Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Sefirot Tree Of Life » Wed Jun 07, 2023 4:56 pm

I didn't like how the Rebuilds handled...every single character now that I think about it. But Asuka easily is one of, if not the worst written characters in the Rebuilds.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby ChrisTamv » Wed Jun 07, 2023 6:26 pm

View Original PostSefirot Tree Of Life wrote:But Asuka easily is one of, if not the worst written characters in the Rebuilds.


How so?

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Postby Sefirot Tree Of Life » Wed Jun 07, 2023 6:47 pm

View Original PostChrisTamv wrote:
View Original PostSefirot Tree Of Life#940974 wrote:But Asuka easily is one of, if not the worst written characters in the Rebuilds.


How so?


1: Soryu became Shikinami. Why? Such a pointless, unnecessary change.

2: They changed Asuka's great backstory from the anime, which had a lot of great context that explained Asuka's personality and neuroses. It recontextualized her actions and gave her tremendous path. This backstory is lost in the Rebuilds, removing a lot of Asuka's depth. And the dumb clone thing was created ten years later, and it was a weakly written backstory and unneeded change. Asuka loses all of her depth and just becomes angry for the sake of angry.

3: Asuka has very few emotions outside of her constantly being angry, without any of her positive emotions, interactions with people, friendships, ect.

4: Asuka loses a lot of her introspection (Along with her backstory) so we do not get to see her true vulnerabilities. In NGE we saw it slowly over time as her breakdown occurred, then even after her breakdown she had scenes in Episodes 25/26 and of course in EoE which did greatly for her character and her relationship with Shinji. All of this is lost in the rebuilds and what we got instead I personally just found sub par

5: Because there is simply less time in the rebuilds and there is more focus on Shinji and his (And Anno's) personal narrative, all the side characters got shafted, but Asuka was especially hurt. She already has little time to work with. She's not in rebuild 1.0, she is a Asuka caricature in 2.0 without the depth and she is literally crippled for the final part because emotionally she is irrelevant (Due to the focus on Rei and Shinji's relationship) she is nothing more then an antagonistic force in 3.0 (and the nature of this movie completely removes her from the Asuka we knew in NGE) and in 4 she's still angry and distant for most of the movie without humanity and warmth Asuka had in NGE. At the very end we see her and Shinji having the beach moment, but it relies on the context of the original series to be emotional because Rebuild Asuka has so little depth and nothing to do her relationship with Shinji is extremely weak.

She doesn't have the same role or importance she did in the narrative, or enough time, which is crucial for her character. Kaworu and Rei basically had a movie each and in Thrice theres more focus on Shinji and a larger cast. Asuka loses her strong relationship with Shinji, her entire character, and her role in the narrative. She and writing are just much weaker overall

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Joseki » Thu Jun 08, 2023 1:17 pm

View Original PostSefirot Tree Of Life wrote:1: Soryu became Shikinami. Why? Such a pointless, unnecessary change.


That's really useful to be honest. You can't confuse the good character from the useless fanservice dispenser.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jun 08, 2023 3:15 pm

My god, I have such complicated feelings about what was done here and they seem never ending.

Asuka and Shinji's relationship is nonexistent, but part of the point seems to be that that fact needs to be addressed in a doing away of it by each party. We're meant to assume that intimate relationships have formed, and part of Shinji's tragedy is he's been completely apart from, for instance, Asuka and Kensuke's relationship, whatever of it we can glean from what we're given.

As an attempt to dislocate (or "destroy") the narrative and distinguish it from NGE, or perhaps in Anno's view, salvage and redeem it, there seems to be a strong effort to reach into the narrative and literally do butcher work, pull apart the previous central protagonists, put a blinder on decades of narrative, go to any length and extremity and order of magnitude to make each path for meaning the original took in a much more organic way totally unfeasible.

It's hard not to feel as if, in doing this kind of undoing, there's some tacit disapproval of the prior narrative and its conclusions and even its journey. But because so much of the original had actually raw human relationships, it almost seems as if NTE is taking a stance against the very concept.

