Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Utritum
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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FaxModem1 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 10:44 am Only going by the reviews, if I were to make a guess, this series is about the Christian apocalypse happening somehow. And instead of humanity just blindly accepting this, they used the power of human souls and giant robots to fight them. And for some reason, thought throwing teenagers into the giant robots was a good idea.
Honestly, it is less Christian Apocalypse and more 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, it was actually "ALIENS!" all along. Of course, this also complicated somewhat by the fact that, in the Eva-verse, the soul is a real tangible entity that be manipulated by science (although everything surrounding that is kind of vague).

The in-universe reason for the heavy use of Christian terminology, is that SEELE are a bunch of pretentious old hipster douchebags who like to dress their Doomsday Scheme up in Knights Templar LARPing and think that code-names based on Christian mythology sounds really quaint.

Of course, this is mostly going off the original series. There have evidently been quite a few changes to the mythology in the Rebuilds.
Last edited by Utritum on Fri Jun 28, 2019 1:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Gruntagen
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Rodan56
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Gruntagen wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 7:54 am Did the video creator’s name happen to be “Davis Aurini”?
No, no, he didn't show up on camera and I'm positive he had a different accent. He might have a skull on his desk, I can't be sure, again he didn't show up on camera. Also, the video was like a full length documentary, using clips from some Ayn Rand biopic. Probably made for TV, it looked like a very cheap film and clearly made by Rand's admirers. Who themselves are always the biggest cheapskates in existence I find.

To be fair to Bennet, at least he didn't make the claim EVA hated escapism and was a screed against its utilization in any form as dangerous and terrible. He only claimed he didn't like it because he found the characters annoying and the plot was stupid.

Look, maybe it would be best if YOU explain what EVA means to you. What are its themes? Why do you like its characters? What about the narrative sticks in your mind? How do you reconcile some of its more questionable decisions? You clearly have an opinion and I honestly want to hear it. Maybe it's time to ask a fan for their take instead of looking for random hot ones. It's worth a shot in any case.
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Gruntagen wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:11 am
LavarosVA wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 9:13 am While I would say Bennet isn't exactly the best filter to get an opinion on Eva, I wouldn't say his opinions on anime are worthless. He does tend to zig where most anime fandom zags though, so using him to get a pulse on the anime community would be a mistake.
Please don’t describe him as some kind of contrarian. He’s an idiot, plain and simple. The guy makes videos in which he acts like he’s better than all the shows he’s watching, because he has no idea how criticism works.
You know, I had a rebuttal all written out, but nah. You seem very entrenched and I'm not wasting my time on you.
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Rodan56 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 1:28 pm Look, maybe it would be best if YOU explain what EVA means to you. What are its themes? Why do you like its characters? What about the narrative sticks in your mind? How do you reconcile some of its more questionable decisions? You clearly have an opinion and I honestly want to hear it. Maybe it's time to ask a fan for their take instead of looking for random hot ones. It's worth a shot in any case.
Well, if you're asking me, it's kind of a unique one. I didn't grow up on Evangelion like I'm sure a lot of its advocates did, and the first time I watched it, maybe five or so years ago, I really did feel confused. I failed to absorb a lot of what it was saying, feeling genuinely frustrated in my efforts to comprehend it all. But I knew that the things it was saying meant something, that the imagery might be abstract and in places incredibly hard to stomach, but that it was for more than its own sake. And that the Judeo-Christian imagery probably should've been taken with a grain of salt, since a nugget of accepted truth I held back in the day was that sometimes, animators create strange imagery separate from the writing staff "because they're bored", or rather because they've been given creative license to go wild with shorthand and iconography as long as it didn't conflict with the script, and who knows? Perhaps those wild drawings could even end up enhancing the storytelling if you're clever or lucky.

