Evangelion Rebuilds

I have a pretty long history with evangelion. I watched it when I was around 13 and it impacted (hehe) me in many ways. It's true what they say, baby's first deep anime. I spent a lot of time back then reading about the lore and the symbolism, I even wrote an essay about evangelion for my ethics class when I started high school. The teacher asked me if I really wrote it on my own, and it's true that I kind of didn't, since my interpretation of evas representing jobs and responsibilities was a pretty common interpretation online. Suffice to say, NGE had a pretty strong grip over me in my early weeb days. I rewatched nge recently, in preparation for the last rebuild and along with my bf that never watched nge before. I noticed a lot of things I didn't pay much attention to before, specifically when it comes to the adult characters. One of my favourite episodes now would be episode 13, where we find out more info about the Magi System and how it was built. The whole plot surrounding Ritsuko, her mother and Gendo was something I just ignored when I was a teen. Another thing I really love about the show were the eva designs, they look so slick compared to your standard mecha designs. Unit 01's screams? Perfect. And yeah yeah I know evas aren't mechas technically.

Now that I'm done reminiscing about the show let me start rambling about the rebuild movies. I never saw the rebuilds as a remake, but more of a continuation. This is why I kind of see characters in the rebuilds as detached from the originals. We don't really know their backstories, some of their proper motivations, a lot of things are missing. Is the rebuild universe something shinji willed into existence after EoE? Idk I'm too lazy to theorize about it. Anyway, the first movie is kind of the same as the start of the original show, with not too many differences in the story. There's one scene in it that stood out to me that was a bit changed from the show, the scene where Misato is yelling at Shinji after he disobeyed her order. In the Rebuild she gets a lot more angry and physical even. The main reason why I like it so much because it's so visible here how Shinji really is just a child still. He's damn tiny.

Now the second rebuild is where things start getting wacky and different. Rei is on her way to become a moeblob but it's not as extreme as the 4th movie. Shinji is getting his own harem, but also I'd say his rebuild self is a bit more charming compared to the the show. The emphasis on him being a good cook is much bigger here I feel. Asuka is just a random angry girl now, and she's going to stay angry for reasons that are unknown to us, as she won't get a backstory until the last 10 minutes of the last movie. Mari appears and I'm already exhausted by her presence. We had a little battle shonen moment at the end with Shinji saving Rei. Misato is telling him to go for it even though she's aware he's causing the Third Impact. Hmm Okay.

The third movie made me the most angry. It starts with Shinji being told to never pilot again and that basically he's a piece of shit but nothing is being explained to him, so he feels confused. Understandable. Why is nobody explaining anything? Also the jarring change in art style only became obvious to me now, even though I watched 3.0 back when it came out. Dorito chins. One thing I didn't mention before but it was already present in the first movie, was the larger focus on machinery, various robots and ships. 3rd and 4th movie take it to the next level. Both movies start in the same exact way, with Mari's singing and a barrage of boring looking cgi machinery. It seems to me the rebuilds have a large focus on scale as opposed to interesting 1 on 1 fights which makes it less enjoyable imo. Anyway, Shinji is confused and angry, so he rejoins daddy and most importantly Rei whom he thought he saved but Misato and co didn't want to elaborate on. Gendo refuses to elaborate on anything but this at least is consistent with his character and his motives so it's fine. Kaworu instead serves us the exposition dump and it turns out he wants to revert things back. So now finally we have the final scene, where Kaworu realizes he was tricked by Gendo. Instead of explaining it to Shinji who is now having a full on breakdown because nobody is bothering to explain him anything, he just sits there covering his head. This movie had way too many moments like this that it became frustrating. In an attempt to make things right due to feelings of severe guilt, Shinji manages to fuck everything up and he uses the two spears only to fuck things up again.

The fourth movie was uhhhhhh "alright". As a movie unrelated to nge I'd say it was pretty okay. It was 2 and a half hours long but I was able to watch it without losing attention so I'd say it did a good job at being a movie. First thing that I disliked was Rei's childification. This Rei is very uwu and child-like. She's learning words for the first time, her purpose in life is to be Shinji's waifu and she doesn't even have the drive to give herself a new name. I thought at the very least she's going to mature into her own person on her own terms as the movie suggested with the cute village life scenes, but she didn't. Shinji is suffering from ptsd big time at the start. I liked the scene where Asuka stuffed food in his face.

I'm sensing a pattern here, I really seem to like the scenes where Shinji gets abused by women. Am I some kind of a fetishist? Uncomfortable, lingering scenes like that are the essence of Evangelion to me lol. I'd totally watch a spinoff about life in a post apocalyptic village protected from the outside world by those column things. Rei explodes and it feels like it was all for naught. This gives Shinji the drive to go and confront Gendo. Weird fight scenes ensue. Shinji finally gets to confronting Gendo and honestly, why did that part end so abruptly and quickly? I think it should've been given more screentime, mainly the part about Gendo. Finally we heard some of his internal monologue, this was something I've been waiting for, for a long time now. I hated how it was wrapped up neatly, especially the "Yui was inside of you all along!" part. After that we just moved on to Asuka, who finally had a brief little backstory and then the rest of the cast. This short scene was super cute, honestly.

In a way this sequence was the complete opposite of the show ending (and eoe too) where Shinji gets interviewed by everyone and realizes things about himself. But those moments were intertwined with the backstories and internal monologues of the whole cast along with Shinji, here it felt more onesided. Anyway, now it's Shinjis turn to interview everyone. And then, the one character that remained a complete mystery besides the fact that she was has something to do with Yui and Gendo meeting, Mari, turns up and comforts Shinji. Now, I read somewhere a while ago Anno wanted Mari to destroy Eva, but Shinji did a fine job of that himself with willing Evas out of existence and having a world without them. I feel like it was a very tongue in cheek move to do, but it was a decent ending for the rebuilds since seeing as how they're implied to be a loop the ending makes total sense. So Mari would be unecessary. Mari being connected with Yui and Gendo is strange because it either implies she has been suffering from the evangelion curse for a long time now or she's a clone type thing like Rei and maybe Asuka even. Also, I think that the fact that Yui's maiden name became Ayanami takes away from the whole Yui/Gendo love story and turns it into something entirely else. I always found it selflessly romantic that Gendo took her surname. Usually men are more into the whole "preserving my seed/lineage/family name" shit while the woman is just a mere stepping stone towards this life purpose, to add to it this act was kind of a symbol of what's to come as Gendo took it next level, as he heavily prioritized Yui over Shinji. But in a more healthy way of course, I find this super romantic, Gendo was just too extreme about it. This surname thing hints at some big backstory we don't know anything about though, as now Rei, Asuka and Mari have military ship surnames. So are we really free from Evangelion?