I don't know, it completely alienates me as someone who doesn't have any beef with, you know, naturalistic character drama. I end up feeling like I don't know what it is that Anno felt he needed to revise. Asuka to me ends up being the biggest symbol of the whole thing despite feeling like the least focal element.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby ChrisTamv » Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:42 pm

1: Soryu became Shikinami. Why? Such a pointless, unnecessary change.


To show that she's a completely different character from Asuka Soryu, with a different backstory, and to hint a bit at her clone origins.

2: They changed Asuka's great backstory from the anime, which had a lot of great context that explained Asuka's personality and neuroses. It recontextualized her actions and gave her tremendous path. This backstory is lost in the Rebuilds, removing a lot of Asuka's depth. And the dumb clone thing was created ten years later, and it was a weakly written backstory and unneeded change. Asuka loses all of her depth and just becomes angry for the sake of angry.


This is not the case at all. Soryu and Shikinami ultimately share the majority of their backstories. She doesn't lose her depth, isn't "angry for the sake of being angry", isn't a "useless tool for fanservice" which is something I've also heard thrown around. These are gross simplifications of her established character and motivations streaming from her very tragic backstory and experience post - 2.0. Complex motivations that are only exacerbated by the fact that she's a parentless child soldier created to pilot a war machine in order to be allowed to live.

3: Asuka has very few emotions outside of her constantly being angry, without any of her positive emotions, interactions with people, friendships, ect.


Except her opening up to Misato and especially Shinji in 2.0, understanding Rei's feelings and volunteering to pilot Unit 05 so that she can throw that dinner for Shinji and Gendo, calling Misato out of interest, finding the parent she always longed for in Kensuke, cultivating a close relationship and hanging out with Mari, etc.

4: Asuka loses a lot of her introspection (Along with her backstory) so we do not get to see her true vulnerabilities. In NGE we saw it slowly over time as her breakdown occurred, then even after her breakdown she had scenes in Episodes 25/26 and of course in EoE which did greatly for her character and her relationship with Shinji. All of this is lost in the rebuilds and what we got instead I personally just found sub par


I understand what you're saying here. The Rebuilds are in general less interested in explicit introspection in exchange for more implicit character exploration through their actions and dialogue. And that's especially true for Asuka, as a significant chunk of her development happened during the 14 year gap and must therefore be almost completely inferred.

5: Because there is simply less time in the rebuilds and there is more focus on Shinji and his (And Anno's) personal narrative, all the side characters got shafted, but Asuka was especially hurt. She already has little time to work with. She's not in rebuild 1.0, she is a Asuka caricature in 2.0 without the depth and she is literally crippled for the final part because emotionally she is irrelevant (Due to the focus on Rei and Shinji's relationship) she is nothing more then an antagonistic force in 3.0 (and the nature of this movie completely removes her from the Asuka we knew in NGE) and in 4 she's still angry and distant for most of the movie without humanity and warmth Asuka had in NGE. At the very end we see her and Shinji having the beach moment, but it relies on the context of the original series to be emotional because Rebuild Asuka has so little depth and nothing to do her relationship with Shinji is extremely weak.


It's true that the Rebuilds put more focus than ever on Shinji, and that 3.0 pretty much shafted Asuka and Misato. However, as I said, Asuka's depth is here, and her genuine liking for Shinji was established in 2.0. I'm not a fan of the beach scene for other reasons I've written about in this thread, but I have to say that the original context only exacerbates the emotional weight of the scene, nothing more.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby C.T.1290 » Thu Jun 08, 2023 7:18 pm

I don’t know why they didn’t keep Soryu in Rebuild the same way they kept Shinji, Misato, Rei, etc. Instead, they chose to replace her with a different character entirely, who is just a carbon copy(literally in this narrative). Shikinami looks like Soryu, acts a bit like her. But to me, she’s not really Asuka.

