Kendrix wrote:According to Mari, he did.
But let's forget that - How is that a counter argument? If you were to follow the "ReShinji screwed up big time" theory, then his efforts were as futile as the girls' as he played right into big, bad Gendo's hand, wouldn't they?

Yes.

Kendrix wrote:The funny thing is, if a male protagonist saves them chicks, everybody starts screaming, but no one minded Sailor Moon saving Tuxedo Mask's ass over and over again.
I even see ppl complaining about men doing most of the fighthing in SHONEN MANGAS Aren't boys allowed to watch stuff where boys do awesome stuff?

For the record, i wasn't entirely talking about kicking incredible amounts of ass. Neither Rei nor Asuka (nor Mari, nor anyone, for that matter) are allowed to make a single conscious decision throughout the running time of the movie that isn't ultimately related to Shinji somehow. I'm just singling out the two girls here because they are the most obvious tools used to affect Shinji. But, in the end, that's all they are, so far. "Main character" doesn't mean "only character", damnit.

The fact that this "Shinji impacting contest" is given the form of a "back to the kitchen" subplot and that Asuka's qualifiactions, drive and ambition exist solely to have a high horse to be knocked down from, right onto Shinji's bedsheeths just adds icing to the cake.

Before anyone calls "But Asuka was knocked down in the series too!": yes, she was, but there, her own issues caused her downfall. Here, it's mainly the need to have her set up as a suitable victim to provoke some reaction out of Shinji.

Kendrix wrote:The funny thing is, if a male protagonist saves them chicks, everybody starts screaming, but no one minded Sailor Moon saving Tuxedo Mask's ass over and over again.
I even see ppl complaining about men doing most of the fighthing in SHONEN MANGAS Aren't boys allowed to watch stuff where boys do awesome stuff? There's enough movies about sterotypical 'strong women' with no attributes but the abilito to make fun of men.
Im a girl myself and it disgusts me.
So a woman is either super mega sucessfull or "old-fashioned"?
Boy, women discriminate other women much more than men do.

There are middles you're excluding here. Again, look at NGE to see what we're talking about -- it's not like Rei or Asuka or any other female in the cast was either "super mega successful" or "old-fashioned"; instead they were just characters with their own interests and goals and whose role in the story wasn't dependent on the male lead. That's the difference -- they came across as people rather than as props for someone else's story.

Not to mention that Rei and Asuka, or, now that we're at it, Mari being cool and saving the Day wouldn't have the same impact as the three of them already are the 'cool fighters'.

Uh, Rei isn't. She's about as much of a "cool fighter" as Shinji is (less, actually; she doesn't really have any badass moments of her own).

But that aside, it's not about saving the day or having an impact; it's about telling a cool story with believable characters (but as far as that goes, it's not like turning Shinji into some shonen wannabe has much in the way of impact; that's just turning him into another example of a tired stereotype).

But apparently you're not allowed to have a male main character.
No one cares if, say, Ishida Uryuu kicks less ass than Kurosaki Ichigo. But if Inoue Orihiome or Kuchiki Rukia dare to not kick as much ass...

Not the best example, since a lot of fans were pissed at Rukia's general woobification during the Soul Society arc and at Orihime's during the Arrancar war. But you know who people are consistently happy with in Bleach? Yoruichi. You know, the badass female who never takes a dive to make Ichigo look good. Same with Soi-Fon, for that matter. Or Rukia after the Soul Society arc, when she finally gets to be relevant again. Or...

But anyway.

When you're a story's protagonist it means that the story is about you kicking ass, not your sidekicks.

[points at NGE]

Seriously, you're not getting it.

You should be able to tell that the makers of NGE are above such things.

They were. That's why Rebuild irritates us.

And while it was no action scene, Asuka giving up on Shinji requiered a lot of inner streght, she made the decision of NOT depending on a guy anymore.

She never depended on him to begin with. As noted (repeatedly), we still know zip about her motivations. That's part of the problem.

If you think too much about making a female character 'politically correct', you forget about making her an intresting character.

If you think it's about making them politically correct you're really not getting the point of the objection. The mere fact that it makes a nod to feminist theory does not automatically make it PC bullshit -- astonishing as it might seem, said theory actually does make some good points from time to time.

