Favorite Anime

Glad to hear that you liked most of it! I find Eva to be endlessly fascinating but it is definitely rough around the edges. The show wasn't all planned out in advance and definitely evolved as it was written. A big part of that was showrunner Hideaki Anno going into treatment for his years-long depression partway through production. They also ran out of money towards the end, which is why the last several episodes use so many still frames, and the final two are ... well, what they are.

Have you had a chance to see The End of Evangelion yet? If not, I definitely recommend it. The movie version is longer than the last two episodes of the TV show and full of really great action animation (the show had proven its popularity by then so they could get a real budget) and actually shows Instrumentality, though fans still argue over how similar (or not) the two endings are. And there's plenty of weird and controversial stuff that's unique to the movie too. But I think it's an important part of the Eva experience.

Loving the Pen Pen avatar, btw.

Yeah it was pretty evident that they must have had budget troubles with several scenes where characters repeated a couple sentences three or more times, and some awkward long pauses. I didn't like how the fifth child just showed up out of nowhere and then put the moves on Shinji, that was a little weird. Yeah, I read that the shows creator hadn't planned it out. At least he was honest about it.

I did watch TEoE last night before bed, probably a bad idea? I liked that they went back to the mechs, but the end was more confusing than the original ending (and ten times more disturbing). And it kind of made me appreciate the simpler ending a lot more. At least that one seemed to end on a "happier" note with Shinji basically deciding that his life is worth living.

Yeah there was a lot I didn't understand. Giant Rei? Rei's arm falling off? Giant Rei merging with the other Eva's? Pretty much everything having to do with Rei. Shinji was the only one to emerge from the LCL (?) at the end, but Asuka was already on the shore, how did she get there? There had to have been more people who wanted to go on living. Why did he choke Asuka???

I didn't like seeing everyone die, I think I liked it better in the other episode where it's just implied.

And what's with all this Christian symbolism and the show's creator claiming that it doesn't mean anything and he just thought it "looked cool." Yeah, sorry, but you can't crucify Eva 1 with your main character in it and claim it doesn't mean anything.

Ok I rewatched some of TEoE and at first I thought I understood what was going on during Third Impact and Instrumentality, but now I have no clue.

Eldo, did you watch the rebuild movies?

There are multitude of interpretations of Eva (and EOE), but I tend to subscribe to the notion that the show is "about" is actually pretty simple. It's in part a deconstruction of various anime tropes, especially mecha anime, since a lot of the people who made Eva were fanboys before they began to work in the animation industry. But on a thematic level, I think it is for the most part consistently about depression, psychology, and interpersonal relationships. More specifically, it's about Anno's own take on those things (and his views may have evolved over time).

The show spends so much time on the Christian symbolism, especially in EOE, that I've spent a lot of time trying to puzzle it out myself. Honestly though, I've never read a coherent interpretation of it. Most of the people who worked on the show were Buddhist and/or Shinto, and I don't think the show really gives any indication that they knew that much about Christianity or the Kabbalah beyond "oh hey, that looks cool". There are plenty of theories out there though, so clearly plenty of people disagree with me on this.

This is actually part of the reason why I'm not as keen on EOE as some people I know. I think it gets too bogged down in the surface-level elements, especially the "mythology" and symbolism, at the expense of the deeper thematic meaning. To be fair, I think the TV ending goes too far in the opposite direction, overdosing on the thematic stuff with barely any story left to hang it on, but I actually kinda prefer the TV ending these days. I agree that EOE's ending is a lot less hopeful, and I wonder how much of that is because of Anno's increasing disillusionment with anime fandom following the reaction to the TV ending. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he made EOE as a "fuck you" to his fans, but he seems considerably more cynical in the movie version. On the other hand, I've read some elaborate theories about how the movie is actually more hopeful than it looks, but this relies largely on alleged mistranslations from the Japanese (something I'm not capable of commenting on) and generally doesn't really line up with my perception of the film. But I don't claim to know for sure.

