Ghibli Tavern - Neon genesis evangelion

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Yeah, I felt pretty similarly Orphic. Particularly about the pacing of major plot points as it went on - I could never appreciate Kaworu or his interactions with Shinji because he just wasn't in it for long enough for me to really care. I too felt very detached from the characters, and didn't especially like anyone other than Misato. I think the visuals early on are very nice, and the psychological aspects nearer the end are the most interesting part, but they feel like two different shows.

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12.03.2013, 10:44 AM

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quote:
Originally posted by Orphic Okapi
Also, I still have absolutely no idea why the Evas must be piloted by 14-year-olds.

They don't. They just have a requirement of needing pilots born on the year of the 1st impact. And must be missing at least a parent, but that's just a rumour I haven't been able to verify. It's fact that the whole of Shinji's class were candidates for Eva pilots though.

I think a big part of why the characters are so hard to identify with is because they're too "broken" compared to the rest of us. Whiny Shinji aside, not many people have seen their parent die in front of their eyes (Asuka, Misato, Akagi) or were born without knowing anyone as family (Rei).

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quote:
Originally posted by fenkashi
Screw your opinions, they are not relevant ^^.

12.03.2013, 10:58 AM

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Did you watch the "End of Evangelion" movie, Orphic? If you haven't I recommend you do, because its a direct replacement for eps.25 and 26 and even as a single work, it has episode titles at the beginning and half way through.

Fans put a huge amount of effort and creativity into discussing Kaoru, especially the strong hints of homosexuality he introduces. There's insane amounts of fanfiction and fanart depicting him and Shinji. I personally don't understand the obsession with Kaoru, he was just the eighteenth angel, nothing more and a device for imparting a few confirmations of things already strongly hinted at before. For me the mental attack and destruction of Asuka's psyche by the seventeenth angel is more significant and more terrible and for the impact of human agony on Shinji's mind, the destruction of Eva 03 with Koji inside it was more damaging for Shinji than killing Kaoru.

I think the show impacts people more who can relate to its characters experiences. I can feel strongly for Misato and Shinji both because connections with people I've had relationships with, and my own father allow me to understand what Hideaki Anno is saying. If your experiences allow you to connect with the message of Utena more easily I can understand that too, in fact these are good things and if works of art like this let us look inside ourselves a little more critically then they have achieved their purpose.

The only thing that annoys me is people who dismiss the show as pretentious rubbish. Evangelion is many things, and it does have pretensions, but it cannot be dismissed and in that regard people's opinions, as Fenkashi once so eloquently said here, "do not matter".

For the fans who were watching a mecha anime and not needing to be fed anything else you might now understand why the end of the series angered them so much.

This forum has quite a lot of insightful discussion about the show.

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12.03.2013, 01:17 PM

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I haven't seen End of Evangelion yet, but I plan to do so as soon as possible. Probably tonight.

I certainly would never dream of dismissing Evangelion as pretentious rubbish. The parts that would tempt most people to call it pretentious, I think, were the parts that I enjoyed the most. Furthermore, a lot of the weird psychological stuff makes sense even on a first viewing (it was the sci-fi stuff that baffled me more). I certainly don't think Anno was just throwing a bunch of random images at you in an attempt to make the show seem "deep" (okay, maybe he was doing that a little bit with all the religious imagery), and anyone who roundly dismisses the show as such is just being lazy.

I shouldn't have said that I couldn't relate to the characters at all, because I could, particularly to Shinji and his struggles with self-hatred. In fact Shinji, minus the daddy issues, probably resembles me as a person more so than Utena or Anthy. But, for whatever reason, my connection to Shinji took place on an entirely intellectual level, never on an emotional one (same with Asuka, who I can also relate to, to an extent). My reaction was usually, "Oh yeah, I have also experienced thoughts like this before, I can see where these guys are coming from. Ooh, that's a cool symbol." Whereas Utena hit me with equal force in the head and the heart; the first time I watched the finale I could hardly breath, and the second time I actually cried.

Evangelion never hit me at the gut level like that. Which doesn't mean it's a bad work of art, not at all. Just that it didn't affect me in the same way.

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12.03.2013, 06:58 PM

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Please don't misunderstand, I didn't suggest that you, or anyone else on the Tavern has said its pretentious rubbish, but I have met a few Evangelion "haters" in my time in various places on the internet; the show seems to cause some people to somehow reject it perhaps because it's so popular and receives so much praise. There's probably a medical name in psychology for such rejection and all I see in such people is something to be pitied because they're missing out on a great experience.

I know its not to everyone's taste but you can't help but affirm it's value as a piece of art.