I only ended up really appreciating Evangelion some years later, after consuming a ton of other experiences. Watching other anime and Japanese-made video games that gave me similar experiences, most notably Revolutionary Girl Utena, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, and Madoka Magica - all of those eventually becoming works that I shall forever hold up as pinnacles of amazing storytelling. Absorbing countless essays, wiki articles, Youtube videos, and more that I came across in my search for stuff that captured my interest and related to my pre-existing interests. Becoming fixated with a rotating cast of Youtube personalities and their content before eventually becoming disenchanted with nearly all of them, since I eventually realized that a lot of what they were saying was spouted from positions of ignorance, emotional immaturity, contrarian peacocking, comedic obligation, and even just sheer madness.

Out of all those experiences, all that research, all those shared opinions colliding with my own, I began to finally form a mental state in which I could comprehend all these works. I managed to eventually gleam emotional maturity from these works, and even used them to help form my personal worldview and morality. But the sad fact remains that it was still personal growth, and that I really can't fully express all this to anybody else, not least of which because, even if I could remember all the steps and pieces, it'd just sound incomprehensible out loud. Like how one of my first and largest steps into understanding Eva after watching it came when I first stumbled across a huge essay about how one of Eva's lategame episodes deliberately told a story about women being emotionally, mentally and physically tormented by the circumstances they ended up trapped in due to misplaced loyalties to people who didn't really care about them, and was presenting it as the legitimate tragedy it deserves to be treated as.

In short, I managed to undergo legitimate life experience and improve my emotional maturity, just by trying to figure out how best to enjoy a fucking anime. In effect, while I didn't age with it, I still grew up with it. That might actually be part of your problem, Rodan: You're already grown up to the point where you can't see the value or message of works like this. Or perhaps you just came to the assumption that you wouldn't like this show anyways after watching Chuck's videos here, and then got immediately hit with a bunch of miscommunicated attempts at meeting halfway from me and Mithrandir. Either way, I beg you to just watch the actual show, and then start looking for answers afterwards, because I promise you there are legit answers to all of them and that it isn't just a really drawn-out version of that really stupid scene from One More Day.
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Utritum wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:17 am
FaxModem1 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 10:44 am Only going by the reviews, if I were to make a guess, this series is about the Christian apocalypse happening somehow. And instead of humanity just blindly accepting this, they used the power of human souls and giant robots to fight them. And for some reason, thought throwing teenagers into the giant robots was a good idea.
Honestly, it is less Christian Apocalypse and more 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, it was actually "ALIENS!" all along. Of course, this also complicated somewhat by the fact that, in the Eva-verse, the soul is a real tangible entity that be manipulated by science (although everything surrounding that is kind of vague).

The in-universe reason for the heavy use of Christian terminology, is that SEELE are a bunch of pretentious old hipster douchebags who like to dress their Doomsday Scheme up in Knights Templar LARPing and think that code-names based on Christian mythology sounds really quaint.

Of course, this is mostly going off the original series. There have evidently been quite a few changes to the mythology in the Rebuilds.
Way I understood EVA using Judo-Christian terminology and symbolism (at least with NGE) is there simply because those are exotic to Japanese. It might be easy to forget but not entire world believes to Judo-Christian mythology. Most Japanese are either Shinto or Buddhists with only really small number being Christian even if Christian weddings could be usual in Japan because those are exotic to them. Also I could be wrong but in NGE each Angel was basically what could had been dominated life form of planet instead of humanity that are children of 2nd Angel Lilith.
"In the embrace of the great Nurgle, I am no longer afraid, for with His pestilential favour I have become that which I once most feared: Death.."
- Kulvain Hestarius of the Death Guard
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Mecha82 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 5:52 pm
Way I understood EVA using Judo-Christian terminology and symbolism (at least with NGE) is there simply because those are exotic to Japanese. It might be easy to forget but not entire world believes to Judo-Christian mythology. Most Japanese are either Shinto or Buddhists with only really small number being Christian even if Christian weddings could be usual in Japan because those are exotic to them. Also I could be wrong but in NGE each Angel was basically what could had been dominated life form of planet instead of humanity that are children of 2nd Angel Lilith.

