I finally did it. I watched the entire original Evangelion TV series and two movies. And you know what? I think I have some idea about what Anno was trying to do with this, and I’m not afraid to be wrong. This is what I reckon Evangelion is about. If you want authority, there was a post otou-san did that I once considered the last word on this series but the link is gone now so here’s my thoughts to replace it until he reposts it.
Okay. Here goes.
Remember those anime DVDs you bought when you first became an anime fan, but you never got around to watching all of them because of school troubles? As a graduate of high school, I now had the freedom to do two of three things:
1: Bum around Kerouac style and play my new Bongo Drums I got for Christmas, real beat man.
2: Spend time with my brother and watch DVDs and Blu-Rays with him.
3: Work on my NaNoWriMo novel editing.
Considering my brother asked to borrow my Evangelion DVDs, I decided to watch those with him instead of bum around Kerouac style playing bongos. Besides, what did I have to lose? I had no real expectations for this series other than it being critically acclaimed.
Evangelion certainly has some strong artistic sensibilities to it, as a Gainax work it’s one of the more famous ones. I like Neon Genesis Evangelion despite Shinji because I kind of understand where Shinji is coming from. Anno stated that Evangelion “has no meaning” but fans have been making meaning out of this franchise for at least a decade. My personal meaning out of this is, Anno got rather depressed about the nature of humanity and kinda went off the rails a bit. But this is a stunning, if brutal, statement about human nature. Shinji to me is less annoying than other people I’ve known from blogging say, but your mileage may vary. To me Shinji is representative of Anno’s perceived “modern weakling Japanese youth” – somebody who is forced into a horrific situation but ultimately he can’t handle it alone. He is shy around women and End of Evangelion is particularly brutal about this – splicing voices of rejection from Japanese women into the end sequence to mess with the otaku fan’s head. Make of that what you will.
Shinji is alone in an unfriendly world, and some of this isn’t his own fault. But he doesn’t really attempt to get to know any of the lead females in a significant and mature way. He just idealises Asuka and Rei and Misato to his own perception – even if that perception doesn’t match those women’s actual personalities at all. Sound familiar? Hmm. Keep reading.
I get the feeling that Anno is, (subtly or not) trying to convey that the Japanese male youth of today is afraid of interacting with actual women, and reaching any real understanding about how sexual politics work. Just look at this picture above, Misato is actually one of the strongest characters in the series, she acts like a real woman and has realistic regrets about her life – even overcoming those regrets by embracing her own self in what she has done with her life. But to Shinji, she’s just a Rainbow in the Dark:
If you actually listen to the lyrics of this song you’ll get what I’m trying to say here. Other than “any anime review is better with a reference to Dio”.
The series itself is very dark and it has a grim atmosphere about it most of the time. There’s comic relief in the earlier parts of the series, but by the time you get to The End of Evangelion there are no laughs to be had at all. Seriously. I have no screenshots from the later part of the series because when I was watching the series with my brother, he didn’t want me pausing all the time to take screenshots. Trust me, depending on how much David Lynch you’ve watched – The End of Evangelion will either weird you out or disappoint you completely. I should do a Rewatch of Evangelion series of posts, but I’m afraid I don’t have enough time for that. I just want to get to the main points of my first impressions of this series, and be done with it. I’ve felt guilty for putting this off for so long, so I’m doing it now.
This is without a doubt one of the most depressing anime I’ve ever seen. No, I haven’t seen Grave of the Fireflies, so that is an accurate statement from this reviewer as of the time of writing. Remember Fight Club making nihilism fashionable and chic? Well imagine if a man in the bowels of depression, the bowels of it, when forced to complete his anime series left his emotional input to the series untouched – creating a nihilistic statement about the worth of humankind that hasn’t been equaled in TV anime since. It is a tough love statement, one that implies as much about Libertarianism being the only option when the governments of the world do nothing to save us, when they sit on their hands and the whores and the politicians will cry out SAVE US… and the messiah the world looks to will whisper… NO. This whole series builds up to the realisation that all of humanity’s flaws can only be overcome by humanity itself. It is humanity that is killing itself, and it is humanity who is the one to save itself.
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Text Copyright Jacob Martin 2010. All Rights Reserved. Images © Gainax / Project Eva. 1997.
4 comments ↓
Well, that’s dead on, actually. The modern Japanese man is thought of as somewhat meek, and afraid of sexually frank women, both by women and by men of other generations.
I don’t know that I would necessarily see the tale of Evangelion as ultimately redemptive. Some dark, dark stuff certainly happens, and the characters of the series turn to ancient religious symbols, coupled with technology, for an answer. It doesn’t work.
Yeah, it’s not really redemptive, but I at least tried to find some positive meaning in it. I didn’t go too in depth into the mechanics of the symbolism because I was afraid of spoiling it for people.
You disagreed with me on the latter issue, but at least we have some common ground on the former.
It is I think a product of its time, and perhaps a reflection of the mind that created it too; for that reason it’s anything but meaningless to me. It says a lot about what the production staff thought of the industry and the medium they worked in, which is often what proper art tries to do (hence it’s more than mere entertainment? An interesting thought). Sometimes I wonder if it became profound and more meaningful by accident, but the end result is what matters to many people anyway.
The series IS flawed and many things could’ve been done better but even the aspects that went against the grain had something of their own to say. Shame the marketing and nerdrage prevent us all from judging it fairly, really.
Pretty good series. I wish they explained a bit more. Series the deliberately leave out vital facts and leave others open to interpretation generally leave a bad taste in my mouth.
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