Why couldn’t they keep Asuka the way she was in NGE? Why not have her remain as a normal human being who is her own person, with her own face and identity, and not just one of the many copies who all came from the original(who may have been more or less created the same way all the other clones were, which would indicate that the original had no parents to begin with either, no bloodline at all. Which means there was no genetic host, and was just created out of thin air or some from of genetic manipulation, so that would make her practically nothing. Basically created from a nonexistent person.) I think they should have stuck with her having parents, and a similar trauma as Soryu, losing her mother to the EVA experiment, and have her find some ways to overcome her traumas and build on that narrative, up to we’re she is at the point of Thrice Upon a Time.

To me, there can be only one Asuka, and Soryu is the one true Asuka.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Blockio » Thu Jun 08, 2023 7:44 pm

I think that one is just you having a personal hangup about clones being somehow not human.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby C.T.1290 » Thu Jun 08, 2023 7:54 pm

View Original PostBlockio wrote:I think that one is just you having a personal hangup about clones being somehow not human.

Well, I’m just so used to Asuka being a normal human being instead being created as a product of science, though that’s just me.

And another sad part is the fact that she was brought into this world without any parents to begin with. I mean, whose bloodline did she come from, assuming she had any?
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jun 08, 2023 8:11 pm

I think one of the reasons some find the clone thing to be a bit of an awkward addendum is that it's another of many cursorily revealed elements that opens up a lot of implications that just aren't treated with weight. Rei as a clone when it was revealed in the original (or NTE in Q) was revealed in tandem to acknowledging the severity of the implication--that the going-on behind the scenes is nightmarish and manned by some cold individuals with nefarious intent and motivation. Shinji, among others, reel and stew. We see Rei suffer from its consequences for a lengthy period of time, and we can include all of NTE in that because of fore-knowledge from NGE.

But the Asuka stuff is revealed simultaneous to the plot asking us to embrace Gendo in warm redemptive terms. And yet Asuka being a clone is this additional complete retrospective shifting bit--well, it would be if it were treated that way instead of glossed over in an attempt to use it solely as an added tragic element to Asuka.

Let's break down the implication though. Rei at least had some sensible logic behind it, as classic of a "Pygmalion" or "The Birth-Mark" futile and flawed motivation as it was, it at least served a discernible purpose on Gendo's end, and it's a purpose focal to the entire plot. But seeing as the entire franchise until the last 15 minutes didn't require clones for any other reason, the Asuka reveal is immediately dubious in-world as a necessity, and comes off as impractical and thus perhaps merely for the sake of being unusually cruel. And yet NTE doesn't really attach any aspect of this to anything tangible in-universe; everyone in these scenes are pretty faceless and removed, almost like it would be too much to show that there was staff of any kind involved. Said staff don't matter at all anyway because of the weird "It's just Gendo and Fuyutsuki" industry of a million mechs--but they should or could matter, NTE just decides not.

At least the stuff with Kyoko was an accident in NGE. There was nuance and flaw. But the Asuka clone program was sustained, calculated, intentional cruelty without seeming reason and the narrative doesn't really deal with it in a serious way for its own sake, it seems happy to just use it as a stock device to invoke a desired empathy response. It's dropped on us without doing the rest of the legwork, for instance, does Mari have the same origin and if so, why so chipper? Why is Shinji spared? More stuff lost in the time-skip void.

View Original PostChrisTamv wrote:Except her opening up to Misato and especially Shinji in 2.0, understanding Rei's feelings and volunteering to pilot Unit 05 so that she can throw that dinner for Shinji and Gendo, calling Misato out of interest, finding the parent she always longed for in Kensuke, cultivating a close relationship and hanging out with Mari, etc.

