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Evangelion Reviewed In LA Times
peter_gzowski writes "Neon Genesis Evangelion, perhaps the greatest anime series ever, has been reviewed in the LA Times. This coincides with the release of the box set of the entire series (not including the movies, which come out on DVD in the fall). Hooray for mainstream credibility!" Best series if I can somehow overlook the final eps of the original series.
The only effective weapon against the Angels are the Evas (short for "Evangelions"), NERV's enormous cyborg robot-suits piloted by psychic teenagers.
Did i miss this(i have the adv dvds)? or did the reviewer add this?
Um, no, not really. It might have made sense, but they ran out of money. That's why there were no conclusions. There are movies that also make you come up with your own conclusions, but they don't degenerate into nonsense. Watch the last two episodes (don't pay for them) and then tell us that they're just avoiding "good-guys-always-win". The first half of the episodes make the viewer ask, "Why are we fighting angels?" Which makes them question the idea of pure good and evil. Always a good thing, IMH(athiest)O. Then they get a little repetitive, but still fun. And then they turn into whining BS and nonsense. And it's still one of the few pieces of anime that I consider excellent.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
utterly unlike any American animated film.
Slowly, surely, inevitably...
anime, because of its stories and quality...
overtakes the U.S. animation companies...
and leaves them behind.
The Metropolis review, the popularity of Toonami, the 20 feet of DVDs at Suncoast and now this. It's no longer a question of 'if.'
Toonami's popularity was described as "out-of-nowhere." Isn't it funny how executives always describe genuine quality-driven popularity as "out of nowhere?" Of course, the two shows that built Toonami: Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon, weren't exactly "out of nowhere," but we can't actually expect the cynics to do any work now can we?
That an animated series can generate so much substantive discussion should just about wrap it for the "animation is for kids" crowd.
The real message to the animation industry:
better wake up.
Actually, I really liked the change in Rei's voice. That voice is much closer to the rest of Megumi Hayashibara's roles. If you've heard her as Ranma Saotome, Faye Valentine, etc. it's as though she's flashing a "Hi! This really is me." Amazing.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I wasn't particularly bothered by the Christian themes presented in Evangelion. I considered it as an alegory of the Garden of Eden.
And the Lord said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. KJV Gen 3: 22-24
I always supposed that tampering with Adam was part of humanity's effort to acchieve instrumentality, which I understood to be an immortal group mind. The Angels, of which Adam was only one, were the Cherubims, set to protect the garden of Eden, "lest he [mankind] put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever"
The only objectionable theme I found was that humanity defeated the angels. However, the symbolism of this is not clear. I have considered three interpretations and cannot decide which, if any, is correct.
1. Man is more powerful than the servants of God. It is his destiny to suceed at achieving eternal life by his own power.
2. God, having been created by man, may also be destroyed by man. Thus, his servants are ineffectual.
3. Man thinks that he is greater than God, an so names his enemies 'angels' so that he can affirm his own superiority. He is deluded and ireverent.
The first two, obviously, are critical of Christianity, the third is critical of man. Which of these, if any, was intended, I don't know.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
There were two possible results of the Human Complementation Project. Both would result in the annihilation of mankind as it's known today - one would simply be the complete destruction, the other would join and merge all souls into a single uniform being, continuing life with a single soul. The former would happen if an Angel came into contact with Adam, the first angel, the latter through a a ritual involving Rei. (There's actually a third option, also, below.)
:)
The series portrayed NERV (the organization behind the Evas) as a puppet for a council of planners called SEELE - a group of old men who had a hand in the original discovery of Adam, attempting to save their own skins. According to the script, they used technology pioneered by Dr. Katsuragi (Misato's father) to force Adam to revert in time to an embryonic form, allowing them to restrain him - however, the energy produced triggered the melting of the ice caps. (No debates about embryos and life please, that's another topic for another time.)
Thus, the Evas were created to prevent the Angels (sent by God) from coming into contact with Adam before they could complete the ritual and trigger the "good" type of complementation. In the first episode containing Asuka, Kaji is carrying around a cryogenic container holding Adam - it stays with Gendo Ikari after that.
As for the ending... in the original series ending, the "good" ending is assumed to occur, and the final two episodes trace what happens to Shinji as he merges with the souls of his cloest friends. (The ritual that triggers this is left undisclosed.) I thought it was a great ending - however, it left a lot of questions unanswered, and many fans complained. So, Gainax dragged Anno back, and released the movie End of Evangelion, which presents a different ending. In EoE, the ritual and creation of the group being is very explicitly shown, along with the freeing of all souls on earth - however, at the last minute, Shinji (inside EVA-01) rejects the new life form, and it all falls apart. The movie doesn't say what happens to the souls of humanity explicitly - they're shown coasting back to earth, and most people figure their bodies will reform.
