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SHISHKABOB posted:Where the angels come from is the greatest question in evangelion because holy poo poo I mean where the gently caress are they coming from??? Space I guess but I mean like jeez that means they're aliens, giant monster aliens coming to destroy us and poo poo. Somehow that whole aspect of the show totally got missed by me the first time I watched it, but jeez it's a pretty terrifying prospect. The show tells you. They come from Adam, just like the Evas. Life on Earth is Lilith-spawn. Adam was in a dormant de-activated state until Lilith-spawn came along and basically switched him on. As a life producing machine, he started producing angel embryos. In Magmadiver they even find one of the angels, on earth, in a volcano, so they're not coming from space.
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May 2, 2014 03:14
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All of the stuff about angles and evas is so contradictory and vague that I'm almost sure they were just making it up as they went along. It's just set dressing for a show about psychological horror and kick rear end robot vs. monster fights.
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May 2, 2014 03:42
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Rewatching because of this thread. One kind of grim detail in episode 2: Their teacher does not notice anything during the lecture. When all the students swarm around Shinji he's just staring off into the distance out the window. Because these kids are robot fodder, so their education isn't treated as paramount, or because of the general sense of hopelessness and doom everyone must be living under.
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May 2, 2014 04:09
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Robotnik Nudes posted:The show tells you. They come from Adam, just like the Evas. Life on Earth is Lilith-spawn. Adam was in a dormant de-activated state until Lilith-spawn came along and basically switched him on. As a life producing machine, he started producing angel embryos. In Magmadiver they even find one of the angels, on earth, in a volcano, so they're not coming from space. Yeah but that's bullshit, you know? I know the show tells us they "come from Adam" (whatever the gently caress that means) but that's about as informative about WHAT the angels are as saying "my dad comes from my grampa". There is no "nitty gritty" source of the angels because that is the whole point, that they are unknowable monstrous aliens who are trying to destroy us. Just like gendo is an unknowable monstrous alien who tries to destroy Shinjis life (from shinjis perspective of course). The whole point of the angels is that they are like your parents when you're a little kid and you don't know anything and are fragile and naive. Who is this person trying to tell me what to do? Why do they hurt me why do they make me angry and sad or frustrated I hate them so much. If you don't KNOW your parents then they are going to be your enemy. If you don't try to connect with them, then they will remain aliens just like the angels. In the show the best examples of this are Shinji and gendo, and Misato and her dad.
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May 2, 2014 04:35
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Robotnik Nudes posted:The show tells you. They come from Adam, just like the Evas. Life on Earth is Lilith-spawn. When they claim they're based on Adam, they're lying. They're Lilith-based.  Also Lilith didn't switch Adam on, the Katsuragi Expedition poking at his frozen, impaled corpse did.
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May 2, 2014 05:15
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SHISHKABOB posted:In the show the best examples of this are Shinji and gendo I'm not so sure about this. I'd say Shinji tries to reach out to Gendo, in his terrified, socially stunted way. The far bigger problem with that relationship is that Gendo is an unfathomably evil motherfucker who breaks everyone around him without even really trying.
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May 2, 2014 05:22
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Robotnik Nudes posted:Rewatching because of this thread. One kind of grim detail in episode 2: Their teacher does not notice anything during the lecture. When all the students swarm around Shinji he's just staring off into the distance out the window. Because these kids are robot fodder, so their education isn't treated as paramount, or because of the general sense of hopelessness and doom everyone must be living under.
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May 2, 2014 05:37
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Spiritus Nox posted:I'm not so sure about this. I'd say Shinji tries to reach out to Gendo, in his terrified, socially stunted way. The far bigger problem with that relationship is that Gendo is an unfathomably evil motherfucker who breaks everyone around him without even really trying. Are the angels unfathomably evil? I mean maybe in rebuild it's more complicated (or less) but the part in end of evangelion where gendo spills his guys about how lovely he felt about the way he treated Shinji says to me that it's a little unfair to say that about him. He's a hosed up guy that's for sure, and he does break people and treat them like poo poo and doesn't care about anything but his own goals but maybe I'm a dumb naive idiot but I can't call him "unfathomably evil", because he's still a human being. I really can't wait to see the forth rebuild movie to see where things go for him.
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May 2, 2014 05:38
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GulMadred posted:There's a fairly simple explanation - Gendo deliberately recruited the least observant man on Earth to do the job. Can you imagine a normal person in his shoes? I'm pretty sure partway into the second one of those Gendo shoots him in the head and replaces him.
