The timeskip's importance to the themes of 3.0+1.0 in contrast with NGE/EoE

[Archer]

This is going to be a (hopefully better formatted and articulated) short write-up on some of my thoughts on the movie's themes which I've posted elsewhere, specifically regarding the 14 year timeskip and how it contributes to turning 3.0+1.0 into the anti-End of Evangelion. I haven't read through the backlogs of the spoiler boards so mods, feel free to merge this into a relevant thread if one exists already.

I went into this movie as someone who was confused and kinda disappointed by some of the at-the-time baffling choices made in 3.0. One of my main complaints that I really wanted addressed by 3.0+1.0 was, why have the timeskip be 14 years when it FEELS like at most 4-5 years have passed? Once I watched 3.0+1.0, the reason became readily clear.

First off, let's sum up some basic-bitch analysis about NGE/EoE. A lot of the latter half of the story revolves around the characters being too deep in their own trauma to be able to properly connect with each other and give each other the help and companionship they need. Kaji is just about the only well-adjusted adult in the cast and everything really kind of goes to shit after he dies, and everything after that is pretty much just a trauma treadmill, with everyone dealing with their own issues, unable to communicate with and help each other, leaving Shinji pretty much at rock bottom at the beginning of EoE. At that point literally everyone he could possibly depend on (not that they would be much help even if they were still available) is gone, and left to his own devices without anyone to help or comfort him he only sinks further (to the lowest of the low, you could say, lol). He only gets kicked out of his catatonic state by witnessing yet another traumatic event that fully pushes him off the deep end and leads to him choosing to trigger Instrumentality to escape the pain.

3.0, if anything, is a remix of the themes from Eps 20-24. Despite 14 years having passed, Misato and the WILLE crew still clearly aren't over the tragedy of 3I, likely because they have to face its reality on a daily basis. Misato's own guilt regarding Kaji's death and abandoning her son get externalized as anger onto Shinji because it's easier just to blame him than to properly deal with her unresolved trauma. Misato et al. basically nonstop verbally abuse Shinji while refusing to explain things to him and expecting him to just understand, which of course drives him to willingly leave with ReiQ and basically do whatever Gendo and Kaworu tell him to, because they're willing to actually fill him in on things (even though the information they feed him is carefully designed to turn him towards their agenda). There's the same basic themes from the latter half of Evangelion: everyone's still actively dealing with the horrors of Third Impact and haven't had time to properly process their grief in the middle of a desolate warzone, and their resultant inability to effectively communicate with Shinji makes things a billion times worse for themselves. 3.0 ends much the same way as Episode 24 leading into EoE: Shinji is at his absolute rock bottom and basically in a catatonic depression, believing that there's no point doing anything because everything he does only makes things worse for everyone.

And this is where the brilliance of the 14 year timeskip kicks in. At this point in EoE, Rei and Kaworu are fucking dead, his friends are all gone, having evacuated Tokyo-3 after their homes were destroyed by the Angel attacks, Asuka's in a coma, and Misato's still dealing with Kaji's death and is basically out of commission as far as Shinji is concerned, even fucking Pen-pen's left with Hikari's family. He has nobody left to turn to for help, so he just slides further into the death-spiral of despair. In 3.0+1.0, however, literally the complete opposite is true. Asuka is still the same old Asuka, and still yells at him and berates him just like he was begging her to in EoE. ReiQ is still alive, and after living among the villagers for a while, starts showing him unconditional love and support even as he tries to push her away. More importantly, he sees his friends again, but not just his friends as they were; these are his friends, grown into well-adjusted adults. They're not hiding secret pain deep inside, they're not barely holding it together under the facade of a responsible adult, they don't fucking die to serve as yet another source of trauma for Shinji. Just let it sink in for a moment that the grown-up versions of Kensuke, Toji and Hikari represent the only unconditionally positive adult role models in all of Evangelion. This is something that was only possible because of the 14 year timeskip, in both a literal and thematic sense.

