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klapman posted:My read on Rebuild 3 is that it was a criticism of the idea that all you need to become a strong person is to be more assertive and hold a higher value for yourself and the ones you love. Now it's been years since I've seen the films, but at the end of Rebuild 2 Shinji finally takes a stand for himself and the one he loves, at what ends up being the worst possible time. This ends up causing the apocalypse and leads straight into Rebuild 3, where Shinji is left in the dust by the consequences of his actions. I mean, everyone in Eva is a codependent trainwreck, but Rebuild demonstrates Shinji being world-destroyingly so over and over. Even Kaworu is like 'dude, seriously, stop!'
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Nov 27, 2018 23:45
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And he didn't even cause the weird poo poo we see in 3.33.
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Nov 27, 2018 23:48
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me on facebook:  me on twitter: 
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Nov 27, 2018 23:54
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CharlestheHammer posted:To be fair saying he put himself over everyone else for 2 is a little hindsight. There is no way he could have predicted what happened would happen. It’s honestly a little random. Yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is that stuff like that is the natural result of only being an advocate for yourself in the most dire of situations. It's not quite as literal in most cases, but it's the kind of attitude of like "alright I've let people walk all over me, but this is IT and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" that leads to almost universally bad results. Honestly though if I'm gonna talk any more about the movies I should actually rewatch them and make sure I have any actual basis in anything I'm saying. Ranzear posted:I should probably rewatch Rebuild, but on hazy memory I'd say much of Shinji's motivations were still entirely external and that's what he gets punished for. The universe is trying to beat some self-interest into him but he keeps demonstrating executive function only when it's in someone else's interest (saving Rei, pulling the spears, etc). Yeah, I guess I can see that. In memory Shinji was coming across as a lot more assertive and life-affirming in that scene than before, and I never really considered the external motivation angle. I'll definitely keep this in mind during the rewatch. The best part of rewatching Eva is that it's actually a really fun mecha show until it rolls up its sleeves and starts beating the hell out of the characters. Dance Like You Want to Win rules
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Nov 27, 2018 23:55
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DLYWTW is the best pre ep 16 episode. 
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Nov 28, 2018 00:21
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Magma Diver gets honorable mention for a name that's metal as hell
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Nov 28, 2018 00:41
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No one seems to like The Day Tokyo-3 Stood Still but I always thought it was pretty fun.
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Nov 28, 2018 00:55
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Nate RFB posted:No one seems to like The Day Tokyo-3 Stood Still but I always thought it was pretty fun. It's always been one of my favorites 
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Nov 28, 2018 01:02
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klapman posted:Yeah, I guess I can see that. In memory Shinji was coming across as a lot more assertive and life-affirming in that scene than before, and I never really considered the external motivation angle. I'll definitely keep this in mind during the rewatch. I mean that's kind of the whole thing with Eva to me: Everyone pushes Shinji to do stuff in their interest. Shinji never really demonstrates self-agency and the little bit he manages, like not fighting back against Unit 03, is casually slapped down (for entirely valid world-saving reasons). Piloting the robot is when Shinji has agency, but time and again that agency is ... hijacked? I'm gonna go with hijacked by the likes of Gendo or even Misato, the latter of whom despite giving a rallying cry in the correct self-interest direction at the end of Rebuild 2 is only really fueling Shinji's need to act in the interest of others most of the time (not like he could hear her anyway, but it's cool she highlights this, like she just realized what his problem was the whole time). Which is why there's so much struggle at the end of the original series or EoE when ascension to godhood is all like "Seriously, what the gently caress do YOU want!?" and Shinji is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the whole time. His identity is entirely tied to the aspirations and goals of others. That's what keeps happening in Rebuild: Shinji develops that false-agency over and over again, feeling he can do something but it's never something in his own interest, all the while missing his chances to demonstrate self-interest like