Sequel theory once again.

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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pwhodges
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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby pwhodges » Wed Oct 04, 2017 4:23 am

View Original PostArchangel wrote:As for the latter half of End of Evangelion; it doesn't match what happened in Episode 26 at all. In fact, it's the polar opposite.

Many people (?most) disagree; and some have succeeded in editing them together to make a convincing whole.

Episode 26; Shinji confronts his issues, realises that his perception of himself is not the only truth, overcomes his issues and lives happily ever after within the Sea of LCL.

It is not clear that he remains within instrumentality; indeed that would not be a good message for the series to end on (that the solution to your problems is to escape from this world).

and finally wakes up on a beach and tries to murder Asuka again.

And stops when Asuka shows him a sign of kindness or empathy - there is a future after all, however bad things may have got (a much more positive message than your interpretation of episode 26 in my view).

a retelling of the story without the darkness of mental health issues weighing him down.

Though making the third film broke him again...

For this reason, I'm hopeful, that when all is said and done in 3.0+1.0, that Rebuild will stand alone from the series

In my view it already does; and sequel theory is just a desperate way of trying to deny that fact.
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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Oct 04, 2017 6:40 am

End of Eva aside (I disagree strongly with Archangel’s interpretation of the film), Sequel/Midquel theories are anticlimactic in NTE for a number of reasons; chief among all would be duration. “It’s all a dream” endings seem to work well in shorter stories. The longer the story, the more of a copout that ending would feel like. The more time the audience spends with the characters, the more impotent that ending becomes. Unless a movie starts hinting half way through that the world around the main character isn’t real, many feature-length films also have a difficult time pulling off this kind of ending.

FOUR ENTIRE MOVIES worth of narrative cohesion and integral structure coaxes far too much investment from the audiences in order for a dream ending to even be interesting. And waiting until the very end of FOUR ENTIRE MOVIES to reveal to the audience that it was a sequel to something else entirely just feels like it would be introduced too late in the game for anything meaningful or engaging to come out of it. Heck, even if Shin Eva started by telling the audience either of these things, it wouldn’t feel as though enough time were being given to these concepts in order for them to mean anything to the audience.

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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby Archangel » Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:29 pm

I know my opinion about End of Eva is unpopular but it's how I feel. I care so little about EoE that I don't even have the desire to discuss it.

This thread is about Rebuild anyway :)

The thing with mental health issues like depression and anxiety, is you can never be cured of it; you can only manage it.

I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder 4 years ago and I've been fighting it ever since. I know I will feel this way for the rest of my life and the only thing I can do is to develop healthy stategies to cope with it.

But hey, on the bright side I now understand what Anno was getting at when he describes the goal of Instrumentality in NGE.

Didn't really get it when I was a kid 19 years ago.


Anyway; that's just adding some context to how Anno might be feeling. Making 3.0 "triggered" him and he relapsed. But he fought it; he didn't run away (avoidance coping strategy) and thanks to the support of his friends and family (and Shin Godzilla) he regained his desire to make 3.0+1.0.

Which is good for us.

And this is why people making videos about how horrible Rebuild is on Youtube irritate me. Anno's only putting his own wellbeing on the line for Eva fans; no big deal.

Everybody knows he's only doing it for as a selfish cash-grab.
(Hyperbole-o-meter 7/10).

EDIT:

FreakyFilmFan4ever; you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the Sequel Theory. Love it!
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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby CommanderFish » Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:33 am

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:FOUR ENTIRE MOVIES worth of narrative cohesion and integral structure coaxes far too much investment from the audiences in order for a dream ending to even be interesting. And waiting until the very end of FOUR ENTIRE MOVIES to reveal to the audience that it was a sequel to something else entirely just feels like it would be introduced too late in the game for anything meaningful or engaging to come out of it.

I'll say that I still retain my opinion -- that the effectiveness of these story twists would all be dependent upon the manner in which they are utilized-- but I don't really have any examples off the top of my head to support that assertion. So with that in mind, I admit that you're definitely right from a rational standpoint.

@Archangel, the fact that one person can have a completely polar-opposite takeaway (even emotionally, it sounds like) from the exact same piece of work to any other person's (mine included) really just highlights why Eva as a whole is so spectacular to me.
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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Oct 05, 2017 5:12 am

Well, if anyone had a chance to pull off that kind of revelation this late in the game, it’s Anno. But, conventionally speaking (both within terms of Anno’s work in particular and the overall habits of filmmakers), if NTE is all a dream then Anno probably would have hinted to Shinji’s world not even being real long before the movies got to the point where they’re at now. If it was all a sequel then characters themselves would have most likely already experienced the feeling of deja vu by this point, not just the fraction of the audience that had already seen NGE (or Gunbuster or Nadia or His & Hers...).

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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby Archangel » Sun Oct 08, 2017 5:57 pm

I was just (re)watching Hellsing Ultimate and I had a random thought.

Are there people out there that watch Hellsing Ultimate or Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and believe they're sequels to Hellsing and FMA respectively?

I doubt it.

So what makes Rebuild of Evangelion so special that this keeps coming up?
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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby Zeruss » Sun Oct 08, 2017 11:43 pm

View Original PostArchangel wrote:I was just (re)watching Hellsing Ultimate and I had a random thought.

Are there people out there that watch Hellsing Ultimate or Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and believe they're sequels to Hellsing and FMA respectively?

I doubt it.

So what makes Rebuild of Evangelion so special that this keeps coming up?

Back when both their respective new series got released I got to experience exactly that: some fans wanted to connect the new series with the old ones--If memory serves right, the logic went something like this ~

(spoilers ahead for FMA and Hellsing, and some olympic-level narrative elasticity)

SPOILER: Show
For FMA, a couple of people argued that the whole civilization being destroyed/reborn was enough for the argument of reincarnation and that the new anime was just the circumstances of the first but being played out differently (or in reverse: that the first anime was a past permutation of what happened in the new anime/manga which was the culmination of the entire sacrificing-civilizations-cycle thing)--I kid you not, there were a lot of people on board with this... but no one actually cared? Like, no one took it seriously, it was just fanwaking for fun's sakes; most people understood it was just an adaptation of the manga and that was that.

For Hellsing they used the fact that Alucard *gasp* is a vampire, and thus, somehow, got to relive past and future lifes of his and ended up in the same circumstances but with different enemies and outcomes (funny how this method never explains exactly *how* that cycle begins and connects both ends, but w/e)--Worse was that the new series had that stupid Dimensional Neko that actually gave this some fuel? This one reached some levels of actual virality and it somehow got really aggressive... Somehow.

As time has passed, though, it is quite evident both of these positions have been extinguished and exiled from this realm of existence as they deserve.
Seems some fandoms just have to deal with time travelling sequel theories... and it's always just was weird.
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Re: Sequel theory once again.

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Postby Archangel » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:16 am

Ergh! Seriously? Bloody hell I was trying to use hyperbole.
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