ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版：Q / Evangerion Shin Gekijōban: Q / Rebuild of Evangelion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo

Well, they can say what they like about being (not) able to redo, with this the third of the four Rebuild films, a whole lot has been redone. We’re a long way from the first in the series’ repetition of crucial scenes from the original here, and in a whole new and interesting continuity.

You Can (Not) Advance finished with a big deviation from the plot of the original – it seemed instrumentality was imminent, until Kaworu showed up with the Lance of Longinus and put a stop to that. ‘I anticipate a good half of 3.0’s length to be given to trauma and suffering and weirdness’, I wrote at the time, and I wasn’t exactly wrong – though what I got was nothing like what I expected.

Fourteen years have passed since then. Shinji, who was about to trigger the Third Impact from inside Eva Unit 1, was extracted, but remained asleep for that long. Asuka and Mari are still piloting Eva, but the three of them seem not to have aged at all as a side-effect of piloting. It is hinted that in the interim Touji joined the other ‘children’, but it is only a hint – though his little sister is now involved in the running of the Evangelion. She does not work for NERV, however. There the most dramatic changes have happened.

Misato and Ritsuko are no longer juniors at Nerv. Instead, they are part of WILLE, set up to oppose NERV and the machinations of Gendou. When Shinji began Human Instrumentality in his attempts to save Rei, many of the horrors seen in the original End of Evangelion’s version of the cataclysm seemingly came to pass, including immense crosses sprouting in a red wasteland and, implicitly, a giant Rei rearing up and having its head fall off. The simple act of trying to save a girl he cared about brought about the deaths of millions and only Kaworu’s intervention with the Lance of Longinus stopped it. Of course, Shinji is ignorant to this at first, to why Misato and the rest treat him like a criminal and fit him with an explosive collar, why they have taken his Unit 01 and converted it into the power source for a huge airship called the Wunder. He is still confused when Rei – some version of Rei – attacks in a new Eva and wanting answers, Shinji goes with her.

He is taken to NERV, now with the sky visible above it. Distant as ever, Gendou tells him he can pilot a new Eva alongside mysterious white-haired boy Kaworu. Kaworu is once again mysterious, gentle, deeply insightful and preternaturally knowledgeable, and takes Shinji under his wing to treat him respectfully in a masterful display of manipulation. They begin to play piano duets in some of the film’s stillest and most beautiful scenes, but part of their bond involves Kaworu revealing the truth – that what has happened to the world is Shinji’s fault. Shinji begins his descent into despair again, and if anybody wants to complain about his whining and angst, I think being responsible for the deaths of almost all mankind justifies it.

Kaworu convinces Shinji that recovering the Lance of Longinus – and also the Lance of Cassius, added for whatever reason and the iffiest bit of Christian mythological esoteria added here – the near-Third Impact will be undone and everything will be happy again. Now, for the plot to work, it must be that Kaworu truly believes this, and is not simply being manipulative, because otherwise his actions stopping the Third Impact in the first place, as well as his heroic, horrific actions once he realises that this ‘Lance of Cassius’ is not there, only another part of the Lance of Longinus, make no sense. He is still everything he was in the original and perhaps more, still oddly homoerotic with his affections, and still acts based on a piece of information that turns out to be critically wrong, but it seems that to make sense of the plot of 3.33 we must accept that he was misled and did not want the ‘doors of Guf’ (slightly iffy but acceptable Judeo-Christian mythology reference) to open or the Fourth Impact to take place. He has essentially become another of Gendou’s pawns.

As ever, the plot is complex and full of bizarre lofty ideas, but everything is presented in an exciting and fast-paced manner, and leads to an interesting cliffhanger with Asuka, Shinji and Rei together again, this time with no Eva units left. The fight scenes, explosions and huge flying battleships are a marvel, and the CG-heavy imagery is stunningly good throughout, even if it’s the human parts that are most interesting. The scale is a little overblown now, post-apocalyptic with advanced technology, and the human heart of this film is kept at a distance knowing Kaworu is not all he says he is. I hope that the next film has a little more humanity, but at the same time I will not be surprised if it is still more harsh and clinical – yet beautiful. 

新世紀エヴァンゲリオン/ Shin Seiki Evangerion / Neon Genesis Evangelion

It was close to a decade between me seeing the first two episodes of Eva, when the were the only episodes released on VHS, dubbed, in the high street, and my finally finishing it. This is where my anime experience really began – and for me, it is the big one. This is the anime that kick-started the current movement towards intelligent, eloquent and ambitious anime series that really drew me in. Just as Dragonball influences everything in the popcorn-entertainment side of anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion pushed back the boundaries of what can be achieved in just 26 episodes. And unlike Dragonball, Eva has yet to be bettered.