listening to Kaworu when he says pulling the spears is probably a bad idea after all; instead his agency and even his short-term identity is hijacked by the simple task at hand and doing whatever it is Asuka is trying to stop him from doing, because his need for external validation doesn't care if it's from a good or bad relationship. Shinji is not some poor kid caught in a chaotic apocalypse. He's an easily manipulated little snot who needs to learn to be selfish and actually demonstrate self-interest instead of faking it. The incredible irony of "Get in the loving robot, Shinji!" is that it highlights his true flaw, an inability to do anything for his own reasons - it's that phrase instead of "I am getting in this loving robot" (except for that one time, which relapsed into not being for his own reasons and ended the world). I kinda just thought to explore something though: I think Gendo is the only character who truly recognizes this through most of the works. Everyone thinks Gendo to be cold and indifferent toward Shinji, but it's more like he has no idea how to fix this hot mess. All those little character moments of Gendo, like pulling Rei out during the test and burning his hands or getting hands-on to help manually get the evas into position for sortie during the blackout, are things Shinji takes note of but doesn't seem to really understand. Gendo is selfish, but also self-interested, in ways that Shinji and the audience incorrectly dismiss. Gendo always has his own reasons behind everything he does (mostly loving over Seele) but Shinji only sees the external results and tries to emulate it with mixed results. So yeah. Gendo is the one sane man but must stand aside and let his polar opposite of a son do the robot piloting. Ranzear fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Nov 28, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2018 01:52
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As time's passed I've moved further and further away from reading Rebuild as being about "what's wrong with Shinji" and more about the ethical context he's acting in. Hideaki Anno is reportedly very well read, and he's got at least a passing familiarity with anglophone New Wave science fiction -- one of the later Evangelion TV episodes is named after a Harlan Ellison short story, and there are a bunch of nods to American and British TV series from that era as well. Significantly, that Harlan Ellison story is about an alien race offloading all its suffering and pain onto humanity in order to obtain a utopia for itself. There's another New Wave story about a society that can only preserve itself by offloading all of its suffering onto a child, and what you should do in that situation -- Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." The short story is careful not to provide a definitive moral answer, but it does ultimately suggest that those who reject this society do so with confidence and with a vision of what they would do instead. LeGuin's novel was in turn inspired by this essay by 19th century American philosopher William James. He writes: quote:Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far‑off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain? James introduces this idea not just for the sake of the question but because he's trying to make a point: morality is not just dependent on the mutual self-interest of human beings in society. There has to be something deeper, something that would make us willing to reject happiness and well-being for ourselves and even everyone around us if that happiness and well-being were inescapably dependent on evil. He goes on to posit that morality comes from the personal preferences and judgment of sentient life: that there would be no good or bad in a world without thinking beings, but that as long as just one mind exists, that mind is like a god in its ability to define good and evil. If there were more than one mind, things get a lot more fractious and complicated: James says that every moral preference or claim a thinking being has creates a valid obligation in others (although not necessarily an equal one) and that the only possible justification for refusing that obligation is a similar claim from another thinking being. He acknowledges that it's really hard to figure out which one should be privileged in these situations; he's not satisfied with a purely Utilitarian calculus of happiness, as illustrated in his previous example. But he's still optimistic: William James posted:Wherever such minds exist, with judgments of good and ill, and demands upon one another, there is an ethical world in its essential features. Were all other things, gods and men and starry heavens, blotted out from this universe, and were there left but one rock with two loving souls upon it, that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could harbor. It would be a tragic constitution, because the rock's inhabitants would die. But while they lived, there would be real good thing and real bad things in the universe; there would be obligations, claims, and expectations; obediences, refusals, and disappointments; compunctions, and longings for harmony to come again, and inward peace of conscience when it was restored; there would, in short, be a moral life, whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed. (Intriguingly, he