rerelease renumbering is odd). The first film gives you all of the previous story you need, does a bang-up job of retelling the same events for a bigger theatrical scale, and actually manages to create a very nice emotional arc out of them (Shinji and Rei fighting that Angel together during Operation Yashima makes for a perfect climax).
If you want to fully understand “2.0”, however, watching the full series is important, because of how the movie deviates from the formula of the show and serves as a counterpoint to it. Of course, while tracking down the series is easy enough (don’t get suckered into the super-expensive “Holiday Special” DVD collection like I was, though), finding the essential “End of Evangelion” movie is much tougher.
Still, all one really needs to see in order to have fun with the “Evangelion” experience is “1.0” and “2.0”.
> If you want to fully understand “2.0″, however, watching the full series is important, because of how the movie deviates from the formula of the show and serves as a counterpoint to it.
I disagree… 2.0 is in many ways a half-baked movie which completely fails to remove the mystery gimmicks and appeal to newbies, as Anno promised us so long ago. Much of it seems clumsy and forced.
I will give one example in detail: when Asuka climbs into bed with Shinji in 2.0. This comes as a bizarre unmotivated scene even if you were expecting it. And it is! That was exactly the reason that the scene was added, because the Asuka-Shinji connection had not been developed and Enokido – who is solely responsible for that scene – felt that the connection had to be made *somehow*. (Enokido was only there for 3 days to help bang the movie into shape.) From the _Complete Records Collection_ of interviews and memos (http://pastebin.com/LkDtSaGq), the Enokido interview:
Enokido: The truth is, the day before I went to Atami, I recieved a call from (Toshimichi) Ootsuki-san, and I was told that they would leave the content alone, and there was only one matter they wanted to pursue. At that time, based on the current screenplay, the film was projected to run between 130 and 140 minutes, and the aim was to reduce it to less than 120.
…
Enokido: There were many scenes at the start of the script showing a deeper friendship between Misato, Ristuko, and Kaji that were discarded. They were “film-like” scenes and, from the dramatic perspective, very good; however, because I thought it was best to organize the film around Shinji, I proposed that they be cut. Because Anno is the chief director, if he hates a cut he can prevent it by saying “I want that scene to stay.” However, he doesn’t do so. Nevertheless, when he’s displeased the atmosphere becomes very oppressive (laughs).
Furthermore, when even Tsurumaki-san, the one person I expected to support me, started saying things like “I’m an Asuka fan, and I won’t be happy if this scene gets cut,” I had a feeling like, “Huh?” (laughs). At that time, Masayuki-san came to my rescue, saying “Look, we should just do as Enokido-san says, okay?” I had the impression that I had just barely kept my place [at Atami] (laughs). Masayuki probably decided to bring “balance” to the sessions (laughs).
— It was difficult, wasn’t it? (laughs)
Enokido: Only, once we had cut a few scenes, naturally the next problem was the opposite one; owing to the cuts you could begin to see gaps detracting from the organization of the whole. As these gaps arose from cuts I had made, naturally I, as the person responsible, had to fix them. For example, while in the first half of the film Asuka appears as a character who strongly repels others, in the second half she becomes a little kinder, and develops into a character who is concerned with Shinji’s feelings. This development is crucial, but I had a feeling that, due to my excessive cuts, the basis for this change became too thin. Trying to make up for that loss, I had the idea for a scene where Asuka, unable to bear her loneliness, enters, uninvited, the room of the sleeping Shinji. The scene used in the film was translated from the concept almost exactly. By inserting this scene, it seemed likely that something of a connection between the “first half” Asuka and the “second half” Asuka could be skillfully established.
I think it works as is, but I’ll admit I would’ve liked it if these “Rebuild” movies were a fair bit longer.
“That’s what struck me the most about the series and you encapsulate it very well here. Young and vulnerable people and bodies that seem to be both strengthened and broken (you do get a strong sense of the physical in the series, which is rare in animation) by their giant metal bodies.”
Part of how this works so well in the series is the way that we’re always keenly aware of Shinji, Rei and Asuka’s physical bodies thanks to the skin-tight plugsuits. Of course, there’s a lot of fanservice nudity of the girls in the show and the movies (though a lot of it is of the passive-aggressive sort), but even at those times, it’s not really as openly sexual as all the banter between the adults throughout. These pilots are kids, first and foremost, in bodies that are fragile and especially vulnerable, being in the midst of growing pains. It all makes their exploitation by the adults of NERV that much more despicable.