As a quick side tangent before getting to my main point, after watching Gurren Lagann, I've always thought that the main difference between Shinji and Simon wasn't anything inherent to Shinji himself, but rather his lack of a proper parental figure, who can believe in him in his lowest moments when he's lost all belief in himself, who can push him to become a better, stronger person. Misato tries, but she fails horribly due to her own unresolved issues with parental abandonment and men in general, and while Kaji is the closest thing Shinji has to that (crucially leading him to decide to pilot the Eva once again not through force or coercion but just by giving him good life advice), he of course fucking dies and basically collapses what remains of Shinji's "support network" if it can even be called that, taking Asuka and Misato out of commission as well. And yes, Kamina also fucking dies (surely this is the "no, I am your father!" of anime by this point, right?) but that's when Nia gets introduced as an outside element who through her bluntness, naivete and unconditional kindness serves to give Simon a different perspective on his situation and realize that Kamina would have wanted him to pick himself up and move past his grief, because there's other people out there who depend on him as their leader and that he's doing nobody any good moping around. I've always wondered how Evangelion would've turned out if Shinji DID have that positive adult influence in his life - perhaps if Kaji, instead of Misato, had been the one who picked him up on his first day in Tokyo-3, and took him under his wing. I certainly never expected to see it come out of an actual canon story.

Why's that positive adult influence dependent on the 14 year timeskip? On the most literal and obvious level, 14 years gives enough time for his classmates to grow into adults. But more importantly, it's given them more than enough time to heal from their own trauma off-screen. His old classmates have been through hell and back, living through 3I, undoubtedly losing friends and family in the ensuing chaos, and the scars of that will always remain with them. But 14 years later, they've all adjusted to the uneasy equilibrium of life inside the village, and the utter devastation they must have gone through 14 years ago has led them to treat each new day as a blessing; to remember and pay respects to the pains of the past, but not to dwell on them; to instead focus on moving forwards towards a brighter future. This is something that's literally only possible with a 14 year gap, because it's given them enough time to recover from the horrors of 3I and be able to return to some semblance of a normal life, in sharp contrast with Misato and WILLE, who are still reliving that devastation every day. Now, I'm seeing that the reason it feels more like a 4-5 year timeskip in 3.0 is because for WILLE, the horrors of 3I are still very fresh in their minds. While the villagers have been able to put it all behind them and move on as best they can, with the imminent threat of the corrupted world and the wandering Failures indefinitely held at bay by the sealing pillar, for Misato and the WILLE crew the trauma never ended.

The first act of 3.0+1.0 shows the massive impact this has on Shinji, because while he's near-catatonic for what's implied to be at least a few weeks if not longer, the people around him haven't given up on him and will still support him in his need - either passively like Kensuke and Toji, giving him his space but being there for him if he wants or needs them; actively like Rei, showing him support and affection as best as she can and being there for him in the most literal sense, or even completely in the background like Asuka - lurking in the shadows checking up on him now and again, maybe unknown to Shinji but clearly signalling to the audience that no matter how she may talk to him, she clearly cares about his well-being. At the end of the day, it's not any one person who pulls him out of his funk (even though Rei clearly plays the biggest part), but his own realization that the his friends, Rei and Asuka, and the others at the village genuinely do care about him and want him to get better, and that he's not helping anyone by continuing to mope around at the NERV ruins. And it's at this moment that he decides to start trying to put the past behind him and to move towards the future. I think this is a really good portrayal of recovering from depression and trauma, because it's not something you can easily fix on your own. You need the love and support of others who care about you. But ultimately, nobody can "fix" you for you; ultimately you have to be the one that chooses to stop dwelling on the past and start the road to recovery.

In conclusion, the timeskip allows for the introduction of well-adjusted adults into the world of Evangelion - not people who are that way naturally, but people who had to really work for it. They themselves have recovered from immense struggle of the post-3I world, and are thus in a superior position to help Shinji through his own issues. They are specifically contrasted with the NERV crew, who represent the "old" Eva mindset of traumatized people unable to communicate their problems and help each other, and 3.0 and 3.0+1.0 shows the difference when Shinji is left with the latter (he runs away and fucks things up even more trying to fix his mistakes) versus the former (he grows as a person, leaves the pain of Eva behind him, and develops the courage to finally confront his father and try to understand him as a person). After reflecting on the movie for nearly two days I think I finally understand that this is what the Rebuilds are actually about: not to show a different version of Shinji who's arbitrarily and inexplicably "better" than his anime counterpart, but to show how the same (or similar) Shinji from EoE would've turned out if he actually had people around him who not only genuinely care about him, but knew how to deal with depression and trauma in healthy ways due to their own trials by fire.

[Tumbling Down]

I knew the village was the best part of the movie. I just didn't know why. Thank you for posting this!