Darkwing wrote:Fool me thrice... I'm an idiot, but your still an asshole. So if there thing 3.0 has taught me, it's that I should not have hope for an ending I'll enjoy in Eva.

This would be good signature material if it weren't for the spoiler policy, I should write it down for the future.

My reaction to 3.0 has been overwhelmingly positive. Sure, I still need to see the damned thing in whole, but I'm quite pleased so far.

This could be because, at the core, it is vintage Eva/Anno, and it has that essence that drew me to the original. I love the brutal treatment that NGE gives the human condition. 3.0 is similarly unforgiving, as it cuts the protagonist down lower and lower beneath a weight of mythological proportions, and confronts us with his flaws and losses -- while, at the same time, acknowledging the human capacities for hope, change, and forgiveness.

And then there's things like visuals and music, where I can nitpick at most. They're really outdoing themselves, and the BD will be a delight.

Well the upside is that while watching what the charecters get put through is brutal and painful, it sure will look and sound nice. * chuckle*

I may grow to appreciate it eventually. It took me years to finally get past the "Where the fuck is the actual footage" factor for episodes 25 and 26. Doesn't mean I have enjoy seeing the charecters go through some of that though.

My reaction to what (little) I've seen of 3.0 so far has been very positive! The last thing I want an Eva-experience to feel like is "just like all those other shows". 3.0 sounds/looks like a rich, compelling and rewarding movie for those willing to meet it as more than "fluff entertainment".

Also, 3.0 confirms in my eyes that Anno has always had some concrete plan regarding Rebuild. That the very upbeat & fan-friendly mood of 2.0 (even down to excessive fan-service) was there for the overall story! That it was all leading towards something. Towards an emotional experience. And towards a story that we were not fully expecting.

Regardless, I can't wait till I get a proper chance to view 3.0 & it had made the (long?) wait for FINAL that more exciting!

I wrote:Need to actually watch a subtitled camrip (haven't looked for that audio yet) to gather my thoughts. IMO so far, Q's a combination of weird but cool.

Still waiting on a full camrip or eventual BD-rip, but 3.0 sounds very in line with themes from both NGE and NME. Some aspects do sound a little weird, but no weirder than original NGE.

Excited about someday watching this hopefully refreshing third installment.

Sailor Star Dust wrote:Still waiting on a full camrip or eventual BD-rip, but 3.0 sounds very in line with themes from both NGE and NME. Some aspects do sound a little weird, but no weirder than original NGE.

Excited about someday watching this hopefully refreshing third installment.

Agreed there. The light and often comedic undertones we saw in the first two films seem to have been blasted away and history. If 3.0 foreshadows anything, it'll be that the rest of the NME ride will be a depressing one with light flickers of hope that occassionally appear and disappear.

A blu ray rip? Thats a really good one! Lets see the inevitable full cam-rip first! Hopefully better shot than the garbage that was the 90 degrees 30 min clip we saw recently, along with the terrible 2.0 rip from three years ago.

Electric Sachiel wrote:A blu ray rip? Thats a really good one!

Probably not until Summer or Fall 2013 at the earliest, yeah.

Darkwing wrote: And lets not get started on the fanfiction.

Hey bitch you look kawaii.
— Willow, My Immortal

Hyper Shinchan wrote:This would be good signature material if it weren't for the spoiler policy, I should write it down for the future.

My other top two Eva musings are
Watching Eva makes me deppressed, cynical and bitter. Always helps me see how awful life really is.
There is nothing more depressing than watching a work done by someone who just crawled out of a deep depression. To them anything will seem upbeat and hopeful. (although that applies to Tomino as well.)

Darkwing wrote:To be honest for me there are two kinds of reactions.

But see, it's not as cut and dry as that... My reaction was an emotional one (See post page back), and I love the movie.

I think a key factor may have been going into the cinema completely unspoiled, unprepared and being blown away.

Reichu wrote:-- while, at the same time, acknowledging the human capacities for hope, change, and forgiveness.

QFT.

Blue Monday wrote:But see, it's not as cut and dry as that... My reaction was an emotional one (See post page back), and I love the movie.

I think a key factor may have been going into the cinema completely unspoiled, unprepared and being blown away.



QFT.

Well you are you, and I am me, and your emotional reaction was a lot more positive than mine. That's cool. Different things for different people. I have a different way of looking at things. Also actually seeing it as opposed to just reading about it. My opinion may or may not do a 180%. Then again if an ending pisses me off, I kinda prefer to have an idea it might ahead of time. Easier on the throat.

Yeah, it's got it's positive message, but man, it's not something you can see at first. Honestly I don't think there is anyone in Eva who can truly be said to be pure evil. Even Seele have good intentions for all mankind. It's just they've completely ignored whether or not all mankind would want it, and forget where good intentions can pave the path to. Once it's all seen through, all the movies and had time to reflect things might be different. Or not. But Eva certainly makes me feel. But it's upbeat in the way Siberia is colder than intersteller space. It's not the worst it could be.

