Rebuild is shallow [split]

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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Rebuild is shallow [split]

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Postby anonymaus » Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:36 pm

1.0 and 2.0 were fun. 2.0's deviations from NGE were pretty good although I don't like what was done to Asuka's character. Some things lead me to believe it might make more sense in 3.0+1.0, but as of now her character arc in the rebuilds is just bad. Everything except the aesthetic level of her personality was taken away. Maybe you can't show suicide and 4-year-olds suffering in a film designed to sell Mari figurines. Hopefully that's not it and there is a better reason which will be revealed in the finale.

3.0 was wholesale awful. The character redesigns are ugly, the setting is ugly, the plot is not stimulating, the protagonist is treated like a leper by everyone and it's never justified in any clearly defined terms. Everything people enjoyed about NGE is absent here.

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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby pwhodges » Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:34 am

That's just reiterating the complaints of those who want NTE to be a rehash of NGE because they lack the imagination to see beyond that. It isn't; things are different because it's a different story.
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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby The Eva Monkey » Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:51 am

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:That's just reiterating the complaints of those who want NTE to be a rehash of NGE because they lack the imagination to see beyond that. It isn't; things are different because it's a different story.

I disagree, it is possible to be different while still providing proper exposition and characterization.

As has been pointed out in the past, Asuka in Rebuild has almost no backstory or characterization, it's summed up by a brief scene with her talking to a hand puppet. They take no time to develop her or explain why she is the way she is. To me, that's bad storytelling.

For a series that is so revered for its strong and iconic characters, I find it very ironic that they didn't take the time to develop any of the characters in Rebuild.

Also, if they had taken five minutes to explain to Shinji what in the hell is going on, maybe they would have avoided all of the conflict in the first place. But I guess then they wouldn't have a film.

Hopefully they'll actually do some of that in the next film. Hopefully.

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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby Joseki » Sat Sep 30, 2017 12:10 pm

View Original PostThe Eva Monkey wrote:For a series that is so revered for its strong and iconic characters, I find it very ironic that they didn't take the time to develop any of the characters in Rebuild.


Shinij and Rei II are extensively developed, Kaworu is even more developed than he was in the TV show.
Asuka and Mari are the only characters that at the moment I feel are underdeveloped in my opinion (in Asuka's case development is there, but it lacks a backstory to make sense of it). The adults are secondary/minor characters and I don't expect/want significant amount of screentime dedicated to them in the last film.
Last edited by Joseki on Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby Snow » Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:07 pm

View Original PostThe Eva Monkey wrote:As has been pointed out in the past, Asuka in Rebuild has almost no backstory or characterization, it's summed up by a brief scene with her talking to a hand puppet. They take no time to develop her or explain why she is the way she is. To me, that's bad storytelling.


I agree with you. I suspect it might have been done on purpose to give more options to what happens next in the story, yet that is just speculation from my part. It wouldn't make sense to me to take such an approach, but maybe for them it would.
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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:29 pm

View Original PostThe Eva Monkey wrote:I disagree, it is possible to be different while still providing proper exposition and characterization.

As has been pointed out in the past, Asuka in Rebuild has almost no backstory or characterization, it's summed up by a brief scene with her talking to a hand puppet. They take no time to develop her or explain why she is the way she is. To me, that's bad storytelling.

Why does Shikinami need any of that? Hikari was similarly “disserviced” in NGE’s narrative, and her character doesn’t feel stifled by bad storytelling. Shikinami in NTE is just like Ritsuko in the same series, or Maya in NGE; she is just as developed as she needs to be in order to be a supporting cast member. NTE doesn’t have an ensemble main cast like NGE did. The new movies don’t focus on a group of 5+ characters to the point where they all become “main characters.” Instead, NTE is all about Misato and Shinji. Therefore, the non-Shinji/Misato characters don’t need the same amount of character development as the main two cast members do.

If it’s bad storytelling for movies to have only two main characters while 15+ other warm bodies play supporting roles, maybe we just need to stop making and watching movies all together.

