Welcome, one and all, to Mecha March!
Every week this month I’ll be looking at a different Mecha show, and
what better way to start things off than with the one I’m going to
have to spend a ton of time referencing, Evangelion?
That is, I admit, mostly why I’m doing
this. I feel like most people who read this blog already know what
NGE is and have their own opinions about it, but if I’m going to talk
about some of its successors, I need to put down my own thoughts. I
also think it’s quite valid to look at old shows with new eyes now
and again, which is part of why I spend more time outside the most
recent seasons. In either case, Neon Genesis Evangelion
A little programming note before we
start, because it might be relevant: My copy of Evangelion is an
undefinable and possibly bootlegged DVD set from I don’t even know
what kind of source. That means it has old subs that are probably
substantially different from the controversial and maligned Netflix
version. That means I neither have to deal with the new version nor
the original English Shinji, which might be coloring my opinions.
Before I get into those opinions, the
basic rundown for those who don’t know: Shinji Ikari is a ‘normal’
teenage boy (and by normal, I mean he’s a depressive and socially
awkward introvert) called in by his dad, Gendo Ikari, who had been
distant up until this point in the boy’s life. Gendo is the head of
a paramilitary organization called NERV, and his renewed interest in
his son is not to rekindle any sort of familial bond but to have
Shinji pilot EVA-01, an Evangelion (big robot, or so it looks at
first) necessary for the defense of Tokyo-3 and by extension the rest
of postapocalyptic Earth against otherworldly beings known as
“Angels”.
Shinji is not the gung-ho type. He
does not want to get in the robot. He reminds himself to not run
away, but has a hard time following up with that. Still he manages
to not totally fail as Earth’s thin line of defense, and meets
some… interesting people along the way. One is his caretaker,
Misato, a hard-boiled military woman who lives off instant meals and
beer but tries her darn best to be a good mother figure to Shinji.
The other, at first, is Shinji’s school classmate and fellow Eva
pilot, Rei Ayanami.
I kind of hate Rei Ayanami.
Alright, perhaps that’s a little harsh.
My problem is not, by in large, with Rei herself. In total
isolation, I don’t like or connect with her, but at the same time I
don’t think you’re supposed to like or connect with her, so mission
accomplished I guess. She gets a lot of awkward screen time and
awkward focus on her blank stare, faintly sad demeanor, laconic
approach to the universe, and all-around dully depressive existence,
so that I started to dislike seeing her scenes as I watched. But all
the same there are interesting reasons why she is the way she is, and
at least a couple actually good scenes if not due to her performance
than at least framed inescapably around her. At least, she adds more
to this show than she takes away so I guess she’s alright. To me,
she’s pretty forgettable most of the time and I don’t miss her at all
when she’s not around, but there have been worse characters in the
history of anime.
My problem is that (and she’s hardly
the only character for which this is true), I’ve seen Rei Ayanami a
million times. The quiet, soft-spoken, seemingly emotionless girl
who somehow captures the attention of others in-character when she’s
about as interesting as the seaweed on a rice ball, Rei’s clones (pun
intended) are probably in every third show and while I can forgive
Rei 1.0 the mark she’s left in copycats is something of a pet peeve
of mine. Not all of them are bad, but something interesting and
unique must be done with the formula, even more so than with other
tired character types, because the baseline is not entertaining in
the least.
But I digress.
After a while handling the Angel
battles (which present some truly visceral and spectacular action),
we’re introduced to our third pilot, the Asuka Langley. Asuka is, in
contrast to Rei, a ton of fun. She has a fiery, competitive
personality. She can be shrill and vain, but her flaws honestly give
Shinji a lot to work off of, and butting heads with her seems to
bring Shinji out of his shell. With her comes Kaji, a strange
roguish type whose arrival kickstarts the path of cloak and dagger
investigations around Gendo Ikari, NERV, and NERV’s parent
organization, the shadowy Illuminati known as SEELE.
This is what brings us to the “middle
episodes” of Evangelion, the meat of the show where there’s a basic
loop that returns to something resembling status quo (though in a
well-built show with a definite beginning and end, like Evangelion,
you could call it more of a spiral or corkscrew than a true loop: we
move forward on some axis, even as motifs repeat) of fighting Angels
and digging into human dirt.
I want to highlight and understand
this: NGE is a smart show, and it has some character study and
symbolism and thought-provoking moments. But the core of the show’s
DNA, what it is more than anything else, is an action show. The meat
of most episodes is preparing for or executing a fancy, spectacular
fight with the episode’s big foe.
