Evangelion 2.0 review

This is a mostly bad, and kind of incomprehensible old Evangelion 2.0 review I have posted on myanimeslist(hence the English). Despite really not being good and well structured, this made some fine points, and reflects some of my thoughts about the movie, so I decided to repost it.

What is the worst anime of all times? What is the criteria to even consider, a piece of fiction to such an infamous title? Those are questions I hopefully can end up answering, while giving insight to the colossal mess, that is eva 2.0. Many will take certain approach with some reserves, a worst anime of all times discussion usually is only warranted to a certain type of titles. You probably know them by now, those ultra-trashy, low budget ovas, the likes of mars of destruction, skelter heaven, garzeys wing (at least that was when everybody flipped their shit, whenever I tried to argue shows like charlotte were the worst thing I have seen). And while those unanimous bad shows certainly are awful, I would never call them insulting. No one in the production of those were under the impression of making a great show, neither did anyone put any real effort to make it so, so why would I get mad over how bad the final product ended up being? There is no passion, no ambition on such projects, they are just lazily made projects, made in the hopes of getting a laugh or two, because of how bad they are. And those usually succeed on those low ambitions only. There is nothing to grab here, nothing to get really angry or mad about. Such forgettable anime, no matter how technically bad they can be, or how a lot of their individual’s elements are way worse than anything else, will never stand as a worst anime of all times list for me.



(How awesome, Shinji finally mans up)

And here I brought the discussion back to evangelion 2.0. I was not laughing when watching, it 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 being 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 few 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 had such great insight to shinji’s character, and gave 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 one another, 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 battles, 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 to 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 topics.

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 in regards to how good she was as a pilot. Currently 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?



(stock footage, and nothing happening was better)


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 quintesential, denial of moment)


The worst aspect in 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).



( How lovely, she even cooks for shinji now)

Those fucking 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 seeming endless torture. Something just 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 aftertaste. 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 ideas 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 comparison 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.



(Anno is such a glorious troll)


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, Anno can (not) be an idiot 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 (not a good one) for me, if that ends up not being the case. Regardless I will wait for 4.0 to make any form of final judgement. 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.

Resposta a video quest 91 - Neon Genesis Evangelion - o que nos define, o que nos separa.

Isso foi originalmente um comentário em resposta ao vídeo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZNnwaQBJnU&t=577s como não consigo publica-lo no vídeo em si irei armazena-lo aqui. Não acho que este está condizente com a maioria do conteúdo que produzo, só estou razoavelmente satisfeito com esse texto, então irei publicá-lo.

Ok eu deveria ter uma vida ao invés escrever textos absurdamente longos em comentários do youtube, que ninguém vai ler. Como vocês apresentam muito sobre temática nesse vídeo, vou ter que falar meus argumentos em linhas mais gerais, não tenho como explicar tudo, nem caberia, nesse caráter.

Para começar eu acho que para uma serie de vídeos sobre EVA que esta já no terceiro episódio, talvez seria melhor deixar a introdução com a sinopse, para não sei os vídeos anteriores, ou dar um link com isso? Sinceramente não sei muito o propósito que esse tipo de coisa serve em reviews (se a pessoa quer contexto ela deveria buscar a sinopse no google). Porque esperar toda vez uns 3 minutos para a ideia real do vídeo começar é extremamente cansativo (E sim eu falo de experiência com vídeos anteriores do canal).

Quanto a ideia de desconstrução e grande inovação de EVA, apesar de negar esse caráter, vc na verdade explicita o que ele seria no próprio vídeo. EVA diferentemente de Gundam fez com que os próprios problemas ansiedades dos personagens, suas questões defeitos e falhas pessoais, fossem o inimigo a ser derrotado no final, o que inverte a lógica de inimigos externos e mechas anteriores, colocando o foco e próprio conflito na intersubjetividade dos personagens. Existem diversos argumentos e formas de se analisar mais seriamente, o que Eva estaria revolucionando, como se diferencia e ocupa um papel importante na mídiahttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8yHcPUOolf2dW9ESGx4eUlnb2M/view

Mas o vídeo no geral só responde a opiniões desinformadas sobre porque o anime não seria uma desconstrução por personagens não quererem pilotar (algo que qualquer pessoa que já viu gundam sabe) não acrescentando muito em termos de conceitos, e a própria discussão. Existe um argumento para se fazer quanto a clichês e elementos que EVA estaria criando muito mais produtivo do que falar eva criou o clichê do protagonista perdendo o controle no primeiro episódio (precisam explicar isso para o autor do manga de Devilman,ele estava copiando o Ano).