While that's certainly an element, I like to think Anno had more of a reason to use Christian themes than say... Muslim which would be equally weird and foreign to most Japanese. I think there is a point behind specifically using Christian Iconography, maybe because its drawing allusions to the Book of Revelations, perhaps even the Rapture, concerning multiple states of armageddon. It could place a better contextual concept on the overall plan of Gendo's, concerning his elevation of man into God, could also explain Salle's apple and snake icon as an allusion to the beginning and how they are bringing about the end...

This is all spit balling honestly, apologies if it sounds like I'm talking out my ass, I'm doing my best to give the series a measure of objective analysis without harping on its use of themes. I'm positive Anno had a greater reason behind using Christian iconography than just being exotic, although that likely did play a role.
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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LavarosVA wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 2:12 pm
Gruntagen wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:11 am
LavarosVA wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 9:13 am While I would say Bennet isn't exactly the best filter to get an opinion on Eva, I wouldn't say his opinions on anime are worthless. He does tend to zig where most anime fandom zags though, so using him to get a pulse on the anime community would be a mistake.
Please don’t describe him as some kind of contrarian. He’s an idiot, plain and simple. The guy makes videos in which he acts like he’s better than all the shows he’s watching, because he has no idea how criticism works.
You know, I had a rebuttal all written out, but nah. You seem very entrenched and I'm not wasting my time on you.
Wise choice. Getting severe "butt-hurt fanboy who is unhappy with how Sage dealt with his prefered anime"-vibes here.
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Rodan56 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 8:28 pm
Mecha82 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 5:52 pm
Way I understood EVA using Judo-Christian terminology and symbolism (at least with NGE) is there simply because those are exotic to Japanese. It might be easy to forget but not entire world believes to Judo-Christian mythology. Most Japanese are either Shinto or Buddhists with only really small number being Christian even if Christian weddings could be usual in Japan because those are exotic to them. Also I could be wrong but in NGE each Angel was basically what could had been dominated life form of planet instead of humanity that are children of 2nd Angel Lilith.

While that's certainly an element, I like to think Anno had more of a reason to use Christian themes than say... Muslim which would be equally weird and foreign to most Japanese. I think there is a point behind specifically using Christian Iconography, maybe because its drawing allusions to the Book of Revelations, perhaps even the Rapture, concerning multiple states of armageddon. It could place a better contextual concept on the overall plan of Gendo's, concerning his elevation of man into God, could also explain Salle's apple and snake icon as an allusion to the beginning and how they are bringing about the end...

This is all spit balling honestly, apologies if it sounds like I'm talking out my ass, I'm doing my best to give the series a measure of objective analysis without harping on its use of themes. I'm positive Anno had a greater reason behind using Christian iconography than just being exotic, although that likely did play a role.
Well it's possible. After all that is just way I had understood it so it's possible that I am one who is wrong about this. We are talking about Anno after all so it's it would surely be interesting to learn what moved in his head when he originally made NGE considering mental health issues that he suffered back then and why he chose Judo-Christian symbolism.
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Re: Evangelion 3.33 Review

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Mecha82 wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 5:52 pm Way I understood EVA using Judo-Christian terminology and symbolism (at least with NGE) is there simply because those are exotic to Japanese. It might be easy to forget but not entire world believes to Judo-Christian mythology. Most Japanese are either Shinto or Buddhists with only really small number being Christian even if Christian weddings could be usual in Japan because those are exotic to them. Also I could be wrong but in NGE each Angel was basically what could had been dominated life form of planet instead of humanity that are children of 2nd Angel Lilith.
I think that is a bit of a mix-up between the out-of-universe and in-universe elements.

Out of universe the Judo-Christian terms are used by the writers because they are exotic.

In-universe, it is used because SEELE is trying to justify their megalomaina (i.e. they know how to use alien tech to alter the souls of all of mankind to turn themselves into gods) by using biblical codenames.
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