There are, of course, variations on the
template. Some episodes are lighter: at least one is dedicated to
Asuka and Shinji having to learn to synchronize their actions through
what’s basically Dance Dance Revolution. It’s… actually very
funny. I knew Evangelion by reputation long before I actually
watched the show, and I’ll say that nothing, absolutely nothing,
prepared me for the fact that the show could still have lighthearted
moments like that. Which is a good thing, because it does spend a
lot of time being heavy, especially as we head towards the end. On
the other hand, there’s an episode where the Angel swallows EVA-01
and Shinji into a pocket dimension called a Sea of Dirac, and he’s
left floating in the dark, his life support slowly running out of
power, until EVA-01 finally goes berserk and saves him by ripping out
of the Angel in a shower of gore right at the end. Some of the
episode still does play in the “Oh no, there’s a crisis” sort of
way you’d expect from something action-y, but there’s also a lot of
time and weight given to Shinji’s thoughts and experiences while he’s
trapped alone. Neither one of these episodes existing negates the
fact that the main dish is usually action and the side dishes usually
intrigue and character.
And, all those elements, main dish or
side, are solid. Solid, I say, but I must admit also particular.
It’s been said that a good deal of the psychology in Evangelion came
out of its creator’s battle with depression, and you know what? I
believe it. The series leaves the viewer, like its main characters,
usually feeling isolated and with limited to non-existent hope and
agency. There are lighter, even humorous stretches, at least at
first, but the dominant sensation is one of being small and alone.
EVA-01 (the Evangelions in general, but especially 01) is horrifying,
and while it can be frustrating when Shinji does his darnedest to
avoid the call of duty – more on that in a bit – his fear of this
think he’s been saddled with never feels entirely unjustified. Add
onto this Gendo Ikari. He’s Shinji’s father and also Shinji’s
commanding officer and he’s distant, aloof, somewhat menacing, and
possibly slightly evil based on what we see of him. Gendo is in
control, and for the most part we can’t get into Gendo’s head.
There’s a very good episode, towards the end of the show, where we
see the history of the setting centered around Gendo Ikari, but even
when we do we don’t see it from Gendo’s point of view. Instead, we
continue to see him from the perspective of outsiders, letting him
retain the mystery and even threat that he’s built up to that point.
And don’t think the Angels themselves
don’t contribute as well. At first they’re almost a reprieve from
the situation at NERV. They’re dangerous, true. City or even
world-destroying dangerous. But all the same the first few angels we
fight in Neon Genesis Evangelion are just monsters; they’re rampaging
beasts with dangeous special abilities, but they can be punched out.
As alien as their visual designs are, as much as they’re inhuman of
intellect and inscrutable of goal (other than the means being
destruction), the fighting is something that can be immediately
understood when we’re never quite permitted to understand Gendo
Ikari, NERV, and SEELE. However, as the show wears on, the Angels
get steadily more esoteric. The one in the first episode is
basically Godzilla, but the one in the later episode that swallows up
Shinji? By then, the Angels have started ignoring the rules. I
don’t say breaking, because the impression that you get is that the
rules never really applied to them. What rules? Any of them, but
most especially the rules of the universe as we understand it and the
rules of the setting as we thought we knew them. And when the enemy
starts to disregard the Rules, everything you thought you knew goes
out the window. They’re no longer emotionally or psychologically
‘safe’ and cannot be treated as mere monsters any longer, removing
battle as a reprieve from the oppressive and mysterious atmosphere.
Which brings us to discussing the
ending, both broadly in terms of the last few episodes at the bottom
of this downward slide, and specifically in terms of the last two
episodes. In general, the last episodes see the total collapse of
Asuka, the steady collapse of Shinji, and the loss of most of what
little personality Rei had by her death and replacement with a new
clone. Speaking of clones, we do get at least some answers in
Evangelion, involving a lot of cloning (mostly around Rei) and a big
Illuminati scheme to do something major with humanity. It’s not all
well-expressed in the show, but most of it is pretty good. I could
go into details, but if I focus too much on minutia in Evangelion
we’ll be here all day. Suffice to say, while the show is going
horribly dark places, it’s going there well for the most part.
The last round of answers is received
from Kaworu Nagisa, a character people that aren’t me like to talk to
death, and also the last Angel. He appears in a human body, able to
pass for a human, and is thus the only Angel to be able to be
reasoned with. Not that reasoning with him solves the threat he
ultimately presents when he invades NERV’s inner sanctum, but
especially when he’s friendly and supporting towards Shinji when
Shinji is feeling that everyone else has betrayed him or been lost to
him, it means it really hurts (and we understand the hurt) when
Shinji has to squish him.
While I won’t exactly go into too much
of a rant on Kaworu, I will say this about him: he really helps tie
together the Biblical theme of Evangelion. Because he can appear,
granting revelation and even expressing something that came off to me
as divine love (the love of a creator for something that has been
created, even if that something is ephemeral and inevitably doomed to
destruction), Kaworu does help pull the Angels as a whole into a
different conceptual space. I talked about how they go esoteric and
can’t really be categorized as monsters, but it’s with Kaworu that
the “Angel” moniker really seems to fit; the other latecomer
angels that are esoteric and rule-ignoring could otherwise be kept in
the same general grab-bag of madness that contains all manner of
Cthulhuoid entities, given that their actions are easiest to
interpret as malevolence or, at best, incomprehensible overriding
drives.
