(L) New Evangelion Project: Rebuild of Evangelion [Movies 1 & 2]

[BetoJR]

You sound like most people here have the ability to accept opinions other than their own.

But, nah... that would make too much sense.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

You sound like most people here have the ability to accept opinions other than their own.

But, nah... that would make too much sense.

*Who in here* does not have the ability to accept opinions?

Anyhow, even if that were true, it'd be a good idea to set an example and not generalize too much, especially other posters too much. Nor is a good idea to misrepresent what others are saying.

[BetoJR]

Cool it with the sermons, preacher man. I was making a jape (notice the little smiley, at the end), not looking for an argument - and I am not going to fuel one.

You're welcome to your hunting grounds, yet again, mate.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

Cool it with the sermons, preacher man. I was making a jape (notice the little smiley, at the end), not looking for an argument - and I am not going to fuel one.

You're welcome to your hunting grounds, yet again, mate.

Lol, I was just offering some advice to people if they want to hold a discussion. Believe it or not, people can agree to disagree without any malice.

Of course, if you wish to be offended by something like that, then I recommend you stop replying.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

Cool it with the sermons, preacher man. I was making a jape (notice the little smiley, at the end), not looking for an argument - and I am not going to fuel one.

You're welcome to your hunting grounds, yet again, mate.

In other words, you're trolling. Got it.

[Yot-chan]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Perhaps it has nothing to do with either.

Perhaps it has to do with the strength of one's argument and the manner they present it.

Or the tact in which it was presented with, and the ability to handle someone else's opinion and maybe accept it even if one disagrees with it.

Nah, that would make too much sense.

Huh I said nearly those exact words to Reckoner before, when I gave him cookies for presenting his argument well.

(Although I still think that, being as I am a fan of the original show, Sadamoto's manga, the new movies, and especially Asuka, I find Reckoner's sig to be beyond annoying, implying as it does that people who like 2.0 are not real Asuka fans.)

[Archon_Wing]

Well, it's just my opinion that "troll" tends to get tossed around too much by certain people. Usually someone sees a strong opinion and they're like "troll!" Usually it applies to people not liking a show way too much, this might be an exception here. Though, honestly, it shouldn't be a problem unless people resort to personal attacks.

It's possible to like this set of movies, but not as much as the series, or vice versa.

No comment on Reckoner's sig. Get off his lawn IMO.

[Reckoner]

I'm sorry Yot-Chan, but I really do think that anyone who considers Rebuild Asuka to be on par with or better than the old Asuka just really wasn't a true fan of the original Asuka.

Is there some tangible guideline with which I can evaluate this? No. This is just me being an immature fanboy who can't do anything but rage and I fully admit it.

[Yot-chan]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

I'm sorry Yot-Chan, but I really do think that anyone who considers Rebuild Asuka to be on par with or better than the old Asuka just really wasn't a true fan of the original Asuka.

I never said that. Nor did anyone, I think.

You're making up something to get angry about, and then getting angry about it.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Is there some tangible guideline with which I can evaluate this? No. This is just me being an immature fanboy who can't do anything but rage and I fully admit it.

Still...fans coming in and trying to set up litmus tests for who is or isn't a "real fan" is HIGHLY annoying, divisive, and doesn't help anyone.

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

No comment on Reckoner's sig. Get off his lawn IMO.

Nah, tell HIM to get off MY lawn... I've been an Asuka fan since 1996. Damn kids...

[Renegade334]

Well, if it's any consolation to you, Asuka had a little dere moment in ch.85 of the manga...(check the manga thread)

But as the situation is getting quite dire, I'm not sure whether this is just a false hope for both of them. Only thing I can say is that Shinji is willing to take lethal hits for her.

And amusingly enough, Sadamoto used the "arm cannon" trick from 2.0 in #85. If that's not a reference to what he's currently doing, I don't know what is..;D

[Roger Rambo]

Having just watched the first Rebuild Evangelion movie, a couple things just came to mind. With that battle against the angel with the positron rifle.





These guys are running around out in the open, manhandling power cables so their giant robot can take another shot at the Angel. This is after the angel has nuked them. And the angel is almost certainly going to nuke them again. How many of these poor, degenerate, scruffy looking slobs died when the Angel took it's second shot? Rei using the shield probably diverted allot of the blast, but these guys are still completely exposed and out in the open.


A similar train of thought comes to mind when we get a brief collage of those evacuating civilians that we cut to as Shinji momentarily ponders the significance of trying to protect all of humanity while preparing for the countdown.



While these might seem like rather minor changes to a plot that on paper seems to follow the original series pretty lockstep, I'd say they dramatically change the tone of the series, and are clear evidence that this was not a show made by someone who'd just emerged from deep clinical depression. The original EVA seemed to have an aversion to focusing on crowds of people. Making it's over engineered and monolithic environments seem barren and desolate. Something Pyongyang. The existence of people almost seems an oddity.