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May 2, 2014 05:45
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SHISHKABOB posted:Are the angels unfathomably evil? ... He's a hosed up guy ... and he does break people and treat them like poo poo and doesn't care about anything but his own goals... Erm, yeah, yeah, I'd have to say so. Feeling the slightest twinge of regret when looking back on literal decades of being a manipulative, callous, absuive, vile little scab of a human being does not absolve someone of being so.
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May 2, 2014 05:57
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Spiritus Nox posted:Erm, yeah, yeah, I'd have to say so. Feeling the slightest twinge of regret when looking back on literal decades of being a manipulative, callous, absuive, vile little scab of a human being does not absolve someone of being so. Jeez I never said he was absolved of anything, I just think that painting him as a cardboard "evil guy" cutout is ignoring a lot of stuff. I agree with everything you say there about him, I think gendo is a real piece of poo poo. My real point is that gendo represents the aloof parent, or not even aloof but simply the fact that dads are scary. To a little kid like Shinji who knows nothing about the world, his dad is a terrifying thing. His dad also abandons him and seems to forget about him and then only calls him up cause he needs Shinji for some business purposes. All he insane bullshit that gendo does is just regular parent poo poo blown to an insane proportion, or in other words it's the perspective of a kid on their dad that they don't know very well and are afraid of. There's no communication between a kid shinjis age and his dad, the kid just sees stuff happen and is scared of his dad. The kid grows to hate his dad and to fear him, if he never tries to connect or if the dad continues to gently caress up or whatever. It's all a sad sad hosed up tale of a dad who can't communicate and is afraid of his kid and the kid who can't communicate and is afraid of his dad. And I definitely do not agree that Shinji ever honestly tried to reach out to his dad (in the series at least, in rebuild poo poo hits the fan before they get an honest shot at it). Shinji doesn't even fuckin believe he tried to do it, he tells himself that in one of those train sequences (or at least I'm pretty sure he does). Neither does gendo! They're both at fault. And since evangelion is what it is, poo poo just gets worse and worse and nothing really ever gets "resolved".
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May 2, 2014 06:13
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Honestly, I see Gendo as a way for the writers to show how "loving someone so much you'd literally do anything for them" is just as mentally unhealthy as everyone else with severe problems on the show. Even if what actually happens in the story is kind of... out there, at his core, he was perfectly willing to abuse and manipulate everyone around him to meet his own ends, mainly because he just couldn't learn to move on with life after losing the love of his life.
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May 2, 2014 06:27
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Regalingualius posted:Honestly, I see Gendo as a way for the writers to show how "loving someone so much you'd literally do anything for them" is just as mentally unhealthy as everyone else with severe problems on the show. Even if what actually happens in the story is kind of... out there, at his core, he was perfectly willing to abuse and manipulate everyone around him to meet his own ends, mainly because he just couldn't learn to move on with life after losing the love of his life. It's also about showing the dangers of cutting yourself off from other people, just in a different way than for most of the rest of the cast. Both father and son cut themselves off from humankind because they find it too painful (for their own particular reasons). In Shinji's case, this manifests itself mostly in despair and self-loathing, whereas in Gendo's case, it manifests as pure sociopathy. The fact that Gendo has totally destroyed any physical trace of Yui is important, here: he is only in love with the idea of the woman, rather than an actual human being. Vermain fucked around with this message at 06:15 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 06:12
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Vermain posted:The fact that Gendo has totally destroyed any physical trace of Yui is important, here: he is only in love with the idea of the woman, rather than an actual human being. This is a cool analysis but, isn't Gendo aware of the fact that Yui's soul is the thing that drives Eva-01? And if he was why did Yui have a grave is she wasn't really dead?
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May 3, 2014 08:29
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Facepalm Ranger posted:This is a cool analysis but, isn't Gendo aware of the fact that Yui's soul is the thing that drives Eva-01? And if he was why did Yui have a grave is she wasn't really dead? He's aware of it, but he and a handful of other NERV personnel are the only ones who know. In particular, SEELE doesn't know until much later in the series, and keeping up appearances for them is especially important given they're a big part of why Yui went into... hiding? in the first place. (Probably; a lot of this is guesswork. Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko almost certainly know, though, since Fuyutsuki discussed Yui's plans with her himself, and Ritsuko was involved in the original attempt to recover her from Unit-01 after the contact experiment.) Also even if she's not dead dead, she's not exactly coming over for weekend visitation either.