I think we got to see just about enough of Asuka's interior - just in a less direct fashion. It's just like with Mari - We just see her for a few Min, but we already know a great deal about her attitudes towards life. There wasn't a single uneeded line in the movie.

Well, that's just my opinion, but your opinion is also just that, YOUR opinion. I don't want to force you to like Rebuild, but I'm tired of each and every mention of it ending in a "ReShinji sucks" discussion. It IS a legitimate part of the frachise made by it's original makers.
PPL seem to have more respect for the GoS manga than they have for Rebuild!

Kendrix wrote:Well, that's just my opinion, but your opinion is also just that, YOUR opinion. I don't want to force you to like Rebuild, but I'm tired of each and every mention of it ending in a "ReShinji sucks" discussion. It IS a legitimate part of the frachise made by it's original makers.

Rebuild doesn't deserve any respect because it is something made by the original creators at all.

Kendrix wrote:I think we got to see just about enough of Asuka's interior - just in a less direct fashion. It's just like with Mari - We just see her for a few Min, but we already know a great deal about her attitudes towards life. There wasn't a single uneeded line in the movie.

But we still know nothing about her background or motivations, and those are kinda relevant here.

I don't want to force you to like Rebuild, but I'm tired of each and every mention of it ending in a "ReShinji sucks" discussion.

And I'm tired of people brushing off legitimate critiques of Rebuild with "that's just your opinion, man!" If you don't care to talk about it that's your right, but if you wanna debate the point either build an argument that stands up to scrutiny or go home.

I'm also tired of people acting like it's an either/or exercise, as though I either have to accept Rebuild uncritically or hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. It is possible to be ambivalent about Rebuild -- that is, to say "I think this show has some really good points, but I also think it has some pretty serious flaws." If you blindly accept the show and refuse to entertain the notion that it might be flawed in any way you're not recognizing greatness; you're just refusing to view it with the critical eye and the intelligence that it (and its creators) deserve (s).

(another approach is to ask why this is happening; if you look at it and say "okay, these are some serious flaws in the presentation, but we know Anno's not an idiot; he gets symbols and in the past has shown he knows what he's doing. So why is he doing this?" That's a relevant and interesting question that can't even be asked if you refuse to recognize flaws in the work at hand.)

It IS a legitimate part of the frachise made by it's original makers.

That isn't really relevant.

Bagheera wrote:

That isn't really relevant.

ppl are calling it fanfic.

And sorry, but everyone here is acting like it's a sacrilege to merely like Rebuild. That goes beyond 'intelligent critique'.

Kendrix wrote:ppl are calling it fanfic.

And sorry, but everyone here is acting like it's a sacrilege to merely like Rebuild. That goes beyond 'intelligent critique'.

How so? Some of us are quite heavy in our critique of it, yes; however, telling us we're not allowed to criticize it because it's a "legitimate part of the franchise" seems to be doing exactly the inverse of what you're claiming that your opponents do. That is to say, you're acting like it's sacrilege to say anything bad about it.

Kendrix wrote:ppl are calling it fanfic.

And sorry, but everyone here is acting like it's a sacrilege to merely like Rebuild. That goes beyond 'intelligent critique'.

Imagine small pack of wolves scratching their infected wounds for well over a year 'till their limbs are bordering on need for being amputated.

The development of this subforum is pretty much same, it went from "I was disappoint in thing X", "they could've done Z better" and "F sucked" to RUINED FOREVER ANNO IS MONEY HUNGRY HACK NOTHING IS GOOD ABOUT THE NEW FILMS GARBLEGARBLEGARBLE

Dozen or so people like that is enough to make most folk tune out from discussion. People who like or are ambivalent about Rebuild rarely post here. Internet, after all, lives on negative emotion

Xard wrote:Imagine small pack of wolves scratching their infected wounds for well over a year 'till their limbs are bordering on need for being amputated.

