Evangelion Shin Gekijôban: Kyu (2012) Reviews

• What Happened?

  opszanski2013-08-20

  Minor spoilers for Eva 2.0 and 3.0 Forewarning: I am not a giant Evangelion fan. I've seen the TV series and have noticed moments of brilliance, but I was in some ways annoyed with the finished product (especially towards the end). My biggest problem was that the characters were not very likable. They were complex yes, but I didn't feel very connected to Sinji, Asuka, Rae, etc. They seemed to fundamentally lack any sense of pro-activity. Much of the plot consisted of their reactions rather than their actions. That's not important however, and I only bring this up to clarify my surprise at Evangelion: 2.0, which did something I hadn't expected: It completely won me over. 2.0 is fantastic, clearing up nearly all the issues I had with the series. There is not a single character that doesn't improve; Sinji actually shows some integrity and becomes a protagonist I can get behind. Never did I feel that he was unjustified in how he was acting. Rae, surprisingly enough, shows consistent character progression versus the TV series where she too often remained stagnant. By the end of 2.0, it's almost a surprise to think this is the same character from the beginning of the movie. She goes from emotionless and hardly human to a caring person wanting Sinji to be happy. A small change, but very noticeable. Asuka stayed relatively the same but with some important changes. While in the series she was portrayed as egotistical and self-righteous, in 2.0 she comes off as more anti-social. Important dimensions are added to her character as it's hinted that her bombastic personality might not be because of her need for praise, but simply a defense mechanism to cope with her loneliness. And then EVA 3.0 happened. Where to start? Well, let's begin by saying much of the foundation laid by the past films are not existent just as much of the positive turns for the characters have been nullified. It really baffles me in some ways: Why have Sinji grow so much in 2.0, just to turn him into a self- loathing angst character again that can't handle the conflicts in this film? Why have Rae develop a personality and have audiences connect with her when she's rescued, just to say she's dead and have us deal all over again with an emotionless Rae clone? Why hint at feelings of self-denial and loneliness in Asuka, just to have those issues ignored and never addressed again? Why have Misato cheer Sinji on to save Rae at the end of 2.0, just for her to reject and coldly dismiss him at the beginning of this movie? If these characters have problems that have changed them - THEN SHOW US. Don't build them up, skip ahead 14 years, and completely change them without explanation. It's not clever, it's nonsensical. Imagine any other show or movie you've seen, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to see the characters just beginning to be fleshed out, only for the plot to move decades ahead in the future. All the open questions you have and all the issues raised with the characters instantly become meaningless because their resolution occurred off screen. Remember Asuka's final lines in the last film, "I can laugh, I didn't know I could"? Well I hope you weren't expecting this to factor into her character at all because it might as well have never been said. Any character development from the first two Evangelion movies have next to zero influence in how anyone acts. Unfortunately, there are no excuses for Sinji and Rae. Killing off the Rae we've come to connect with just to introduce her next emotionless clone and expecting us to connect with her all over again is completely unjustifiable. Rae had already progressed so far in terms of her personality. But no, all that progress is gone. Now meet a new Rae, who is coincidentally exactly like the Rae you knew at the very beginning. Sinji is no better. Him becoming an emotional wreck by the end that has lost the will to live is not shocking anymore, it's pathetic. Does this character have any other dimension to him, or is it all self-loathing? Why make him the least bit competent when all you intend to do is tear down his character again? Sinji is a microcosm for everyone in this film; any development is meaningless because they revert back to their starting point, just to begin the whole process over again - like a dog chasing its tail over and over again. The whole movie stands in stark contrast to the last. The fundamentals of how NERV operates and what its relationship is to the characters is completely changed, and never explained. In fact, barely anything is explained. Asuka and Sinji have not aged a day after 14 years and the only explanation given is some reference to "the curse of EVA". Yeah, sure. All I hear is "we wanted to skip ahead 14 years, but we still needed Sinji and Asuka to stay at age 14 and pilot the EVAs." Don't you think if a machine stopped people from aging they would I don't know, warn them before they became pilots? Because that's kind of an important side-effect. On top of this, the film is much darker than the second. But darker in EVA means better right?? Well if done properly, yes. But that's not the case here. This isn't a "dark turn" that is properly foreshadowed; the viewer has been thrown into another universe where consequences of the last film have not been dealt with or explained. I'm sure there are many fans out there that will have a different perspective and will like this film. But for me, many of the reasons why EVA 2.0 won me over to the franchise are either ruined, reversed, or ignored.