goes on to say that it makes no difference for this purpose whether God exists or not; morality is in the relation of intelligent minds to each other, so while God would be a tremendous presence in the field of morality, he isn't necessary.) Now I don't know if Anno ever read William James, and even saying he read LeGuin is speculative. But this is extremely applicable to Evangelion. Rei tells Shinji after they save the city from Ramiel that she defines herself by her relations to other people. The tragedy, however, is that Rei is so consumed by the needs of others that she doesn't regard herself as having any moral worth. She's approaching a morality kind of like James', but isn't fully able to include herself in it. (Also, significantly at least insofar as it characterizes her: Rei is a vegetarian.) Another thing to keep in mind is that, while I'm not really convinced that Evangelion makes sense as a moral critique of Shinji's character or that the consequences in Rebuild 3 reflect directly on him, I do think that it's critical of "children piloting Eva units" as an institution. I mentioned this (literally years ago lol) in this thread, but there's an uncanny parallel between the pilots in Evangelion, Evangelion's relationship to the super robot genre, and kamikaze pilots in World War II. Tsuneo Watanabe posted:It's all a lie that they left filled with braveness and joy, crying, 'Long live the emperor!' They were sheep at a slaughterhouse. Everybody was looking down and tottering. Some were unable to stand up and were carried and pushed into the plane by maintenance soldiers. Watanabe is a Japanese journalist and politician; he was a high schooler during World War II and he remembers military recruiters coming into the school and trying to encourage militarism among young people. He was so infuriated by this that he organized a boycott among his classmates of the class period set aside for the recruiters, for which he was later punished. Watanabe's whole deal is that he doesn't think Japan can "mature as as country" (his words) until it stops ignoring its actions during the war and faces them head-on. (Obviously not endearing himself to the right wing in Japan.) Evangelion completely rejects the image of the brave, heroic (and teenaged) robot pilot, and instead goes to the well of kamikaze pilot imagery again and again. In the first episode, Gendo motivates Shinji by threatening to have Rei (injured and unable to stand) pilot in his place. Against Zeruel, there's Rei's suicidal charge. In EoE, Misato manipulates a nearly-catatonic Shinji into Unit-01's cockpit. The point here is not the morality of the pilots' actions -- it's the morality of a society that would cajole and even force young people, inexperienced and wounded soldiers, to kill themselves for the good of society. This is not the kind of imagery you use when you want to suggest that your society is doing fine and this is a reasonable sacrifice for the greater good. Tokyo-3 is admittedly painted as a glorious utopia, a proverbial "city on the hill", but it's also explicitly shown that it can only possibly survive by relying on the suffering and maybe even the death of children. Now, the cool thing about Rebuild is it takes this one step further. In LeGuin's story, those who walk away from Omelas do so with a confident moral vision of the future, and their abandonment does not decide things for others who decide to stay. Rebuild isn't satisfied with this equivocation, or with the neatness of the ending. Either the utopia is just and should be preserved, or it's monstrous and should be destroyed. And where LeGuin's characters get to make the decision as adults, able to comprehend and calmly judge the situation for themselves, Rebuild laughs at this idea: Fuyutsuki's speech to Shinji in Rebuild 3 lampshades the impossibility of being emotionless in the face of suffering, and Shinji's decision to save Rei no matter what is entirely emotional. And, after making his decision, he's torn with guilt and (at significant prompting from others) tries to take it back instead of living with it. There's an idea (and I wish I could remember where I first heard of it -- might've been Zizek talking about Christianity) that there's a kind of hierarchy of moral thought: there's acting for yourself (selfishness), acting for the good of the many before the good of the few (utilitarianism), and then, crucially, acting for "the one among the many". The idea is that, given that the future is uncertain, to say that we should knowingly sacrifice one person to save many others is morally irresponsible -- it forecloses any possibility of saving everyone. If we can't know for certain whether we can until we try, then we have to try. For an illustration, consider the Parable of the Lost Sheep: Luke 15:3-7 posted:He told them this parable. "Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn't leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing. When he comes home, he calls together his friends, his family and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!' I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance." All of which is leading up to my point: while it's true that Shinji isn't thinking clearly and weighing his options and the consequences in Rebuild 2, and even though he's wracked by guilt after the fact, there's an argument to be made that reaching out to save Rei was the right thing to do, and that insofar as the consequences were cataclysmic and awful, well -- maybe reforming a society that's build on injustice and suffering is always going to be a violent and painful transformation. The problem isn't Shinji, it's that NERV is stuffing children into apocalypse machines, and that everyone who lives in Tokyo-3 is tacitly okay with this. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Nov 28, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2018 02:27
