And here I brought the discussion back to evangelion 2.0. I was not laughing, when watching, because of how awful all its aspects were. Like there are lots of things even I can admit where incredibly well made, this is a gorgeously well animated, greatly directed,with cool soundtrack, film. The action set pieces are completely stunning, the shot composition (as with anything hideaki anno makes) is superb.
Neverthless the act of watching this was pure agony, I ended up scratching my face, facepallming and even screaming angrily at everything that was happening on screen. A this is not how this is supposed to be thought, crossing my mind at every moment and scene of the movie. Anyone that is reading this can probably guess by now, I am a diehard fan of the old neon genesis evangelion series, the old series and eoe, being my favorite piece of fiction ever created. It is such a personally important anime, for reasons, I hope I can in write in the future in a pretty fucking long essay. And after finishing those two, the most inspirational and important thing for me, I went and watched all 3 rebuilds that are out. However before anyone gets any funny ideas, no I do not dislike these movies simply for they are different(I am sorry, NGE is just so perfect doing things another way is usually wrong). I do not want these movies to simply be a scene by scene copy of the series, that would be completely pointless, Eva 1.0 was almost a carbon copy of the series original episodes, and that only made it passable at best. So let’s get into some specifics of why I loathe this movie.
For starters, the characters are not that interesting or fleshed out, especially when compared to its older series counterparts. Sure, in order to streamline this and make the material work as a movie, changes were inevitably going to be made considering, how unlike 1.0, this one actually, complicates the plot (a lot) and brings a lot new aspects that were absent in the original (surprise, none of that shit actually worked to its advantage). But really sacrificing a lot of the character depth in eva, in order to make room for more mecha action and plot oriented series? That is a low blown. Remember when we had this superbly made episode 4 of nge, that great such great insight to shinji’s character, and weight to his relation with Misato? FORGET ABOUT SUCH SHIT, because let me tell you, not only the characters on screen are not that interesting, their interactions are also shafted, there is not enough time dispensed to properly stablishes how every character reacts and affects each other, no relation feels organical or well developed. It all fells so artificial, like these are the works of a checklist, of the minimal things to do, in order to make the audience remotely care and understand the characters. For example, Asuka is on screen for a total of 8 minutes before falling in love with shinji, talk about contrived character writing. Again a lot of people will not agree on how serious of an issue this ends up being, having a more action heavy, almost blockbuster like formula of this movies is bound to appeal to a lot of people.
But no, for me most of the appeal of eva was not in the mecha battle, even if those were undoubtedly entertaining to watch, nor in its cheese save the world plot. But in its flawed characters, that had to face not only a lot of pressure from the duty as pilots, but a lot of more universal and relatable personal issues. Like the pains and joys of human interactions, how said interactions may come to define us, our world views, how we see ourselves, how important it is to come on our own as an individual, make your own decisions and take responsibility for their consequences. And to be fair it is not like those ideas are absent in the movie, there is definitely an effort to allude and portray a lot of the same ideas. Though this ends up being mostly wasted effort, the protagonist we see on screen right now, is no longer that complex individual desperately struggling with his fear of rejection, and the fact he never acted upon any of his desires. Now all we end up having is a generic harem lead, that has chicks literally fighting to be his girlfriend. Asuka also really changed, long are gone the days where she was that self-centered bitch, that really needed confirmation from others, while at the same time isolating herself, a person that only defined her value in life for how good she was as a pilot. Currentely she is a generic tsundere, that only cares about the great Shinji Ikari. Anno even had the audacity of changing the iconic evangelion elevator scene, and change the dialogue, from rei’s view of herself, asuka's trauma with her mother and need of confirmation, to a literal fight about who should be shinji’s number 1 girl. Why would I care, or how could I relate to the themes in display , no matter how personally important they may be? How the fuck I am supposed to really relate to these characters? To make matters simpler, I did not like what they did to my Shinji, my misato, hated what they did to my gendo, and my god, Asuka, what did they do to you?