Well, those are things that happen, but there's a difference between idea and execution. Anyone can have a character do things but that doesn't mean that it amounts to a unified sense of a tangible character. Asuka's scenes always seem to me to suffer the most from motivational whiplash. I don't feel like enough time is spent for Asuka's decision to let Rei have the dinner, for instance, to feel earned or justified or happen in a believable amount of time. The scenes tell us that Asuka has made that decision and has a reason, but that's not the same thing as any of that being strong in a dramatic sense.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Joseki » Sun Jun 11, 2023 9:56 am

View Original PostAxx°N N. wrote:It's hard not to feel as if, in doing this kind of undoing, there's some tacit disapproval of the prior narrative and its conclusions and even its journey. But because so much of the original had actually raw human relationships, it almost seems as if NTE is taking a stance against the very concept.

I don't know, it completely alienates me as someone who doesn't have any beef with, you know, naturalistic character drama. I end up feeling like I don't know what it is that Anno felt he needed to revise. Asuka to me ends up being the biggest symbol of the whole thing despite feeling like the least focal element.



To be completely honest, to this day (more than 2 years after the movie released), I genuinely have no idea what is the core message of the Rebuild.

I can see the (entirely self-refencetial) metanarrative aspects of the story, I see the authorial desire to create a second, different take on Evangelion and I see the commercial advantages for a indipendent studio to build a strong IP as economical fundation for the future.
However, what I do not really understand is what is the core narrative message beind the movies that wasn't already a part of the original NGE.

To me it feels like the metanarrative commentary cannibalised any other aspect of the project, to the point that now that it's over what really stuck to me of the entire project is:
A) "Anno wanted to pay homage to his forming works and inspirations"
B) "Remaking Evangelion exhausted Anno".
And neither of them really has anything to do with Rebuild as a work of fiction/narrative.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Konja7 » Sun Jun 11, 2023 11:07 am

View Original PostJoseki wrote:To be completely honest, to this day (more than 2 years after the movie released), I genuinely have no idea what is the core message of the Rebuild.

In the last movie, I think the "care for others", "stop running away from pain" and "move on" were pretty obvious messages. Honestly, I've never really understood the messages in NGE/EoE (what are these?), so it isn't so weird a message could reach to some people and not others.

That said, I don't really need my fiction to have messages. I mainly care about the characters in the stories.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Joseki » Tue Jun 13, 2023 12:42 pm

View Original PostKonja7 wrote:
View Original PostJoseki#941008 wrote:To be completely honest, to this day (more than 2 years after the movie released), I genuinely have no idea what is the core message of the Rebuild.

In the last movie, I think the "care for others", "stop running away from pain" and "move on" were pretty obvious messages. Honestly, I've never really understood the messages in NGE/EoE (what are these?), so it isn't so weird a message could reach to some people and not others.

That said, I don't really need my fiction to have messages. I mainly care about the characters in the stories.


That's why I specified "that wasn't already a part of the original NGE."

To me it feels like the project is 4 movies of overall pretty similar themes from the OG series but with extra problematic new elements like victim blaming (Gendo/Shinji) and a confusing metacommentary.

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Postby ChrisTamv » Tue Jun 13, 2023 4:04 pm

To me it feels like the project is 4 movies of overall pretty similar themes from the OG series but with extra problematic new elements like victim blaming (Gendo/Shinji) and a confusing metacommentary.


The metacommentary is pretty straightforward to be honest, and I don't see anything that could be considered as "victim - blaming here". Overall, the Rebuilds repeat most of the original's themes, focus especially on the anti - escapism angle and highlight the metacommentary elements that have existed since the original's finale(s) even more. That's pretty much it.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby BernardoCairo » Thu Jun 15, 2023 6:59 am

Joseki wrote:To be completely honest, to this day (more than 2 years after the movie released), I genuinely have no idea what is the core message of the Rebuild.

There is none. The movies are so different from one another and were created in such unique contexts that it is almost impossible to group them into a single work with a unifying message. It's clear that each of them is trying something different from the last and that they weren't planned in a way to create a cohesive story. It's as if they're all part of the same continuity, but each one is their individual work. That's why some messages don't even make sense when you watch the entire tetralogy back to back (a lot of the fourth movie, for example, just doesn't feel right after watching the third one).