Then we come to probably the most
divisive part of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the last two episodes. And
I’m just going to come out and say it… I didn’t care for them. At
least, not as a proper conclusion to Evangelion.
In the last two episodes, the physical
world is abandoned entirely for a delve into the psyche of the
characters, particularly of Shinji. This is done with a lot of
important-looking title cards, still images, clips from the past, and
in the final episode some new animation on the stick figure level,
with very little of the animation that you’d expect out of Neon
Genesis Evangelion as it was up to this point.
I’ve heard that this ending came about
at least in part because the production ran into trouble and out of
budget, and that’s about what I would have guessed from the
production. It seems like the kind of thing some talented people
with old stills, a couple of clips they were actually able to finish,
and 65 yen fished out of the company couch with which to borrow art
supplies from local schoolchildren. (Hyperbole on my part) I specify
talented people, because there is still good artistry to what goes on
here. There’s a purpose to what is shown even if it could have been
shown better without constraints, and some support of the ideas in
this ending from earlier so it’s not like it comes entirely out of
nowhere. For what it is, I think it’s about as effective as it could
be.
But… that doesn’t make it a good
conclusion. Some skill and artistic ability shows through the
restrictions and limitations, but most of what you actually say in
the finished (and I use that word loosely) product is the limitation,
the fact that they were out of money and out of time. And even
beyond that, I’m not sure the sequence works as an ending to
Evangelion in particular.
What do I mean by that? I’ll refer
back to what I said earlier, that the core of Evangelion’s DNA was an
action show. And thanks to that, I feel like Evangelion needed some
kind of action in its climax. At least in its original show form, it
goes out not with a bang but with a whimper, and that’s a disservice
to what came before. I’m not saying you can’t have the otherworldly
material as well, but this isn’t “2001: A Space Odyssey”, a
slow-paced and surreal experience, for which a slow-paced and surreal
ending that’s notoriously difficult to parse is fitting. There
should have been some payoff to the experience we’d had through most
of Evangelion. Instead, there is none. That’s the biggest, most
core failing of those last two episodes and the conclusion. And
considering there are no less than three attempts to remake the end
on record, I don’t think I’m the only one to be at least somewhat
disappointed with the material we got.
Even beyond that, Evangelion isn’t a
perfect show. It’s a good show, but it has other flaws than the
ending. One of the big ones that occurred to me is that Shinji
attempts to quit NERV not once but twice, which I alluded to earlier.
The problem with this is not whether or not it makes sense for
Shinji as a person to do it (though it’s at odds with his other issue
of placing his self-worth in piloting), but that the emotions and
events in the two episodes are largely on repeat. Perhaps it’s done
to show Shinji backsliding, since in the middle episodes, with Asuka
as an active foil, he seemed to be coming more into his own as a
person than the Shinji who tried to quit near the start, but it
doesn’t easily come off as that. It comes off as the show being kind
of out of ideas and forcing us and Shinji through an arc he’d already
been through in order to draw out the drama.
Which also highlights how, as good as
Evangelion is at pulling the viewer into the moment, there can be
some artificiality to how it works emotions. It’s something of a
mixed bag. Misato feels very genuine, as does the relationship
between Shinji and Asuka as
friends/rivals/coworkers/it’s-complicateds. Oddly enough for all
that I dislike and tend to forget her, even Rei works in abstract
once you get the reveals about her being a clone that explain a lot
of her psychology. But Shinji’s issues, ones that are treated as
being essentially normal in some ways, are more clearly kind of
pathological. Have a depressed writer get depressed characters, I
guess. What’s more the issue (when it’s an issue) is that the
characters will have an on-off switch on their drama and hangups
that’s flicked to the needs of the plot. One moment, Misato is a
competent adult, if one who doesn’t always make the best choices, the
next she’s unable to manage her affairs in the least. It feels
almost like there were two writing teams, and one of them
passionately disliked how the other wrote certain characters.
I will say, though, that these
issues… aren’t fatal. Even trying to look at it with fresh eyes in
2020, Neon Genesis Evangelion remains a strong product, and one
that’s worth watching for itself as well as its massive and lingering
impact. For that reason, I’m going to choose to grade Evangelion as
an A-. It’s brilliant material with definite A+ potential, but it’s
also deeply marred by several issues. All of which, I’ll say, feel
like they could be corrected; a sentiment that was clearly shared
because, again, attempts were made (and continue to be made) to do
exactly that.
If you’re at this point and you haven’t
seen Neon Genesis Evangelion, do watch it. You owe it to yourself to
really understand and experience this monolith of a show, and I think
you’ll find it worth your while.