What is the most unfair review of EVA you have ever watched/read? (this can be of the series, the Rebuilds, the manga or just about anything else that is EVA)

Bennet the sage's review by far, though on a relative scale of shit JO's review is pretty damn bad too.

Bennett the Sage.

He fails to take into account the psychological issues that the characters have and simply writes Asuka off and being a bitch and Shinji off as being a repressed douchebag.

He also completely ignored/refused to interpret the last half of EOE in his review.

I honestly tried watching both Bennet and JO’s Evangelion reviews, and just couldn’t finish them. Bennet refusing to take any contextual implication into account just made it sound like he was uninterested in the entire series (which he was) to the point where he didn’t even bother letting it speak on his own terms (which he didn’t).

And then as soon as JO said the words “Post-Modern Existentialism” I suddenly knew that, whereas she might be able to recognize where she’s coming from with her review, where she’s coming from doesn’t even exist and can’t by definition of the terms be used to name a place that could exist.

Also ChocolateDouche’s (or whatever his name is) review of NTE playfully danced around a few elements of NTE that would essentially damage his review of the newer series. Don’t get me wrong, the newer series isn’t as good as NGE. But a reviewer should at least be able to recognize when his entire point about a series being essentially broken and couldn’t be fixed by a longer duration in order to spend more time with the characters can all be rendered moot with the mere ability to count how many lead characters are in NTE as opposed to Angel’s Egg, a series which he used as an example of getting tone down right in a short duration. Angel’s Egg had the proper amount of time to concentrate on tone because it only has 2 characters. NTE doesn’t quite have that much time because it’s the same length with as many as 10 lead characters, depending on the film in question. His argument is flawed because he doesn’t understand kindergarten-level mathematics and basic counting. Either he’s really stupid, or simply has an unfair bias against NTE that’s coming from a place he hasn’t quite identified yet. He also made the mistake of assuming that the message of NTE was going to be similar to the one of NGE, therefore already making a determination as to whether or not these narrative elements were being used properly by the movies to convey that yet-unseen, yet-unproven message.

Basically, these people are all kind of ignorant in a way. This isn’t to say “Only smart people like Eva, and if you don’t like it then its 2DEEP4U,” but rather that there’s a smarter way to go about unlocking it. A friend of mine really doesn’t care for NGE simply because it’s depressing to him. He can respect the filmmaking in it, but he can’t get himself to like it. And I understand that. I’ve certainly seen my share well-crafted films that I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it on any level, so it’s not like I don’t see where he’s coming from.

As popular as Mr. Plinkett’s Prequel reviews are, honestly a good reviewer doesn’t need 50 pages of material or 70 minutes of video to explain why he doesn’t like something. Sure, there are a lot of things that don’t work or make sense in the Prequel Star Wars. There are also a lot of things that don’t work or make sense in the Original Star Wars. The difference is that with the Originals, the filmmaker was able to guide our subjectivity on the film to more or less match his own subjectivity on the things the film presented. In the Prequels, we doesn’t tell what that subjectivity was supposed to be in the first place. The same thing goes for any other series. We can go on and on about how the continuity errors of Attack of the Clones’ makes it a bad film, yet still enjoy the Hell out of Die Hard despite its rather obvious continuity errors. The real problem is that one movie was engaging to watch, and the other wasn’t.

Oh man, I love DouchebagChocolat's take on the Rebuild series. I don't think you're giving him enough credit; there's a reason why it's not good to pack a bunch of main characters into a relatively short movie series.

I'l re-watch DBC's review and come back later with my thoughts.

I don't see why anyone would take Bennett The Sage's reviews seriously, he's an entertainer, clearly. He's not doing a critical dissection, he's lampooning it for entertainment.

DouchebagChocolat/Demolition D+ on the other hand does actually take the time to dissect and analyze the work in detail, and I really enjoyed his thoughts on Rebuild. He accurately articulated how I felt about the films, and I feel his criticisms of Rebuild are all very valid.

