Postby Bagheera » Fri Jul 20, 2012 2:45 pm
Late to the party I guess, but it seems I never commented on this so I feel I should fix that.
Unlike most, I was not terribly impressed with this review. The reviewer is clearly articulate, but her understanding of both postmodern existentialism and its application to the show is severely lacking. The main problem with her approach is that she's clearly approaching things from a positivist mindset: she's assuming there's an objective reality out there that can be meaningfully identified (which appears to be true in the same way that Newtonian physics appears to be true, but falls apart for many of the same reasons), and from there assumes that the chorus in EoTV was going down the road to absolute relativism when in fact they were talking about relationships and interactions with others (where things are much more fluid than they are in physical reality). This makes the major problem explained and addressed in the middle of her review completely fizzle. Seriously, postmodernists get this a lot. They are not saying that the world we see and interact with is a product of our own design. They are saying that we cannot fully ascertain the nature of reality because our senses and the instruments that inform them are imperfect. There is an objective world out there, but our observations and descriptions of it will always be inaccurate because we are limited beings. That's about as far as it goes. On a related note she also misses the point of Instrumentality to a fairly baffling extent. The whole reason the chorus setup works is because Shinji's looking into the hearts and minds of others at the time, and they are likewise looking into his. He believes what they are saying because they believe it; he is persuaded by Complementation, not by the logic of their arguments. His big breakthrough simply wouldn't be possible in any other context and the show's pretty explicit about this.
On the topic of Shinji we encounter other problems. She assumes everyone hates him, which is obviously not the case (particularly in Japan). She takes this as a given since she assumes we want our heroes/protagonists to act in a certain way, and of course the whole point of the show was that Shinji was designed to subvert that role. Shinji isn't supposed to get his head out of his ass and take a stand or whatever; instead he's supposed to find that there's no One True Path, and that life is something one needs to endure even though it's painful and confusing. But even leaving avant-garde filmmaking aside her approach here is still mired in ethnocentrism as she's looking at the show in the context of her own cultural expectations rather than those of the target audience. Evangelion does not fail as a work simply because it fails to live up to stereotypical American cultural sensibilities; indeed, those sensibilities are not even relevant when discussing its artistic worth and cultural impact. At the end of the day Evangelion is a Japanese show made for a Japanese audience, and that is the context in which it, and Shinji, must be judged.
Once she moves on to "practical" problems the review becomes even more problematic. Prior to this point she was articulate even if she was operating based on flawed assumptions, but in the last third of the review she just starts lambasting the show for "flaws" that are subjective at best and flat-out incorrect at worst. She thinks the helltrain scenes (and the "character in isolation" scenes in general) fall prey to show-don't-tell (they don't; they do show, but they do it via monologues rather than events, which is just as valid); she thinks things like the elevator scene with Rei and Asuka and the end of 24 were shot that way due to budget problems instead of to build tension and such (and she apparently missed the fact that the elevator scene was animated); she thought 24 was rushed and unbelievable instead of being really fucking dense; and so on. Finally, she seems to think Anno hates his fanbase, and that EoE was a middle finger to the fans, and that Anno's continually rewritten the end of the show . . . none of which is true. She also seems to think the new movies are awesome, even though they throw away the very things she was praising in the original show (seriously, she criticized the show for the way it handled Asuka's and Rei's arcs, but seems to have no problem with the fact that they're made into props for Shinji in the NME? It doesn't make much sense).
What I find most baffling about this review is the fact that it didn't address any of the IMO legitimate problems with the show. Things like Rei's truncated arc, the laughable attitudes of the adults toward the kids who are responsible for saving the world, the utterly roundabout and completely unnecessary approach taken to achieve Instrumentality, the gratuitous nature of Asuka's final battle, the uneven animation quality throughout the show (she claims it's front-loaded, but that's not really true; it's wonky all the way through), etc. There are a lot of legitimate problems with the show, so why focus on stuff that's iffy at best? It makes for a review that looks reasonable on the surface but ultimately misses the mark by a fair margin.
For my post-3I fic, go here.The law doesn't protect people. People protect the law. -- Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-PassPeople's deaths are to be mourned. The ability to save people should be celebrated. Life itself should be exalted. -- Volken Macmani, Tatakau Shisho: The Book of BantorraI hate myself. But maybe I can learn to love myself. Maybe it's okay for me to be here! That's right! I'm me, nothing more, nothing less! I'm me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it's okay for me to be here! -- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis EvangelionYes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.