On a sidenote I have until now avoided the new series of 4 films that's being made, three have been released and the fourth is due for release in 2014 IIRC. I bit the bullet and began watching them but was very disappointed. I have seen the first 2 so far. Its a retelling of the whole story but with several significant changes. To me the most notable changes are all things that weaken the story - too much empathy and friendship between Rei and Shinji, no focus at all on the adult characters problems and all the focus is on the pilots, far more focus on the mecha story and very little on the personal issues, waaaay much more religious mumbo-jumbo that's really complete twaddle, the addition of a valueless new female pilot and unfortunately (this time I agree with Saviour) LOTS of fanservice. Rei seems to appear naked almost as often as she's dressed and its really disappointing how the use of nudity has pervaded this great story due to the production values of the anime industry in the 2010s compared to the 1990s.

It makes me now wish I'd never seen them. I can't recommend them at all.

Also, very weirdly, the second movie uses lots of music from Gainax's Kare Kano series, their next production in 1998/9 after Eva. It was so very weird hearing music I associated with a comedy high school romance playing behind Kaji talking to Shinji about the pleasures of growing watermelons. So inappropriate!

For the same reasons I hope we never see a modern remake of Utena. We'd almost certainly get naked Anthys plastered everywhere. Grr.

Only one good thing from the new movies is the ending credits song "Beautiful World" by Utada Hikaru

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Post last edited by Saddletank on 12.03.2013, 08:07 PM.

12.03.2013, 08:01 PM

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The third movie is almost completely a new story. Just saying.

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quote:
Originally posted by fenkashi
Screw your opinions, they are not relevant ^^.

12.03.2013, 08:10 PM

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That could be a good thing.

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12.03.2013, 08:54 PM

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quote:
Originally posted by Saddletank
There's probably a medical name in psychology for such rejection

I'm not sure about psychology, but TV Tropes calls it Hype Backlash. There is also the closely related Hype Aversion.

I have to say, that affected me too somewhat. I really wanted to like Evangelion because of its general significance, and so naturally it was disappointing when I found it was overrated. Of course, I'm by no means a hater, but I just couldn't get into it in the same way that many others have.

Regarding the many films: I've been given the impression before that The End of Evangelion was a bit of a case of throwing a bone to grumpy fanboys who'd wanted a big finale to the series. I know it also criticises certain of those fanboys (there is the infamous "I'm so f***ed up" scene) but I've often been a bit put off watching it because it sounded like it just delves back into the crazy sci-fi part of the show, at the expense of the psychological part.

And the Rebuild series was intended to be less of a downer than the original, so I'm not surprised if it's more spectacular and less intellectual. I'd like to check it out some time because it does seem impressive in terms of animation, and I must say I'm curious, but I fear that I'll feel the same way about it as Saddles.

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12.03.2013, 10:15 PM

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End of Evangelion was . . . something else. "Disturbing," I guess, is the first adjective that leaps to mind. If you've seen the rest of the series, Arren, I would recommend you check it out. It won't change your outlook on the franchise as a whole or anything, but it does tie up loose ends for many of the characters who were left in limbo by the original finale, and it also helped clear up a few plot points for me. Not so many that I didn't spend two hours afterwards on the EvaGeeks wiki trying to figure out what the hell was going on the whole time.

It's true that the psychological aspect of the film is much weaker, and mostly feels like an uninspired retread of the same psychological stuff you've seen in the original Eps. 25 and 26. But that doesn't make the movie any less weird, that's for sure.

Having read half of the EvaGeeks wiki now, I feel like I have a much better grasp on the show's underlying mythology. It's interesting stuff, but frankly I haven't the faintest clue how anyone would be able to piece all this stuff together from the TV show alone. I'm assuming it took the Rebuilds and the manga to clarify some things?

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Post last edited by Orphic Okapi on 12.04.2013, 06:42 AM.

12.04.2013, 06:40 AM

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I have seen the whole series, so I intend to check it out some time. I know some of the plot already, and actually I found a YouTube video once that explained the timeline of the whole story, and it made a surprising amount of sense! I think a lot of the details are in various supplementary materials though.

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12.04.2013, 07:43 AM

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I too have been sifting through the EvaGeeks Wiki. On their forums I found a thread asking basically the usual question, "What's it all about?" Here is one reply, I found it useful and succinct, so I thought I'd copypasta it here:

quote:
I'm not the most experienced philosopher, philologist or whatever about Evangelion, but to me keeping in mind what I believe (again, nothing certain here) are the three main layers of the narrative is usefull

1 - The evolutionary/sci-fi layer: humans vs aliens battling it out under the "survival of the fittest" rule

2 - The mystical layer: the path to godhood (pretty much a a mandatory aspect in productions coming from the country where Shintoism is practiced and kaizen was invented)

3 - The psychological layer: charactes coming of age or gaining a better understanding of human relationships and such (the most important layer, in the end)

The religious elements are just window dressing in my opinion, but I believe they work very well in giving you the "wow these Angels really are connected to the Big Guy upstairs, aren't they?" feeling. (note: I was raised a Catholic so obviously you have to factor that in in what I am saying). I say this in the sense that I really think Anno was not trying to tell us something about religion.

