Category: Evangelion Page 1 of 2

The Commedia of Evangelion

Oh. Sorry. Did you think we were done? No, no, no. Thrice Upon a Time may have been the perfect capstone for this Evangelion retrospective, but we’ve still got a coda before we conclude this completely. See, one of the things that has allowed Eva to become the phenomenon it is is its fanbase. And from that fanbase has sprung forth a fountain of fanfiction, various Eva geeks all putting their own spins on the characters and world we all love so much. So, if the Rebuilds were the Avengers: Endgame of this series, let’s end this with a Far From Home.

RE-TAKE

RE-TAKE is an Evangelion doujinshi by Studio Kimigabuchi. It was originally a hentai work, before having its sex scenes excised for a SFW edition (which is what I read). And it is also one of the best pieces of Eva media I have ever encountered. It’s been a while since I’ve found something so compelling I stayed up late to read it, but there was something about this work that made it truly fascinating to me.

RE-TAKE is truly something special, but I have difficulty in describing just what about it compels me without relying on shorthand from other geek media. Like, the immediate way I think to describe it is “It’s like TNG’s ‘Tapestry’, mixed with Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, and a dash of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion Saga.” But to anyone not familiar with those three works, such a description is probably nonsensical. And yet, I can’t think of a more apt description! Though, if I may try…

RE-TAKE is set after the events of EoE. Shinji is lying on the red sea beach, feeling miserable and disgusted with himself, and desperately wishing he could fix all the mistakes he made. Then, suddenly, he wakes up and it’s Episode 16 again. Shinji is in the hospital after getting out of Leliel, and, now convinced the events he witnessed were simply a possible bad future the Angel showed him, Shinji resolves to get things right this time.

It doesn’t quite work like he hoped though. Because Shinji now knows what Rei is, he ends up drawing away from her, which causes her to eventually attempt suicide. And while his initial strategy is to keep his synchro rate down so that Asuka doesn’t lose her confidence like she did originally, when she finds out about the deception she’s even more furious than she was before. Also, Shinji’s synchro rate is even higher than it ever was. Unusually high. Some might even say… unnaturally high. And then to top it all off, a ghostly image of Asuka on the red sea that only Shinji can see pops up every now and then to taunt him, while Rei mentions off-handedly to Misato that Shinji is no longer in this world.

Eventually, Shinji and Asuka work things out and start a romance. But no matter how Shinji tries to do things differently, the outcomes of his decisions only become different, not better. Even as, just like Gendo, Shinji grows to do increasingly amoral things in his desperate quest to remake the future and resurrect a lost love, events never work out like he wants or expects them to. And all the while, Ghost-Asuka continues to taunt him with his actions in EoE.

There’s an expertly-done feeling of creeping dread that permeates every corner of RE-TAKE. We know something is wrong, and that more things will go wrong, but we don’t know just how it will all get worse, or if Shinji will pull through, realize he’s making the same mistakes as his father, and course-correct. And all the while, there are hints that there’s just something off about this world, and about Shinji.

To explain just what those things are would delve into the realm of spoilers. But without discussing the plot twists too much, two things that stand out to me about RE-TAKE are its message and its portrayal of Shinji. Despite predating that film by several years, the plot of RE-TAKE is essentially telling Shinji that he cannot redo his mistakes from the past. But he can learn from them, and maybe do some good in the present. Also, if Shinji isn’t really Shinji, but something that was made manifest from his despair and given his shape, is it still Shinji? What is it that makes Shinji Shinji? This is a question that RE-TAKE occupies itself with, and while it has echoes of the Eternal Champion in its answer, I don’t think Moorcock ever tried what RE-TAKE does.

One last warning for potential readers, the last of the three volumes of SFW RE-TAKE may seem to drag on a bit near the end. But the reason for this is that they stitched the distant epilogue to this edition of the story, despite it taking up as much space as a regular NSFW volume did. This isn’t to say the ending is bad, just that the “proper” ending is at the midway point of Vol. 3, while the rest is simply an additional story.