In many ways, “Evangelion” is very much the same kind of coming of age sci-fi young-vs-old story as “Never Let Me Go”. The crucial difference isn’t the presence of largescale battles, animation or what have you, but instead the ways in which Shinji, Rei and Asuka actively try to fight back against the adults who are using them. Even when Shinji is curling up into a ball and retreating from reality, he’s doing something far more heroic than the cute, coquettish clones of Romanek’s film did– even though he mustn’t, running away is the better part of valour compared to those pieces of cattle.
“What I liked about the series (which I am not a massive fan of but like) is how everything is grounded in reality. There are not the same flights of symbolic fancy that are used in the works of other Anime directors – the little dreams and nightmares and hallucinations that artificially ramp up a psychological imbalance.”
Yes. Granted, Anno does indulge in a lot of psychological exploration and dreamlike hallucination throughout the series, but when he does he finds a concrete rationale for it (Shinji absorbed by an Angel that seeks to probe his mind, etc) and doesn’t try to over-exert the dreams onto reality. It’s only when we start seeing the various NERV, Seele and Evangelion related experiments come to their fruition of engineering Human Instrumentality that the actual world becomes affected by these surreal sights, and in that case it is very much a case of the physical landscape being affected by so many strange psychic and technological powers.
“Like precious few TV Series do it does make you want to see the next episode, makes you sort of addicted to it. Your piece here has made me want to go back to it and give it another go. Your enthusiasm and affection (as well as insight) for the various incarnations of Evangelion is great to see and read.”
Thanks. And I should’ve said before– you’re well versed enough with Evangelion to get into the swing of 2.0 on its own, I think. You’ve seen the series, though a long time ago. You’d dig 1.0, though, so I reccomend that.
“I often get confused by animes that have so many series and films (Ghost in the Shell too).”
I actually really like GitS: Stand Alone Complex. To a certain extent, I even enjoy it more than Oshii’s films (the second one, definitely). But yeah, many animes have completely different continuities and canons between movies, TV-series, OVA’s. The “Tenchi Muyo” franchise is a prime example of this.
“Films and television shows that are uplifting without sentimentality or overt moralising are rare and to be cherished.”
So “Evangelion” is uplifting, now? After the EoE movie, I’m not so sure, but even then there’s a silver lining, I suppose. I really love the Tarot-simplicity of those final few minutes, and how open the ending is to interpretation. It’s something far better than a mere happy or downbeat ending, either one of which is a fairly artificial construct.
Thanks for the info Bob.
Before I’d seen or known much about Evangelion I actually saw END OF EVANGELION in a second-hand shop for a couple of pounds. I didn’t get it.
“Of course, there’s a lot of fanservice nudity of the girls in the show and the movies…”
The amount of this in ‘mainstream’ shows (as well as in the overtly erotic ones) can be disconcerting at times.
“These pilots are kids, first and foremost, in bodies that are fragile and especially vulnerable, being in the midst of growing pains. It all makes their exploitation by the adults of NERV that much more despicable.”
Yes.
I haven’t seen NEVER LET ME GO yet – the trailers and discussions haven’t seduced me but the stream of praise will probably make me see it eventually. Reminds me, in tone if not entirely in plot, a little of Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s INNOCENCE.
GHOST IN THE SHELL didn’t click for me beyond being a too obvious discourse on humanity/robotics/the soul etc. I haven’t seen the sequel (called Innocence(!) isn’t it?)
“So “Evangelion” is uplifting, now?”
I tend to see the best in something or want to put the most positive spin I can on what I see.
“Before I’d seen or known much about Evangelion I actually saw END OF EVANGELION in a second-hand shop for a couple of pounds. I didn’t get it.”
The same thing happened to me back when the series was only out on VHS. I was browsing through the anime section of an old Sam Goody store, and found the designs of the characters and plot description exciting, but was too embarassed to try and get my mom to purchase them (it didn’t help that the video I kept looking at was the “naked before the angels!” episode). Too bad, because NGE probably would’ve been the perfect thing to help get me out of my lonely, depressed middle-school student shell at that point. I didn’t finally watch it in earnest much later, when I was already out of college.
“GHOST IN THE SHELL didn’t click for me beyond being a too obvious discourse on humanity/robotics/the soul etc. I haven’t seen the sequel (called Innocence(!) isn’t it?)”
