Will 3.0+1.0 Negatively Impact The Legacy of Evangelion?

[Zusuchan]

There'd be more room for characters, and for themes, if the films didn't devote a lot of their runtime to acrobatic mecha and color-bombs of explosions.

Acrobatic mecha and color-bombs of explosions might be a part of the themes, though. I am in the camp of people who consider Ha an intentionally bad film and if it is that, doesn't the action part of that still have a thematic relevance of its own? Jo had about as much action as the first 6 episodes, while Q is a bit of a different beast, but for me, the action there is most of the time as weird, strange and sometimes even downright bizarre as the rest of the film, so I look at it as part of the film's aesthetics and internal atmosphere. For example, the final Fourth Impact action scene features a lot of character discussion, and as a matter of fact, it's far more interested in what the action means to the characters than it is interested in any sort of true action-y stakes. Kaworu's death, Rei Q's start toward independence and self-searching, Shinji's actions-they seem to be far more important to Anno than making a more traditional action work.

As for your first point it's hard to say; to me it seems like there's a handful of considerations involved, but I believe the commercial consideration in the end was the most consistent one. [...] Evidenced by everything I've seen of 3.0+1.0, the last entry is also tonally commercial, with a lot of cliches that feel lifted from something more eager to crowd-please than Eva of old; things are resolved very easily in a kind of Shonen or Hollywood fashion, and the messaging seems more direct, almost to the point of advisory.

If the commercial consideration was the most consistent one, I seriously doubt Anno would have given us something like Q. For commercial purposes, it would have been a lot easier to simply make another Ha-a slice-of-life romcom with harem-ish qualities and a cool guy Shinji for whom all the girls want to act as emotional validation. Instead we had a weird, strange, bizarre, sometimes even grotesque and surreal film told 95% of the time entirely from the viewpoint of a subconsciously egotistic child without the wider picture. And Shin seems to, for the first half, be a slow, glacially paced film that then goes into abstract meta territory-not exactly traditional franchise material either.

I'm also open to certain things working better or worse for me once I've actually seen the film, in fact it would only be natural.

Agreed.

BernardoCairo: I agree that Eva isn't the only artistic work used by many for simplistic escapism nor do I think that Anno is somehow necessarily at fault here because he couldn't communicate his message clearly enough or anything nor that Eva's legacy is horrible or bad at large. I just felt the need to say what I said because Blockio's post made me think about what exactly is so wonderful or great about Eva's legacy that we need to worry about it. Yes, partially that legacy is cool, but it also partially isn't.

[LoveYui]

This whole thread comes from an inherently bad faith approach; that Shin can and will never live up to NGE. Since I disagree on that very premise (and ticket sales seem to agree on that!), I am going to say that no, Shin will do the opposite and elevate the franchise. Well, outside of mired-in-the-past elitists, but there's no pleasing those to begin with.

A franchise lasts for more than the moment it exists only because of those elitists. I speak against myself, as I'm a "casual" fan who just lurks the franchise from the fringes most of the time. I didn't even know Rebuild was a thing until a friend casually mentioned the second movie.

Rebuild won't live up to NGE. In a couple of years, people will have devolved back to the TV series + EoE. I mean, do you want to discuss Rebuild? Is there anything in these movies worth of faffing about for decades like NGE had / has?

By far the funniest thing about the reception of 3.0 + 1.0 in otaku circles is that some of the people bitching about how it reneges on the "anti-escapist" themes of the original 1. missed the memo that it's not even the point of Rebuild given that Anno straight-up said in an interview he gave up on trying to get through to otaku, and 2. are some of the most profoundly escapist people out there and are just using nominally "anti-escapist" media as a purely performative gesture.

(does a jim halpert stare at a nonexistent camera)

Otaku engage with their preferred franchise by induling in fanworks where they emphatise everything they like and erase eveyrthing they don't like, with a self-insert fix-it mary sue or two if they're particularly eager about it. I've read enough derative works for different franchises to recognise this beast.

