This Is (Not) Going To Go The Way You Think
Spoiler Warning: all the Evangelion spoilers under the sun.
Yesterday, I watched the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, and with that, I have now watched all the Evangelion that a person could currently watch. I am free.
I’m not free. That was a lie. I’ve spent the entire day thinking about fucking Evangelion. I will never be free. I wanted to write up some more coherent thoughts on the whole thing but didn’t want to just drown everyone in tweets so this is what you get. You get a blog, like we used to write, back when there was still hope in our hearts.
Okay so here’s my stance on Evangelion. The series is mostly good. The dance sequence is the best thing in the franchise. The original ending is honestly the only ending that should have been made. I do not like End of Evangelion. As a movie it’s bad, so I’ve assumed it’s been a joke all these years. Those are the takes that matter, you now understand me and I understand you. Let’s continue.
This brings us to the Rebuild movies, which I was fairly skeptical of going in. All I knew was that they were a retelling of Evangelion which might actually be a secret cyclical sequel and spun off into whole new directions. To this day nerds are debating which is the correct canonical interpretation but it doesn’t matter. The first movie literally opens with the red sea from End of Eva, Rebuild planting its feet as being a thematic continuation of Evangelion.
Which is maybe the most shaky foundation for any storytelling considering episode 25/26 are essentially a 45 minute powerpoint presentation on the themes of the show, and End of Eva is a gigantic middle finger to everyone and anyone who was still invested after that point. Where is there left to go?
1.0: You Are (Not) Alone doesn’t provide many answers, mostly sticking to the first six episodes of the show with the big changes mostly being cliffhangers of what is to come. What the fuck is Kaworu doing on the moon? The biggest change comes in the form of Misato revealing Lilith (side note: the big angel in the basement. They call it Adam for almost the entire show, the whole premise is that the Evas were built from Adam. But it’s actually Lilith. I hate lore.) to Shinji, making him aware of the existential danger they are facing. His resolve to pilot Eva is strengthened by a series of phone calls from his classmates wishing him luck. The whole thing is mostly the same but it’s less focused on the interiority of Shinji. And so by the conclusion, he’s more adjusted and assured than he ever was in the show.
2.0: You Can (Not) Advance takes this ball and runs with it, to the point where the first half of the film is essentially a slice of life comedy. It’s fantastic. For one, you get a sense of Tokyo-3 as an actual functioning city in an excellent montage, a beautiful and light sequence that takes away from the idea that the sense the series builds up where the characters live in desloation and isolation every damn day. For two, the changes to the story come mostly from Rei, who has a much stronger relationship with Shinji, and like Kaworu, her counterpart, almost seems subconsciously aware that this has happened before. She spends the whole film determined to fix this, even going so far as to arrange a lunch with everyone and she makes Gendo promise to come.
She makes Gendo Ikari promise to come to a party. She did that. Your fav could never.
The elevator scene happens, and at the moment Asuka goes to slap her she reaches her hand up and stops her, and then they actually talk about their problems! It’s incredible! The film actually paints the idea that these characters, trapped in this awful story with their awful brains, do have a route to happiness. After the original show and End of Eva focused so completely on the interiority of these characters, 2.0 actually demonstrates that their hope lies not inside them but in their connections, in the communication between them. It is the subtext of the show made literal in the retelling and it’s very beautiful to see.
Of course, this cannot last, and everything falls apart. In this version, Asuka is in Unit 03 when Gendo activates the Dummy Plug system and forces Shinji’s Eva to berserk out and attempt to kill her. Obvious changes in the plotting aside, the framing of this scene is entirely different and this is where Rebuild truly comes into its own.
In the original, the scene was shocking, putting us entirely inside Shinji’s state of mind as he watches as his father takes direct control and forces him to attempt to kill a human being. But here, driven by the song choice, the scene is instead deeply sad. We are not feeling Shinji’s pain, we are more than familiar with Shinji’s pain, but instead we watch as despite how avoidable it should be, this grand tragedy repeats again, and it’s all so deeply pitiable.
This all builds to the conclusion, where we get the events with Shinji leaving Nerv and coming back to pilot Unit 01 in a time of crisis. Unlike before, the crisis is Rei, who has sacrificed herself and been consumed by an Angel. We get the entire sequence leagind up to Unit 01 awakening into its true form, but instead of going beserk and getting his entire Ego destroyed by the Eva, Shinji is going to save Rei with nothing but his force of will. It is the first time, in the entire franchise, that Shinji has done something for himself. Nobody is ordering him to get in the robot, he doesn’t feel obligated to save everyone, he doesn’t care about his dad anymore. As EVA 01 awakens, it starts to cause Third Impact and end the world, but it doesn’t matter. It all fades away as the music plays, and we get the moment we’ve waited for for decades. Even Misato is cheering him on.
I was honestly taken aback by how smart, mature and hopeful the film was. It is the best representation of the thematic ideas of Evangelion in a two hour shell. I think 2.0 is a fantastic movie, and it feels so complete that of course everything fucking fell apart behind the scenes and whatever plans that they had for Rebuild were abandoned.
3.0 is a mess. The experience of watching it without knowing what was going on was wild because yo, it’s fourteen years later and Misato is commanding an airship and leading an organisation to stop Gendo’s plans for instrumentality. It’s crazy and yet it’s ultimately a cowardly wreck of a movie that refuses to commit to any of the interesting ideas of what came before and instead retread old ground and ultimately say nothing. Which is ironic, given what Evangelion puports to be all about.
For one, despite it being 14 years later and everyone being older, this doesn’t apply to the Evangelion pilots because “it’s the curse of Eva” or some nonsense, which isn’t true and is a plot point they made up to justify Asuka still looking 14. And like, she has an eyepatch. If this movie had 30 year old Asuka in an eyepatch it would automatically be the coolest shit ever made. They had that on the table, and they threw it away.
Anyway it turns out that Shinji being happy and doing the right thing for once totally ended the world because of Gendo’s Brain Genious Plan #1 and then he sets out to right everything with Kaworu but that also causes another Impact because it too was a trick from Gendo’s Brain Genious Plan #2. Literally every single bad thing happens because nobody explains anything to anyone. If it at least ended with Shinji realising “wait, maybe being angry at my dad isn’t because of a complex, but because he’s an abusive monster trying to end the world” it would have been worth it, but it doesn’t. He’s near comatose and dragged from his entry plug, full on End of Eva breakdown mode.
It’s bad. I’ve seen people say that this is because it doesn’t have an ending and it’s all set up for 3.0+1.0, the final movie that will make everything make sense. Which it won’t, come on, it’s Evangelion. The whole thing is tied together with string and heart and it’s not that deep. The second movie ends in a trailer for an entirely different movie that contains this fucking amazing image and they threw it out. It’s a series made from abandoned plans of abandoned plans, and it always has been. It’s not building to some wild, final hour twist that will bring everything together and make it all make sense. The last time everyone wanted that they made End of Eva. Be careful what you wish for, you know?
Anyway. Those are the takes. This ended up being longer than I expected but the gist of it is this: the second Rebuild movie is a fantastic exercise in mythologizing and maturating what Evangelion actually means, and I’m always going to love it for that even though 3 is kinda a kick in the teeth after you get past the holy shit factor of the time skip.
One day, the final Rebuild movie will actually come out and I’ll get to live this Discourse in real time. I am steeling my body for that day because I doubt anyone will survive. Turn me into orange goo and set me free. One last ride.
