1)3.33
2) 3.01+1.01
3)2.22
4) 1.11

I don't think I like the rebuilds. My objection for them is that I don't really think they justify their existence until the 3rd movie, since most of it is retreading old ground without the depth or exploring new angles.

So yeah, I think that's why I am putting the third and fourth installments.... I think since they're so divergent there's more to talk about.

1) 2.22
2) 1.11
3) 3.0 + 1.0
4) 3.33

Overall I liked them but not as much as the original show. I re-watched everything a few days ago and felt nothing at the end of 3.0+1.0 while seeing EoE again let me feeling like I was hit by a truck.

It is a bit contrarian considering 1.11 is my second favorite, but I like that the movies are different from the original, if they just remade the original as it was there would be no point in the movies existing overall.

Shiro Sagisu knocked it out of the park with the music though, absolutely my favorite part from all the movies without any doubt.

After reading all of this I feel like I cheated.

I didn't see any of the rebuilds until Saturday night, when I watched them all back-to-back.

I had good and bad feelings. At times I felt like I didn't want it to do what it was doing. But overall, I am glad I watched them. They are flawed. I'm not sure how to rank them yet, since I watched all of it in one 9 hour binge and that was literally less than 48 hours ago.

Somehow I kept myself spoiler-free and only knew that Mari existed. I had also seen Asuka with an eyepatch in images and long-haired Rei, but I didn't know for sure if they were fan fantasies or what.

Being a slow-to-action fan of the original (I didn't fully watch the show in full until six or seven years ago) and one who chose to dodge the rebuilds until they were all out.... well I missed all the suspense, theory-building, and investment of it all. I got it all in one night.

THat helps me understand why the disappointments hit so deeply for people who feel cheated.

Anyway---I liked them enough, even if they are an apocryphal commentary. I consider them an alternate universe created by Shinji after he and Asuka woke up, somehow. OR they could be and alternate what it that helps illustrate the characters back in the original, or something. I felt like I got more to think about with my characters.

I liked the meta aspect. I loved the village parts. No love for Mari, but I am not mad she existed--I just would rather it had been different. She annoyed me.

Adult Kensuke and Toji were A+, and I even liked Hikari although she was impossibly wholesome. What can I say? Touch rice. It's a good idea.

Mixed feelings about the ending, but I liked Gendo's monologue. I realize this might be a bad sign about me but I always sort of wanted to like him. I wanted him to find a way out of being a bad person. Maybe for Shinji's sake.

I don't know what to think about the conclusion's moral aetiology of evil--maybe gendo doesn't typify it anyway, as he is just one person. But I was gratified by the ending. I will point out however, that it does resemble "Return of the Jedi." (Hopefully I didn't spoil return of the Jedi for anyone)

I was thinking about something today... The whole of Instrumentality felt really weak in Shin overall, at least in my opinion. The individual scenes with the main characters were good, but the general vibe and aesthetic didn't do much to me. Lots of whites, yellows and pinks going on. A very "happy" vibe to it all. And you can barely understand what's happening if you're not a big fan who watched the movie several times over. EOE's felt more genuine somehow...

My current feeling is that the rebuilds are only a fun exploration of an alternate universe that rekindles appreciation for the original. That said there were a lot of good parts and it was kind of like "It's a wonderful life" where he sees an alternate universe. I'll watch them again, but I don't think they are better or that they can stand alone at all.

I'm glad I watched them. I like the original a lot better however and I don't think there is really a comparison. There are many things I really didn't like, though, even though as I said there were plenty of good parts.

1) 2.22
2) 1.11
3) Girlfriend of Steel
4) NIKKE cross-collaboration
5) Godzilla x Evangelion pachinko machines
6) 3.01+1.01
7) Mahjong Instrumentality Project
8) 3.33

It annoys me that ppl generally rank Q as the worst tbh

It's a bit incomplete on its own without the next one to deliver the "punchlines" but its arguably where the Rebuild really got brave & dared to do unique shit that pisses ppl off.

To date its the only movie ever that manage to upset me enough it affected me in "real life" like I could barely focus on uni for several days - granted that is probably because i was already attached to these blorbos, but I remember that I kept really feeling just how hopeless poor Shinji's situation seemed.