Darkwing wrote:Well you are you, and I am me, and your emotional reaction was a lot more positive than mine. That's cool. Different things for different people. I have a different way of looking at things.

I'm pretty much sure that Blue Monday being unspoiled and having seen all the visuals had a more authentic experience, personally I'm slowly starting to sympathise again with Shinji just after "seeing" the last short camrip, I felt pretty bad until now because I couldn't relate well with him in this film (Evangelion has always been about that for me).

EDIT: thanks for the other two musings but I especially like that first one because it really suits well my current mood about this series, I just wanted to point this out actually.

Apparently, a lot of the meaning is really in the visuals.

Rebuild, in general, has leant a bit more towards visual metaphors, and for example, in the Misato thread, there was someone saying that we don't know to conclude that WILLE really hates Shinji's guts, only for someone who'd seen it to interject how the stares said it all, adding the detail that Midori seemed particularly pissed, which couldn't be inferred from just her lines.

It helps that the film apparently follows Shinji's perspective a lot and that the audience doesn't find out wtf is going on before he does.
His "OMG wtf have I done" moment also becomes a lot more pronounced if you see him staring at the devastation of 4I, it's also rather crucial how there is a "helplessly pulling the levers"-scene...

Seeing the camrip, I get the impression that their style of drawing Shinji's face during the climax has come to resemble the style of 25' a lot...

Blue Monday wrote:I think a key factor may have been going into the cinema completely unspoiled, unprepared and being blown away.

I think it's more of a personal thing that decides our emotional reaction to the movie. A combination of our expectations, our desires, our attachment to the characters and setting, and the form that attachment takes.

Reichu wrote:Whether you've seen it or not, how does it make you feel?

After six weeks of moderating this sub-forum, and all the to-ing and fro-ing going on here, I've reached the point where I am just barely nursing the forlorn hope that Final will pull something amazing that can serve to redeem the preceding two films (and, no, galaxy-sized Evangelions or similar eye-candy would be exactly the wrong thing to do). Where Ha summarized as merely mediocre fanfiction, Q is coming over as solid idiot-plot.

There, that's better out than in.

Mr. Tines wrote:There, that's better out than in.

It's cool Tines, it's not like you're the only person hoping for something from 4.0 despite deep down inside knowing you're not going to get it. I mean, we're hoping for different things but we can all share the disappointment when none of us get what we want and Anno laughs his way to the bank.

Sometimes I wonder if Anno isn't actually playing us all, and is in fact some sort of sadist.

A while ago a statement from one of the crew members got posted. Sadly as I was typing a response in that thread it got closed. But I saved what I typed, and this seems as good a place as any to post it.
Well I've talked in the reaction thread about things before. I'm just glad this isn't a "You idiot babies don't get it because your shallow babies who want it all happy and rainbows." It's more that you just need to go back and look at all that's been done thus far, and see how it fits together. Granted that isn't always easy. We don't have all the pieces, and peoples points of view can greatly differ. Eva will always be subject to vastly varying interpretations and reactions. Or he could just be trying to inflate the box office take.

Also a lot of people somehow got it into their heads this would be a more upbeat, less doom and depression version of Eva. Although I was one of them, I don't ever recall the actual crew saying it would be the case.

Darkwing wrote:Also a lot of people somehow got it into their heads this would be a more upbeat, less doom and depression version of Eva. Although I was one of them, I don't ever recall the actual crew saying it would be the case.

Anecdote: In the year between me watching Eva and 1.0/2.0 for the first time and joining this forum whenever I came across someone hating Rebuild for it's lack of darker elements I pointed out how the first half of NGE was pretty simple as well. "The first half of the tv series was light hearted and generic, it wasn't until the second half that all hell broke loose, so stop getting mad when the first half of Rebuild is simple and light hearted too. 3.0 and 4.0 will probably be really dark and thought provoking." I'd say.

Then I joined here and someone promptly convinced me that, while the first half of NGE wasn't dark, it still had a lot of depth in the form of Shinji's introspection. So I pretty much abandoned the concept that 3.0 and 4.0 would be dark and accepted the reality that Rebuild was a lighter take on Eva, "Anno when he's not depressed."

Yea, fuck me. I was right the first time.

It is interesting to note how some reviews of 1.0 deemed it gloomier than the original....

^
I went back and checked my review of 1.01 from 2008 and was amused to see that I was wary even at that point:

I wrote:while some things stay the same -- Misato's photo -- others change, for reasons yet to be revealed, if for any reason beyond "it looks cool" -- the streets where Shinji sees the apparition of Rei are now years overgrown, rather than just-now evacuated; and the sea that has flooded parts of Japan is now red.
...
After just retelling the first quarter or so of the tale, the movie ends with a big reveal that came near the end of the series, and then a whole bunch of entirely new material -- including a preview of the next movie that is 80% entirely new material inconsistent with the series (and more akin to bad fan-fics -- who is this Mari, the new girl in glasses, anyway?).