It’s the only Oshii that’s readily available in the states, so it’s hard to pass it up here. Perhaps if “Patlobar” or even his “Uresei Yatsura” features were easier to find, that’d be different. I will say that the “Stand Alone Complex” show that Kenji Katayama did is quite good, and worth checking out. “Innocence” is boring as hell, and lacks the suckerpunch cool of Kusanagi.
“I tend to see the best in something or want to put the most positive spin I can on what I see.”
I hear you. It’s to NGE’s testament that putting a positive spin on the ending is not only possible, but perhaps even logical. Anno makes you work hard for it, but in the end, even the smallest grain of hope is priceless in that show.
> Even in the televised versions, there was a natural dramatic progression in those installments which provided an easily identifiable beginning, middle and open-ended conclusion, with the tragically withdrawn Rei finally mustering a smile for the first time.
Indeed, that was the end of an arc. The interesting thing is that Anno regards the arc ending there as a mistake! A snippet from a book of ’96/’97 interviews was recently translated http://www.gwern.net/otaku#prano :
Anno: ‘The truth is, I have no emotional attachment to Rei at all.
In the midst of making Eva, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten her. Her very existence. For example, in episode seven, I remembered and added one shot with Rei. I had no attachment to her at all, right? I think that was okay, because in episode eight, she doesn’t appear, right? Not even in a single shot.
Episode 6 was too early.
At the end Rei says “I don’t know what to do,” and Shinji says, “I think you should smile,” and Rei smiles. … Afterwards, when I thought about it, I cursed. In short, if she and Shinji completely “communicated” there, then isn’t she over with? At that moment, Rei, for me, was finished.
When she smiled, she was already finished, this character.’
Anno and other Kharaers sometimes mention Rei in the CRC. Between the CRC and Prano, I suspect part of what Anno would like to do with Rebuild is fix the character of Rei.
If it was indeed a “mistake”, then it’s a wonder that Anno left it in at the end of “1.0”, and indeed seemed to make it even more poignant. I think his statements on not having an “emotional connection” to Rei is more a combination of his distance from that character in regards to others (knowing how things turn out in EoE, he seems more attached to Asuka) and in his willingness to portray her as something that isn’t entirely human (I’m wondering how the whole “Rei 3” angle is going to play out this time). Furthermore, he’s also probably making that statement in response to the rather odd enthusiasm with which people greeted her character, fetishizing and sezualizing her in ways that he wasn’t comfortable with. And considering that he said that stuff about 15 years ago, odds are he’s mellowed out on the blue-haired girl.
Bob, I didn’t want to read to much of this so as to spoil the series (1.0 I guess) which I’m still watching. But what is the gist of this project – a “remake” of the show boiled down to feature film – length and with narrative changes in the second half? Btw, did you ever review the series itself? If so, I can’t find it.
“Evangelion 1.0: You are (Not) Alone” is basically a retelling of episodes 1 to 6, with much better animation for the most part, and better pacing to fit feature length. There’s changes to the narrative to serve it as a feature and to streamline the mythology for what’s supposed to be a 4 movie series. “2.0: You Can (Not) Advance” (which this review covers) touches on a few key moments of the series, and takes us up to the same area as episode 19, but for the most part it’s a different beast, and whole character arcs are altered. It’s a game changer.
My “Operation Yashima” piece focused mostly on “1.0”, but it also looks heavily at the series versions of episodes 1 through 6, so that’s safe to read I guess. What I’ll probably do at some point is do a write-up that covers the portions of NGE that “2.0” covers, and detail the differences at some point. I’m particularly interested to see how the new films cover the final episodes, and “End of Evangelion” (which is notoriously hard to find nowadays)
I’ve got End of Evangelion in my Netflix queue – hoping it’s not mislabelled or something.
Also I meant to ask, do you prefer the series in English or with the original Japanese, subtitled. Usually with animation I don’t mind watching it dubbed, but when Asuka entered the cast I had to switch to the Japanese – the vocals were just WAY too obnoxious in the American version, and the characters already annoying enough. Indeed, I found some of the dialogue and actions easier to take in the original language than with American intonations, in part too probably because they change the prononciations at times to fit the character’s mouths.
Overall, I’m intrigued by the idea of movie that tells the same story (which I’m loving) but in tightened-up, more visually striking terms (since some of the over-the-top stuff – which may still be in there – and the more limited animation compromise it somewhat for me). I’m glad to see 1.11 is on Netflix but looks like 2.22 is still “saved” – kind of a death sentence in Netflix terms.