I don't think I would have "accepted" the happy-ish ending if I hadn't previously been convinced that it would've happen.

Overall I think 2.22 is still my fave but it gained more oomph by how the positive-ish growth of everyone was afterwards subjected to this harsh test that lead them all prove they actually meant business. It reflects how the world doesn't automatically reward you for trying to do the right thing & you need to press through an unrewarding phase before you see results - which is just the truth in my experience. You would've had a much less 'honest' work if the positive turns in 2.0 resulted in instant success for everyone.

As such Q is absolutely a prime example of the "Geode theory of character development" in the same way that EoE was.

I agree. In fact, I think Q is the best one by far.
Not as good as EOE, but a nice and condensed psychological thriller. I'd argue it works fine on its own too.

Kendrix wrote:It's a bit incomplete on its own without the next one to deliver the "punchlines" but its arguably where the Rebuild really got brave & dared to do unique shit that pisses ppl off.

I am happy that the rebuilds wanted to be brave and try something new.

Q has the script force everyone be mad at Shinji just enough for him to flee to Gendo. It's intended to be confusing for Shinji but it's also confusing to the viewer as well. There is nothing wrong in trying something new, but the end product should be good.

marchon wrote:Q has the script force everyone be mad at Shinji just enough for him to flee to Gendo. It's intended to be confusing for Shinji but it's also confusing to the viewer as well.

I mean... That was the point. Most of the NTE movies are seen from Shinji's perspective, with the only exception being HA, which focuses on too many characters, all at once. But JO and Q are clearly centered on Shinji. I think the idea was to simplify the story and bring us closer to the protagonist.
The story wants us to be confused.

BernardoCairo wrote:

marchon wrote:Q has the script force everyone be mad at Shinji just enough for him to flee to Gendo. It's intended to be confusing for Shinji but it's also confusing to the viewer as well.

I mean... That was the point. Most of the NTE movies are seen from Shinji's perspective, with the only exception being HA, which focuses on too many characters, all at once. But JO and Q are clearly centered on Shinji. I think the idea was to simplify the story and bring us closer to the protagonist.
The story wants us to be confused.

There is a difference between having a confused protagonist (which makes sense) and a confused audience. This is a tough line to tow from a narrative perspective. It makes sense Shinji is confused, and you do want the audience (by proxy) confused for some time as well, so they can put themselves in his shoes as the protagonist.

At the same time you don't want the audience to divest themselves from the narrative, they have to remain curious and invested, and having the situation be too confusing risks the audience becoming alienated.

I found myself becoming alienated, and disengaged from the narrative of Q. I know many people did not and were able to appreciate the film. It unfortunately did not work for me.

marchon wrote:There is a difference between having a confused protagonist (which makes sense) and a confused audience. This is a tough line to tow from a narrative perspective. It makes sense Shinji is confused, and you do want the audience (by proxy) confused for some time as well, so they can put themselves in his shoes as the protagonist.

That's interesting, because I remember discussing POV with someone I saw it with. I don't think I ever typed it out though.

I'm actually of the mind that Q works in this way, in that it's immersive from Shinji's POV. At the least, it's self-contained.

But then in Shin the POV is kind of all over the place. In a way, you can say that Rei becomes the POV character, as she's innocent and fresh-eyed and has basic concepts explained to her ... it's largely through her that we as an audience experience the village.

But it's not quite as immersive because, well, she is such a blank slate. Meanwhile, we've been cut off from Shinji and he mostly sulks.

Then later on we're still kept at a distance from him. We aren't really let into his head, we're just shown that he has an epiphany. And we follow mostly externally as he blankfaces through the narrative.

Then of course Instrumentality pries open the POV, but really we only get deep into Gendo's mind. All the other mind-meld is largely through Shinji's POV, but he's operating very external there too. He exists mostly to coax out conclusions, 'talk at' the subjects of Instrumentality, who never drift too far from Shinji's presence.

We get little (none?) scenes that don't feature Shinji in Q. I guess you can count the opener with Asuka, but that's a good example in an opposite sense: yet again, Q has a scene that is immersive from just one character's perspective.