I have watched all three of the Rebuild films so far. It's been kinda interesting to watch fan reaction to them swing back and forth wildly after each one. The first film (Eva 1.0; though the DVD/Blu-ray release is called Eva 1.11) is nearly identical to the first six or seven episodes of the show, except for having more detailed animation and of course trimming things down for time. Eva 2.0 starts to go in a different direction and a lot of people who did not care for the show started to cheer about how "this was how Eva should've been done in the first place". I do not agree, and while I enjoyed 2.0 well enough, I did not prefer it to the corresponding episodes of the series.

Eva 3.0 is where I think the Rebuild project went seriously off the rails. It undercuts the ending of 2.0 right off the bat, it changes up the characterization in a lot of poorly explained ways, and it focuses on a bunch of the "mythological" stuff that I'm not really that interested in. Oh, and they bring back Kaworu for a bunch of fanservice for the shippers, including the most homoerotic scene of people playing piano that I have ever seen. Moreover, there's barely any plot movement and nothing much interesting happens. It's been several years since I've seen the film (at an anime convention) but it's only just now being released on DVD/BR in the US, so I dunno what the reaction from the now wider audience is. A few years back, not everyone was as vitriolic about the film as me, but it was still generally regarded as the weakest Rebuild film so far IIRC.

It's now been about three and a half years since 3.0 came out in Japan and as of the most recent updates, Anno and co. have not even begun production on the fourth (and theoretically final) film yet, so god only knows when we'll see that. But I'll probably be there in spite of myself when it drops.

Eldorion wrote:This is actually part of the reason why I'm not as keen on EOE as some people I know. I think it gets too bogged down in the surface-level elements, especially the "mythology" and symbolism, at the expense of the deeper thematic meaning. To be fair, I think the TV ending goes too far in the opposite direction, overdosing on the thematic stuff with barely any story left to hang it on

That's a really good way of summing it up, and I completely agree. And like I've said, my initial feelings are the ending of the TV show is better, but watching those last two episodes is like having someone hit you over the head repeatedly.

Interesting thoughts on the rebuild movies. Not sure if I'll check those out yet. Finding a copy of the show on DVD seems to be difficult.

So overall, a lot of things I liked, and somethings I didn't like. Probably a testament of the author making it for themselves and not just to please everyone. Though I really could have done with a traditional "and they lived happily ever after."

Every now and then I get fed up with the formulaic nature of so many shows (this isn't a problem exclusive to anime, of course), and at moments like that I'm happy to see something as singular and out of left field as Evangelion. But yeah, I'm not hugely satisfied by either ending myself. I've got no problem with happy endings myself, and while I don't think a totally sunshine and roses ending would've been fitting for Eva, the message of hope and overcoming depression is, I think, a fitting ending for the story.

As for finding the DVDs, the show has been out of print in the US for a while, so the prices are even crazier than they are for more current anime DVDs, which can already get pretty bad. Not sure if they've localized the Blu-ray yet (it was released in Japan last year IIRC), but I don't think they have. I dropped something like $125 for the "Evangelion Platinum" box set a few years ago because I wanted to make sure I'd get the director's cut versions of episodes 21-24 and since it was a remaster with better image quality than the "Perfect Collection". There may be cheaper options online since there's been many different releases of the show over the year, but you're probably gonna be stuck buying from secondary sellers and sometimes the product descriptions are really vague.

I hope you'll post your impressions if you do end up watching the Rebuild movies. Those, at least, are currently licensed by FUNimation and easy to find, despite them taking so long to get their version of 3.0 released.

Hahahaha..

Bluebottle wrote:

Definitely study music.

That song was put to such good use in EOE. That and Asuka vs the MP Evas were the highlights for me.

The Cave of Two Lovers is such a great episode.

Absolutely shounen.

Finally getting back into anime more and finishing some of the series I began watching at this year's Otakon. I really enjoyed Erased even though the ending was rushed and it was a little uneven. Still a great viewing experience and I feel like I watched the show for completely different reasons than a lot of the people hating on it on MAL. On the flip side, I'm not sure if I will actually finish One-Punch Man despite it being so widely praised. The premise is amusing but the execution is very, er, typically shounen and just not very interesting to me.

The melons in the bike one.

And that Come On and Slam remix is phenomenal; one of the best I've seen.

omfg could they just release NGE on blu-ray so I don't have to gamble and buy used dvd's on the internet?!?!?!