Konja7 wrote:Honestly, I've never really understood the messages in NGE/EoE (what are these?)

I don't know how that's even possible to be honest. The entire anime is built around it.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Konja7 » Thu Jun 15, 2023 9:18 am

View Original PostBernardoCairo wrote:That's why some messages don't even make sense when you watch the entire tetralogy back to back (a lot of the fourth movie, for example, just doesn't feel right after watching the third one).

Really? I feel the messages of 3.0 and 3.0+1.0 compliment in a good way.

In the 3.0, Shinji is trying to escape from pain, that's why his attempt to restore the world is doomed to fail. Instead, in 3.0+1.0, Shinj stopped escaping from pain and his main goal is to help others, so this time he manages to defeat his father and repair the world.

In 3.0+1.0, we even discover that a "not escaping the pain" Shinji could turn the Spear of Longinus into the Spear of Cassius, which would have ruined Gendo's plan in 3.0.



View Original PostBernardoCairo wrote:I don't know how that's even possible to be honest. The entire anime is built around it.

I'm completely honest. I've never caught the message in NGE or EoE. Maybe I was too young the first time I saw it, but even the second time I didn't understand it.

Maybe I could understand something about the message in Episodes 25 and 26 (keep living?), but the message of EoE is totally lost for me.

Anyway, as I said, I don't really care so much about messages in Evangelion. I care more about the characters and the story.

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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jun 15, 2023 3:28 pm

View Original PostKonja7 wrote:Anyway, as I said, I don't really care so much about messages in Evangelion. I care more about the characters and the story.

Did you watch it dub, or sub? Maybe something got lost in translation?

I'm not sure this kind of separation of terms even makes sense for Evangelion. Lets subtract "message" and replace it with "theme"; character, story and theme are all intertwined at the end, and I'd say this applies to every incarnation, be it EoTV, EoE or Shin. So I'm not sure why Shin would be more legible, other than that its exposition is far more direct. Everything still functions the same across the material, far as I can tell, it's just more implicit in EoE, or in the case of what exposition there is, stated less plain. I can see why that would be a roadblock, but it always made more sense to me that an ascended form of existence in Instrumentality would lead to less basic articulation, not broader text.

The themes are consistent and gradual in NGE/EoE. And to paint a kind of skeleton and whittle it down to the core, I'd say it all revolves around the trouble with relating to others. The Hedgehog Dilemma is a major signpost, but by the end every element wraps back around in some way. The angels (which are largely sidelined in NTE) even incorporate into this in an abstract way, because it feeds into this theme and tone of what mankind is and amounts to, its limitations, differences and misunderstandings. The AT Fields end up tying in with the body functioning in a kind of philosophical allegory way as an insurmountable brick-wall separating our minds from each other. And then at the end, Instrumentality is the breaking down of these borders.

Did you see NTE first? Because it might have lessened the impact (literally) of what the point was from a meta subtext, and how it felt for it to happen. It worked the same way as it does in NTE, where the border between fiction and reality is also torn down. So that when it happens in EoE, the audience and our reality is being treated in the same fashion as the characters were to that point; borders of misunderstanding are broken down and everything merges.

It was an attempt to use meta elements to pare away in a gradual way, and end up at a completely universal theme. And it was offering the same thing Shinji finds after all that deconstruction to the audience as if we could also share in ownership; it was also, probably, necessary to deconstruct to arrive at that vantage point, and so means are ends and vice versa. The treatment of theme would be incomplete without involving the audience actively, because the theme was about connection. To quote Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message. The difference being that NTE literally says this out loud, whereas EoE wordlessly switches to live-action footage and relates it to a dream.