So for now, I think that’s the end of this retrospective. There’s still a lot more Eva for me to cover. I never reviewed any of the games, after all, and there’s still all the manga I couldn’t get my hands on. Plus, there’s who-knows-how-many documentaries and nonfiction works on the production process of Evangelion. I haven’t even interviewed Nathan Collins yet!

The point is, I’m not fully finished with Eva just yet. But as for this sustained, singularly-focused series of reviews, I think we’ve reached a point where things can comfortably end. If I return to the Evangelion well sooner or later, it’ll more likely be later. I’m sure both my loyal readers are eager to see me cover more than just Eva. And if I did nothing but Eva reviews, I think my enthusiasm for the franchise might start to wane. So I’m leaving the rest of my Eva articles for another day. In the meantime, feel free to recommend me Eva fanfics, which I’ll happily gobble up as long as I can.

The Testament of Evangelion

So… here we are. At last we’ve reached the Avengers: Endgame of our journey. I’ve been putting it off for long enough. It’s time to jump in and finish this. Three times Hideaki Anno tried to give Evangelion the ending he felt it deserved. And while the first two attempts failed for their own respective reasons, with his third and final try he has finally achieved satisfaction. Anno has said that Thrice Upon a Time will be his last entry into the world of Evangelion. He’s now said everything he has to say with Eva, so it’s time to say goodbye.

As for me, the Rebuild films were actually my first ever exposure to Evangelion. I first became a proper weeb during the 2000s, when Funimation was taking over as the main purveyor of anime in America, and so when they released the first Rebuild film I was eager to check out this famous franchise everyone was so bananas about. Despite my friends all insisting I needed to watch the original show before checking out the movies, I couldn’t understand why I had to check out that old shit, especially when the animation was so ugly and lifeless compared to the Rebuilds.

Yes, I know, I was an uncultured little swine back then, who only watched the og NGE after finishing the second Rebuild film and finding no more Eva to watch, and who spent most of the early episodes of my Eva viewing bitterly complaining about how boring and ugly the show looked in comparison to the movies. I know I had no taste back then. I am aware of this. What I wasn’t aware of though, until I rewatched the Rebuilds for the first time in mumblemumble years, was just how uncultured and undiscerning my teenage self was, especially in thinking that the first two Rebuild films were superior to their source material.

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

For one thing, I didn’t get the titles. No, seriously, back when I watched the Blu Rays I’d so lovingly purchased at Anime Milwaukee, I didn’t think the titles meant much beyond sounding cool and having parentheses. Parentheses make titles cool, right? Now as an adult though I can clearly see that the titles of the first three Rebuild films are all centered around the main thematic question of each entry. For this one, that question concerns isolation and loneliness, and whether Shinji is destined to forever be alone, or if he can make human connections and come out of his shell.

This also establishes what the Rebuild films (initially) were all about, and why I felt secure in starting with them while skipping NGE; being a “greatest hits” showcase of the events of that series, with even more beautiful visuals than anything we could have seen in 90s tv. I am honestly willing to forgive my teenage self for thinking the show looked bad in comparison to the films, because it really feels like that’s what Anno and co. deliberately set out to do. When iconic scenes from NGE are replicated here, there’s an extra level of care and polish to things, just to make the visuals even more impressive than they were in the show. Given how, as I’ve mentioned previously, Anno is willing to use the Eva IP to give up-and-coming animators something to show off their skills with, it really feels like You Are (Not) Alone (and the next two Rebuilds) are more concerned with painting pretty pictures than telling a story.

That may sound like there is no plot to the Rebuilds, but there is. And indeed, Alone is perhaps the most faithful adaptation of the original show, being a clear condensation of NGE’s first six episodes. My first thought when realizing this upon my rewatch was “Damn. I wish they’d do something like that with Nadia. Those first six episodes were the best part of the whole show.” My second thought was “Ohhhh, yeah. This makes sense. Fighting Ramiel with Rei was a major turning point in Shinji’s character arc, so I can see why they’d make that the climax of this film.” And then, my third thought was “Wait. Wait. Wait! Noooo!”