Bothering to take the afterthought of adding these kind of crowd scenes. Of Tokyo 3 civilians tentatively awaiting the results of the battle. To random faceless Nerv personal charging and risking their lives to engage in completely mundane activity so that the hero can save the day. If the original Evangelion was a testament to people who felt isolated, than these sequences in Rebuild that acknowledge that there's more beyond yourself. It's not necessarily glamorous, but in it's own mundane manner there's a sense of inspiration and heroism to it.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

While these might seem like rather minor changes to a plot that on paper seems to follow the original series pretty lockstep, I'd say they dramatically change the tone of the series, and are clear evidence that this was not a show made by someone who'd just emerged from deep clinical depression. The original EVA seemed to have an aversion to focusing on crowds of people. Making it's over engineered and monolithic environments seem barren and desolate. Something Pyongyang. The existence of people almost seems an oddity.

Not wanting to put down what is most certainly a very interesting theory I must point out: couldn't those changes be mostly due to the larger budget and development time allotted to the movies in relation to the original series?

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Dextro

Not wanting to put down what is most certainly a very interesting theory I must point out: couldn't those changes be mostly due to the larger budget and development time allotted to the movies in relation to the original series?

It's certainly a possibility...but I don't think so. Rebuild didn't blow their budget on these short crowd scenes (I'd argue they spent more budget on the logistical scenes of hundreds of vehicles setting up the positron rifle). And while the first Eva series ran into budget issues later on, early on they easily had the capacity to do scenes like these. The lack of such shots to me suggests not an inability on Gainax's part to do these sequences, but more that when you have a director whose just come out of a deep depression fueled by a feeling of social isolation that you'll probably seem more introspection on individual characters than thoughts on how humans as a large social group behave.

Even if this turned out to merely be a budget issue, an important thing to consider is that the audience perception is still wildly changed just by making these minor modifications.

It might also help to consider the context in which you see the clips happen. The shots of the evacuating Tokyo 3 citizens happens while Shinji is contemplating how the fate of man kind is now literally in his hands. The Nerv guys working is while Misato is explaining to Shinji how all the power in Japan, along with humanities future is in his hands. Thematically speaking, this is a very strong statement since the audience is listening to words and is connecting them to things that they visually see. This is how filmmakers convey idea's to an audience.

The only reason I'm bothering to mention all of this, is because in my recent marathoning of the original Evangelion series one thing that stood out to me was that when-ether someone brought up the idea of defending humanity that the idea came off as thematically been given light emphasis. The idea that he's piloting the Eva to defend humanity is never really a concept that resonates with Shinji. Misato's motivational attempts revolving along those lines seem to fall short. Asuka brings up the idea vaguely ("It's kill or be killed") but it's fairly obvious that her actual motivations are very different.


Also keep in mind that each individual segment in Rebuild is shorter than in the TV show, since they're trying to cram the plot of six episodes into a movie. That makes decisions over what you retain, cut and change not arbitrary one's. So someone had to deliberately decide to take a concept (defending humanity) that was presented quite ambiguously in the original series, and completely change the way it was presented in Rebuild. In Rebuild, Shinji's act of pulling himself up to take another shot at the angel is pretty unapologetically portrayed as a heroic act not just in defense of himself or people he knows, but for all of humanity.



This really isn't so much a commentary about the quality of Rebuild VS the Original. It's more a commentary about how the shows are different and why those differences might exist.

[Reckoner]

Well to be clear here, I only hate Rebuild 2.0...

I think what you pointed out is interesting, but it also kind of shows to me a sense of conformity in Anno's directing. The ideas of community and collectivism are very strong in Japan, and the original Evangelion was very interesting to me precisely because it went against those sorts of ideals. I mean why did Shinji reject instrumentality in the end? There was a respect for the individual, an understanding that we are different and that we can't fully understand one another...

Rebuild seems to run contrary to this in many ways. It seems entirely too Japanese and anti-NGE. Very typical, very cliche. Is Anno going to turn this all on its head in the end? I don't know.

What you point how shows how Shinji is carrying a lot of weight and ti begs the audience to care about the fate of humanity. In the original, Shinji had very little care about these things and this was further stressed by the somewhat vacant atmosphere of the original that you noted. It's very different.

Anyways thanks for pointing this out Roger Rambo.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

I think what you pointed out is interesting, but it also kind of shows to me a sense of conformity in Anno's directing. The ideas of community and collectivism are very strong in Japan, and the original Evangelion was very interesting to me precisely because it went against those sorts of ideals. I mean why did Shinji reject instrumentality in the end? There was a respect for the individual, an understanding that we are different and that we can't fully understand one another...