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Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby anonymaus » Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:53 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:Why does Shikinami need any of that? Hikari was similarly “disserviced” in NGE’s narrative, and her character doesn’t feel stifled by bad storytelling.

That's because Hikari isn't a main character, lol.

I'm starting to believe there's something anomalous about Asuka in Rebuild. There are strange things about her.
1) No mention of her backstory at all. Fond for dolls now.
2) Different last name.
3) No core on her plugsuit. Every single plugsuit except hers has one or more cores. Even when Mari uses EVA-02 her plugsuit has a core.
I don't have a good guess, maybe something will be revealed in 3.0+1.0 which explains what's going on with Asuka. Something related to the looping timeline possibly.

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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby Sachi » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:02 pm

View Original Postanonymaus wrote:That's because Hikari isn't a main character, lol.

This is quite the point Freaky is trying to make about Asuka in Rebuild. She's not a main character.
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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby anonymaus » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:21 pm

View Original PostSachi wrote:This is quite the point Freaky is trying to make about Asuka in Rebuild. She's not a main character.

Oh. I didn't consider that point because it's so apparently incorrect from the first moment you consider it

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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby pwhodges » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:30 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:NTE doesn’t have an ensemble main cast like NGE did. The new movies don’t focus on a group of 5+ characters to the point where they all become “main characters.” Instead, NTE is all about Misato and Shinji.

As I said above it is not the same story, and and as you say: nor is it being told the same way. It may be hard to put NGE out of mind while watching the films, but for some people it seems that it really does get in the way of properly appreciating the new experience.
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A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:24 pm

^ Exactly. I've been showing people unfamiliar with Eva the NTE series before showing them the original TV series. The result is that nobody complains about the lack of development in characters that aren't Shinji or Misato. They aren't expecting there to be any, and the movies don't give a pretense of that expectation. So, if NTE doesn't give the pretense of character development on characters that aren't Shinji or Misato, why do people who have seen NGE feel disappointed by the lack of character development in these supporting cast members?

The answer is nostalgia, and complaints from the older, more established fans about the newer fan base "not getting" why Shikinami needs character development stem from juvenoia. It's really that simple. These aren't invalid reasons to not care for Shikinami in the "Rebuilds," but they aren't stable foundations upon which to accuse someone of "bad story-telling" either. It has nothing to do with the technicalities or the sensibilities of the story-telling present within the movies themselves.

View Original Postanonymaus wrote:Oh. I didn't consider that point because it's so apparently incorrect from the first moment you consider it

How so?

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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby Gendo'sPapa » Tue Oct 03, 2017 1:16 am

Ah, this old thing again.

I've made my point in other threads. The Rebuild films aren't shallow, they're just going about telling their message in a different way & not relying so much on characters directly stating their feelings to camera in elaborate skirting around budgetary restraints dream sequences. It's a much different experience but it's hardly "shallow", a word people like to throw out whenever they can to grab attention. It does work. The films require the audience to be more engaged as Anno is actually doing some subtle work for once while still making his broadest spectacle driven features yet loaded with action scenes.

And the old "Asuka is not as fully developed a character as in NGE" is an old bit of nonsense that is probably never going to go away. Ah well. Asuka was arguably the second lead in NGE. That's not the case in Rebuild, she's 100% a supporting character (one who - like Misato - actually showcases some subtle character animation acting in 3.33 which is a first for Eva) & anyones inability to reconcile with that is them brining their own bias to the new films. Asuka has shown a perfectly fine character arch befitting her role as a supporting character. But, despite her prominence in marketing & all in the end she is still just a supporting character this time around. If one had to rank the characters in terms of importance to the story being told she'd probably rank 5th or 6th overall, a major change from her status as essentially the co-lead of the original anime.

Funny how everyone knocks Rebuild for Asuka while at the same time the film series (in my eyes) completely saves my most least favorite element of NGE - Kaworu Nagisa - and actually makes him a compelling & robust character instead of just being a plot device.