While Alone takes the time to add that extra polish and detail to its visuals, in its attempts to streamline the narrative of the show, it ends up losing a lot of the polish and details that made NGE’s narrative so compelling. One crucial detail is Shinji himself. Given how faithful they are to the events of the show, you’d expect Shinji to also be the same as he was then, right? Well, he is and he isn’t. Similar to how Picard in his titular tv show is a mixture of his characterization from the TNG tv and film series, so too is Shinji a mixture of his NGE and EoE incarnations. I have of course made no bones about my dislike of Shinji in EoE, and while I don’t hate Shinji here as much as I did there, I did find it much more difficult to sympathize with him in Alone.

Shinji in NGE started out as depressed and moody as any teenage boy with abandonment issues would be if they were thrust into a combat situation with no training. He was self-conscious and had low self-esteem, but he had enough altruism and decency to always hunker down and do the right thing no matter how difficult it was, and through the love shown by everyone, he was slowly able to come out of his shell, heal from his trauma, and grow into a well-adjusted adult.

When the iconic scenes from the show show up in Alone though, Shinj’s behavior is always slightly different, just a little less heroic and a little more Byronic. And these little details add up, especially when Alone adds extra scenes of him being sullen and self-loathing. He never becomes outright catatonic like he did in EoE, but he spends so much time lost in his head, feeling sorry for himself, that the film hardly has any time to devote to any other character moments. Even when Shinji isn’t on-screen, a lot of time is spent with Misato and Ritsuko discussing his self-esteem issues, just to make extra sure you get that he doesn’t like himself. And my problem with this isn’t so much that I find it wimpy or unmanly, but that by hammering us over the head with how much Shinji hates himself, the movie doesn’t leave room for him to grow and change.

We see that Misato takes Shinji in, and we see that Toji and Kensuke become pals with Shinji, but we don’t really see any consequences to this. Apart from these initial establishing scenes and a brief recording Shinji listens to before the climax, we don’t see relationships develop between Shinji and Misato, Toji, and Kensuke. And this is baffling to me because that was such an integral part of Shinji’s development in the first NGE arc. For Alone to remove that while focusing on the cool robot fights makes it seem like Anno and co. forgot just what it was that made Evangelion special.

I think the thinking was that, because this is a movie, they wanted Rei’s sacrifice in the Ramiel fight to be the first act of kindness that kick-starts Shinji’s development. Instead of all the little moments of kindness and connection that Shinji experiences in NGE, they may have wanted one big moment to serve as the emotional climax. But without all these little moments of kindness, Misato isn’t Shinji’s guardian, she’s just some woman he lives with. Toji and Kensuke aren’t two friends we care about. They’re just two random assholes who know Shinji. And Shinji’s development isn’t a slow, gradual progress, but a sudden shift that feels unearned.

The thing is, this might have worked if Shinji’s characterization were closer to his NGE counterpart. But Shinji in the Rebuilds is so pathetic, so sullen, so full of mental anguish that a single act of kindness is simply not enough to rectify that. Taken on its own, I didn’t find the scene where Shinji teaches Rei how to smile heartwarming or endearing. I found it like Shinji developing an unhealthy, codependent obsession with Rei, like she’s the only good thing in his life, and if she’s not there Shinji will slide back into feeling sorry for himself even more. Although, that may have actually been just what Anno and co. were planning.

Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

Alright, so, back in my review of NGE, I spent a lot of time addressing common misconceptions about the show. One misconception I addressed was of the supposed surreality of Episode 16. But while I discussed that detail, I didn’t talk about the other big misconception people have towards that episode. This is the one where they “fight” Leliel, and another one where the events of the episode don’t actually pan out like most people assume, even though I also remembered them in that way. The way that I, and most people it would seem, perceive the episode is that it’s the point where Shinji’s self-actualization progress goes awry. His confidence grows too much, he gets smacked down, and he subsequently relapses into a shell of his former self.

That’s not actually what happens though. Yes, his confidence is at perhaps its highest point in the series here. But the thing that prompts him to charge in like Leeroy Jenkins on Leliel is pestering from Asuka, whose confidence takes a serious hit when Shinji starts outpacing her in sync rates, and who goads Shinji into taking a dumb combat risk. So it’s not so much him becoming overconfident as confident enough to stand up to Asuka’s bullying.

