How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Lordd_Humungous » Mon Jun 19, 2017 7:58 pm

I have a new video up where I briefly go over why Eva's rebuild movies are able to get away with being stale, and lifeless

https://youtu.be/cGsDBySDTJg

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Postby CommanderFish » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:25 pm

^ I really appreciate the thought that went into this video, and agree with the concept that the writers of NTE (Anno included) are self-aware of their pandering to the audience. But I think you could look at if from a more "optimistic" perspective if you wanted to: 3.0 + 1.0 hasn't come out yet, and for all we know--assuming that he is indeed self-aware--Anno could be planning to go all meta on us and call out the audience for being okay with all of this stuff. Just food for thought; you don't have to agree, but it is a possibility.
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jun 20, 2017 1:05 am

Any chance of getting a title with 1000% less clickbait?
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Postby Stillborn » Tue Jun 20, 2017 2:11 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:Any chance of getting a title with 1000% less clickbait?


Why? It does exactly what it says on the tin.
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Postby Joseki » Tue Jun 20, 2017 3:19 am

I don't agree on any of point or interpretation in that video.
The fact that you think Rei is supposed to be "a love interest" in 2.0 makes me wonder if we saw the same movie, and the comparison between the scene the scene with Shinji and Yui in EoE it's just wrong. How can a scene like that be in any of the movies if it's supposed to be an end scene? :uhh:

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Jun 20, 2017 3:36 am

It's impressive how much can be got wrong in less than four minutes.

For instance, the changes in the characters in Q are explained, and are consistent with the story told; the aquarium in Ha is the start of an effort to recover the oceans, not merely an entertainment facility.
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jun 20, 2017 4:28 am

View Original PostStillborn wrote:Why? It does exactly what it says on the tin.

This, of course, coming from someone who already believes it "gets away with being terrible"...
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Stillborn » Tue Jun 20, 2017 5:00 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:This, of course, coming from someone who already believes it "gets away with being terrible"...

For slightly different reasons than OP though :P
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby robersora » Tue Jun 20, 2017 5:46 am

There is no answer to the actual question in the video.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, his assessment of NTE is universal truth.
Let's assume, it's objectively terrible.
(Daily reminder, that objectivity doesn't exist)
(He kind of alludes to fragments of the movies he found to be insufficient, but that's not an analysis that would convince anyone with a differing opinion to change ones mind.)

But, let's pretend, for the sake of argument, he's totally right and NTE is terrible.
How exactly does NTE get away with being terrible?
When choosing click bait for the title, at least answer the question, please.

What does it provide that other shows who are not successful don't?
It provides good girls and great action trenched in Otakuness - which was more than enough to shoot SAO and AoT over the moon.
The difference is, NTE is at least trying to make a statement and uses the appealing parts to tell us something interesting that lies beneath the surface. Kinda like NIER AUTOMATA.
It might have failed to reach you, but the willingness to be more than popcorn entertainment makes it at least better than terrible.
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Gendo'sPapa » Tue Jun 20, 2017 7:48 am

Nope.

My issue is it's the usual pedantic view of "Neon Genesis is the greatest work ever created & every person who has ever watched it has fallen head over heels in love with it (not true, a good many people dislike & even hate NGE for completely rational reasons) so because Rebuild doesn't equal that lighting in a bottle scenario (which it never could) then these films are absolute garbage and the creators are intentionally making it garbage because I looked up some words in a thesaurus".

Shrug. My two cents on the video : It's another clickbait entry in the commonly reoccurring & increasingly myopic viewpoint among nerds that "because I - the center of everything - don't like something then it must be garbage made solely for morons & only I & those who agree with me are educated & informed enough to see the truth." It's common across all types of pop culture now & even I've done it a few times (I recently posted a half-serious joke in the film forum saying don't go see the new Transformers because "come on") but it basically falls to the same "I'm smart, other people are dumb" refrain that is sometimes followed some an empty "but if you like it then fine whatever". People love to put themselves on a pedestal. Making three (At the moment) videos to say a series of liked films is shit sure is doing the pedestal thing. Plus, equating people who like the new Eva as being rubes at the aquarium who "tap their fingers on the glass" sums up that incredibly myopic viewpoint. It lowers everything to a child mentality.

