Guy Nacks wrote:This seems like pretty concrete evidence that he's never been satisfied with how NGE and EOE turned out and this whole endeavor has been motivated by the desire to make something that appeals more to what he wants to see out of Evangelion rather than anything else. Anno has said that the parts of Evangelion that he doesn't like are the parts that he's in. NGE was created directly after (and also during) a period where he had significant psychological issues and he used the series as his method of expunging all of his pent up frustrations. This in turn created characters who themselves had issues, and in turn made those characters feel more like real, flawed human beings.
NGE was a hit because, like all massively successful properties, it found a way to connect emotionally with an audience in an explosive fashion. Now, can a property connect that way because of the series' lore? Not really. How about with the action scenes? They may make you excited, but why? Because it's because of the
characters involved in those scenes. We empathize with them and want to see what happens to them.
Your point here clashes with Anno's feelings about the three movies:
Anno in 2015 wrote:“…after it was released, I was broken. I fell into what’s called a depressive state, the natural result of having spent six years grinding down my soul making Eva again.”
Anno in 2016" wrote:“Evangelion can only be described as my soul. It’s a work that chips off parts of me. Up until then, after doing the third entry Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, I thought I wasn’t going to make any more. At that time, I went into talks with Toho, and it saved me. I think this is how I’m able to keep making Evangelion. However, since it is a fact that I’m making everyone wait, I deeply apologize for that.”
Anno clearly is putting parts of himself in the movies, he's infact putting all of himself in the movies.
And NGE was a hit, but it wasn't an universally acclaimed anime, it was quite the opposite: one of the most divisive anime ever. People that connects with the characters love it, but there's an equally big amount of people that doesn't connect with the characters and doesn't love NGE.
Is that any different than the reactions about the movies? I don't think so. The movies are a hit too (especially Q) and the reactions were mixed. There's a group that connects to the new characters and a group that doesn't connect to the characters.
To put it in graphical terms:
C is the audience of NGE/Rebuild
A is the audience that connected with NGE
B is the audience that connected with Rebuild
The parts of A and B that overlaps is the audience that connected with both
Asuka'sBigBrother wrote:Except that both times Rebuild Shinji almost ended the world with choices, things were inside his control.
Right, Shinji, didn't choose at all, aside from when he literally chose to save all life in the story's climax.
This could potentially spin into a long tangent, but Shinji has made two choices (actually the movies tells us that people forced him into making those choices) ignoring the consequences of those choices because Gendo and Kaworu kept him ignorant for their benefict. The previous events teached him to chose (he doesn't choice against Bardiel and his hands were literally forced on the controls against his will resulting in what he wanted to avoid) and then he's exploited.
And yes he did made a choise at the end of EoE, but that was the final puzzle in his character development. During the course of NGE Shinji is passive and submissive, a concept that gets pushed to the maximum in Episode 25'.
Asuka'sBigBrother wrote:Honestly though, none of this really addresses how the two versions compare in terms of depth. NGE Shinji is
deeper because they actually go
in-depth and explore his character.
This is what I mean by in depth characterization:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TISVubPMeMOr
this:
https://ww3.gogoanime.io/evangelion-the ... de-1(24:40)
That's a level of depth Rebuild never comes close to reaching because it's too busy with sh!t like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAfD-YPmcfQOr this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKLYA1xO9y8This isn't to say NGE didn't have fanservice(albeit much less), but NGE wasn't supposed to be a "streamlined version" of existing material. Instead of keeping what was important, Rebuild trades characterization away rather than unneccesary fluff.
Additionally, Rebuild Shinji
A. Has significantly less character development than his NGE counterpart
B. Doesn't have an in depth-foil like Asuka which helps explore his character further.
Rebuild's decision to shun any real exploration of Asuka so that they could add a character who offers the story nothing in Mari consequently makes Shinji a weaker character as Asuka's relationship with Shinji was a key pillar of Shinji's original characterization. Shinji's relationships in rebuild comparatively have little to no depth which again, makes him weaker.
First of all exploring something in depth doesn't make it deeper. Have you ever read a hermetic poem? Salvatore Quasimodo won a Nobel prize "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times" and this is his most famous poem:
Salvatore Quasimodo wrote:Italian:
Ed è subito sera
Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole
ed è subito sera
English:
And suddenly it's evening
Each of us is alone on the hearth of the earth
Pierced by a ray of sun
And suddenly it's evening
An almost unlimited amount of thesis has been made on those 4 lines of text.
Extensive monologues revealing the entire gamma of emotions and thoughts a character have is one way of telling a story, and showing a three small figures walking on a static background is another. Both works flawlessly and provoke strong emotions if done right, and
this and
this (or
this) prove it.
And by the way you should compare similar part of a story. Episode 26 and EoE can be compared to parts or 3.0 and, when it will be released, 3.0+1.0 because they are the final parts of a story. The scenes of 2.0 you provided are probably similar to the episodes of NGE around Asuka's arrival and before Toji's incident inside Unit 03, and those scenes are very similar to Asuka making Shinji wear her plugsuit before a fight against an angle or Asuka flirting with Shinji talking about her chest while touching it.
The structure of both NGE and Rebuild is very similar from this point of view: the beginning has Shinji slowling accepting and managing the new obstacles, then the story takes a rapid turn into something similar to a slice of life comedy before taking another U turn into depression and despair because of characters being unable to communicate and poorly made decisions.
FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:EDIT: I think the major frustration of “Rebuild is literally replacing NGE” is uniquely a Western problem. In the USA, NGE has long since been out of print, shortly after the “Renewal” release in Japan. In Eva’s native country, however,
both NGE and NTE are available in multiple formats, sometimes as a result of Anno’s
invested interest in keeping the originals circulating. There’s no replacement going on by Anno, only a lack of adequate Funimation releases.
I'm quite sure that the problem is mostly related to the US and UK and not widely spread in the western world, NGE is still printed in most of the European countries.