Mind you, this still blows up in Shinji’s face, and his time inside Leliel is still traumatic. But the love and support shown by Misato, Rei, and even Asuka once he’s rescued help him recover from his ordeal, and by episode’s end he’s even able to crack a smile (though the last line, where he remarks that the smell of Leliel still hasn’t left, shows that the trauma will never fully leave him). So rather than the universe smacking Shinji down for his arrogance, a better description of the episode’s events is that Shinji faces a new trauma, but realizes that he has a support system he didn’t have before, which allows him to heal more quickly and thoroughly, while also realizing that there will still always be a mental scar. It’s a great episode, and a lot more nuanced than what most people remember it as.

So why do I bring it up here? Well, because once again, this Rebuild forgets the nuance and subtlety of its source material, and delivers a story that is not as good as a result. But this time around, the central question is whether or not things can ever really get better, or if any little piece of happiness Shinji gets will blow up in his face.

Before I rag on that though, I want to discuss what I think are the movie’s strengths. Advance is, once again, a visual feast, to the point where I was wistfully wishing to watch it on the big screen (Why couldn’t I have caught a single theatrical release of these films? “Sigh”). And it also comes with new Angels, and new variations of old Angels, which lead to each fight being truly incredible to watch. Also, this film remembers to show Shinji having everyday pleasant interactions with his friends, allowing their relationships to feel much more real and valuable. Everything at the Marine Research Organization was wonderful, and now that I’m watching it with a fuller context, I can see what the pills Rei takes and her comments on the fish tank are leading up to. Asuka is… not as rich of a character as her original counterpart was, but again, in the context of the full Rebuild series, I can see where they’re going with her, and I think she’s enjoyable enough. She’s just a different character than she was in the show, which is probably why her name was changed.

One new character I don’t like though, both initially and now, is Mari Illustrious Makinami. I realize that she’s a much-beloved character, and it’s probably quite controversial to say this, but I just never connected with her, at any point in the series. The main thing fans of Mari have told me about why they love her is that she’s so anti-Evangelion, which strikes me as an odd reason (why would you want an anti-Evangelion character… in Evangelion?), but I can see why that would be an amusing bit. Once you get that that’s the bit though, the bit is kinda done? And there’s nothing really to Mari’s character besides that bit, which leads to her feeling tacked-on and incongruous. The thing is, when I first watched Advance, I thought that maybe they were gonna do something with her later on. Eva is famous for having characters who are deeper than the initial impressions they give, right? But, uh, no. What you see with Mari here is what you get with the rest of the Rebuilds. An overly flirtatious schoolgirl who is Not Like Other Eva Pilots, and is somehow integral to the plot despite this overwhelming blandness (Shinji doesn’t even learn her name until the last film!). I’m getting off on a tangent though, so let me return to the things I don’t like about this film specifically.

As I said earlier, the first two Rebuilds are, ostensibly, trying to speedrun through the events of the original series. But in their haste to get through everything, they end up leaving out key details that make the scenes worse, and perhaps the worst offender of this is the fight with Bardiel. After no doubt having had to listen to smart alecks ask smarmily “Why didn’t Shinji just remove Unit 03’s hands from his throat?”, Anno and co. have devised a new development in the fight, where the Bardiel-possessed Eva grows another pair of arms, with which to hold Unit 01’s hands down while it continues to choke Shinji. Boy, aren’t your expectations subverted now? Bet you didn’t see that coming.

Except, while they addressed that fan nitpick, they completely forgot the whole reason that Shinji chose not to fight back in that scene. In NGE, Shinji was willing to fight Bardiel until he realized that the pilot of Unit 04 was still inside. After that, he argued that, if there was a chance the pilot was still alive, then NERV’s priority should be rescuing them, instead of eliminating the Angel and possibly killing the pilot with them. In Advance though, Shinji, knowing that Asuka is inside Unit 03, decides not to fight Bardiel, because he’d rather die and let the earth perish than kill Asuka. So the moral quandary of “eliminate the Angel” vs “save the pilot” becomes “eliminate the Angel” vs… “do nothing”.