That's what Anno did from NGE to NTE, kept what he liked, erased what he didn't like anymore, self-inserted into Shinji even more so than in the original towards the end and added a fix-it mary sue who stole every major character's role in some way.

Anno did what he criticised the most, not own up to reality (NGE) and engaged in self-indulging escapism instead (NTE). Let's wait and see if he tried to retcon NGE+EoE, to see if how low he sunk. As I said in another thread, Anno unwittingly trolled himself.

[Zusuchan]

^I think there's an awful lot about NTE worth discussing, such as its meta themes (largely in regards to its look into NGE, from its origins to its impact), its examination/denunication of traditional franchise material and possibly even a discussion on humanity's relationship with fiction, its fairy tale references and allusions, its potential status as a sort of fairy tale itself, its roots in beliefs close to Japanese society, its mythological references, its potential dive into deliberate inducing of alienation, its aesthetic choices, its use of the visual language, its character work, its usage of "show-don't-tell", its personal meaning for Anno et cetera.

Some of these ideas worth discussing depend on whether or not I find those things to be there in Shin as well, but I believe/have a hunch most of them will, but I think the idea NTE doesn't have the same sort of potential for deep analyzation and criticism as NGE and EoE had is, as far as I'm concerned, blatantly wrong.

[NamvM74]

The old show and EoE still have fleshed out characters and a consistent and somewhat grounded, albeit in many ways cryptic, hard-scifi backdrop...But from the script and the clips, it just seems to me that Shin is a case of thoroughly figurative writing that forsakes far too much in terms of narrative.

Okay but Evangelion episodes 1-24 alone are longer in length than all of Rebuild. So they had more time to provide backstory. And, one is a TV show, the other is a series of movies, so it is understandable that the narrative structure and way of presenting the story would be different. And I do not think Anno needs to spoon-feed the viewer all of the details. I'm not saying the universes of NTE and NGE are parallel or intertwined, but based on what the viewer knows about the Eva franchise and Eva stories, they can reasonably be expected to make inferences about what is going on and imaginatively draw their own conclusions as to what may or may not have happened.

The realization that you were going to lose runtime by transitioning from TV to film should have made the team cut characters. Not add new ones. It honestly seems like no thought was given as to how this series would work as films. These films aren't really restructured into proper films at all.

1.0 is feels like 3 long tv episodes stitched together.

2.0 is a mess structurally. Forcing 5 angel fights into a 2 hour film not only takes away time for badly needed character development but it diminishes the threat of the angels. No Kaiju film is structured so that 5 random Kaiju appear throughout the film, with no relation to one another, only to be quickly dealt with and moved on from like nothing ever happened.

3.0 is actually structured as a 3 act film. But its sol focus on Shinji(while interesting) again takes way time for other characters to develop.

[LoveYui]

Some of these ideas worth discussing depend on whether or not I find those things to be there in Shin as well, but I believe/have a hunch most of them will, but I think the idea NTE doesn't have the same sort of potential for deep analyzation and criticism as NGE and EoE had is, as far as I'm concerned, blatantly wrong.

I doubt it will be enough to generate interest like NGE did.

Half this subforum is whining about the consecutive delays and yet it's still smaller than the subforum for NGE.

[Zusuchan]

NamvM74:And why do these films have to be structured properly? Last I checked, a Western idea of what constitutes good story structure isn't necessary to make a great artwork. (Not to mention the films actually do follow a Jo-ha-kyu story structure.)

As for the characters, I agree they're not as well developed as their NGE counterparts-but seeing as how NGE's main thesis was human relationships and seeing NTE's different thematic preoccupations, along with the fact the two are different works and seeing how I don't consider "well-developed characters" a necessity for good art, I personally find that criticism pretty pointless.

I guess this is another reason why I find so many arguments against artworks interested in something new tiresome-people seem to constantly wish them to be "more normal", as if normalcy is what makes an artwork great.