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• ...well, that was an experience

  lightningbarer2014-06-26

  I've argued against the consensus that Hideaki Anno hate's his fans before, I've tried to say that just because he feels the need to change some things and dislikes rabid Evatards, it's not reason to think him wrong. This movie has changed my opinion of him. I'll say this first off, you want to change continuity in a story, fine. It's your work, you can do whatever the hell you want with it, whether it's a good thing or not, we've seen that with some of the best sci-fi epics in the last 40 years. But don't expect to write utter rubbish and not be called out for it. A lot has been said on the depression that Anno went through in the writing process of the Eva TV series and how it's effected his story structure, you can see it around the mid-point of the series changing gears at a horrible rate, if I'm honest, this movie shows that he needs someone to rein him in, there have been changes to story structure(I mean 14 years of character destruction just because he wanted it) additions and retcons. This movie is a mess, from start to finish there seems to be no reason for it, nothing really happens in this other than build-up for the final movie. We've had major reset buttons being hit for major characters, we've had horrible, disgusting plot conveniences of no-aging for the Eva pilots without anything substantial being shown for them and the burden of spending 14 years in an adolescent's body (you know, the whole tortured Claudia style character). A major character was introduced just to be killed off, without any major development! AGAIN! I could let Anno off in the series, he'd come up with a brilliant idea, but the money was running out and he had to cut and paste together a quick resolution to probably the most important character interaction for Shinji. But doing this. After Two Films of build up, with a full movie to show just the blossoming friendship and possible love between a young man and an alien in the guise of a young man. This is unforgivable, I can't forgive a horrid mess of this mistake, Anno had the chance to give us what he'd complained so much about before. And he gives us the same basic thing, no character development, a choice to kill or not to kill and a breakdown of a Human mind. Like I said before, if you want to change continuity then that's perfectly fine, I don't mind that. Lucas and Roddenberry both did the same with their stories(with a sliding scale of success). Now I know he'd already changed a lot of stuff in continuity by the second movie, but doing this is idiotic, he's changed continuity within his own movie series, while it's still running. You don't DO that. Breaking continuity while you are still telling the story doesn't work, saying something like: "billy went to the supermarket and picked up dry cleaning from the laundromat for his new book, then on his way home, Jenny found a £1000 and was evicted from her home because she was flat broke" yes there's a story there, but it doesn't make a lick of sense. In essence, that is what he has done here, taking a story structure of "there was the First Impact 65million years ago, Humans came, then Second Impact came with Adam and brought the Angels, a union between Adam and Lilth will bring Third Impact, causing the end of the world." And stating now "Whoa, what are you saying, Third Impact is just a step along to the Apocalypse of Fourth Impact, didn't I mention that before?" If you'd stated that Third Impact was the end of the world, then stick to that and show a world in Purgatory for the third movie, you know because Kaworu stopped it at the end of the second movie. That could work, 14 years of a living purgatory would harden anyone, even people like Misato. So you can create a sacrificial Saviour of Shinji for the Fourth movie, you know like you're planning to do anyway. The visuals are the only major tent pole holding this film up, because that're amazing as usual, but as for the rest, it's terrible. The story is crap. It's a reason to turn away from the Rebuild series, I'll still see the final movie, mainly because I'm in too deep now and just have to hold my nose and swim through, if I'd fallen in on this just now, I'd have been easily able to give it up. The only bright point is that I've got the full series limited addition boxset on my shelf and all the movies, that's enough for me and even though it's ending is as convoluted as this one is currently, I'm more willing to forgive that than this. Hideaki Anno hasn't impressed me with this sharp right turn, can his final movie change my opinion. I seriously doubt it.

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• The emperor has no clothes