This turns Gendo’s decision to use the dummy plug from sadistically cruel to cruel but necessary, and in Thrice Upon a Time Asuka will flat-out tell Shinji that she would have preferred he killed her than do nothing like he did, so the ambiguity of which decision was correct has also been removed. Shinji was clearly in the wrong. Gendo did the right thing by overriding Shinji’s free will and eliminating the Angel, and even without that context, what is presented in this film, including the fact that this version of the Bardiel fight doesn’t have Shinji feeling himself tear Unit 03 limb from limb (he doesn’t even know what’s going on until he hears Asuka’s scream), it makes Shinji’s actions afterwards much more petulant than they were in the source material.

In NGE, Shinji refused to pilot again after the very visceral trauma of being used to kill like Picard was used by the Borg, and he is brought back to piloting when he realizes that he has the power to save humanity from Zeruel. But in Advance Shinji still refuses to lift a finger until he directly witnesses Zeruel eat Rei, after which he goes berserk. Shinji’s heroic will to protect the earth is replaced with a codependent obsession, and his desperate, almost deranged pursuit to get Rei back nearly dooms the world. But was it worth it? Did he save her and not lose all the good things he got in life these past two movies?

Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo

No.

The last two films posed their titular themes as questions, the answers to which were tentative yeses. But this film takes back all the progress Shinji made, and subjects him to even more trauma. Since I’d only recently watched this movie, it was still fresh in my mind. I didn’t like it then, partly  because it felt like a filler episode (the main reason I hadn’t seen it for so long was because I’d been warned by friends of that exact issue). But the main reason for my distaste was that the plot essentially boiled down to “Shinji! How could you fail to act on information we very deliberately and quite angrily refused to give you? This is all your fault!”

Upon my rewatch, and watching it in the full context of the larger saga, I have warmed to Redo slightly. But largely this is because the scenes of quiet character interaction that I found meandering on my first viewing now seem fresh and rich after having seen the last two movies breeze past such moments. Also, I can’t really blame Wille for not telling Shinji everything anymore because the first time they try, they’re interrupted by the arrival of Unit 09, and then later when Kaworu outright tells him that they’re making a terrible mistake, Shinji refuses to listen. He’s so far gone by that point, so obsessed with turning back the clock with the two MacGuffin Spears, that Shinji shuts his ears to any warnings against his actions. And then, when it all blows up in his face and Shinji is once again reminded that these titles are statements of facts instead of questions to ponder, he’s at the point where he was in EoE, utterly catatonic with grief and self-loathing.

The main problem with talking about this film though is that there’s not really much to talk about with it. While my initial description of “filler episode” is somewhat harsh, so much of Redo’s plot and themes rely on what comes before and after it. It’s a bridge between the first two and final fourth films, and doesn’t have much to do on its own except sadistically beat down Shinji to his breaking point. The thing is, upon my rewatch, while I don’t hate Shinji like I did in EoE, I found my sympathy slowly drying up for him over the course of these three films, to the point where my attitude went from “Come on kid! Hang in there!” to “Ah, c’mon kid. What’re we doin’ here?” More than being upset over the story not progressing, I think if I’d watched Redo when it first came out, I’d have been pissed off at how sadistic and mean it feels without the context of the next film. But in that fuller context…

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

Given how long the gap between the third and fourth Rebuilds were (enough to justify a recap at the beginning of Thrice), you would think the final installment would feel noticeably different from what came before it. And yet, watching them all together in one sitting, I’m surprised at how cohesive they ultimately feel, especially when the film references and even shows flashbacks to events we never got to see in previous Rebuilds. Certain things that didn’t make sense to me on my first viewings make sense now that I see where it’s all leading up to, and while it doesn’t necessarily redeem the flaws of the previous entries, it does make them look better.