LoveYui:Even if NTE doesn't generate as much analytical discussion as NGE and EoE do, that's not its fault. There's plenty to analyze there, after all.

Also, this subforum is very popular at the moment, even though it's entirely dedicated to only Shin. This subforum and the Rebuild subforum together have around 80 pages of posts together, compared to NGE and EoE's 98. So I don't think it's entirely accurate to use this subforum specifically to say there's less interest in discussing NTE. And for that matter, we're going to be arriving at the moment we're going to be able to actually judge NTE in its entirety pretty soon, too and I think there's going to be some discussion, there.

[NamvM74]

NamvM74:And why do these films have to be structured properly? Last I checked, a Western idea of what constitutes good story structure isn't necessary to make a great artwork. (Not to mention the films actually do follow a Jo-ha-kyu story structure.)

As for the characters, I agree they're not as well developed as their NGE counterparts-but seeing as how NGE's main thesis was human relationships and seeing NTE's different thematic preoccupations, along with the fact the two are different works and seeing how I don't consider "well-developed characters" a necessity for good art, I personally find that criticism pretty pointless.

I guess this is another reason why I find so many arguments against artworks interested in something new tiresome-people seem to constantly wish them to be "more normal", as if normalcy is what makes an artwork great.

What? Why does a film have to be structured properly? Because if something isn't structured right it crumbles. Try making a bridge without a structural foundation. I also didn't compare it to western films. The structure I compared to 2.0 was the Kaiju genre. That's a Japanese structure.

The Jo-ha-kyu is the structure of the films as a series. I'm talking about the internal structure of each film.

So you don't find proper story structure or well developed characters "necessary for good art". I guess if people share those preferences coupled with the belief that imaginative and well composed visuals are also "not necessary for good art"(the best images from Rebuild are lifted from NGE and EoE) then I can see how some could really like The Rebuilds. Id be curious as to what exactly makes a work of art good in your eyes.

[Axx°N N.]

Regarding the tangent of films "not needing to be structured properly," I think there's a misapprehension taking place.

Many of my favorite narratives are not "conventionally structured," but they are "properly structured" in that they work on their own terms. The writing of James Joyce (or any experiemental literature, really, he's just the most extreme example) or the films of David Lynch are often disregarded as "not having structure," but I find that they do, they're just playing by their own rules and their own radically different internal logic; nonetheless, they 'work' even though they aren't 'proper.'

I think the Rebuilds are structured poorly, but not because they aren't "conventionally structured," which is a different thing entirely.

Acrobatic mecha and color-bombs of explosions might be a part of the themes, though. I am in the camp of people who consider Ha an intentionally bad film and if it is that, doesn't the action part of that still have a thematic relevance of its own? Jo had about as much action as the first 6 episodes, while Q is a bit of a different beast, but for me, the action there is most of the time as weird, strange and sometimes even downright bizarre as the rest of the film, so I look at it as part of the film's aesthetics and internal atmosphere. For example, the final Fourth Impact action scene features a lot of character discussion, and as a matter of fact, it's far more interested in what the action means to the characters than it is interested in any sort of true action-y stakes. Kaworu's death, Rei Q's start toward independence and self-searching, Shinji's actions-they seem to be far more important to Anno than making a more traditional action work.

I've often humored the idea that Ha was intentionally off of a certain mark, but that always seemed like I was trying to justify it in some way and attribute Anno with more foresight than is deserved. He's openly admitted in interviews as to not knowing what Mari's purpose was and that he struggled to find ways to make the new films divergent in ways that worked. I think it's more likely that at the time, Anno's conception of diverging from Eva, how to make Ha a "non-Eva Eva," was to lean in on Gurren Lagan-esque romp qualities, merely because it's pleasing to general audiences in a specifically modern way that Eva never fully bothered with.

The action scenes in Q are for sure my favorite moments in the Rebuilds, exactly for the reasons you describe. I never got when people found them incomprehensible; they have pathos, which is something the Rebuilds mostly lack for me.

