What are everyone's thoughts, feelings, opinions about both the old and new Evangelion series?

4.0 SPOILERS

I thought the rebuild ending was more depressing than EoE, partly because when given the power to create LITERALLY ANYTHING, Shinji goes ahead and creates a copy of THIS WORLD (evidenced by the use of a live action shot in the end), where he will live as a capitalist salaryman with his literal waifu.

At least in EoE everyone could choose to come out of instrumentality by themselves to create a new world, thus leaving everything ambiguous.

Pure ideology, Mark Fisher is vindicated yet again.

They also couldn't go 5 MINUTES without showing some 14 year old girl ass....

  • barrbaric [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The Originals: Still good, 10/10, art.

    The Rebuilds: :i-told-you-dog: and also :ancap-good:

    I think it's not really relevant that Shinji doesn't establish communism (though that would, of course, be cool). The rebuilds (especially 3.0 and 4.0) are Anno yelling at weebs that they need to stop living in the past, and have to find happiness in the real world.

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I think it’s not really relevant that Shinji doesn’t establish communism (though that would, of course, be cool).

      It is tho in both a meta sense and in the animu itself. Its a direct admission from the Zietgiest that nobody can imagine a better future or a better world than the one we currently have, because we are at the so called end of history. This was supposed to be Shinji's self-actualizing moment, a chance to create something better than the current situation with the total, absolute, power to do so, and yet he chose subservience to the elite under the same power structures that led to the 2nd impact and the same society that created the fundamental alienation that the characters feel. That is fucking depressing imo.

      Anno yelling at weebs that they need to stop living in the past, and have to find happiness in the real world.

      And they do this by becoming a salaryman and magically getting this perfect girlfriend. Its clear that Anno's personal financial success and marriage over the past few years influenced direction. The originals told an authentic story about human ruin and depression open to interpretation, with no didactic moral imperative to "happiness" being pushed. The rebuilds, on the other hand, do the opposite, with a clear didactic message being retconned in.

      • barrbaric [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I agree that the ending of 4.0 is bad because it is both very simple and very preachy, I was just pointing out that the ending (and 4.0 in general) is focused on the meta level, so the textual level is more or less irrelevant.

        On the textual level, though: in fairness to Shinji, the current real world is better than the world he lived in, because while we do live under capitalism, with all that entails, we aren't living in a post-apocalyptic eternal summer where 2/3 of the world died to the second impact, and we don't have biblical angels trying to turn us all into Tang. On top of that, he's a child soldier raised in a supremely conservative country, so again, I'd hardly expect him to create the perfect world.

        • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I agree that the ending of 4.0 is bad because it is both very simple and very preachy, I was just pointing out that the ending (and 4.0 in general) is focused on the meta level, so the textual level is more or less irrelevant.

          Indeed m8 sorry if I came off as a bit too hostile.

          On the textual level, though: in fairness to Shinji, the current real world is better than the world he lived in, because while we do live under capitalism, with all that entails, we aren’t living in a post-apocalyptic eternal summer where 2/3 of the world died to the second impact,

          ...yet :ancap-good: (we need a neolib globe emoji)

          But yeah he would in the end create such a world because he's a 14 year old child soldier who has probably only heard good things about the pre-impact world. It also mirror's Anno's own experiences too, since he was lucky enough that his efforts as an animator were rewarded by market forces and he's a millionaire now. Therefore, his ideal world of self-actualization would be this one.