But then Shin has, like, Asuka and Mari, alone, talking, Asuka and Kensuke, Toji with his family, and Misato and Ritsuko talking, and those scenes are pulling double-duty because they're essentially making up for lack of exposition in Q. In the scene with Misato and Ritsuko, for example, they both reiterate things they both logically know self-evidently, and there's no real reason to be going over them again. So it's almost like there's need there for a third party POV character to facilitate the exposition, but there isn't. I don't even know how to fix that myself, but clearly they couldn't figure out why Misato would say anything to benefit the audience, so she just says it to benefit the audience. Or to compare openers, we have a scene where Mari's POV is switching back to Ritsuko's POV. What's interesting here is that the two never synthesize, which is a different problem ... like, outside of a scene where Ritsuko is on comms, does she ever interact with Mari? It's strange.

I'd say that Shin is, from a POV standpoint, pretty confused. It might be its central flaw, really. For all its faults, at least Q has a central through-line.

Axx°N N. wrote:But then Shin has, like, Asuka and Mari, alone, talking, Asuka and Kensuke, Toji with his family, and Misato and Ritsuko talking, and those scenes are pulling double-duty because they're essentially making up for lack of exposition in Q. In the scene with Misato and Ritsuko, for example, they both reiterate things they both logically know self-evidently, and there's no real reason to be going over them again. So it's almost like there's need there for a third party POV character to facilitate the exposition, but there isn't. I don't even know how to fix that myself, but clearly they couldn't figure out why Misato would say anything to benefit the audience, so she just says it to benefit the audience. Or to compare openers, we have a scene where Mari's POV is switching back to Ritsuko's POV. What's interesting here is that the two never synthesize, which is a different problem ... like, outside of a scene where Ritsuko is on comms, does she ever interact with Mari? It's strange.

I'd say that Shin is, from a POV standpoint, pretty confused. It might be its central flaw, really. For all its faults, at least Q has a central through-line.

I find it harder to say why I dislike Shin, except I've seen it twice and found it disappointing both times. It tries to make up for the original Q by exploring how characters changed as a result of Shinji's actions at the ending of Ha, but since it's occurring a few movies later, it all seems a bit forced, almost like it wanted to retcon or explain the previous film. In addition it has to wrap up the story that NTE was trying to tell. I think that's why the movie, while the longest, doesn't feel that long; it needed time to explore the characters and themes it wanted to tell - including changes to the story that happened post-Jo - but couldn't. You pinpoint some of the characters it focuses on but for all the time spent on (for instance) Mari and RItsuko, I don't get a much of a sense of either character. Paris is beautifully animated but I can't for the life of me explain the narrative point of it, except as a big battle sequence. The village is nice but Shinji goes from being justifiably despondent to being willing to get in the Eva again. Anno-as-Shinji making peace with his father and saying goodbye to characters he created makes sense on a meta level but is disconnected from the rest of the films.

(Note this is not a request for members here to explain Q/Shin to me in attempt to have me appreciate the films. I don't expect my writings here to change your mind, do not expect to change mine.)

The problem with stating one dislikes Q and Shin is that it inevitably leads to accusations that one dislikes change, something almost impossible to defend against.

And since Jo is essentially the first few episodes with better animation, that leaves Ha which, while good, isn't enough to support enjoying NTE as a whole.

Honestly, 3.0 completely derailed the whole saga, at least for me.

In making the consequences for Shinji’s actions in the second film so huge and so horrific, undermining pretty much everything that it had built up, it really made it hard to imagine the saga ever having some sort of ending that didn’t involve him taking responsibility via sacrificing his life, which goes against the whole “choosing life no matter what” message.

The last film tried its best, but still came off as unsatisfactory because the third film went so far in punishing Shinji purely for meta-commentary, that anything afterwards couldn’t really end happily without it undermining the deaths of billions.

Really, the decision to have billions dead as a result of Shinji trying to save Rei at the end of 2.0 is the thing that ruins it all. Any attempt at trying to say “Shinji simply did what he thought was right” or “it’s just about dealing with the feelings of responsibility” ignores that fact that again, BILLIONS of people, with lives of their own, ended because of what Shinji did. It’s trivializing such an abominable outcome.