Evangelion

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X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Every day still just feeling like...

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X :neo:
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Finished all but the last two episodes of my rewatch. The Japanese acting is much better, especially in Shinji's case (no offense Spike Spencer.) Also got to watch the director's cut episodes this time. I didn't skip the NEPs this time, so I got to see that the last few were mostly made up of story boards and animatics rather than finished animation (Rei III was a still shot of a concept drawing lol.) I also noticed the preview for 25 was seemingly storyboards for EoE, so I guess that always was the intended ending. The production really was a mess wasn't it?
 
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Theozilla

Theozilla

Kaiju Member
null said:
Yeah Anno basically gave up on Rei development-wise after episode 6. (He pulls the same shit with Mari in Rebuild.)
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Huh, that's interesting how frank and critically self-reflective Anno is in those excerpts. I never realized that character-wise, Rei's character development basically stalls after the first quarter of the series and largely only has plot relevance during the ending episodes.
 
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X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
null said:
Yeah Anno basically gave up on Rei development-wise after episode 6.
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I see it more that Rei's role in the narrative is one where the element that she plays is essentially existing as a foil of who Gendo becomes after he's forced to give up Yui. He's constantly locked himself into doing what he has to do as he sees it, so Rei acts as an extension of that as the clone that he wants to connect with but forces himself to be detached from.

While that does make her interesting and mysterious, that's also why that moment Anno mentions where she learns to smile is really all that there is to get her into place insofar as understanding. She's a blank slate, and she sort of has everything that she needs to set about learning to do things in her own way – which is VERY much unlike all of the history of psychological damage that Shinji & Asuka are exploring. Later, she's also essentially the opposite foil in Shinji's mind, instead of seeing his mother & father, he sees Rei & Kaowru because that's the concept of safety and familial bonds that he's learned to relate to. For better or worse, Rei is closer to being a part of Evangelion's setting than one of its characters simply because the nature of her existence is a foil by which the characters understand themselves, rather than something like Ghost in the Shell that is more about exploring the nature of her conceptual existence.

Given that role on top of the fact that Asuka was initially planned as the main character, but then they changed Evangelion to have a male lead, so that it wasn't too similar to Anno's previous work Nadia, especially since it was originally imagined as a sequel to that series. It's not really hard to see why he really focuses his attentions on the two of them very differently than how he does on the rest of the characters in the series – because of how they're reflections of one another, and the foils by which they're both forced to face their own inner trauma, which is really at the heart of what Anno is pouring into Evangelion.

That's the good and bad thing about the series is that it VERY much isn't a narrative that's designed for people who are looking for a series that dives into all of the characters and what's going on with them, to tell a story – but one that focuses very particularly on the elements that it wants in order to just convey a particular type of emotion through the experience, which is... also a lot of what Gunbuster is like.



X :neo:
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
What's wrong with that..?

Ohhh....

Is it because people wanted
Shinji to get with Asuka
and have now been denied that again?

I don't think its news to anyone, but a lot of people surprisingly identify with Shinji, especially with regarding his relationship to Asuka. Part of the controversy with the first series was how people got pissed about how Asuka rejected Shinji and rather than have Asuka warm up to Shinji in the end... End of Evangelion basically dug harder into that dynamic, and exhibited Shinji's selfishness and lack of understanding towards her.

And then there was that hospital scene that punctuated it.

I guess old wounds still don't heal.
 
looneymoon

looneymoon

they/them
AKA
Rishi
From what I've read, there's a whole scene in the movie where Asuka and Shinji discuss their relationship and agree that it's toxic even though they care for each other. Obviously this is paraphrased from a summary, so I'm not actually sure how the scene went.

It seems like Anno is using Asuka as a meta-stand in for the original Eva series. Having her end up the giant nerd character seems cheekily appropriate.
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
With that in mind, I cannot begin to imagine what kind of abuse the writers have been receiving to necessitate such a no-nonsense statement.

It sounds like death threats were part of it but the "misrepresentations of the film content" seems strange to me. Are people lying about the film somehow? And how so?

This sounds like something worst than what Gainex went through with the first Evangelion series.
 
looneymoon

looneymoon

they/them
AKA
Rishi
Makoeyes987 said:
With that in mind, I cannot begin to imagine what kind of abuse the writers have been receiving to necessitate such a no-nonsense statement.

It sounds like death threats were part of it but the "misrepresentations of the film content" seems strange to me. Are people lying about the film somehow? And how so?

This sounds like something worst than what Gainex went through with the first Evangelion series.
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it might be as a precaution given the Kyoto Animation arson attack that happened only a few years ago.
 
thelastmagus

thelastmagus

Lv. 25 Adventurer
AKA
Cecil
so i've been watching anime for like 15+ years, i've finally gotten around to evangelion. and idk why but it's just not really working for me. i'm 14 episodes in for the record.
 
null

null

Mr. Thou
AKA
null
thelastmagus said:
so i've been watching anime for like 15+ years, i've finally gotten around to evangelion. and idk why but it's just not really working for me. i'm 14 episodes in for the record.
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Nothing wrong with that. Eva has problems and it suffers from its own insane hype. If you end up finishing it though, tell us what you think. Episodes 18+ and The End of Evangelion are almost an entirely different show.
 
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