If the commercial consideration was the most consistent one, I seriously doubt Anno would have given us something like Q. For commercial purposes, it would have been a lot easier to simply make another Ha-a slice-of-life romcom with harem-ish qualities and a cool guy Shinji for whom all the girls want to act as emotional validation. Instead we had a weird, strange, bizarre, sometimes even grotesque and surreal film told 95% of the time entirely from the viewpoint of a subconsciously egotistic child without the wider picture. And Shin seems to, for the first half, be a slow, glacially paced film that then goes into abstract meta territory-not exactly traditional franchise material either.

And that's why Q is for sure my current favorite Rebuild. Nonethless, it's still more commercial in many regards when compared to NGE whenever it used to diverge from convention. Aside from the scripted nature of Shinji & Kaworu I touched on, another example would be the scene following Fuyutsuki's exposition dump to Shinji/the audience. Shinji's vertiginous walk down the hallway has never had an emotional impression on me, unlike prior scenes in the franchise where a character's unhinged subjective mental breakdown is conveyed. To me, the hallway scene and its directorial notes are too direct; it's basically the same kind of hurried instructions that Fuyutsuki's lore dump is, except in visual language; "this is the emotion you should be feeling right now, please go along with it." Shinji as proxy for the audience is also a very conventional and linear framing device, and Kaworu as guide for him is also playing as guide for the audience, i.e. "I know things have been confusing, but trust me, fall back on me for now, this is all making sense," until of course things go wrong, but that much is unambiguous as well.

I really do hope the pacing in Shin is more glacial. My biggest problem with the Rebuilds is that they go too fast; there's no consistent flow, too few shots that truly 'dwell,' and especially in Ha, far too many one-second cuts. But even the unexpectedly peaceful and slow opening to Shin seems full of things like Rei being cute, which is a very direct kind of "service, service!"

I'm not convinced the pacing will be meditative to the point of a Tarkovsky film or anything, and in fact it might still suffer from pacing issues, who's to say? I'd love for it to take its time, though.

--

ETA: Regarding the tangent of "is there anything to discuss about NTE?"

Clearly I'm negative on Shin, but I've had fun discussing it already, and I'm pleased it at least retains the inherent Eva quality of being endlessly debateable. I don't think there's any question discussion will be active, there's enough evidence already.

[Jäeger]

This whole thread comes from an inherently bad faith approach; that Shin can and will never live up to NGE. Since I disagree on that very premise (and ticket sales seem to agree on that!), I am going to say that no, Shin will do the opposite and elevate the franchise. Well, outside of mired-in-the-past elitists, but there's no pleasing those to begin with.

A franchise lasts for more than the moment it exists only because of those elitists. I speak against myself, as I'm a "casual" fan who just lurks the franchise from the fringes most of the time. I didn't even know Rebuild was a thing until a friend casually mentioned the second movie.

Rebuild won't live up to NGE. In a couple of years, people will have devolved back to the TV series + EoE. I mean, do you want to discuss Rebuild? Is there anything in these movies worth of faffing about for decades like NGE had / has?

By far the funniest thing about the reception of 3.0 + 1.0 in otaku circles is that some of the people bitching about how it reneges on the "anti-escapist" themes of the original 1. missed the memo that it's not even the point of Rebuild given that Anno straight-up said in an interview he gave up on trying to get through to otaku, and 2. are some of the most profoundly escapist people out there and are just using nominally "anti-escapist" media as a purely performative gesture.

(does a jim halpert stare at a nonexistent camera)

Otaku engage with their preferred franchise by induling in fanworks where they emphatise everything they like and erase eveyrthing they don't like, with a self-insert fix-it mary sue or two if they're particularly eager about it. I've read enough derative works for different franchises to recognise this beast.

