Re-Watched Evangelion for Raid "Preparation"

[_Aelys_]

I consider the series, especially its second half and EoE, to be personal masterpieces.

I know a lot of people hate the end of the series, EoE, and 3.0 precisely because it avoids all the clichés of Japanese animation, namely a shonen hero ready to save everyone. What 2.0 basically does

The fact that you prefer the Rebuilds 1.0 or especially 2.0 but hate EoE and 3.0 is more or less proof that you don't really like it when works delve a bit into the psychology of the characters or events that don't end well.

This is not a criticism, everyone has their own tastes and expectations. Don't get me wrong, I think 2.0 is a good movie and entertaining. However, I think it's a bad Evangelion movie.

Finally, I think I must be one of the rare fans who loved Evangelion without focusing particularly on the mecha aspect, where many shots were reused, there were many still images, and the music played on the tension, all of which made Hideaki Anno's work unique (For example, the hacking of Magi in episode 13 or the last 7 episodes).
I also really like it when he develops the "military" aspect and the planning stages. This is something we see in episode 6 or Evangelion 1.0 (Who wanted to improve episode 6 and one of the reasons behind the Rebuild movies), this aspect can also be found in the Shin Godzilla movie.

As I said in the other thread, what worries me about the FF14 crossover is if they push the meta aspect in the Alliance raid.
FF14 is a refuge for many of us. It would be incredibly bold to finish the raid with images of reality, to see YoshiP himself and tell you, "Stop spending your hours in a virtual world to escape your depression."
This is a recipe for disaster in the forums or Social Media and could put Square and FF14 in fire, especially in Japan.

That's why I think it'll be fan-service oriented. Mecha, waifus, plugsuits, school uniforms.
That said, if the raid finale takes place in an increasingly desperate event with an EoE-style finale and a reprise of Komm Susser Tod, it'll be a 10/10 for me.

[Turtledeluxe]

I think its easy to type out plot points in a way that makes any story look reductive. You can argue XIV has done the same ending 3 or 4 times (wanna take a trip down memory lane) but it also takes all the detail and nuance away. I find the analysis of episodes 22-24 here pretty off the mark. Regarding oversexualization, I won't defend egregious camera angles or poses but I will say Evangelion does deal with dark subject matter and traumatized individuals. You might not notice this because they emotionally oscillate between extremes and it can be easy to see this as contrived. Regarding Kaworu its like, I guess you don't know disregulated people can be prone to lovebombing. And that's exactly what happens, its not unbelievable whatsoever.

Growth and rehabilitation do not just continue to tread off in a linear way. Those are bs stories. Experiencing setbacks, falling back into old patterns, is extremely common. The way arc happen in XIV for example, thats not the average case where someone grows and just stays in a permanent state of success. Alphinaud for example.

[DiaDeem]

Now watch Gurren Lagann. Some of the people worked on Eva went on to form studio trigger and made Gurren Lagann as a sort of response to the premise of Eva, and even an antithesis to Eva.

Thanks for the recommendation

[TeresaFortell]

I consider the series, especially its second half and EoE, to be personal masterpieces.

I know a lot of people hate the end of the series, EoE, and 3.0 precisely because it avoids all the clichés of Japanese animation, namely a shonen hero ready to save everyone. What 2.0 basically does

The fact that you prefer the Rebuilds 1.0 or especially 2.0 but hate EoE and 3.0 is more or less proof that you don't really like it when works delve a bit into the psychology of the characters or events that don't end well.

This is not a criticism, everyone has their own tastes and expectations. Don't get me wrong, I think 2.0 is a good movie and entertaining. However, I think it's a bad Evangelion movie.

In my humble opinion, it is the engagement with the works of Hegel and, to a lesser extent, Kierkegaard that sets this anime apart from the others, as it rejects Hegel's end-of-history. Looking at the surface, it is just mechas fighting. However, it touches on many of the elements Hegel wrote about in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Particularly, the concepts of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in the process of Determinate Negation represent the conflict between individualism and collectivism.

Thesis, or the immediacy, represents the state of the individual, or the entity that represents each character in the show. In this state, individuals are incomplete and isolated, and they cannot truly understand one another, thereby becoming capable of hurting one another (Hegel, 1807, p. 61). This conflict, called the antithesis or negation, is evident in the interactions among Shinji and Asuka, Misato, and Gendo (Hegel, 1807, p. 62). As such, the Human Instrumentality Project pursued by SEELE is therefore viewed as the synthesis, or the sublation, the resolution of these conflicts via the merging of all contradictions into unity, wherein this state, the individual is obliterated, and the unity resolves the conflicts brought upon by the thesis, or individuality (Hegel, 1807, p. 75).

