Postby Jornophelanthas » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:07 am
I think that Anno's quote to focus more on entertainment reflects an artistic choice that distinguishes Rebuild from NGE, in order to make it more accessible to the segments of the audience that care less about the psychological aspects of the story. Anno is apparently shunning a narrative technique that was everywhere throughout NGE: the monologue.
Nearly every episode of NGE contained at least one long monologue of a character talking to him/herself, occasionally in the form of extended flashbacks, and occasionally being disturbed by the hinted interference of either an Angel or an Evangelion's soul. This was what some here called the "epilepsy inducing" scenes.
However, none of this is in Rebuild. Instead, Anno uses different tools to portray the inner turmoil of his (main) characters.
For example:
- Dialogue, not monologue
Shinji's hell train sequences are half-remembered shards conversation (where it's unclear whether they're even his own memories) that are brought in different voices. It's no longer his own voice questioning himself (where in some cases you may doubt whether one of Shinji's voices is even Shinji himself).
- Short, not drawn out
Any stream of consciousness scene lasts only a short time, with very few actual lines or interchange. This makes those all the more important, but at the same time more difficult to interpret.
- No more explicit thoughts
Instead of characters saying their thoughts out loud to nobody in particular, a lot of their inner workings is portrayed through their expressions and posturing. At most, one or two lines are uttered by the character, in order to clarify to the viewer what it is that they're mulling over.
(Rei in Rebuild 2.0 is a prime example here. She is not reciting Evangelion-induced stream-of-consciousness "poems" to the viewers any more. Instead, she is seen staring at a pill with slumped shoulders, or raising a kitchen knife with an expression of utmost concentration, or standing forlorn next to a garbage container, clutching Shinji's discarded music player.)
- Show, don't tell
Rebuild uses (symbolic) imagery in order to reflect the inner workings of characters. The blood and dirt on Shinji's hands, the close ups of Kaji's watermelon patch, Rei holding Gendo's glasses or Shinji's music player, the weird imagery inside Asuka's entry plug as the 9th Angel ("Bardiel") invades her consciousness; these scenes all show key moments in characters' development, with the objects representing or symbolizing some special meaning to the character.
(Asuka's doll is another one of these symbols, but we are unfortunately not yet told what it represents. I wouldn't be surprised if her relationship to the colour red will also prove to be significant later on.)
In conclusion, the absence of the "traditional" (NGE) method of conveying psycho-analytical reflections does not mean that the psycho-analysis is absent. You just have to recognize the new methods chosen by Anno to convey the message.