That's what Anno did from NGE to NTE, kept what he liked, erased what he didn't like anymore, self-inserted into Shinji even more so than in the original towards the end and added a fix-it mary sue who stole every major character's role in some way.

Anno did what he criticised the most, not own up to reality (NGE) and engaged in self-indulging escapism instead (NTE). Let's wait and see if he tried to retcon NGE+EoE, to see if how low he sunk. As I said in another thread, Anno unwittingly trolled himself.

Nothing more to say, Your Honor. Like or not, but in less tan 5 years nobody will give a damn about NTE. Do somebody gonna remember the "eva series" from this las iterations instead of the iconic MPEs? Seriously? Somebody wanna talk about tickets? The Force Awakens propelled again SW, the box office was spectacular...less than a year after nobody gave a fuck about the film. It sold, a lot, but it never was a phenomenon. A cashgrab never can be a phenomenon.

And I cannot do anything but laugh at reading people that accept that Anno can be a flawed creator, that he can fail. I don't care whichever his mood is and if he wants or not to get it filmed : It's about the result as a movie, as the conclusion of a tetralogy and the whole tetralogy. Good intentions have filled graveyards and art is no exception. People talking about "elitism" while at the same time behave like zealots. Always the same loop : always talking about what Anno wants to say but never crosses their minds that maybe he has done It wrong.

I have a friend who loves Macross more any of you can love Eva and he has no problem saying that Shōji Kawamori failed loudly with 7 and Delta. There si no problem among the Macross fandom hearing that affirmation. And 7 was a big financial success, so we better keep the money "argument" out of a serious discussion. So why is a sin to say the same about Anno? if he has wanted to play fanfiction just to satisfy his ego, he'd had to deal with criticism. That is how life and art work. And he is not gonna be an exception.

By thy way, good luck finding SHin memes 20 years in the future like still we find of EOE.

[chee]

Otaku engage with their preferred franchise by induling in fanworks where they emphatise everything they like and erase eveyrthing they don't like, with a self-insert fix-it mary sue or two if they're particularly eager about it. I've read enough derative works for different franchises to recognise this beast.

That's what Anno did from NGE to NTE, kept what he liked, erased what he didn't like anymore, self-inserted into Shinji even more so than in the original towards the end and added a fix-it mary sue who stole every major character's role in some way.

Anno did what he criticised the most, not own up to reality (NGE) and engaged in self-indulging escapism instead (NTE). Let's wait and see if he tried to retcon NGE+EoE, to see if how low he sunk. As I said in another thread, Anno unwittingly trolled himself.

1. pretty much irrelevant to what was said, but allllllllrighty
2. didja actually watch the film, my dude

[Jäeger]

1. pretty much irrelevant to what was said, but allllllllrighty
2. didja actually watch the film, my dude

1. No, not irrelevant
2. 99% of us haven't watched the film, so we better close the post, don't we?

[ChaddyManPrime]

Can't we all just be reasonable adults and say that this film needs to have The Star Wars Holiday Special treatment done unto it?

[roblucci01]

What? Why does a film have to be structured properly? Because if something isn't structured right it crumbles. Try making a bridge without a structural foundation.

Are we seriously comparing filmmaking to structural engineering now? Is that how far some people have to reach to masquerade their personal opinion that Rebuild is "not appealing" as "Rebuild is objectively bad"?

So you don't find proper story structure or well developed characters "necessary for good art".

It's really not "proper story structure" so much as what you perceive to be proper story structure.

the best images from Rebuild are lifted from NGE and EoE

This is just flat out wrong. There are plenty of original visuals in each Rebuild film that give the series artistic value from an aesthetic standpoint.

I guess if people share those preferences coupled with the belief that imaginative and well composed visuals are also "not necessary for good art" then I can see how some could really like The Rebuilds. Id be curious as to what exactly makes a work of art good in your eyes.