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 08:42 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 08:37
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So I finished the series tonight. I must say, I loved pretty much everything before Anno brand depression set in. I know it probably wasn't supposed to be, but watching Shinji come back and just scream that he's the Unit 01's pilot then attempt to throw down really made me rethink how I see Shinji. I know he gets a terrible reputation for being whiny, but especially now after my rewatch so far, he seems way more real of a person and believable. Even after 22 and 23 with Asuka and not crazy Rei biting it respectively, how he's acting post that is believable. Hell I don't even hate Asuka, despite her being at some points insufferable. Might have just been the performance, but you feel bad for the girl. I'm not really gonna dwell on TV 25 and 26 because it's been done to death, but the first half of End isn't really as insanely horrific as I remembered. MP Evas are creepy, but SRW has given me more than enough of a chance to blow them away.
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May 4, 2014 05:34
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I still prefer most of Sadamoto's manga version up until the lazy eh ending. Beautiful art, I liked his characterization of the various cast and it still retained Anno depression and doom up to a point, generally I enjoyed the directions he took in embellishing the story and the backstory of the characters (Kaji telling that flashback story, for example, and all the extra stuff about Rei and Ritsuko and Asuka), he seemed more interested on building on the interactions between Shinji and Rei rather than Shinji and Asuka in some ways compared to the anime but I've still got the old Viz volumes of the Eva manga that used to come out years and years and years in between while I waited and I love 'em. Just wish he hadn't messed up that landing. The way the manga ended just didn't seem fitting. But for me, some of my most iconic scenes and visual memorable images are still more manga-centric, I did actually get into Eva by finding the manga first before knowing there was an anime somehow as a kid. There's really power in the Gendo-Shinji relationship because Sadamoto obviously had a lot more time and space to dip into it, that scene with Shinji throwing a fist at Gendo and the scene where they meet on the anniversary of Yui's death, they're just so Evangelion iconic for me.  Also all the schoolfriends stuff with Kensuke and Touji and Hikari is somehow a thousand times more heartbreaking. Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 09:36 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 09:27
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I actually really dislike that scene but that's partially because it it is the start of (what is to me) the lazy and generic ending. The interesting thing about Shinji is that he isn't aggressive and violent in person. He is defined by being passive and inward even in the most extreme of situations. The only time he really lashes out are when he is in an Evangelion and even then it requires an act above and beyond the realm of the norm to bring it out. In particular that scene comes right after his immense passiveness in the face of a threat leads to the Eva-03/Dummy Plug disaster. It is right behind he gives up and leaves NERV entirely and is one of the most inward and self-focused moments Shinji has. It is not the time he should be suddenly being proactive and attempting to attack someone, let along Gendo who is basically the giant center of all his complexes. It's very much an after-the-fact (considering how many years after the anime that scene occurred) 'feel-good' moments the manga throws in. "Oh poo poo, Shinji totally punches Gendo!" Expect Shinji punching Gendo isn't really what makes sense for that moment and it's very much a wish fulfillment moment less than one that makes sense for Shinji as a character. It sort of ends up a prelude to why the ending is lazy and eh. And I'm not opposed to "Shinji gains confidenence and acts on it" but having him attempt to punch Gendo just feels weak. Super Robot Wars handles the same scene but handles it better because even a more confident and more forward Shinji doesn't reject his dad by punching him. He rejects his dad vocally and by acting against him. They even handled the exactly same scene in SRWZ3 in a more interesting way where Shinji rejects his father but continues to pilot for his own goals.
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May 4, 2014 09:54
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I forget most of the stuff in the Eva manga once AT Field Gendo entered the picture.
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May 4, 2014 11:26
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Also even if she's not dead dead, she's not exactly coming over for weekend visitation either. Actually she sees him pretty much every week
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May 4, 2014 11:41
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Something I'd like to point out to people that think the Angels are aliens... Adam was here first. HUMANS are the aliens. Unfortunately for them, they didn't bring a flag.
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May 4, 2014 16:37
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I thought the idea was both were alien. Like the tree of life/knowledge thing, a planet was supposed to get one, but not both.