I’ve watched it both ways, and for the most part I watch it with the English dub simply because some of the episodes get a little heavy with on-screen text, when the show gets into its more abstract moments, and it’s easier to keep up with everything if you don’t have to read two sets of subtitles at once. I saw “1.0” and “2.0” in theaters this year, and I have to say– they’re rather exhausting in the subtitled versions. Still, either one is worth watching, and at least you’ll get “anta baka” the way it was meant to be heard (although I do like the translation they had to come up with– “Are you stupid?”).
If you like the series enough, I might just reccomend biting the bullet and buying “1.11” and “2.22”. They’re good on stand-alone terms, certainly.
Wait, by 1.0 do you mean the series itself, or is there a difference between 1.0/2.0 and 1.11/2.22 as well as with the series (i.e. 3 versions of the same story circulating out there?).
Eh, “1.0” is the theatrical version and initial DVD, “1.11” is the blu ray, with a couple of extra scenes restored near the beginning– I think they didn’t have time to animate everything, or whatever. The difference is small, but it was enough to anger some fans who got left behind. Look for “1.11”. Thankfully, “2.22” is the only existing DVD/BR version of the sequel, as far as I know. They got all their ducks in a row for that one.
Well, I can’t play blu-ray but Netflix seems to offer 1.11 on DVD as well. Maybe it’s really 1.0? Quite confusing…
Hopefully it’s “1.11”. The “1.0” transfer is a little darker, not as good to look at. In terms of content, you’re only missing a couple of short scenes, and if you’ve seen the first episode you’re not missing anything.
Well, I ended up buying 1.11 (on standard DVD – only $9!). I look forward to watching it because I’ve been enjoying the series (the next disc of which arrived in my PO box Saturday, but I forgot to pick it up and now have to wait until the long holiday weekend is over) and at the same time thinking, damn if it was just a bit more polished and less silly at times (though I like some of the silly stuff, particularly the penguin) I could call it “great” (and I want to be able too, because I’m cursed with the sickness of wanting to fit as much as I can into my ever-receding-on-the-horizon-yet-growing-larger-without-each-recession canonical project). So I’ll return after finishing the series, End of Evangelion, and my new possession to let you know what I think. At any rate, now that it’s part of my collection I can include it in an upcoming chronological clip show progression through my DVDs, to be unveiled probably around November.
Postscript – and I bought 2.22 as well; both will be in my upcoming clip show of cinema history (as limited by the parameters of my DVD collection). Haven’t watched either yet but I’m almost done with the series. It’s getting to the point where I really really like it – at first I was just intrigued, but now I’m fully invested in the characters and the stories. Definitely on a shortlist of series DVDs I would buy (not including doc miniseries, right now the only show I own is Sopranos season 1, but Twin Peaks & Freaks and Geeks – sorry I know you hate Apatow – would also be on there if I ever got around to them).
Well, I’ve finished watching 2.22 and I’m kind of ambivalent about it at this point. On the one hand, both the rebuild films are lush and gorgeous – the diamond angel in 1.11 is simply breathtaking – and it’s nice to see everything in one place (especially for someone like me, who kind of implausibly wants everything to fall under the category of “movies”).
But at times 2.22 felt rushed and uninvolving – it would seem that making Asuka the pilot of the runaway Eva would make that crisis even more poignant, but oddly enough I felt more distanced then when it was the other kid in the show. And the rescue of Rei didn’t quite carry the same punch I expected. gwern0’s comments above were interesting as they seem to point to some of the things that frustrated me – how something about the movie didn’t quite seem to have breathing room, even compared to 1.11 which was an even more direct compression yet still seemed to have a pace that worked.
Most of all, though you put an intriguing spin on the movie’s lighter moments, I was a bit frustrated by the over-the-top silliness (one of my least favorite parts of the show, though I always liked the penguin) which sort of doubled down in this movie. And especially the gratuitous fanservice; yeah, I know it’s supposed to be ironic but at a certain point 14-year-old T&A is just 14-year-old T&A. And another thing I had a problem with on the show was really amplified here – the tendency to overtalk and analyze everything explicitly (probably hurt to by the English translations). You kind of sold me on the idea that this element is a nice poetic counterpart to the imagery in your Operation Yoshima post, but in this film I think it was just overkill – and if gwern0 is correct about the film being severely truncated at the expense of better narrative unfolding, that might explain why.