On the surface, the concept seems banal. Strange creatures are attacking the earth, and the only ones who can save the planet are 14-year-old pilots of Evangelions, which appear to be giant robots. Not the most original prospect of all time. But then we begin to see the references to Christian mythology, and though there is little real significance to the allusions, they give a veneer of intelligence that makes you pay attention. Then the characters begin to develop, and it becomes clear that not only are the adults very much adults, doing their laundry, having affairs and neglecting their children, but the children are children: they bicker, their hormones are out of control, they are confused about their sexuality – the boys fight, the girls menstruate, and Shinji reacts to extreme situations in increasingly inappropriate ways, until one incredibly memorable scene by the side of a hospital bed in one of the movies. People who think that anime is just for kids need to pay attention.

Honestly, the power and inventiveness of the storytelling makes this amongst the few things I consider to have most influenced me in my life – in any medium. I didn’t see it all when I was about Shinji’s age, but I saw plenty of it, and I am not exaggerating when I say that my ideas of visual impact, good storytelling and the way people interact have been shaped by the anime. It is that important to me, and while I know that there are some slow episodes, some bad ideas for angels that should have been left out in favour of more development of the exemplary peripheral characters, at its best, Eva’s untouchable. The angst-&-robots-by-numbers of Soukyuu no Fafner and Gundam just can’t compare.

But then there is an issue of contention in any discussion of Eva – the ending(s). There are three, essentially: first, the final episodes of the series. These left some unsatisfied, so two movies were made, one of which is mostly recap, the other of which basically follows on from there. These provide the ‘saabisu, saabisu’- ie fanservice - that Misato promises throughout the series. There are huge fight scenes, the characters get another chance to shine, we get sex, explosions and a high body count, including casualties amongst the principle cast. And the world ends. However, despite some fantastic scenes, these movies in my opinion don’t provide a more satisfying ending. They spell out what Instrumentality is a little better, but their flaws are their shallowness in delivering a trite climax that the audience wanted, and the empty ambiguity of the ending.

The last episodes didn’t go down well because they look bizarre. Taking place entirely within the minds of the characters, this alternate perspective is represented by different types of art, from line sketches to watercolours, which often look lazy, as though the episodes were never finished. This works far better than the empty symbolism of the movie, and crucially, it coheres. Shinji learns that he doesn’t want all the souls of the world to mingle. He wants restraints, and he wants the freedom to choose what he can be. He imagines his ideal, normal life (bizarrely, yet appropriately, given Shinji’s character, extremely like the beginning of a typical shoujo series), and then realises that he CAN change what is around him, and it is how he perceives things that really matter. This is what the series was building up to, and while the final scene is rather abrupt and a touch silly, it works far better than the explicit, bangs-and-flashes apocalypse of the movies, which only further complicated the story and irritated fans. The original worked.

Brilliantly adult despite its juvenile characters, Eva is a strong and cohesive story, a simple premise spun out into some fascinating character studies, and peopled with some of the best characters found in any medium. One of my top five anime of all time, and certainly the first one I loved, I cannot recommend it enough, ending included.

(originally written 28.6.05. Since then, the new rebuild movies have been announced and released: You Are (Not) Alone and You Can (Not) Advance)

Rebuild of Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

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!

Rebuild of Evangelion / Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone

It’s three years since the Rebuild of Evangelion feature film was released in Japanese cinemas, and two years since it was dubbed. It is, however, only a matter of days since the extended Blu-Ray 1.11 version was released, with extra footage and beautiful transfer, and that’s the one I’ve waited to see.

I’ve written elsewhere that Eva means a fair bit to me. I watched it back when I was just Shinji’s age, when the Internet was a tiny place and it was fun waiting for strange and fascinating images to download with a dial-up modem. It was the first anime series I watched that wasn’t made for young children, and it was a pretty remarkable place to start. I didn’t actually watch the remainder of the series until some years later, but the characters and setting stayed with me, as well as the uniquely unorthodox and experimental direction style. I was happy to get the original Japanese dub, though, for most of the reason Shinji has a reputation as whiny is his dub actor’s grating voice.

So when I started to watch Rebuild, the first thing that struck me is how direct the remake is. A shot-for-shot recreation of the first five or six episodes, with a few parts trimmed down and a couple of added vignettes, the real question that lingers after watching is…why bother? Nothing new is added in story terms, the direction is the same, and it doesn’t even match up to the original because the character development is much more rushed. It has one great advantage, and that is its beauty, for everything has been redrawn to a higher standard, and indeed, other than one scene in which Shinji sits looking down at the city in the morning mist, it all looks so much nicer than the original series, which for all its advances and cleverness looks a little dated now.

But that is all, and covering only a quarter of the series, it becomes easy to call this a cynical and mindless cash-in. Almost no thought has been put in, and it made a lot of money at the box office.

It is worthwhile, however. It is worthwhile for the thrill of seeing this classic animation made as beautiful as anything released today, especially on a large screen. It is worthwhile because old fans will be impressed and new fans being introduced to the story for the first time will see it in the best possible way. And it is worthwhile because, yes, it will still make money for Gainax. And it is worthwhile because even if this is just a rehash, the later Rebuild films may not be. My only disappointment is how long I will have to wait to see the next one.

There wasn’t even any Asuka here!