Speaking of that review... Here's what I found in the comments right under that vid.

I undelined the specific one.


Sad but true.

I stand by what I said about D+, as I presented accurate annalysis of his inaccurate analysis. He might be more entertaining than Bennett, but factually can be just as flawed in his reviews at times. It's particularly damning when he admits she won't even let the series finishing before stamping g his seal of unapproval on it.

The whole reason Bennet derailed the review towards the end was to poke fun at Anno for essentially doing the same thing to the series and EOE. Essentially ending the story to talk directly to the audience/characters about his problems/ their problems. and when they didn't take the advice to screw the audience over royally.

He mentioned in his Outlaw Star review. . .

Bennet The Sage wrote:That’s what (Outlaw Star) is, summed up in one word: uncomplicated. Not simple. Uncomplicated. Gene, at the start of the series has his personal demons, but he gets over them , and the show resumes as normal. Likewise, the other supporting characters have little character development or arc to speak of, but the show doesn’t need it. It focuses on the happenings of the plot first and foremost, and lets these already-developed characters and personalities play off each other. And that’s a fairly bold step to take, all things considered. When your plot’s endgame is the literal creation of the universe, it can be very easy to overwrite the characters.

In my review of Evangelion, I talked about how the story kept focusing squarely on developing Shinji and events of the past, when there are so many other more pressing matters in the plot. Which only serve to undermine the urgency of stopping THE END OF THE F**KING WORLD!!

On the other hand, Outlaw Star lets the plot speak for itself. Gene is certainly not a non-entity. He has agency, his actions have consequences, and his personality is stark and well defined. The difference is the show cemented his place and character in the story before the cosmos bending plot took shape. We grow attached to Gene and his devil-may-care antics and heroics. And we want to see him get to the Leyline. . . You can't say that about Shinji!

and there you have it. Bennet is a fan who want's characters to be defined beforehand, and have their character serve the plot. Not have them developing (and in his view not for the better) to the very end. He wants a hero who can win the fight or at least fight to the bitter end, not give up and succumb to his demons.

I like some of Bennett's material, but he's a comedian who uses Anime as source material for humor. He usually makes a few good points, but often fails because he instead chooses to make a joke at the expense of the source material.

Also. . . (and I hate to do this to you GJ). But Goatjesus made a pretty unfair review of the Rebuild series a couple years ago. While he has since softened his opinions towards the Rebuilds . . . his argument at the time was that the rebuilds were narratively unsound, capped off with him going into a Semi-Tangential rant where he (poorly) imitates the characters acting the way they should have acted in the films.

While he did make a few good points, specifically that the last film has to tie together roughly a billion loose ends, and fill in several by the end credits if it wants to be anything but a shallow rehash of the originals themes and messages with a bigger budget, assuming Anno is even going to bother with that.

But overall I found the review to be very unfair and biased against the Rebuilds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFultzPN7nU


But like I said. He seems to have softened and changed his opinion in the time between 3.0 and now. So take it with a grain of salt.

The point I think he makes the best of in his critique is. . . .



Implying Anno is a huge hypcrite.

^
You're demanding answers from Anno, while the whole time the only thing Anno does, is shouting right into our faces, that all those answers don't matter in the big picture. All those inane details why everything around works how it does, don't matter. I don't think Anno has suddenly become a bad story teller. I think he uses constant omission of important information, while simultaneously overloading us with other, inane information for good reason. It's a parable to growing up in unstable modern life. It's only about yourself. It's figuring yourself out without relying on others. It's about Shinji. And all those dangling plot threads have the one purpose to illustrate how devoid of meaning it is to look for meaning in your surroundings. It's like in real-life. Not every person you will encounter will give you his backstory, or everything you do makes an impact. But some stuff might affect you nevertheless. Does Mari's existence make sense from a traditional story-telling point of view? No. Did her one action inspire Shinji to get his ass up? Yes. Could we have skipped the Kaworu part? Of course, but why should we? Are all the other characters just superficial copies of the original? Sure, but does it make sense for Shinji to know them any better?