  tuomas_gimli2014-01-25

  With a plot full of holes like Swiss cheese, setting and setup that will confuse even the staunchest long-time fans, script on the level of a bad fan fiction, countless disrepancies and abandoned plot lines from the first two movies and characterization taking 180-degree turns every two seconds, Evangelion 3.0 is an utter mess at best, and an open insult to movie watchers at worst. It's a colossal failure as its own story, as a follow-up, as a remake and a movie in general that renders the previous two movies and all their accomplishments completely pointless. Almost nothing from the previous films is resolved in any meaningful way: Shinji's relationships with his friends and slowly growing confidence, Kaji's shady dealings with NERV, the Key of Nebuchadnezzar, Rei coming out of her shell, Asuka warming up to people, the growing threat of Angel attacks and much more are completely abandoned and forgotten about. In their place we get an endless barrage of new terms and plot elements which the characters talk about, but none of which are ever adequately explained or established. The first 30 minutes consist of nothing but action scenes with only the tiniest amount of context or setup, just a bunch of flashy stuff for the viewer to look at. The characters have taken a total nosedive. Mari, who had a strange foreboding about her in 2.0 is reduced to a mere sidekick with no meaning. Despite the 14-year gap, Asuka is still her old bratty self despite now being 28 years old. The justification for her and Mari not having aged is so ridiculous you have to wonder if the writers are actually pulling a prank. Misato is so far removed from her previous persona she might as well be an entirely new character. Rei's character actually regresses, as all her development from the previous movies is rendered nonexistent, and is never properly explained how. Gendo has become a caricature of himself. In the original series he had an enigmatic presence and there were hints of his deeper motives, but here there's nothing under the surface: he's just a cartoon villain, practically twirling his moustache and cackling "JUST AS PLANNED". But the change of setting is undoubtedly the thing that shoots this film in the leg and then some. So many questions rise and are never answered that the viewer is completely lost. The last 20 minutes will be spent in utter confusion as the viewer tries to grasp even the flimsiest straw of what is supposed to be going on, and why it should mean anything. Bombastic music playing over certain scenes is the only signal of something meaningful happening, but since the setting is so unestablished the viewer is just left thinking "I guess that's important because the characters act like it is, but why should I care?" Perhaps the only saving qualities of this film are the music and the animation, both of which are great and work to put together some rather impressive action scenes. But that makes it only so much worse when you think what other projects this clearly great amount of talent could have been used for, rather than this 90-minute fart in the audience's face. At one point Fuyutsuki, the one character who gives the only direct exposition in the film, says "'Tis a wretched role I'm playing" to himself. It's almost if he's meta talking about his character having been reduced to a useless exposition device. Add to all this meaningless shoutouts to the original like recycled shots from the series and Gendo's new choice of eyewear, occasional pseudo-philosophical lines which don't mean anything and some completely out of place piano playing scenes that add nothing to the story and you have an indulgent, incomprehensible, poorly told, plot less, pretentious, forced mess that doesn't even have a proper ending. Stuff explodes, characters talk about things you don't understand, Shinji sulks, some piano playing, stuff explodes again and then the movie just stops. Nothing has been achieved, learned or accomplished and you just don't care.

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• Disappointing, also made me lose respect for almost all of the Characters

  Sabre_Wolf2014-09-05

  Disappointing and I really hated this film, the Rebuild Series looked so promising but this completely killed it for me. I mean to me its as if everyone has just gotten completely nuts! Also Third Impact was not Shinji's fault at all, it was Gendo's. Honestly Shinji didn't know what he was doing and only ones who knew what was going to happen were Gendo and Fuyutsuki. Yet everyone treats Shinji like crap not caring about their own contributions or even how much their behaviour is playing into Gendo's hands. No matter what they claim to be WILLE are just plain tools of Gendo whether they know or not, their stupidity and pathetic behaviour confounds me. Shinji is even more unstable and easily manipulated yet the only really sane one in this is Kaworu Nagisa. Frankly the series has turned into one of those where I am actually rooting for the antagonists, part of me wondered throughout the movie is 'Would Fourth Impact really be so bad?'. Kind of scary, huh? I have never been so disappointed as the series started quite promising and yet they pull up this crap. Other disappointment with the Evangelion franchise included End of Evangelion and the awful manga!

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• All Set-Up, No Pay

  misterkevinoh2013-05-17

  It must first be said that this film is superb in terms of visual quality. Opposed to many opinions, the film is well edited, well animated, and is essential perfect in the details pertaining to image and sound. But the major problem with this film is that it is completely filled with set-ups that do not pay off. Which basically means the entire film is one big tease. Much of the controversy and anger surrounding the latest Rebuild stems from the fact that it felt incomplete. And although other Rebuild films have ended on cliffhangers as well, 3.0 specifically is frowned upon. The difference with 3.0 and previous entries in the series is that the previous films still fulfilled a basic arc of some sort for the characters to develop by the end of the film. They overcome an obstacle and move forward as people, and the audience gets to witness that. But by the end of 3.0, we're left with what feels like half of the story. Although the story certainly spans all for movies, this felt like a baby step compared to the leaps and bounds that were 1.0 and 2.0.

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