All this continued retreading about how the Rebuilds are shallow for not spending all it's time beefing up the supporting cast REALLY makes me hope Anno double downs on everything in Final & literally makes the whole movie nothing but Shinji Ikari. ....Which I kind of expect he's going to do anyway because 3.0 makes it VERY obvious that the film series more than the TV series IS Shinji Ikari's story.

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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Oct 03, 2017 7:03 am

Regarding the fact that the New Theatrical Evangelion focuses on Shinji’s story and leaves everyone else as supporting cast memebers, I wrote in length about that here, but will only quote a portion of it in this thread.

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:Basically, a lot of people are complaining because they have to focus more on Shinji, the main character, in order to fully understand his arc, and those complaints just don't sit well with me.

....But I still like Asuka's arc in NGE better, so....

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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby Cybermat47 » Tue Oct 03, 2017 8:01 am

I think that less focus on Asuka is good. Don't get me wrong, I think she's a great character, but let's be honest - Rei really got the short end of the stick. She had barely any presence between episode 6 and her second death.

I much prefer Rei's story in RoE.
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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby CommanderFish » Wed Oct 04, 2017 2:29 am

Gendo'sPapa wrote:The films require the audience to be more engaged as Anno is actually doing some subtle work for once while still making his broadest spectacle driven features yet loaded with action scenes.

I am completely lost when it comes to this mindset. In what ways is NTE more subtle than NGE? (I'm not necessarily asking you in particular but more so anyone who may hold this opinion).
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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Oct 04, 2017 5:45 am

NTE’s larger budget doesn’t only give its audience more spectacular battle scenes, but it also gives audience more detailed character animation. As a result more nuanced things are conveyed through character blocking and movement than they were for the original TV series. Compare this to episodes 16, 25, and 26 in NGE, where characters are literally given a plateform where they can speak their mind plainly, simply, and openly.

This isn’t to say that the new movies and TV series don’t use both techniques to tell their stories. Episode 4 of NGE is a really good (and rare) example in the TV series where nearly all of Shinji's development is shown through voiceless animation and isn’t dictated via dialogue. And there are plenty of scenes in Ha and Jo where Shinji discussing things on “The Eva Train.” But the new movies certainly use more blocking and animation to convey development than ever before, while the TV series still relies more on dialogue than it does on visuals to achieve the same thing.

To recite a (perhaps clumsily overused) film proverb quoted on this forum before, “Show, don’t tell.” When it comes to character development, NTE can afford to do more showing than telling than NGE could.

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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby CommanderFish » Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:17 am

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:NTE’s larger budget doesn’t only give its audience more spectacular battle scenes, but it also gives audience more detailed character animation. As a result more nuanced things are conveyed through character blocking and movement than they were for the original TV series.

Okay... :chinscratch:
I mean, I get where you're coming from but I'm not really seeing it tbh. Of course if it's really that subtle then I suppose it would be doing its job in that respect, but regardless I have yet to see anything all too profound come through by way of these avenues (relative to NGE, of course; I do not for a second believe that the Rebuilds are inherently poor or shallow).
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Re: Rebuild is shallow tangent

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Oct 05, 2017 4:25 am

Well, we were just discussing NTE’s subtlety. Nobody was extolling NTE for its profundity. (Yet. It kind of takes a completed story in order to detect any profound declarations, especially when a series isn’t as episodically segmented as NGE was.)

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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby Asuka'sBigBrother » Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:46 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:it's a different story.

Except it isn't. It literally takes the place of NGE, it's a reboot

Simply put, if Anno wanted to make a different story, he should have made a different story, or build off the incredibly well written story that already existed. Instead Anno, replaced a very well written story with a far worse version of it.

In the end Anno has the right to do whatever he wants, but we also retain the right to criticize the hell out of it if what he does is bad. And that's exactly what's happening here.
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Re: A decade has gone by since the first Rebuild film (Jo)....

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Postby Arcadia's legacy » Sat Oct 21, 2017 2:05 pm

View Original PostAsuka'sBigBrother wrote:Except it isn't. It literally takes the place of NGE, it's a reboot

It's possible to reboot an existing franchise whilst telling a very different story, with Captain Harlock as an example accomplishing this several times
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