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May 4, 2014 20:59
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ImpAtom posted:I actually really dislike that scene but that's partially because it it is the start of (what is to me) the lazy and generic ending. You're right, a more confident and forward Shinji wouldn't do that. This is just him snapping and lashing out and I felt like the acts that caused it were above and beyond the realm of the norm to bring it out. The nature of the medium means there's a lot more opportunity for Sadamoto to SERIOUSLY milk the horror and agony of what happens with Touji. I mean, look at this poo poo:             (man I love Sadamoto's art so much) etc. etc. etc. In the context of the manga, the whole Unit 03 situation is really the biggest soulcrushing event in the entire series. There's just a lot more heartstring pulling and cruel preperation for what's coming by fleshing out Touji and Hikari and Shinji and Kensuke and all their interactions early on. That's there in the anime too, but not as much, obviously with the manga Sadamoto had way more space and a billion years to embellish and build on stuff and add scenes. It's a thousand times more of a punch in the face than any of the Eva Unit 03 scenarios in animated Evangelion, even including the memorable version in Rebuild. Sadamoto's Shinji is slightly more emotive and human anyway, I mean you can argue against how he writes Shinji but Fist is not an out of nowhere chapter crammed in considering how he writes Shinji. Considering how much more gruesome and potent and horrifying the whole Touji/Unit 03 plot unfolds in the manga and how extra-provoking Gendo is, it just felt like it worked and had a cause whereas it wouldn't work in the anime. The whole business with Touji just feels a lot more impactful and emotionally powerful in the manga, so the "payoff" of Fist (it's barely a feel-good payoff since it's not like it's a bold brave act, it's an act of feeble futility that Kaji stops anyway) didn't feel "off" when I read it. I get what you mean though...Like I said, I started off with the manga, so I've got that nostalgia and bias. Manga Shinji only seemed slightly "off" to me, not to a degree that hurt the story...up until the crappy ending of course. You mentioning that Fist and similar chapters are the start of what ends up being a crappy ending is a valid observation in retrospect, but reading it at the time it didn't feel like it had to totally veer off in that direction...I feel like Sadamoto balanced his own vibes and Anno Doom and Gloom fairly well for like 90% of the series. Also the manga has Kaworu strangling a kitten to death and basically being Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger, so yeah.
Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 21:11 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 21:00
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Jazu posted:I thought the idea was both were alien. Like the tree of life/knowledge thing, a planet was supposed to get one, but not both. It doesn't matter what the specifics are, what matters is that they are alien. In the words of our own Shinji Ikari: "I've never even seen something like this before!" They're as alien and terrifying as Gendo is to Shinji as any dad is to a kid when there's a failure to connect and communicate.
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May 4, 2014 21:07
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Heard bits and pieces about Evangelion for years, and finally just got round to watching the original series and End Of Evangelion... poo poo son! To say 'Shinji Goes Through A Rough Time' would be putting it mildly, I personally didn't think too much of the original ending, End felt like much more complete. I don't quite understand after all that Shinji decides to strangle Asuka right after coming out of the Instrumentality Puddle Of Tango, Asuka strokes his cheek to get him to chill out...and then calls him disgusting. Did they reconcile (Well as best they could) or what? Still one of the better animated movies I've seen, pacing felt a bit out of whack towards the end but drat what a ride. Time to wait a few years until Rebuild is complete and marathon into a depression. 
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May 5, 2014 18:36
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The EVA manga is terrible because Sadamoto doesn't get it, and in fact goes out of his way to not get it. The best example is the Kaworu storyline, where he goes out of his way to make sure everyone knows how not-gay Shinji is, and in fact Shinji hates Kaworu. It's full of these moments where I can just imagine Sadamoto thinking "The hero of a robot show shouldn't act like this!? Here, lemme fix it."
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May 5, 2014 20:40
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Temascos posted:Heard bits and pieces about Evangelion for years, and finally just got round to watching the original series and End Of Evangelion... I believe the story is that they showed the hospital masturbation scene to the voice actress for Asuka, asked her to sum up what she thought of it, and then had her say that in the epilogue.
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May 5, 2014 21:31
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MonsieurChoc posted:The EVA manga is terrible because Sadamoto doesn't get it, and in fact goes out of his way to not get it. The best example is the Kaworu storyline, where he goes out of his way to make sure everyone knows how not-gay Shinji is, and in fact Shinji hates Kaworu. It's full of these moments where I can just imagine Sadamoto thinking "The hero of a robot show shouldn't act like this!? Here, lemme fix it." I can see what you mean though. Certainly you could just argue that Sadamoto went out of his way to make Kaworu less and less appealing to Shinji by making Kaworu act creepier and weirder as a character than he did in the anime, but given Sadamoto's willingness to alter a lot of facets and stuff in weird slight ways and add new scenes I didn't really get the impression that it was purposefully malevolent in intention. He adds a lot of extra weird things to various characters, such as having Asuka's confession scene with Kaji and a lot of additional weird stuff between Rei and Ritsuko, not to mention the whole Gendo A.T. field thing. For what it's worth Sadamoto seems to have Shinji be less involved with Kaworu and/or Asuka and seems more interested in more Rei interaction (maybe because he just really likes drawing Rei, great art) 
Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 01:11 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 01:04
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Captain Invictus posted:I believe the story is that they showed the hospital masturbation scene to the voice actress for Asuka, asked her to sum up what she thought of it, and then had her say that in the epilogue. I'm no Japanese expert but the fun thing about that line is that she says "kimochi warui". "Kimochi" means a feeling, what you're feeling, a sensation, and "warui" means bad or negative (it's the root word for Wario and Waluigi, bad/evil Mario/Luigi). The "How disgusting" translation is one way to go, as is "I feel sick". The line appears in the first episode when Shinji's entry plug is first filled with LCL and he goes "Kimochi warui"; it's a statement of that "Ew, I feel gross, icky, that's disgusting, I don't feel well" kind of feeling. Weirder fans in the past have used this a evidence that it's also an expression for morning sickness therefore Asuka'a pregnant at the end but that's dumb. Language! 