(The whole idea of the ending was that the so-called AT field was the intangible, inpenetrable barrier of the soul, keeping us in human shape; if our AT fields were somehow countered, the human body would break apart into base elements - which Eva calls LCL - and the soul float free.)
Personally, I don't see a need to interpret it in terms of my religious beliefs, just because it has symbols and imagery from it. I just enjoy the series for what it is, and for the philosophical issues it presents
Evagelion's bombastic, sarcastic use of theme music in some scenes (Worthy is the Lamb, the Ode to Joy) is another place where The Prisoner's influence (especially that of "Fall Out") is apparent. (The Prisoner came well before Kubrik's Clockwork Orange, let alone Reservoir Dogs.) More generally, both shows took a popular genre of TV action serial and subverted it into a statement about the human condition, full of weirdness, symbolism, and angst. HIDEAKI Anno probably owes Patrick McGoohan a beer for that one.
For those out of the know: The Prisoner is not Prisoner: Cell Block H . The Prisoner is a British TV show from the 1960s. ITV is a UK commercial TV channel. The Prisoner is a one-hour show with 17 episodes. The Prisoner is the Greatest TV Show of All Time, Ever. (So far, at least. :) )
Lain about an AI software girl (Lain) who was created by a researcher (the old white guy with the beard)
The experiment (the program) got stolen (or hacked) by a group called "Knights" who played with Lain.
Near the end, Lain found out that she was in fact a program (as with the girl at the beginning who commited suicide, and the professor dude). Lain is just one of many AI "agents" in the artificial world that "got smart"... (This is why the "knights" are interested in her...)
Once she found out that she is an AI, she becomes a "god", kind of like "the matrix", and she can do wierd shit.
There are wierd parts thrown in to trick you, like Lain's sister. (She got "erased" and "replaced" by a dumb AI because she started to know too much). Also, the fact that people from the outside knew how to get in the Lain world "matrix style".
The key phrase in the series was "The real world and the computer (navi) world" are really the same. This means that Lain's world (you would think "real world") is really the computer world. Also, notice that the artists draw the real real world (non-Lain world) in MUCH more detail than the Lain world.
Am I the only one who remembers the old Gainax lore ? This kind of activity is completely typical of them... a prime example of revenge on the fans from back in the old day.
Revenge on the fans is the standard reaction of Gainax (I guess Anno in particular) when the more artful work of theirs is treated to a lukewarm reception by the otaku. The best example of this action/reaction was the release of Honneamisu no Tsubasa followed by Toppu wo Nerae! Gunbuster!. Gainax released one of the truly all-time great animated films, but apparently the public reaction was underwhelming to the folk at Gainax. The logical conclusion: give the otaku another great product, this time wrapped in anime cliches and stupidity... anime that, more or less, talks down to the fans.
Another example of the wierd relationship Gainax has with the anime otaku is truly bizarre Otaku no Bideo, where Gainax presents a looose animated history of itself ("Giant X" in the video) which is interspersed with live action "portrait of otaku": interviews with people acting out some standard otaku stereotypes. There's the tape collecting/trading otaku, the fake-guns military otaku, the prOn otaku, and several others. For the Americans, there's the westerner who's given up everything back home to move to Japan, the mecca of animation (or at least anime). All of them seem rather psychotic.
Despite all of this, Gainax clearly ranks themselves amongst the otaku. They are, in fact, such great lovers of animation that they have based their lives around trying to actually create animation. Sometimes, they aim for innovative and thoughtful animation that tries to transcend the current state of the industry. Odd how they'd be mildly vengeful when their art is poorly received by fandom.
Artists... yeesh.
Evangelion is about trying to find a way to cope with the painful reality of the world... to find some kind of meaining in one's futile life to make living worth while... a deeply personal story.
The "second ending for Evangelion" is just an immediate application of revenge on the fans. Fans get what they want... and hopefully feel somewhat stupid when they do get it.
Mechs, in capes, fighting with swords. Pure genius.
;-)
Except for that one scene in the opening where esca and another caped melf are fighting and their capes are blowing in the wind...in completely opposite directions
I love Escaflowne (hell, I bought the VHS box set after seeing the entire series fansubbed), but that bit in the opening always made me laugh.
I have not seen either of the two movies. However, I did not find the ending of the series to be all that depressing. Giving the audience enough room to interpret things for themselves is one of the things that makes it such a valuable work. I am getting tired of entertainment that readily hands you all the answers, whether you want them or not, and never gives the viewer much chance to question the ethics and motivations of the characters.
Also, there seems to be a strange conception that happy endings are the only kind allowed. Is the American mind really so brainwashed? Maybe some more foreign films are needed in this country... One good start for Anime fans is Jin-Roh, which toured the US in theatrical release, no less, and is an immensely powerful animated feature.