More than that, while Thrice Upon a Time is the conclusion of the Rebuilds, it’s also meant as a conclusion to Evangelion as a whole, Anno’s final word on the whole franchise. So as I sit here, collecting my thoughts on the film, I’m struck with a burning question. Given how poorly I think the first two Rebuilds stack up to the show, and how redundant a lot of the plot of the third Rebuild is, could you watch Thrice Upon a Time all on its own? I’m not actually sure. I suppose, given the recap and the flashbacks, it wouldn’t  necessarily hurt you if you watched this all by itself. But it also wouldn’t necessarily hurt you to watch the previous Rebuilds before this. I think the only wrong choice in watching Thrice is to watch it before you watch NGE and EoE, because, as the title suggests, it’s the third, charmed time at concluding that story.

The other thing that strikes me upon my rewatch is just how little happens in the plot, given how much longer the runtime of this film is compared to its predecessors. Like, there’s never a dull moment in Thrice. Even when their plots have been subpar, the visuals of the Rebuilds have always been splendiferous. But this time, they’re really giving it their all. Some scenes do drag on a bit. The scene with Toji’s little sister and the woman with the pink hair whose name I can’t be bothered to remember is overwrought and filled with bathos. But overall the film breezes by, not feeling nearly as long as it actually is.

Also, while the story serves as a conclusion, one of the standout details of it is how it shows human life continuing after Third Impact. The post-Third Impact world shown in Redo was barren and lifeless, humanity desperately eking out a meager existence in the face of overwhelming enemies. But in the world we see here, with Toji, Kensuke, and Hikari all grown up and living in a safe village, even if life is hard and resources are scarce, everyone is still living to the fullest. Humans still cling to hope, not just in the wake of the apocalypse, but after the apocalypse has come and gone, our tenacity refusing to let us die. It’s from this, and the gentle support shown to Shinji, that he learns to live and hope again, to finally heal and move on. Shinji’s arc as a character is a lot messier and shoddier than it is in NGE, but it ends in the same result, to the point where, even when confronted with a similar situation to the violent trauma at the end of Redo, Shinji is able to grow up and step up to the plate for the final battle against Gendo.

And even this battle is not won through combat, but through compassion and communication. We’ve seen Shinji reconcile his feelings towards his father. We’ve seen Gendo realize that his single-minded focus to resurrecting Yui was misguided. But until this point, we’ve never seen the father and son confront each other head-on, and finally understand one another. When Gendo is crying out that he cannot find Yui, and he sees at last where she was all along, that is a moment that will remain as iconic as the scenes the first two Rebuilds replicated. And while EoE ended with Shinji sobbing on a beach, as Asuka hissed “disgusting”, this time around, on that same beach, Shinji is calm and at peace, and the words he exchanged with Asuka are words of comfort and love.

Perhaps the most important part of this finale though, is that it takes Redo’s answer of “no” and replaces it with an “actually, yes”. Shinji does manage to remake the world. He does manage to heal and grow into a well-adjusted adult. And when the story ends, he is not alone. He is with Mari, rather than any of the other characters who it would’ve made more sense to be with. But we know that everyone else Shinji loved is also in this new world. So who’s to say he won’t find them again?

When I first watched this film, I had such mixed feelings. It’s what compelled me to start this retrospective, after all. But upon rewatching it, after everything that has come before it, I am satisfied. When I look back on everything Evangelion, I feel like every piece of that larger tapestry was precious, even the bad parts. And even if this is the end of Anno’s Evangelion, knowing how many people Shinji’s story has touched and inspired, I know that this is not the end forever. There’s still so much more Evangelion out there. And I can’t wait to explore the rest of that larger tapestry.

The Hymns of Evangelion

Hideaki Anno loves animation. More than that, Anno has positioned himself similarly to his mentor and friend Hayao Miyazaki as the guy with enough clout and money to pay his animators a decent wage, foster new talent, and put the fear of god in major anime production studios by showing how amazing and innovative animation can really be. To that end, Anno has used the Evangelion IP as a means to get promising newcomers involved in major projects, just as Anno got his start in Miyazaki’s Nausicaä.