You could say it is bad story telling, but I feel it's just accepting that life is bigger as you will ever be and trying gathering information is a futile task and won't make it easier.

And that's a great message to ponder on for life.

Is it too much to ask for a little closure?

Just watch the review if you haven't and get back to deciding for yourself.

Like i said, he HAS softened his opinion in the years since 3.0. . . He did a very very nice and complementary examination of Until You Come To Me. Which I think it STILL his best video so far.

Ray wrote:Is it too much to ask for a little closure?

Well, we are talking Evangelion. The one thing this franchise denies since it's inception is wish fulfillment.

I'm sure, there'll be closure for Shinji. All the other stuff? I don't think so, especially for all trivial stuff like "where's the missing Eva's? Where's the missing Angel? What happened in the time skip?"
I'm sure Anno has his own ideas about this stuff, maybe he even has timeline planned out, but I'm fairly certain he won't disclose it, because he doesn't like to feed answers. We managed to puzzle the gist of most of the stuff together for ourself, so it's not as if he didn't drop hints along the way.

It's not that I wouldn't be interested, but shoehorning answers into Final will result in an exposition dump, while nullifying Qs purpose. Which would be horrible.

In a sense 2.22 relates to 3.33 what happens when you graduate somewhere on the countryside and then decide to move to New York City without a job.

Honestly, even if a review is negative, that doesn't necessarily mean it's unfair. The only issue I have is that some people look at the wrong set of criteria when reviewing something. As much as people like to go on about elements such as the Lance of Longinus, the FAR, etc., what they don't realize is that it's not the point of Evangelion. It was meant to be largely a character study and should be reviewed as such. It's not trying to be Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

I do kind of hate the people who started bashing 3.0 and 3.0 alone when it came out though. The real problems as people see them (chaotic battle scenes, not examining the characters enough) were present before the third movie. As long as people look at the whole Rebuild movies, and don't act like 3.0 is terrible for taking away badass Shinji, I've been fine with the review being somewhat more negative. Honestly, as much as I'm one of the people who think's that Shinji didn't deserve what happened (at least in this iteration), 3.0 is the only one of the Rebuild films that stands on its own to me, to the point where I've rewatched it.

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:Also ChocolateDouche’s (or whatever his name is) review of NTE playfully danced around a few elements of NTE that would essentially damage his review of the newer series.

Huh, so kind of like how your criticism of his review leaves out all of the legitimate points he makes to cherry pick the stuff you didn't agree with - thus making it unfair?

robersora wrote:Well, we are talking Evangelion. The one thing this franchise denies since it's inception is wish fulfillment.

In due time I'm sure the Theatrical Editions will have supplements like the CI, the 3.0/4.0 CRC and such to fill in most of that information to some degree of satisfaction. They might even tell us who's in Eva-00!

Glor wrote:Huh, so kind of like how your criticism of his review leaves out all of the legitimate points he makes to cherry pick the stuff you didn't agree with - thus making it unfair?

Some of these points were the foundation on which he built his review, thus realizing that the foundation was corrupt places the rest of the reviewer's comments in a better understood context.

You guys are all forgetting the best worst review of anything Evangelion.

I urge you to listen to at least the first 5 minutes. This shit is gold.

Comedy gold!

Also . . . . you could at least read ALL the plot spoilers before ranting!

Oh man, the salt is real. It's just like an eva thread on /a/! He didn't even see the movie before going into a lather.

Bit off topic, but why the hell do they call her "Mary?"

Guy Nacks wrote:You guys are all forgetting the best worst review of anything Evangelion.

I urge you to listen to at least the first 5 minutes. This shit is gold.

Before I even watch it... is it the angry yaoi lover??