I own the film now (along with 1.11) so I will definitely watch it again, and most likely before I write that essay. And I did not watch it under ideal circumstances at all, splitting it over several late nights (which is ironic considering the whole poing of the movie is to give you the story in one sitting). I hope I get into it more the second time around. I actually liked what they did with Rei quite a bit here, moreso than the developments with Asuka (I put her as a favorite character and listed 2.22 on my recent list, but really it was more in reference to the show than the movie which I hadn’t watched yet – just felt the need to attach a movie as it was supposed to be a movie list).
When all’s said and done, though, I find myself wondering if End of Evangelion might not end up being my favorite Eva movie; kind of perverse, perhaps, but (despite the visuals suffering in comparison to the rebuilds) it’s such a beautiful movie and sort of gibes with my own tragic sensibility anyway. I’ll be really interested to see what Anno does with this in 3.33 (or 3.0, or whatever) – I know you said there might be two more films in the series, but it seems hard to see how they could pull that off the way he closed 2.22.
Speaking as somebody who saw “2.0” in its all-too-brief theatrical run here in New York… yeah, watching it piecemeal on a television at home is about as close as you can get to a worst-case-scenario. The pacing of it as a feature is all off for that kind of self-imposed serialization (no feature is really built to be viewed that way), and you lose out on the grandeur of the work when seen on the big screen, all that hard work of making a real theatrical Evangelion to waste (granted, that’s how most anime features are seen in the West, but still).
This is a problem with a lot of movies, I think– the ones that make the best use of the wide expanse of the theatrical movie-going experience are often the ones that have the most problems translating to the small screen, even when you watch them in letterbox format. Having seen William Wyler’s Ben Hur on the big screen this past week at the New York Film Festival, I can definitely say it’s a movie I’ve taken for granted in its television broadcasts, an epic that puts to shame even the grandest pretenders, and one that’s more or less wasted on anything less than the biggest, widest screen possible. Things just play out differently when your entire vision is taken up by the image, looking up at it all, and the same is true of both the big and little moments of Evangelion.
Granted, you do have all the same problems you’re talking about– Asuka’s character arc is telescoped something fierce for the purposes of this film (I’d have gladly spent another hour with her, and the rest of NERV), and for the most part everything’s much easier to get a handle on if you’ve already seen everything that came before (literally or otherwise). However, I also think that Anno and his team find nice short-cuts that slice to the quick of each character, and let us in and out of their lives at the same hectic pace with which they live fighting the Angels and trying to make up for borrowed time afterwards. It’s fitting that we see Asuka here sulking with her Game Boy instead of swooning over Kaji, or that we finally learn the reason why Shinji listens to that damn Walkman all the time. For me, a key inclusion is the jazzy music from Anno’s follow-up series, His and Her Circumstances, where he really put his heart on his sleeve in adapting a straightforward high-school romance manga by animating it all as though it were taking place during the Third Impact– there, the romance between a black-haired “wonder child” and a fiery tempered, red-headed tsundere was allowed to blossom and flourish in ways that only Asuka/Shinji shippers (like myself) can dream of, or read about in syrupy fan-fiction and doujins. The upbeat tempo of all that music belies the quickened beat, however. These are kids whose lives are as accelerated as their lifespans have probably been shortened by the advent of the Angels, so the speed with which we barrel through their tumultuous adolescence here has a certain kind of sense to it, especially if seen in the overpowering theatrical circumstances (or at least uninterrupted ones) the material deserves.
At any rate. I never gave a damn about Toji, so having Asuka in the rampaging Eva this time was a genuine shock and blow for me– all I can hope now is that after surviving the encounter and gaining a spiffy eye-patch that she’s possibly averted the fate of a mind-rape and hopefully even has more of a fighting chance in the final battle to come (her wounds here do almost perfectly match the ones she washes to the shore with in EoE). And one thing I’ll say about the unrelenting pace of the film– it makes Shinji’s final act of defiance and destructive heroism feel absolutely deserved, and earns the film the absolutely sentimental gesture of his last-ditch effort to save Rei. After everything that we’ve been through, it’s something of a reward for sitting through it, and especially it gives proper motivation for young Ikari to not screw up this time around. It even makes up for how the film ditches some of my favorite Angel battles, like when Eva 01 is swallowed by the Sea of Durac (in a sense, the ending is like an encapsulation of that). I dunno. It just works for me in a way that so many other attempts at sci-fi melodrama kind of fumble at.