The idea behind EoTV is basically the same, although it's illustrated in a more direct, almost educational documentary way. Shinji's reality is broken down to nothing and from there re-construction of understanding happens. In EoE it's given a broader context and an ability to exit Instrumentality, but the premise is the same; except here what Shinji is understanding is that the dynamics of his constant retreat into the self are inherently pointless and limiting, and that although the pain he's been perceiving (and using to justify his retreat) are real, the dynamics of relating to others are inherently more meaningful in the end. In a way Eva is an indulgence of the idea of retreat, and once it annihilates everything, it also naturally does away with mistaken notions in the process, and with everything guarded torn out into the open, the elements can be seen with more clarity for what they are and how they interact, and instead of confusing inundation, a way to navigate can arise. This indulgence brings down the borders that have been causing pain, and removes this kind of implicit yearning for understanding that has plagued the characters. The impossible, loneliness-causing idea of unity becomes possible. But the process itself is painful and it makes the function and use of the borders clear, almost as if by surprise, in a "you get what you wished for" sort of way.

It's a complicated journey to end up somewhere simple, or a long journey to wind up back where you were at the start, both changed and unchanged. The only difference between each iteration is I find NTE to feature a lot of elements that don't marry well to the idea, the necessary ingredient of pain is largely absent or misplaced and misattributed, the cause and effect relationships of everything feels less informed, etc. Too many things either ending up feeling like embellishments that distract or are totally useless, like the ambiguity of what the train platform is, Mari, what's going on with reality, etc. Nothing in Thrice's Instrumentality feels like actual psychological depth, but more like a TV talkshow version of therapy where too many elements and nuances are suspiciously unacknowledged.

To me, the ambiguity of EoE services the ideas, because it's far more restrained. The idea of acknowledging pain and its fruits is kept intact by the way the ending is choreographed. Asuka and Shinji are like a distilled version of the prevalent idea of self vs. other. The idea of a persisting hope alternated with a persisting chance for pain is kept intact by Shinji's anger and Asuka's response. It feels like the only possible ending; like a scar beginning to heal but there's still the unavoidable itch and discomfort.

NTE however is pretty much the polar opposite of feeling like a payoff for a consistent and gradual treatment of an idea, because Mari is so ill defined and the entire tone is without any polarity. Things are really really bad then they're really really good. It's just this oddly imbalanced Hollywood/fairy-tale sendoff where the tone is extremely clear, how the audience is supposed to feel is pretty much evangelized, but nothing else is coherent and it renders every prior hour of NTE feeling like a lot of mismatched pieces.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Konja7 » Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:34 pm

View Original PostAxx°N N. wrote:To me, the ambiguity of EoE services the ideas, because it's far more restrained. The idea of acknowledging pain and its fruits is kept intact by the way the ending is choreographed. Asuka and Shinji are like a distilled version of the prevalent idea of self vs. other. The idea of a persisting hope alternated with a persisting chance for pain is kept intact by Shinji's anger and Asuka's response. It feels like the only possible ending; like a scar beginning to heal but there's still the unavoidable itch and discomfort.

I saw NGE first. The first time I saw NGE was in Latin Spanish (which is pretty close to the original), but I watched it with subtitles the second time.

The first time I was very young, so I couldn't understand much. The second time I was older and I understood it much better (I gained a better appreciation for episodes 25 and 26).


To be honest, the whole message that you got from EoE, I could never have concluded that by myself. The whole situation in that movie confused me too much (especially the ending).

After I saw EoE, I was mainly curious about what will happen with the characters after the end. I remember asking myself if there would be a sequel.

Axx°N N.
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Re: Do you not like how Asuka’s arc was resolved?

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jun 15, 2023 7:32 pm

View Original PostKonja7 wrote:After I saw EoE, I was mainly curious about what will happen with the characters after the end. I remember asking myself if there would be a sequel.

I was always in the camp who saw it as totally final, because everything seemed to lead to that conclusion, especially the point of naming it End of, and the fact it already ended once before almost seemed to guarantee there would never be a third time, which would sound crazy until it happened. But I guess some of that is because I got used to the idea of reading it as final for so long, in a time before Rebuild was even announced as in production.
Après moi le déluge!


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