Well to be fair, you're not exactly being particularly conformist by getting a group of people to come together to fight beings that are trying to exterminate you. One thing that got pointed out in Evangelion that set humans apart from Angels, was the ability for Humans to cooperate with each other in large numbers. So having visuals to remind people of that isn't unwarranted.

Though I don't think it's really fair to say that Shinji rejected instrumentality because he wanted to live as an insular individual. To me it seemed that the message was that being an individual that learns to live with other individuals, even if you can't completely understand them, is better than living as an isolated being, or trying to artificially destroy the boundaries between individuals and turn us all into the ultimate collectivist entity.

Individuality is an extremely admirable trait. But in the context of Evangelion, you got to distinguish between being able to learn to love yourself and make your own choices, and crippling isolation locking you into a shell and keeping you from interacting with people.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Rebuild seems to run contrary to this in many ways. It seems entirely too Japanese and anti-NGE. Very typical, very cliche. Is Anno going to turn this all on its head in the end? I don't know.

To be fair, allot of what made the original NGE, *NGE* was the fact that Anno wasn't exactly a model of good emotional or mental health at the time. He'd come out of a rather extreme depression and allot of the most fucked up elements in Eva are bassically his therapy notes. When so much of Anno's depression is what formulated EVa, I can't exactly lambast Rebuild for not having that kind of stuff. It almost feels like I'm jumping in Anno's face and telling him to get depressed again so that his stuff feels more deep.

Maybe my problem when I watched Evangelion, was that I didn't really view it so much as philosophy, and more as the personal catharsis of a man who'd just pulled himself out of an EXTREMELY bad emotional crisis. So in a way the differences between Rebuild and NGE fascinate me more than any unhappiness about Rebuild not having the disturbing NGE elements.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

What you point how shows how Shinji is carrying a lot of weight and ti begs the audience to care about the fate of humanity. In the original, Shinji had very little care about these things and this was further stressed by the somewhat vacant atmosphere of the original that you noted. It's very different.

This is one of the fundemental things I was trying to allude to, in regards to Rebuild VS NGE, and Anno today VS anno over a decade ago.

I can almost imagine Anno when he first sat down to do Evangelion, sitting down and looking at the premise. *The world is in danger of imminent total annihlation*. And I can sorta see Anno's gut response being "I don't give a fuck about the world". Thus when he does the series, he filters into the protagonist and you see that Shinji's emotional's problems are so overwhelming that the prospect of so many people dying seems unimportant to him. This isn't to say that Shinji (and by extension Anno) are bad people. It's merely a commentary that people with extreme emotional problems probably aren't necessarily going to have healthy world views.

In Rebuild, Shinji's acknowledging larger humanity is more a commentary about Anno. About how a decade after NGE, when he looked at the premise of NGE. *The world is in danger of imminent total annihilation.* And I can sorta see his new gut response as "Geee, that's kind of a bad thing, isn't it?"

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Anyways thanks for pointing this out Roger Rambo.

You're very welcome.

[Appel]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

These guys are running around out in the open, manhandling power cables so their giant robot can take another shot at the Angel. This is after the angel has nuked them. And the angel is almost certainly going to nuke them again. How many of these poor, degenerate, scruffy looking slobs died when the Angel took it's second shot? Rei using the shield probably diverted allot of the blast, but these guys are still completely exposed and out in the open.

i actually find that extremely amusing.... am i a bad person? =D

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Appel

i actually find that extremely amusing.... am i a bad person? =D

Yes. You're an EXTREMELY bad person. And you should feel ashamed of yourself!



....


Though I don't really have much high ground over this at all. Considering that during End of Evangelion I was constantly cracking jokes over how badly the NERV personal were getting their asses handed to them by those JSDF Commandos taking no prisoners. Then I watched Rebuild of Eva, then felt the tiniest bit of guilt in my black heart.

[Yot-chan]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

I think what you pointed out is interesting, but it also kind of shows to me a sense of conformity in Anno's directing. The ideas of community and collectivism are very strong in Japan, and the original Evangelion was very interesting to me precisely because it went against those sorts of ideals. I mean why did Shinji reject instrumentality in the end? There was a respect for the individual, an understanding that we are different and that we can't fully understand one another...

You don't really know what you're talking about, do you?

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Yot-chan

You don't really know what you're talking about, do you?

Nope. I must be the sort of person who just likes to ramble about things he clearly doesn't understand to make a fool of himself.

Oh wait, maybe I really do think I know what I'm talking about!

[Yot-chan]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Nope. I must be the sort of person who just likes to ramble about things he clearly doesn't understand to make a fool of himself.

Oh wait, maybe I really do think I know what I'm talking about!

Hmm...when you talk about Eva, yes, you generally do (although I'm o the opinion that Shinji ACCEPTED Instrumentality in the show)...but trying to extend it to a cultural commentary on Japan doesn't really work.