Wish fulfillment and escapism are not terms of criticism I really like using against fiction. Those are so overused, because of the way how everything is labelled as such, the terms have lost a lot of their meaning over time. I will have to use those here, because very rarely I have seen something that was so transparent, about its intent of being a wish fulfillment fantasy. If you have any better way, to describe a show where our protagonist literally says, I do not care about the world, I just want to save this cute idealized version of human being, a perfect waifu, please let me know. The tone in here reminded me more of a school comedy if anything, with lots of its aspects, like the constant ecchi fanservice moment being awfully self-indulgent. Eva always had some of that shit, but 2.0 capitalizes on that by tenfold. And like I get it, presenting this perfect fantasy, of the average male being called out to save the world, and having lots of chick fall in love with him has a lot of thematic purpose in this story. It is that escapism tale, that eva questioned and "deconstructed", in its later half, by applying psychology and real world logic to a lot of its clichés. To what degree that is so innovative in mecha (if at all) is very debatable. It turns on its head such fantasy, and in turn brings back important questions of how the audience deals with reality (Are we running away from our problems?) and what purpose fiction has in your lives. So yeah I get what Anno was attempting, it is very deliberate how pandering this ends up feeling, maybe the escalation of those aspects serve to show how bolder, escapism has become in the decades after NGE's release. But it does not change how not worth, the final product ends up becoming, especially for someone that already got a lot of the same ideas, in a way more potent way before. I might end up giving it a pass for the whole rebuild saga, if the meta, franchise angle was well done in 3.0, but that sadly was not the case.
The worst past of all of that is not even present in the movie. The fan reaction to it manages to even more annoying than the movie itself. Like whenever I see someone saying that they like this, because shinji finally acts like a man, I just want to lower my score for it even more. But that, and facts like how this lost that darker and depressive edge of the older series, how more prevalent the action scenes are, all seem to be hailed as great positives. Many even start to argue to just skip the older series, which is pretty ironical, since there are lots of aspects specially in the next movie that will not make much sense if you skip the older series (you will still not get it even, with the context of both).
Those opinions, I simply cannot stand that, like I know evangelion is a highly divisive series, but having this being put as a definitive version, something that makes NGE obsolete, is just so unacceptable Really, I get why people like this, but every minute watching is nothing but a slog of seemling endless torture. Something feels very wrong in every scene, and by that fact alone I can easily say I find the so hated eva 3.0 to be a superior work. Sure 3.0 is in a lot of ways a clusterfuck, with a fairly incomprehensible plot, however I never got the same feeling. It feels like eva, it had concepts like Shinji facing alone the consequences of his actions, having to face the weight of killing the person he cared the most, that I could easily get behind, unlike anything in 2.0 or 1.0. So well done 3.0, for being the first competent imitation of the original's ideias and mindfucks, that actually had enough bold choices to add anything to EVA as a whole.
I could keep complaining about every change this movie makes in the original plotline, But for someone who does not want a comparisson series, I sure talk a lot about those. Instead I want to argue, what is the point of this story. While 1.0 is somewhat understandable, as a new introduction for newer audiences that did not grow up with eva, and 3.0 brings up an entire new direction for the franchise, 2.0 is sadly lacking. Sure you could say the purpose was simply to make easily digestible self-indulgent nonsense, that bridges the gap between those two, but outside of that I got nothing. This is such pointless and mostly derivative nonsense.
In the middle of all of this, a silver line of hope exists. I am talking about the sequel theory of course, the controversial fan theory, that the rebuilds are actually sequels to the original. It may give an entirely new way to approach these characters, and story. Like the more extreme ways the character’s act in 2.0 could be seen as a natural development of their personalities, it may also give an in series importance to how pedantic a lot of it feels, representing Shinji falling even further into escapism after failing to accept reality after EOE. It retroactively may give some value to some of the things I am complaining about. As for me I would be really surprised if that was not the case, there are way too many fucking hints at the rebuilds actually being a sequel, to the point it will be kind of a surprising twist for me, if that ends up not being the case. Regardless I will wait for 4.0 to make any form of final judgement on that. And of course this will never redeem 2.0 in my eyes, but hey, It will become better than what we have right now.
So those are the reasons for me thinking of this as my worst anime of all times. I am of strong belief, that the individual aspects of a series have no value in, and of themselves. It is how they add up to create the enjoyment, the experience is how I rate and judge fiction, so no, I do not believe this should be rated at least a 5 for its fantastic technical aspects, or soundtrack. Animation is completely worthless without a great story, a vision, passion and a desire to express ideas. Maybe even all of that alone may not add up to a good show, since with some ideas I have this inherit prejudice with. And maybe that is all there is towards my hate of 2.0, but hopefully, I could be more insightful than that. Lastly I would like to add that yes I do recommend 2.0. Despite my eternal grievances with it, if you did not like, or just did not care much about NGE, definitely give this is a watch. I hope you end up having a better time.