But then again, I’m walking around with a Darth Maul pin on my jacket, so what do I know? Suffice to say this– so far, the Rebuild movies have become the blu-rays I play more often than anything else in my PS3, and even after picking up the Star Wars set, that’s probably not going to change anytime soon.
Yeah, I could certainly see it growing on me. And I’ll find out soon enough how it holds up on a second viewing, under better circumstances.
Good call on Ben-Hur too. Though it’s not nearly the same thing, recently I was playing with aspect ratios for video displays and using a clip from Ben-Hur to test its perameters. Seeing the usual clip-size unfold to three times its length for the chariot race (rather than filling out a narrow sliver of the screen with thick bars on either side, making it seem smaller than, say, “The Office”) was a real eye-opener, putting the film far more into its proper context (keep in mind too I’ve never owned a widescreen TV); and to think I used to watch that film on the most atrocious pan-and-scan VHS tape as a kid.
Yet at the same time, I LOVED that pan-and-scan copy. And Lawrence of Arabia, my all-time favorite movie, I’ve seen three times on the big screen yet I think some of my favorite viewings, or at least the ones that meant the most to me, were on TVs. I think when a movie really captures you, it doesn’t matter how you see it. I can definitely think of films where seeing it on the big screen made me appreciate it much more (Seven Samurai comes to mind) but for the most part I’ve always been skeptical of the “must-be-seen-theatrically-to-be-truly-seen” argument. Then again, that’s coming from someone who goes to theaters like twice a year, and never for new releases so I suppose I’ve already cast my die…
*I should note though, lest that comment seem misleading, that (aside from a few well-worn nostalgic videotapes) I can’t tolerate cropping at all; picture quality and size I can live with, but not that.
It’s funny how two people can watch the same film and come away with two completely different impressions; 2.22 didn’t do anything for me. The action scenes were spectacular, but the whole shebang started to come apart at the seams the moment the transparent plugsuit made its first appearance.
I think my biggest issue with the movie is that putting Asuka in the infected Eva unit simply didn’t work. Unlike with Toji in the original series, 2.22 didn’t really establish very well that Asuka had any kind of emotional significance for Shinji, and therefore his subsequent anger and outrage felt forced and unearned. The *viewer* feels sorry for Asuka, sure, but the sequence with Asuka isn’t really about Asuka qua Asuka–it’s about Shinji being traumatized and losing his innocence in war. If we don’t feel that anything is at stake for Shinji, the subplot doesn’t work. I think this problem kind of snowballed by the end of the film; since Shinji undergoes no real spiritual or moral crisis over the course of the film, his determination to save Rei at the expense of all humanity didn’t feel emotionally justified to me. And this is coming from someone who didn’t have much of a problem with EoE!Shinji.
Yeah, I get the subjectivity of it, especially considering how differently things in the series and film play out (I’m used to this kind of reaction in other things, being a Prequel fan). One of the reasons I don’t mind the way Asuka is handled in the movie, as opposed to the slow build on the show, is the greater emphasis the toil of the missions take here– the Eva pilots are very much experiencing “life during wartime”, and as such their childhoods/teenage-years are on something of a fast forward. It works for me that Shinji and Asuka can develop a strong emotional bond in the short time we see them share onscreen– they don’t have any other choice but to latch onto one another, knowing they could die in a mission at any time. They’re prepared to risk life and limb, just not at one another’s hands.
I have to admit, the whole Toji subplot in the series never really did anything for me. It worked when it was just a matter of Shinji being uncomfortable with the idea of killing anybody, no matter who it was– the fact that it turned out to be a friend, and that his father hid the information, was more about their issues of trust. Using Asuka in his stead works a lot more, from my perspective, because it’s a character we as an audience are encouraged to care about a lot more than Toji, and a character that we have significant enough development with Shinji for him to care as well (save for their bedroom confessional scene, I like the fact that it’s all developed in their mission-activity, angry moments and hurt, behind the scenes little displays– it’s a vague relationship created between the lines, and in a sense feels even stronger than what we had in the series, which was essentially akin to Lucy pulling away the football from Charlie Brown over and over again). Granted, there’s also the history of the series incarnations of these characters that all of this builds on (especially if you’re an adherent of the Sequel Theory– which apparently is now including the possibility that Mari is a time-traveling daughter of Shinji and Asuka), but really, it all squares for me.
But again– I never gave two shits about Toji, so whatever.