Ocorre também uma falha na interpretação sobre a importância do episódio 15 de EVA, que apesar de mencionado, não explicam porque ele é o paradigma e essencial para a série. De certa forma ele representa o momento de maior proximidade dos personagens. Depois dos 15 episódios anteriores, estes já ficaram mais familiarizados uns com os outros e se permitem seus momentos de maior contato. O shinji e o pai, a asuka e o Shinji, a Misato e o Kaji, todos eles estão na situação de maior proximidade, e contato. A partir desse ápice a serie vai para uma lenta quebra e destruição desses relacionamentos, enquanto os personagens mergulham em ciclos extremamente autodestrutivos e a dificuldade de relacionamentos é demonstrada com toda sua força, não coincidentemente as cenas da asuka e do Shinji em eoe, é um call-back para esse episódio.

Em relação ao uso de ideologia e debates filosóficos e sua aplicação em Evangelion, sinceramente eu acho essa parte absurda. O lobo sendo o lobo do homem é um debate sobre a natureza humana, e a necessidade do estado e estruturas de controle. A ideia da tabula rasa é um conceito epistemológico de Locke. Claro o existencialismo do Shinji e formação de conceitos por parte dele, ou a ideia de uma situação da instrumentalidade, e o fim das individualidades as pessoas não entraram mais em conflito, essas ideias estão presentes em Eva, e a obra pode te fazer pensar nesses conceitos (mais pq eles são bem abstratos e podem ser aplicados a tudo). Mas evangelion não é minimamente sobre nada disso, anno não está discutindo a origem do conhecimento, não está trazendo exemplos, aspectos desse conceito para debate. A história não é sobre como humanos precisam de um estado para conter seus conflitos e egos. Não há debate ou elaboração sobre essas ideias em nenhum momento. Claro vc pode pensar em Thomas Hobbes em qualquer obra trazendo conflitos interpessoais ou a individualidade, como requisito para conflitos entre as pessoas. Sim dá para se conectar qualquer conflito entre pessoas, ou delas com instituições estatais, com nossa, o homem realmente é o lobo do homem. Mas em nenhum momento vocês apresentam o porquê essa conexão seria particularmente tópica, relevante, ou evangelion está escolhendo e trabalhando com essa ideia em especifico. Qual o papel ou importância desse debate, além de como referência ideológica extremamente genérica, e que não importa para quase nada para entender EVA. Especialmente quando seu grande exemplo para isso é a ideia da humanidade transcendendo para se tornar um deus, entidade que reuniria todas as pessoas, e seria ausente de nossos erros e conflitos causadas por nossas percepções incompletas. Essa é novamente um conceito extremamente genérico, que baseia a maioria das ideias de religiosidade para diversas pessoas. Então não vejo como essa conexão permitiria falar dessas duas figuras, e correntes de pensamento. Em minha opinião o vídeo está jogando esses nomes e ideais e debates extremamente amplos da filosofia que no íntimo podem ser aplicados a qualquer coisa sem minimamente explicar a razão.

O fato de Eva lidar com a ideia de divindade e a união de seres humanos permitir a criação de um novo ser, transcendental o qual não contem os nossos defeitos, também é um link extremamente fraco para justificar o enorme simbolismo religioso na série, ou dizer que ele está justificado (o que não acho que seja o argumento, mas só quero acrescentar). Já que o debate é muito mais a ideia de religiosidade em si, do que qualquer enfoque judaico cristão, nem este ponto é particularmente bem elaborado tematicamente falando.

 Terminando só com um problema da visão incompleta (ou apresentação) da psicanalise e de sua importância em EVA. Sim vocês apresentam os sinais certos o pai é essa figura ameaçadora, esse estranho o qual rouba o afeto de sua mãe, e que os filhos usualmente antagonizam, junto com a ideia de culpa na criança relacionada a isso. Sim a mãe é constantemente associada com carinho e acolhimento (apesar de as vezes assumir uma figura ambígua), a primeira pessoa com quem a alguém interage, e a primeira que precisa se separar para assumir a própria identidade, existem muitas alusões em EVA a isso. Mas a conflitiva edípica do Shinji é mais complexa do que isso. Ao contrário do herói grego que deu origem ao conceito, ele não assassina seu pai e fica com sua mãe. Isso funciona em EVA como uma metáfora para o crescimento. Ao mesmo tempo em que ele é capaz de não dar vazão, agir para matar seu pai para possuir sua mãe, rejeitando a REI. Além da figura da própria mãe dele, ela é um símbolo vazio, uma boneca sem significado, a qual o Shinji pode dar qualquer aspecto ou papel. Sendo capaz de rejeitar ambas essas escolhas Shinji se torna alguém capaz de se assumir e se tornar uma pessoa no final. Por isso agradecendo e perdoando seu pai, e finalmente dando adeus a sua mãe, transformando a ideia do herói edípico, que a figura dele ecoa. Isso tirando a enorme importância e aplicação de sexualidade e morte no contexto serem os momentos de maior proximidade e afastamento respectivamente, e como esses são os 2 impulsos que levam os seres humanos a tomar atitude (seria extremamente importante falar sobre isso, nesse debate).

Mesmo esta não sendo uma péssima analise, acho há diversos pontos em que a compreensão do anime pode ser melhorada, e muitos pontos realmente questionáveis.