If the first Rebuild film felt somewhat superfluous, this second part justifies it entirely. For the first time in many years, Evangelion has gone somewhere entirely new and very different.
This is still a film series for fans. I think that anybody who had only seen the two Rebuild films would find the characters underdeveloped and the concept confusing – even more confusing than it is for the initiated, to the extent that it’s probably impossible to quite wrap your head around without knowing some of the parts missed from the original series. There are also little sly references to the things that have been changed, such as one scene giving a nod to Touji’s different fate that would probably just bewilder if you do not know that in the series, he was a pilot.
And I find it something of a shame that Touji doesn’t get the chance to wear the plugsuit, in some ways supplanted by a strange new character called Mari, although I’m not sure her name is mentioned in the film. Mari is a peripheral figure, from a SEELE-affiliated company but not Nerv, who has a weird, knowing confidence that I don’t think quite fits into the Evangelion world. Even though she’s voiced by Sakamoto Maaya and it’s hinted she’s British, I see no reason to like her. She was annoyingly over-confident, detached and really had no development.
Anyway, from where the first film left off, Asuka gets a rather irritating entrance taking care of a new angel (fondly named ‘Clockiel’ by some online) in moments, then moves in with Shinji and Misato and gets her own version of one of the former’s embarrassing early scenes. They don’t have to do a silly synchronized dance, which was always a bit of a nadir for the series despite the adorable outfits, nor the deep dive. The next angel’s attack comes from the original, with the takeover of a new Evangelion, and the actions of the ‘dummy plug’ again deeply disturb Shinji. It is the film’s third angel and its climax that brings the biggest changes, and it almost seems that the very end of the series is coming early – until a long-foreshadowed intervention from a character bearing the Lance of Longinus.
The mixture of old and new elements makes for a moving, beautiful and somewhat disturbing film. Not everything in it worked all that well, and it does suffer from being the middle part of a trilogy, containing story arcs that ultimately have little bearing on the overall story and ending on a cliffhanger, but it sets up the final part well. At the very least, I’m sure that final movie will be devastating and after all, it makes sense for the end to be close, for I anticipate a good half of 3.0’s length to be given to trauma and suffering and weirdness. We shall see!
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