The development of this subforum is pretty much same, it went from "I was disappoint in thing X", "they could've done Z better" and "F sucked" to RUINED FOREVER ANNO IS MONEY HUNGRY HACK NOTHING IS GOOD ABOUT THE NEW FILMS GARBLEGARBLEGARBLE

Xard, I liked this tired flamebait much better when GasmaskAvenger made it a few weeks ago.

Dozen or so people like that is enough to make most folk tune out from discussion. People who like or are ambivalent about Rebuild rarely post here. Internet, after all, lives on negative emotion

This isn't really our fault.

@Xard
Exactly so

Xard wrote:Dozen or so people like that

The real "Haters gonna hate" hardcore is actually smaller than that -- they just post enough to make it seem like more.

Xard wrote:Imagine small pack of wolves scratching their infected wounds for well over a year 'till their limbs are bordering on need for being amputated.

The development of this subforum is pretty much same, it went from "I was disappoint in thing X", "they could've done Z better" and "F sucked" to RUINED FOREVER ANNO IS MONEY HUNGRY HACK NOTHING IS GOOD ABOUT THE NEW FILMS GARBLEGARBLEGARBLE

Dozen or so people like that is enough to make most folk tune out from discussion. People who like or are ambivalent about Rebuild rarely post here. Internet, after all, lives on negative emotion

Exactly. I mean, I chose to interpret Tsubasa Kudasai heroically (cuz its nut perfect but an improvement) but I SEE where the "he screwed up big deal!"-ist are comming from. This is allright, EVA is EVA cuz we can talk about it. But I cant even mention it, like, in a thread about diffirent forms of berserk-ing.
I can't say that Asuka's berserk stunt in EoE is somewhere in between beast mode and Shinji's stunt while discribing the latter with vaguely positive language. I could understand such reactions in the ReShinji vs. Original!Shinji thread, but not when I just list it as an example.
Look at this thread. Topic went very fast from "How should be interpret Shikinami" to "Shikinami sux" to "Rebuild sux". I can't interpret Mari like all the other character's were interpreted (there's even basic interpretation of Mana, damnit! (her being a mix between Shinji's other chicks or her looking a tad like Yui, for example) ), but if I bring up the "meaning of Mari", any answer I'm going to get is "Fanservice/Mary Sue etc".

Kaworu also had little screentime and no one's gonna tell me HE was a shallow character that didn't tell us a thing.

Kendrix wrote:Look at this thread. Topic went very fast from "How should be interpret Shikinami" to "Shikinami sux" to "Rebuild sux".

Every Rebuild topic tends to do that (and the chance grows exponentially as the posts add up). This one just took less pages than usual.

AngelNo13Bardiel wrote:Every Rebuild topic tends to do that (and the chance grows exponentially as the posts add up). This one just took less pages than usual.

From the rather contentless opening post, it's somewhat of an achievement that this thread evolved to have any discussion at all. Either way, it's Bagheera's thread and the path the conversation has taken is the direct result of the posts he (and others) wrote elsewhere and linked to.

A change in thread title might be in order to better reflect its contents, but I don't really think any of what's happened here is inappropriate. There's a lot of things interrelated to one another, and it's difficult to intelligently discuss one of them without the other related aspects having to come up either to support or argue against the points being made.

Kendrix wrote:And sorry, but everyone here is acting like it's a sacrilege to merely like Rebuild.

No, we're not. We're acting like dismissing criticisms of Rebuild out of hand is bullshit, because it is.

There's a middle out there. Stop excluding it.

esselfortium wrote:From the rather contentless opening post, it's somewhat of an achievement that this thread evolved to have any discussion at all. Either way, it's Bagheera's thread and the path the conversation has taken is the direct result of the posts he (and others) wrote elsewhere and linked to.

In fairness, the content was in the other thread. That was the point of the link. I basically said "look at this thread, particularly the second post; I think he has an interesting take on Shikinami. What do you think?" I'm really not sure why that's contentless.

And Kendrix, posts like yours are why these threads degenerate. If you won't acknowledge any criticism of Rebuild as valid people are going to retreat to their respective corners and refuse to meet you halfway. If you actually make an effort to understand others' positions and concede points every now and then it's a lot easier to find some common ground and generally get along.

Great job, guys. You've really outdone yourselves.