Here we go again. "I have a great taste in fiction and you don't. I'm an expert in Evangelion story-telling, Gundam story-telling, Kaiju story-telling, LOTR story-telling... all of this information I have compiled into my consciousness makes me a higher authority on film and I hereby decree that if you even so much as enjoyed 3.0+1.0 then your standards for fiction are lower than mine."

[chee]

1. pretty much irrelevant to what was said, but allllllllrighty
2. didja actually watch the film, my dude

1. No, not irrelevant
2. 99% of us haven't watched the film, so we better close the post, don't we?

1. It's irrelevant because you're essentially comparing apples to oranges. There is no sustained message about escapism in Rebuild as far as I can tell, it's much more straightforwardly a coming-of-age story with metafictional elements thrown in. (No, saying "it's time to move on" isn't the same as saying "fuck escapism"). This whole thing about Hideaki Anno being some kind of epic anti-escapist troll is all just shit people keep meme-ing about because of NGE's notoriety. Blaming something for not living up to themes it doesn't have is completely illogical.
2. Yes.

[Konja7]

A franchise lasts for more than the moment it exists only because of those elitists. I speak against myself, as I'm a "casual" fan who just lurks the franchise from the fringes most of the time. I didn't even know Rebuild was a thing until a friend casually mentioned the second movie.

No. The elitists fans aren't who mantain the franchise alive.

The fans who buy all the Evangelion merchandise are who mantain this franchise alive.

[Axx°N N.]

There is no message about escapism in Rebuild (at least so far.)

That's wrong, though. A lot of discussion regarding Q's relationship to Ha involves reading into Shinji's "give her to me" moment as something that seemed unexpectedly un-Eva-like in the moment, only to be "punished" by Q's nosedive into "more familiar" Eva-style plot difficulty, because Shinji's "feels good in the moment" action leads to unexpected tragic fallout in the plot. There have been plenty of interpretations that this is a statement on escapism since Q's release. You can disagree that it's there, but there's Rebuild-specific precedent for this discussion.

Also, to push back on a constant refrain in your posts a bit: from what I see, everyone is being frank about the basis of their opinions being the script and the camrip. No one is under the illusion their opinion is more substantive now than it will be once the film is widely available. An entire script and the entirety of the last five minutes is fair game for reactions.

[Xenoblade]

Evangelion will continue to sell merch and remain big. Physical, theatrical and streaming rights will all remain important. It's an iconic IP and Anno can hand it off to whoever he wishes.

If it's handled with more delicacy than Star Wars, I could see a fairly favourable reaction to a new timeline anyway, more favourable than NTE even. This isn't Disney.

Eva will remain important, perhaps not as important as it was during the Anno years, but still a big IP.

If there are bad decisions in 3.0+1.0, and there arguably are...a lot of those decisions will stick to 3.0+1.0 like glue, not necessarily the entire IP. The same thing happens to other large franchises.

[NamvM74]

Are we seriously comparing filmmaking to structural engineering now? Is that how far some people have to reach to masquerade their personal opinion that Rebuild is "not appealing" as "Rebuild is objectively bad"?

So you don't find proper story structure or well developed characters "necessary for good art".

It's really not "proper story structure" so much as what you perceive to be proper story structure.

Every story has to have some sort of structure to it. Its the driving force that allows scenes to build upon one another. Without it you just have disjointed scenes stitched together. Nowhere did I say rebuild should have any particular structure. I said the first two films didn't seem to seriously think about translating the structure of a series to that of a film. This lead them to have no real structure to them which resulted in a lot of wasted time.

I guess if people share those preferences coupled with the belief that imaginative and well composed visuals are also "not necessary for good art" then I can see how some could really like The Rebuilds. Id be curious as to what exactly makes a work of art good in your eyes.

Here we go again. "I have a great taste in fiction and you don't. I'm an expert in Evangelion story-telling, Gundam story-telling, Kaiju story-telling, LOTR story-telling... all of this information I have compiled into my consciousness makes me a higher authority on film and I hereby decree that if you even so much as enjoyed 3.0+1.0 then your standards for fiction are lower than mine."

