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my first exposure to eva was in the early 2000s amongst an internet enclave that mostly liked it but were also kinda dismissive of its importance and throwing words like "overrated" around, obviously decades later guess who had the last laugh. this did not encourage me to seek out the series, plus my entire anime viewing at the time hinged on cable tv cause i only had dialup and no spare cash for dvds. when i went to college, i finally had to opportunity to watch the original tv series through the library, i liked the first half fine but i really pored over the second half, especially from episode 18 on. even though i really liked rewatching those episodes and reading interpretations on the internet, eva never really became a favorite favorite of mine before i exhausted myself on reading up on it and put the whole thing back on my mental shelf. the library didn't have end of eva on dvd so instead of doing the obvious and looking it up on my college internet, i refrained from ever watching the thing for whatever reason and instead read synopses, summaries, transcripts, joke summaries, joke reviews, interpretations of certain scenes, and dumb memes of certain scenes, never experiencing the whole film for myself. until this past weekend in the theater. here's some thrown together thoughts about it, which probably reflect my own preoccupations with eva: -a good chunk of the film is devoted to shinji's pathological obsession with asuka, arguably the richest relationship from the tv series to explore, with probably shinji/misato a close second. the film opens with shinji intiating aggressive physical contact with asuka to provoke a response and ends with shinji performing an even harsher physical act, where he finally gets the response he longed for (forced?) from her but, considering what he has(n't) done to/for her throughout, probably doesn't deserve. shinji lusts after asuka physically, he wants her conscious if only to validate his miserable self-image & how he ruined her life but he simultaneously wants to kill her in order run away from those things. and the film is explicit about how shinji still can't really recognize her as independent person beyond what he wants out of her, maybe until that aforementioned ending. perhaps shinji tries to strangle asuka that second time in order to prove to himself that he sucks and to assume full responsibility for ruining her life, ignoring asuka's own agency and responsibility for the problems in her life. shinji could be enamored of this form of control he has over asuka, something that's not present with his relationship with misato. shinji wants to connect with others again while having everyone retain their separate consciousnesses, but judging by asuka's immortal final line, he still has a ways to go in carrying it out in healthy ways; you are always a work-in-progress, depicted in the most brutal fashion. one of, if not the most, painful moments in the whole enterprise is shinji's absolute despair at seeing unit-02 being carried off in pieces by the masspro evas and to really hammer the point home, the sequence is repeated after the mid-credits intermission as if we were coming back from commercial break or a "last time on nge" even though it's a drat theatrical film (though it would make sense for possible tv airings) -it was so nice of anno to have seele and the nerv techs/fuyutsuki finally just say what's literally going on, step-by-step, after concealing a lot of it during the series to preserve the mystery. also think it's funny that the remnants of nerv were relatively casual about their coworkers getting killed (built different after 2nd impact i guess) & having the whole geofront getting carried off into space, all while providing exposition through monitor readings using the same storyboards used throughout the tv series. was also surprised by how long they lasted compared to a bunch of more important characters -absolutely perfect that shinji is instantly elated, the brightest expression he shows throughout the entire film, when giant kaworu appears before him after being loving terrified of giant rei. maybe i'll catch eoe again later tonight and come up with a bunch of new points contradicting the ones i just made. if i ever get around to the rebuilds, it'll probably when i'm at the age when anno made them
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Mar 20, 2024 05:56
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:28 |
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I like asuka because she almost instantly made shinji a more interesting character because of the contrast in the reactions she drew out of him compared to rei and misato (not that shinji wasn't interesting before) Also, after rewatching eoe in a theater a few days ago, the song i've been coming back to is not komm, but me alternating between thanatos and everything you've ever dreamed
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Mar 25, 2024 14:56
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