However, what really defines eva is the ultimate choice Shinji made at the end of the EoE. He rejected the synthesis for the end of history and embraced the flaws of the individual, thereby bringing the world back to its original state. In other words, he negates the unity as he believes only the existence of pain, the antithesis, can provide proof that the individual, or the immediacy, exists. Therefore, Eva is seen as both a representation and a slight subversion of the Hegelian Dialectic, which isn't something you see commonly displayed in animations.


Reference:
Hegel, G.W.F. (1807). The Phenomenology of Spirit.

[DiaDeem]

it avoids all the clichés of Japanese animation

Yeah, that time where Shinji slips and "accidentally" lands on top of a naked Rei with his hand conveniently landing on her boob had never been done before or since in Japanese animation. Then there's that time where the tsundere girl kicks a pervert boy that just did something obscene in front of her, or the EVIL dark room with the EVIL BAD GUYS lurk, or that time where after Kaji tells him to do something, so he goes back and saves the day like a shonen Hero at the end of Episode 19 and into Episode 20.

There's more. All those cliches are there. You are just deciding they don't bother you when they're in Eva, which is fine, but don't pretend they aren't there.

you don't really like it when works delve a bit into the psychology of the characters

Oh, I was enjoying OG Eva alright. Shinji is a good kid, and I think the hate towards him is rather unwarranted. The whole Misato/Ristuko/Kaji dynamic was super engaging, and I even like Maya, Makoto and Shigeru.

But then the show stopped being about any of that, and it became about a pretentious nihilistic message about the end of the world, and how Shinji is a coward, despite him coming through every single fucking time up to this point.

The whole movie is a self indulgent mess... Unless you think Shinji jacking off to a comatose teenage woman was "deep psychological analysis" and an integral part of the story.

It would be incredibly bold to finish the raid with images of reality, to see YoshiP himself and tell you, "Stop spending your hours in a virtual world to escape your depression.

I don't think Yoshida would do that.

As a species, we have always gravitated towards fantastic stories to enjoy and live in their worlds. For literal millennia, people told stories to one another, which then became paintings, songs and books throughout modern history. People would devour books and get lost in their worlds. Then the 20th century came, and we got motion pictures, animation, and gaming.

Telling people to "fuck off, go outside" is rather insane and reductive. People don't escape to games, movies, books or music because they don't wanna live in the real world. They let us explore our human condition and visit unique places and emotions.

People that don't go outside and obsess over fiction were not invented by Japanese anime. People did that with books for literal centuries, and those that don't wanna interact with the real world just won't, regardless of anime existing or not.

At this point I just hope the raid is fun, the story is entertaining, and that we get some cool glam.

[DiaDeem]

Growth and rehabilitation do not just continue to tread off in a linear way. Those are bs stories. Experiencing setbacks, falling back into old patterns, is extremely common. The way arc happen in XIV for example, thats not the average case where someone grows and just stays in a permanent state of success. Alphinaud for example.

Yeah, Rebuild 4 did that too in the village. But to go back to the OG show: I like Shinji. I genuinly don't understand why people hate him so much. He's reacting like any kid would, and still coming through for those he cares about. It'd be insane if this didn't affect him, and not only do I think it's remarkable, but it also speaks to the strength of the growing bonds he formed through shared experiences with the other pilots, and through daily life with his friends and Misato as well.

End doesn't care to build upon any of this. You could cut all of Eva, introduce Shinji as a troubled kid pilot that had to kill Kaworu last episode, and it'd make no difference to the movie's plot. It's clumsy and feels incredibly rushed, imho.

I'd rather watch them play piano and bond through music and shared experiences than a single awkward bath scene.

[DiaDeem]

Thesis, or the immediacy, represents the state of the individual, or the entity that represents each character in the show. In this state, individuals are incomplete and isolated, and they cannot truly understand one another, thereby becoming capable of hurting one another (Hegel, 1807, p. 61). This conflict, called the antithesis or negation, is evident in the interactions among Shinji and Asuka, Misato, and Gendo (Hegel, 1807, p. 62). As such, the Human Instrumentality Project pursued by SEELE is therefore viewed as the synthesis, or the sublation, the resolution of these conflicts via the merging of all contradictions into unity, wherein this state, the individual is obliterated, and the unity resolves the conflicts brought upon by the thesis, or individuality (Hegel, 1807, p. 75).

Thank you so much for this, truly.

I'm not a philosopher, and I will accept the fact that a lot of this stuff really just plainly flew over my head while watching.

That said, I find some of the stuff Hegel says (at least in the way you present it) as... at least questionable. Of course it's impossible to fully ever understand one another, and of course we're meant to hurt each other, even those we love most, but that's just part of the human condition. There's no "perfect fix" to this.