So yeah, not impressed with the video.

As an aside the argument placed in the video is also incredibly shallow & doesn't hold ground when the central thesis of the video seems to be "Evangelion 2.0 devolves the series into just being about a guy saving the world & getting the girl" when the following film - a movie which was always intended to exist & still has another final sequel on the way - immediately refutes that sentiment & illustrates why such fantasies of putting your hopes & dreams for happiness solely on another person is a major mistake. The movie (3.0) then proceeds to double down on that theme by having Shinji commit the most human of errors & repeat his previous mistake by putting all his hopes & dreams of happiness on the vaguest of ideas given to him by a close friend - you get those spears & it'll be a-ok. The majority of the thesis in the video is seemingly built around the concept that 2.0 is the end of the film series & would have held sway before 2012. But 3.0 does exist & because it doesn't fit the narrative of the video the third film is given the most casual of brush asides with "characters are cardboard cutouts of themselves - counterargument: for the first time in the franchise there's subtle character work going on that isn't expressed in solidly-constructed-but-still in-your-face-dream-sequences - the story makes no sense unless you have a degree in EOEology - counterargument: the sci-fi trappings continue to be & have always been for show with the real story being Shinji's emotional growth - & tosses in a possible gay panic joke about Kaworu - counterargument: why panic?.

Not the first flawed & myopic youtube video to say "Rebuild is trash only enjoyed by morons & I'm the smarty here to tell you otherwise" & it won't be the last.

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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby silvermoonlight » Tue Jun 20, 2017 4:11 pm

View Original PostGendo'sPapa wrote:Nope.

My issue is it's the usual pedantic view of "Neon Genesis is the greatest work ever created & every person who has ever watched it has fallen head over heels in love with it (not true, a good many people dislike & even hate NGE for completely rational reasons) so because Rebuild doesn't equal that lighting in a bottle scenario (which it never could) then these films are absolute garbage and the creators are intentionally making it garbage because I looked up some words in a thesaurus


This is so true as I was one of those people who on first watch didn't get it and was left scratching my head by the last two episodes and kind of going what the fuck? I was in my late teens and later down the line I watched EOE and was still left going well I didn't get that ether. It wasn't until I was an adult that I re-watched both the series and the EOE again that I understood the themes and it all kind of clicked and a lot of people never get its themes and as you say they make there hated really clear. Also I think comparing rebuild to Evangelion is just a bad idea because they are very different animals even though they have the same characters. Plus I though them doing rebuild this way was quite clever because Rebuild is more family friendly and not as dark as the classic Evangelion series or EOE but it means new people can search out the older series and movie if they want to or read the mangas and spin off manga's.
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Settie » Tue Jun 20, 2017 5:40 pm

While there are criticisms to be made of the rebuilds, the video uses some rather shallow and easily debunked arguments, I mean as Gendo'sPapa said the video completely ignored 3.0 and how that movie destroys one of the main premises of the video in NGE escapism=bad NTE escapism=good.

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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:03 pm

The reason why the video doesn't answer the question it asked itself ("How does Evangelion get away with being so bad?") is because the very question is based on a false premise. It would be like me making a video titled "How does air get away with being so unbreathable?" I would then complain in the video about how air on Earth isn't all just pure oxygen, and explain that there are more non-oxygen chemicals in our air than there is actual oxygen, thus making it "unbreathable."

Meanwhile, hopefully no one watching the video would realize that both myself and the audience are still breathing this supposedly "unbreathable" air, or what would actually happen to our bodies if we breathed pure oxygen. Also, I still wouldn't have answered the question.
Last edited by FreakyFilmFan4ever on Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby CommanderFish » Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:42 pm

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:The reason why the video doesn't answer the question it asked itself ("How does Evangelion get away with being so bad?") is because the very question is based on a false premise. It would be like me making a video titled "How does air get away with being so unbreathable?" I would then complain in the video about how air on Earth isn't all just pure oxygen, and explain that there are more non-oxygen chemicals in our air than there is actual oxygen, thus making in "unbreathable."

