Thoughts on Evangelion (original, end, or rebuild)
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Was Akira trash too?
The movie? I wouldn't say it was as bad as Evangelion, but it definitely gets more hype than it deserves. Mostly it was bad because it tried to adapt way too fucking much source material. The source material was fine. That is not the problem Evangelion suffers from. Evangelion is just trash bags all the way down.
Hmm ok so you aren’t opposed to cerebral media in general, just NGE... I have a few questions if you want to share:
Do you recognize a value in the impact a piece of media has in spawning/inspiring other media? Akira for example, being very influential on not just later anime but cinema itself in multiple ways? Or is the value (or lack thereof) of a piece of media entirely contained within the media itself?
Roughly, are you old enough that you grew up with these media, or are you “looking back” at them from a purely modern perspective? What I mean is, are you the kind of person who can appreciate a black and white film, or something otherwise “dated”, with the acknowledgement that the art form in general has “improved” since?
What did you discern as the message of NGE? Do you find no value in that message, or do you believe it didn’t convey that message adequately, or what?
To your first point, it's something I admittedly have not given much consideration. My evaluation is purely on the artistic endeavor's own merits rather than an analysis on the influence it projected onto the rest of society. Magnitude of influence does not warrant adulation or praise however, for there are many things that project a malignant influence. I haven't given it enough thought to properly identify and evaluate the lasting influence that Evangelion produced. I maintain my stance that as a piece of art standing on its own merits...those merits are severely lacking. To my understanding, Akira's influence had a lot to do with the fact that it was one of the first anime movies to make it to western shores and introduce an audience to the artform as a whole. It that regard I'd say any anime could have been the one that accomplished that, Akira just happened to be the one that was in the right place at the right time.
On the second point, yes I am old enough to know the struggle of trying to download episodes of Trigun over a 56k dial up connection while praying that it finished before someone decided to use the phone. I missed the boat on Evangelion when it was initially airing because I didn't have cable, so no Toonami for me. When I was finally able to pick it up later in college, I found that it did not hold up to all the hype my friends had given it. At the same time I was also getting caught up on Cowboy Bebop, which I did find lived up to its hype. My conclusion at the time was that the people who had told me about their enlightened consciousness altering experiences, their divine revelations and their mind trips of watching their hand go through the screen when they went to turn the TV off after watching the final episode...those people were all dumb 14 year olds who thought the pretentious philosophical masturbation that Gainax had been putting on display was somehow anything other than pretentious masturbation.
Evangelion did not have a message. It was just Gainax luring the audience in with some giant robot fight scenes and then proceeding to wank off in your face and pretend it was philosophy or something and people, being stupid teenagers, decided it must be deep and insightful somehow and then proceeded to spend the next several years reinforcing each other's incorrect interpretations.
Well, fair enough on the first two points, absolutely fine takes to have, just not ones that really need any further discussion, so I’ll just skip to 3, and keep focused on what the message of NGE is, contained within the media itself (so no, I’ll try not to reference the Japanese only PS2 game(‘s bonus content, lol) that sometimes gets brought up) - have you read my other comments to other users in this thread? I think they have some useful context for what my thoughts on the “message” of the series could be. But to boil it down, I think both the God-Tier (Adam and Lilith, first ancestral race, spears, eggs, etc) plot and the Civilization-Tier (Seele, Nerv, Instrumentality, Tokoyo3, etc) plot shouldn’t be regarded as the core of the message, but rather as symbolic elaborations on the core message (which I think is Shinji’s personal journey, which isn’t just about the external, “larger” plot lines alone, but also clearly deeply related to his “internal drama” of fear of rejection, and tendency to withdraw or run from situations that present even the possibility of rejection or disappointment).
So that’s just a lot of words to say that, while you can totally be annoyed that the show’s plot “went haywire at the end” or “conflicts/plot elements were left without perfect knowledge on their origin and outcome being given”, those are both, effectively, “missing the point” of the show. The Evas, the Angels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Seele, all the various sideplots (MAGI and Ritsuko, Misato and Kaji, the school kids, etc) serve their purpose of facilitating and birthing the real story, the real message, which is effectively about Shinji’s (and thus every member of the audience’s) responsibility to not run away from the gift of life, but to embrace it entirely, aware that the lows are what make the highs.
IMO anyway! I’d be interested in your further thoughts!
Edit: one further thought, we could have had a show that was exclusively about the Adam and Lilith plot line(fruit of life descendants vs fruit of knowledge descents fighting over a planet they both landed on) - that would be cool in its own right, if a little lacking in meaning. We could also have had a show entirely about the human-scale machinations, of Seele, Nerv, Gehrin, Marduk, and other groups, seeking to bring about Instrumentality in different ways for different end goals - that would have also been cool in its own right. And finally we could have had a show about the challenges of one boy trying to find realization in a world that sometimes doesn’t care about his struggles. What we actually got was 95% of each of these shows, all in one! That’s part of why, for me atleast, I can rave about the show, compared with the vast sea of “meh” out there before and since.