The Japan Animator Expo then makes perfect sense as something Anno and Miyazaki would do. A weekly series of animated shorts, during its brief period of existence the Expo paid up-and-comers in anime that most coveted of all currencies: exposure. And since Anno and his Studio Khara were fronting the bill for the Expo, of course sooner or later they would give animators a chance to use the most popular toys they had in their catalog. During its run, JAE would drink from the Evangelion well three times. So, before we hunker down and conclude this Eva retrospective, let’s take one last detour and check those shorts out.

until You come to me.

Pretty straightforward, this is essentially just a series of pretty pictures, but what pretty pictures they are. It’s also the only one of these shorts where we directly see Eva characters we know, most of the runtime focusing on Shinji walking around a beautiful, barren landscape, and Rei appearing briefly as well. Given the plugsuits and background, this is clearly set some time during the latter half of the Rebuild films, but where exactly in the timeline is a bit fuzzy. If I wanted to fan-theorize, I’d say it was most likely a dream sequence Shinji experiences during his hibernation, with some premonitory foreshadowing in the imagery. However, while the short is possibly a premonition, it’s probably just pretty. I don’t think you need to think too hard about continuity or the short’s place in it, because the ultimate aim is most likely just to give you a little extra Eva. You don’t need to watch it, but you’ll probably enjoy yourself if you do.

Evangelion: Another Impact (Confidential)

Even simpler than its predecessor, this one is really just an extended launch sequence of a new Eva unit before it goes rogue and blows some stuff up. You hear Rei’s voice at one point, hinting that some deeper machinations are afoot, but there’s really very little to this other than seeing a really cool robot being really cool. I wish there was more I could say about it, but that’s about all there is to say. Pretty colors robot smash. Yarg.

Neon Genesis: IMPACTS

This has the most ambitious plot of the three shorts, and explores a side of Eva that was always present but usually in the background. One of the strengths of NGE was how it didn’t ignore the impact frequent kaiju attacks had on the civilian population of Tokyo-3. And in this story, we see three young girls whose friend group is split apart, as their families move away one by one in the wake of Angel attacks. Said friend group had put together a band, and when the second girl moves away, she promises the last remaining girl that one day the group, and the band, will be reunited.

All that is sweet. Seeing a group of friends trying to soldier on even as the world is ending is truly compelling, and listening to one of their songs while images of happy memories flash on the screen drives home how precious this friendship is, and what Shinji and the other children are fighting to protect.

And then the short cuts to a shot of the last girl alone and miserable in a shelter, as explosions reverberate in the background. If that had been the downer note the short ended on, I would have been bummed out, but still on board. But then the screen goes black just as an extra-loud explosion sounds off, heavily implying that the girl was blown to bits and died. It all leaves the short feeling like an especially mean-spirited joke, the punchline being “Oh, did you want to see these kids happy? Well fuck you! LOL, butthurt!” And man, fuck you! Fuck off with that kind of shit, man. I know innocent people die in war and disasters and shit, but don’t structure that death like it’s a god-damn punchline. It all left me distinctly cold, and was a shitty note for the experience to end on.

So I guess now there’s only one thing left to watch.

The Anima of Evangelion

Wait.

Wait.

WAIT!

IT WAS A JOKE!!!

It was supposed to be a joke about the sort of idiotic enemy a studio would foist upon the production staff if they forced a second season of NGE! You weren’t supposed to actually do it! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

The Apocrypha of Evangelion

Super-deformed parodies of popular anime IPs are nothing new. Indeed, they’re actually quite common. As to the question of why, my personal theory is that it’s a great way to sell even more merch and media, while also weaning a younger audience on an IP that they might be too tottish to take in till they’re older. I know that when I was a wain, I was far too young to be watching some of the more mature iterations of the Gundam franchise (and to be quite frank, I wasn’t all that interested). But the lighthearted and goofy antics of SD Gundam Force appealed to me greatly, and made me curious to check out other Gundam shows.

As such, it made perfect sense for Evangelion to get its own super-deformed parody show, given how popular and iconic it is. And given my own experience with SD Gundam, alongside the stills of Petit Eva that I’d seen before diving in, I had a general idea that I was in for a fun, lighthearted romp. I mean, what else could the show be?

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