:lol:
Oh man, I'm just waiting for someone to misinterpret this...
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Lennik » Thu Jun 22, 2017 11:05 pm

View Original PostCommanderFish wrote:Anno could be planning to go all meta on us and call out the audience for being okay with all of this stuff. Just food for thought; you don't have to agree, but it is a possibility.


Okay. So. Let me get this straight.

You're entertaining the notion that Anno put so much work, his heart and soul, into four movies, because he considers them poor in quality? And he kept making them badly, on purpose, just so he could tell fans "This is terrible, and you're all wrong for liking it"? He put all this effort into a project he didn't actually believe in, just to cynically give his fans the middle finger?

:rolleyes:

I know a lot of fans tend to think Anno's worldview revolves around them, but even for a fanbase like this, this is a projection so extreme I don't even know what to do with it. It's basically the same tired "Anno is a troll" meme by another name. You don't like the movies, so obviously it means Anno doesn't like them either.

He makes Eva because it's important to him. If we can't even agree on that, we can't have an argument with any kind of sincerity.

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Postby CommanderFish » Fri Jun 23, 2017 7:04 pm

Lennik wrote:You don't like the movies

That's not true though. I never said the movies were bad or that I didn't like them. I think that you are assuming that's the case because of my response to the OP, so I guess I should have been a bit more clear than that: there are a few decisions with the plot in the Rebuild films that I think pander a bit to the audience, but I do not agree with the OP on his idea that the movies are terrible because of this pandering (which is not to say that the OP doesn't have other reasons behind his dislike, but suffice to say I don't really agree with those either).

Lennik wrote:He put all this effort into a project he didn't actually believe in, just to cynically give his fans the middle finger?
[...]
He makes Eva because it's important to him. If we can't even agree on that, we can't have an argument with any kind of sincerity.

We can agree on that, though. And I think that there is a possibility the reason he is making all these pandering or pander-ish decisions is precisely because he cares so much about Eva. The way I see it, it's not about making it bad on purpose, it's about doing something trope-like and then turning that on its head and making a statement with it (deconstruction, if I'm using that term correctly). And a large part of why I think Anno could be taking this route with the final film is because he sorta kinda already did it with Q. Gendo's Papa said it best in his criticism of the video:
Gendo'sPapa wrote:"Evangelion 2.0 devolves the series into just being about a guy saving the world & getting the girl" when the following film - a movie which was always intended to exist & still has another final sequel on the way - immediately refutes that sentiment & illustrates why such fantasies of putting your hopes & dreams for happiness solely on another person is a major mistake. The movie (3.0) then proceeds to double down on that theme by having Shinji commit the most human of errors & repeat his previous mistake by putting all his hopes & dreams of happiness on the vaguest of ideas given to him by a close friend - you get those spears & it'll be a-ok.

And I'd predict that a few people did feel like Anno gave them the middle finger with this, because it did not fulfill that feeling of fantasy that was present for them at the end of 2.0. But none of this means that Eva is not important to Anno, it just means that he is using to Eva as it has always been used: to spread an anti-escapist message. He's just doing it a bit differently this time around.
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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Cookie H Wilson » Wed Jul 05, 2017 5:47 pm

View Original PostGendo'sPapa wrote:Nope.

My issue is it's the usual pedantic view of "Neon Genesis is the greatest work ever created & every person who has ever watched it has fallen head over heels in love with it (not true, a good many people dislike & even hate NGE for completely rational reasons) so because Rebuild doesn't equal that lighting in a bottle scenario (which it never could) then these films are absolute garbage and the creators are intentionally making it garbage because I looked up some words in a thesaurus".