I'm quoting the guy I was talking to. He said he didn't think "Character development" and "proper story structure" were "necessary for good art". I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth. Mabey he misspoke or just didn't express his idea clearly. But you shouldn't be face palming at me because I think character development is important in 4 film drama Sci-Fi.

[Gendo's Glasses]

I don't think Shin will negatively impact Evangelion's legacy at all. The issue arises, I think, because Evangelion has always had a certain nerdy orthodoxy to it. If you're a fan from the west, consider just how long the fandom railed against the 'First Ancestral Race' and related ideas. For years, the orthodoxical reading of the text was that the Angels were literal, actual Angels and that there was a literal, actual God who was sending them to test mankind. I know this because I was one of them. In the west, Evangelion enjoyed a memetic mystique that you could only comprehend this esoteric, occult-riddled series if you were one of the chosen few.

But, I mean, let's be honest - Evangelion isn't nearly as inscrutable as people liked to hype it as.

The Rebuilds have had to butt up against this orthodoxy for just about the entire time they've been released. Why are there four Adams? Evangelions can't go Beast Mode! Why are the Angels numbered differently? And so on, and so on. To be entirely frank, I think the only legacy that's been impacted by the Rebuilds is the legacy of the fandom - suddenly, they no longer have the answers that's come from decades of fandom consensus - accurate or otherwise - or expanded universe materials.

While I haven't seen 3.0+1.0 yet, everything I've heard and read suggests it's a pretty personal story about the creator and his relationship to his creation. If you're familiar with some of the previous things Anno has said about Evangelion (such as EoTV and EoE being two separate endings diverging after Episode 24) the core of the Rebuilds and Anno's desire to give the characters and story a conclusive ending is more understandable. From the start, I've considered the Rebuilds to be the story Anno truly wanted to tell, trying to weave his way through some very complicated issues and thoughts, and it appears that's what we got.

EoTV and EoE will still be incredible films. Frankly, in order to understand the Rebuilds, I think you need to have watched them. EoE didn't invalidate the ending of the original series. The Rebuilds won't invalidate EoE's haunting ending. Don't mistake jilted fans - who may have spent years internalizing that Shinji MUST GET WITH Asuka AAAAA - with the reactions of people who are, well, less obsessed with canon.

(And I say this as someone who shares Axx°N N's issues with SEELE, the Spears, Gendo's planning, and so on! But I'm trying to save judgement until I see the film, because I'm getting the impression there's a lot of visual storytelling that isn't really getting relayed to us by these accounts and screenshots.)

[Jäeger]

1. No, not irrelevant
2. 99% of us haven't watched the film, so we better close the post, don't we?

1. It's irrelevant because you're essentially comparing apples to oranges. There is no sustained message about escapism in Rebuild as far as I can tell, it's much more straightforwardly a coming-of-age story with metafictional elements thrown in. (No, saying "it's time to move on" isn't the same as saying "fuck escapism"). This whole thing about Hideaki Anno being some kind of epic anti-escapist troll is all just shit people keep meme-ing about because of NGE's notoriety. Blaming something for not living up to themes it doesn't have is completely illogical.
2. Yes.

It's the meta thing gonna be the excuse for every Anno's flaw?

A franchise lasts for more than the moment it exists only because of those elitists. I speak against myself, as I'm a "casual" fan who just lurks the franchise from the fringes most of the time. I didn't even know Rebuild was a thing until a friend casually mentioned the second movie.

No. The elitists fans aren't who mantain the franchise alive.

The fans who buy all the Evangelion merchandise are who mantain this franchise alive.

And, like it or not, NTE was born with that in mind. No franchise, no matter how good it sells, can keep the merchandise machine working without releasing new iterations from time to time. That's the reason I know Anima will be adaptad sooner or later. Anno's "I wanted to tell the story again from a new pov" is just BS for me. He used the chance for his purpouses? Yeah, of course.