In the same way, he's not trying to tell us something about made up Angels, Seeds of Life, Impacts and AT Field (no sh!t, it's all made up, but so is religion one might argue!) so in a way the sci-fi stuff is also some kind of fancy frame, a backdrop. But heck, you need it, otherwise NGE would have just been the anime version of The Sorrows of Young Werther I guess. Plus, again, the world needs action figures of mechas. At least, I do.

There's a number of problems with the meanings behind Evangelion, one of them is that Hideaki Anno has spoken in interviews and basically said "whatever you want it to mean". I suspect he did have a specific goal in getting this out of his system, though that was more than likely a very personal goal. I suspect he designed it also to hopefully make a lot of money (and perhaps ease his personal situation), hence he chose the hugely popular mecha setting as a vehicle with which to deliver his message(s).

Other issues are that there is a manga, subsequent movies (currently five with the last of the Rebuild series due next year), a video game and various comments by Anno and Sakamoto online and in print. The fanbase argues among itself over which of this material is canon, which isn't, how much weight can be given to it (because no-one has a clue how much direct input Anno had into the video game maaterial, for example) and even how much validity fan-created material has.

There's also various versions of the TV show, with director's cuts and such and even the English subtitles to the Japanese audio plus the English spoken dub differ from the original Japanese. For example the English subtitles use the word Angel to denote the aliens while the Japanese word, so I understand more closely means Apostle or Messenger.

In the Japanese audio you can clearly hear the voice actors saying "First Chlidren", "Second Children" etc while the subs state "First Child", "Second Child". Some of these differences are minor but this is the internet and because the show uses a mecha format it has attracted the kind of people who like to pick over such details endlessly instead of doing something useful, like their homework.

EvaGeeks is a good resource and probably the best on the internet but reading it sometimes just annoys me at how people over-react or are rude without justification and when the noise drowns the signal I get quickly tired of internet forums. Take away from it what you are able to but even so, what you do take on board is probably only going to be what you first suspected to be your interpretation of its meaning anyway.

For me the show looks at personal relations at all levels and between all kinds of people, children with children, parents with offspring, youth into adulthood, lies and deception as a means to protect yourself, and so on and so on. In there I can see things that reflect in me with critical (and almost shameful) clarity and there's times the show is deeply humbling for me and very distressing but in the end there's hope and no matter how unrealistic it might be, its enough to keep yourself glued together.

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Post last edited by Saddletank on 12.04.2013, 09:05 AM.

12.04.2013, 09:02 AM

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Double post. Apologies. I found this page from EvaGeeks quite useful. I found it while trawling through one of the threads I mentioned above about what can be considered canon and what can't. This data is from the video game NGE2 but the Wiki organisers state that the data conforms 100% with what we are given in the TV show so it has some veracity. They don't know if Anno had any input in this compilation of data but I infer that they think he did.

Personally I'm still hunting down info on who exactly Rei is, or rather what they are.

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Post last edited by Saddletank on 12.04.2013, 10:16 AM.

12.04.2013, 10:14 AM

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I found the video I mentioned before! Hopefully it will be helpful to people who are confused about the plot (though it appropriately leaves the psychological elements up to viewer interpretation): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho07Ag6lV9g

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12.04.2013, 10:51 AM

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Nice find, a good explanation of the sci-fi level of the anime.

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12.04.2013, 03:05 PM

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Time for some AMVs.

Shinji - Linkin Park - Numb

Rei - Serial Experiments Lain Theme

Asuka - Rammstein - Engel

Johnny Cash - Hurt

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12.04.2013, 10:17 PM

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I enjoyed the one with the Serial Experiments Lain theme song - really drives home how indebted that show is to Evangelion. I think in the end I liked Lain a bit more overall, but I highly doubt it would have ever come into being if Evangelion hadn't come first.

The Johnny Cash song surprised me by being incredibly fitting. Before this I don't think I could have imagined country music and mecha anime coming together in a way that wasn't terrible.

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12.05.2013, 05:12 AM

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Just wanted to mention that although I haven't been posting in it, I've been really enjoying reading through this discussion.

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12.07.2013, 02:31 AM

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Have you watched the series, Mush?

On a different subject, Orphic, do you plan to watch Eve no Jikan soon? Please let us know what you think.

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Post last edited by Saddletank on 12.07.2013, 09:39 AM.

12.07.2013, 09:37 AM