Who are SEELE and why are they even pursuing the Instrumentality Project? What drove them to conclude that this was the only way forward? Even the most dense objects in the universe are held together from literal implosion by individuality. Neutron degeneracy pressure is the only thing that prevents a neutron star from becoming a singularity, which by itself is not even an object anymore, rather just an infinite point of density. In a true Human Instrumentality fulfillment, there would be no humanity left by definition, which makes the whole thing sound even more insane as a plot point in the story.

And that's the thing in the end: If we consider Eva as an allegory for all these philosophical concepts, I can see why it can be interesting as an exercise... but as a story? I still think it's not very good when it comes down to trying to wrap all these ideas in a way that makes said story complete or even reasonable, at least when we're talking about OG and End. It's a mess, and makes me wonder if they themselves delved into something they just didn't fully understand. I can respect the attempt, but the story only ever got so far.

In this philosophical sense, Rebuild is far more simplistic, but I think it's more successful as a complete story.

Again: I'm not a philosopher. I was only talking about Eva as a story and its characters. I don't think I'd be capable of engaging a true philosophical debate without dedicating myself to studying it for a while. But truly, thank you very much. Your post was very valuable to me. I wasn't trying to engage Eva in bad faith. There's a reason I gave the whole thing another chance. This perspective is far more valuable to me than "you don't like it because it's not cliche anime".

[TeresaFortell]

That said, I find some of the stuff Hegel says (at least in the way you present it) as... at least questionable. Of course it's impossible to fully ever understand one another, and of course we're meant to hurt each other, even those we love most, but that's just part of the human condition. There's no "perfect fix" to this.

That's more often the criticism levelled against Hegel in his writing, as he was trying to establish logical frameworks for the human condition, which is itself abstract and hard to quantify, and therefore should not rely on a rigid framework. As for the "fix" to the underlying issue, you are correct in saying that there isn't a perfect fix, and Hegel does indeed address this and proposes a potential solution. He recognises that it is impossible to achieve full understanding, so he proposes a solution which is known as the Mutual Recognition. In this concept, which is presented as a rebuttal against his very own dialectic, he writes the following "Self-consciousness is in and for itself while and as a result of its being in and for itself for an other; i.e., it is only as a recognised being"(Hegel, 1807, p. 109). Put it in layman's terms, he means that the other, the pain and hurt we do to each other, are the essential elements that determine the "self", and we cannot truly recognise each other as free individuals until we recognise the impossibility of fully understanding each other, since the inability to fully understand each other creates the aforementioned conflicts. In other words, knowing that we cannot truly fully understand each other is the step towards recognising each other as individuals.


References:

Hegel, G.W.F. (1807). The Phenomenology of Spirit.

[TeresaFortell]

Who are SEELE and why are they even pursuing the Instrumentality Project? What drove them to conclude that this was the only way forward? Even the most dense objects in the universe are held together from literal implosion by individuality. Neutron degeneracy pressure is the only thing that prevents a neutron star from becoming a singularity, which by itself is not even an object anymore, rather just an infinite point of density. In a true Human Instrumentality fulfillment, there would be no humanity left by definition, which makes the whole thing sound even more insane as a plot point in the story.

Regarding SEELE, they want to pursue the Instrumentality Project because they fear the Hedgehog's Dilemma presented in humanity. The Hedgehog's Dilemma is an example provided by Arthur Schopenhauer in his Parerga and Paralipomena. In the Hedgehog's Dilemma, Schopenhauer describes a group of porcupines wanting to stay warm in the winter, lest they freeze to death. However, staying together for warmth means these porcupines need to stay close, and their spines can injure each other. Equating this to humanity, he believes that the social friction, the pain and suffering we inflict upon each other, is essential towards "the middle distance" where we "finally discover and at which a coexistence is possible, courtesy and good manners" (Schopenhauer, Adrian Del Caro and Janaway, 2015, p. 584). SEELE sees humanity in its current state as flawed and imperfect. These elements precipitate the Hedgehog's Dilemma, dooming humanity to eternal suffering. Therefore, SEELE concludes that pursuing synthesis through the project is the ultimate way to resolve this dilemma, because human suffering is evident only when humans are separate individuals. The fulfilment of which would see SEELE elevate themselves to a higher level, tantamount to godhood.


References:

Schopenhauer, A., Adrian Del Caro and Janaway, C. (2015). Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays / Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[RedLolly]

Now watch Gurren Lagann. Some of the people worked on Eva went on to form studio trigger and made Gurren Lagann as a sort of response to the premise of Eva, and even an antithesis to Eva.

What's funny is how many players mentioned Endwalker was basically Gurren Lagann with how many details in the messaging were similar while playing it.

So I'm extra interested to see how the one that's supposed to be heavy and difficult to get through being in FFXIV after EW pushed such hope in spite of hell.