Shrug. My two cents on the video : It's another clickbait entry in the commonly reoccurring & increasingly myopic viewpoint among nerds that "because I - the center of everything - don't like something then it must be garbage made solely for morons & only I & those who agree with me are educated & informed enough to see the truth." It's common across all types of pop culture now & even I've done it a few times (I recently posted a half-serious joke in the film forum saying don't go see the new Transformers because "come on") but it basically falls to the same "I'm smart, other people are dumb" refrain that is sometimes followed some an empty "but if you like it then fine whatever". People love to put themselves on a pedestal. Making three (At the moment) videos to say a series of liked films is shit sure is doing the pedestal thing. Plus, equating people who like the new Eva as being rubes at the aquarium who "tap their fingers on the glass" sums up that incredibly myopic viewpoint. It lowers everything to a child mentality.

So yeah, not impressed with the video.

As an aside the argument placed in the video is also incredibly shallow & doesn't hold ground when the central thesis of the video seems to be "Evangelion 2.0 devolves the series into just being about a guy saving the world & getting the girl" when the following film - a movie which was always intended to exist & still has another final sequel on the way - immediately refutes that sentiment & illustrates why such fantasies of putting your hopes & dreams for happiness solely on another person is a major mistake. The movie (3.0) then proceeds to double down on that theme by having Shinji commit the most human of errors & repeat his previous mistake by putting all his hopes & dreams of happiness on the vaguest of ideas given to him by a close friend - you get those spears & it'll be a-ok. The majority of the thesis in the video is seemingly built around the concept that 2.0 is the end of the film series & would have held sway before 2012. But 3.0 does exist & because it doesn't fit the narrative of the video the third film is given the most casual of brush asides with "characters are cardboard cutouts of themselves - counterargument: for the first time in the franchise there's subtle character work going on that isn't expressed in solidly-constructed-but-still in-your-face-dream-sequences - the story makes no sense unless you have a degree in EOEology - counterargument: the sci-fi trappings continue to be & have always been for show with the real story being Shinji's emotional growth - & tosses in a possible gay panic joke about Kaworu - counterargument: why panic?.

Not the first flawed & myopic youtube video to say "Rebuild is trash only enjoyed by morons & I'm the smarty here to tell you otherwise" & it won't be the last.


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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Ray » Sat Aug 26, 2017 8:25 pm

If you want a much more Nuanced video series talking about the flaws of the rebuilds vs the original series. I recommend you look up DemolitionD and his videos on the original series vs the rebuilds. He criticizes the Rebuilds for being Shallow, but he also acknowledges things like screentime, and the difference between poor animator Anno in the 90's vs Multi Millionare Happily Married Celebrity Anno now and how that's affecting the way the rebuilds are made vs the original series.

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Sep 12, 2017 5:39 pm

Yeah, I saw DD's videos, and they're only slightly better than this. His claims still lack the proper context of both the series, the movies, and the other titles he compares them to. He'll claim that it wasn't the multiple characters and short duration that made NTE "fail" in character development (that the problem must somehow lay deeper than mere time restrictments), and then compare NTE to Angel's Egg as an example, which has nowhere near the 13 characters NTE has. The fact that he doesn't address his fallacious claims suggest either ignorance or intentional omission on his part, neither of which make for a well researched and detailed video analysis.

This isn't to say that people must like NTE, or that NTE is as good as NGE. In fact, it's okay to simply state "I don't like this thing simply because it doesn't appeal to me," which is far better and much more honest than BS-ing your way through a discussion with inflated and pretentious claims.

NTE too sad for you? Okay.

NTE isn't as narratively complex as NGE? That's true.

Soryu is way cuter than Shikinami? I probably agree.

But none of that excuses under-studied reviews and weak arguments involving stretches in logic and misrepresented, falsifiable data. That is as egregious as the American film critics who would misrepresent the fact that the cast and crew for Godzilla films were the same as the ones for Kurosawa's films, because the critics thought that Godzilla was way too silly and couldn't possibly have over half of the same creative team as Kurosawa's films.

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Re: How Evangelion Gets Away With Being Terrible

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Postby Nahash » Tue Sep 12, 2017 7:34 pm

I am not a native-english speaker. And I not understand much.
But the subject interests me very much.
Could someone give me a brief summary of what he saying?


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