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May 6, 2014 13:05
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TheFallenEvincar posted:I didn't really get that impression, keep in mind that Kaworu acts really creepy and bizarre and strangles a kitten to death. When I was reading it at the time, it didn't strike me so much as a pathetic "no homo" moment as it was "this pale guy appeared out of nowhere, posed horrifying existential queries to me while strangling a kitten with his bare hands, and is now getting all up in my personal space, also he's super excited and thrilled about Asuka being mindraped". It just felt like it made Shinji shy and uncomfortable, though if I remember right he does ultimately regret the way acted with Kaworu initially. In any case, it's pretty clear Sadamoto doesn't get the characters, as they all have varying quantities of out-of-character moments. Kaworu is just the most obvious one, where everything about his story arc is completely botched. And the characters are the important thing about Evangelion, the giant robot stuff is window-dressing. The only thing I'll give the Eva manga is that it's really well-drawn.
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May 6, 2014 17:01
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The manga started almost a full year before the first episode of the TV show aired. Given that not only did Sadamoto start his version of the story before Anno did his own but that he also designed the characters (which gives him an unique insight into them) I don't think it would be accurate to say they act "out of character". Are they different from their anime counterparts? Yes. But you could also argue that the differences are because of Anno going out of his way to make his own version of them.
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May 7, 2014 04:32
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GimmickMan posted:The manga started almost a full year before the first episode of the TV show aired. Sadamoto took so incredibly long to finish the story and so much of it is obviously cribbed from material that came during or after Evangelion itself that it's pretty much impossible to argue that the manga is the 'original story.'
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May 7, 2014 04:41
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Absolutely, but after all this time Anno is changing everything as well (see Rebuild), so who can say what is and isn't the original character anymore? Or is Asuka "out of character" in Rebuild too?
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May 7, 2014 04:48
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GimmickMan posted:Absolutely, but after all this time Anno is changing everything as well (see Rebuild), so who can say what is and isn't the original character anymore? Or is Asuka "out of character" in Rebuild too? Yes, intentionally so. They even changed her name to differentiate her from the original character. I would say the major thing there is that Rebuild is an intentional commentary on the original series and characters acting weird or out of character is pretty obviously intentional, especially with Rebuild 3.0 taken into account. I never quite felt that way with the manga.
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May 7, 2014 04:50
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ImpAtom posted:Yes, intentionally so. They even changed her name to differentiate her from the original character. You know that makes a lot of sense when you put it that way. I figured they changed the name just for the sake of  but that's a neat way to look at it.I do agree that Sadamoto does not get what made the characters and story so memorable, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten that ending. The man had a pretty big role in creating and establishing said characters though, I wouldn't say that he got them wrong, just that he got them boring. But that's just semantics.
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May 7, 2014 05:07
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That's fair, I can see where you're coming from.
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May 7, 2014 05:09
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I'll give him the Kaji backstory scene. That was great.
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May 7, 2014 05:32
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I'd say that just about everything prior to the ending of the manga was really good. Sadamoto did a lot to flesh out the lives and emotions outside of crisis mode for the characters, and the artwork was phenomenal. The ending just really shat the bed, especially after how long we waited for it.
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May 7, 2014 08:05
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The characterization changes in Rebuild feel like the characters from the original show, but after they've undergone growth. This is the reason I call it a sequel, or at least it's much more important to me than the "is it literally a time loop" stuff. I haven't read the manga in its entirety so I don't want to be too quick to judge, but every single excerpt of it I've ever seen reads like Evangelion fanfic.
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May 7, 2014 08:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The characterization changes in Rebuild feel like the characters from the original show, but after they've undergone growth. This is the reason I call it a sequel, or at least it's much more important to me than the "is it literally a time loop" stuff. I like to think each run through is basically the Evangelion world defragmenting itself until its all nice and tidy and not incredibly messed up.
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May 7, 2014 10:01
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