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CharlestheHammer posted:I think the only scene they would care about is the masturbation scene and the most you will get is man that was weird and dumb and then everyone will move on. you could even say that scene is so hosed up
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Nov 28, 2018 02:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:All of which is leading up to my point: while it's true that Shinji isn't thinking clearly and weighing his options and the consequences in Rebuild 2, and even though he's wracked by guilt after the fact, there's an argument to be made that reaching out to save Rei was the right thing to do, and that insofar as the consequences were cataclysmic and awful, well -- maybe reforming a society that's build on injustice and suffering is always going to be a violent and painful transformation. The problem isn't Shinji, it's that NERV is stuffing children into apocalypse machines, and that everyone who lives in Tokyo-3 is tacitly okay with this. Well, everyone with a name, anyway. The masses aren't technically supposed to know that there's anything more morally complex than Ultraman happening when Angels and Evas come to blows 
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Nov 28, 2018 02:38
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Also: if we take Watanabe's assertion seriously (about what has to happen before Japan can advance as a nation) then regardless of whether Shinji's actions directly caused Near Third Impact or not, regardless of whatever happened with Kaworu and GNR and Eva-07 in the timeskip, the way everyone uses Shinji as a surrogate and scapegoat for the outcome of an apocalyptic war they all took part in means that they will (not) be able to advance until they confront that guilt themselves.
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Nov 28, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2018 02:39
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Pretty sure Rebuild 4 already has a release date in 2019.
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Nov 28, 2018 02:40
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Fly Ricky posted:Pretty sure Rebuild 4 already has a release date in 2019. Ha!
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Nov 28, 2018 02:41
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:you could even say that scene is so hosed up My partner and I picked back up on our watch through after getting distracted by other poo poo for a while and we got to half an hour into EoE after bingeing through the rest of the series in one weekend. We were pretty stoned so I can't remember too much of her reactions to poo poo except when she said "......that's it?" at the end of 26 Also I'm one of those people who 100% buys into the rebuilds being a time loop plot sequel kinda thing and I don't expect that 4.0 will do anything to confirm or refute that
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Nov 28, 2018 02:42
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Nate RFB posted:No one seems to like The Day Tokyo-3 Stood Still but I always thought it was pretty fun. English dub ruled "It's hot." "Mmmyes." With Gendo's feet in buckets
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Nov 28, 2018 02:43
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Spiritus Nox posted:Well, everyone with a name, anyway. The masses aren't technically supposed to know that there's anything more morally complex than Ultraman happening when Angels and Evas come to blows True, but their infosec ain't all that hot and the analogy to Japan in WWII is so strong that "what about the people who didn't realize what was going on?" rings kind of hollow.
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Nov 28, 2018 02:45
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:True, but their infosec ain't all that hot and the analogy to Japan in WWII is so strong that "what about the people who didn't realize what was going on?" rings kind of hollow. This is fair enough.
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Nov 28, 2018 02:49
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Zeruel posted:English dub ruled Forever the best part of the dub
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Nov 28, 2018 02:52
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I appreciate the shot of Gendo's hairy legs
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Nov 28, 2018 03:33
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iospace posted:Forever the best part of the dub Actually, thats "Baloney Pony" from the happy universe scene
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Nov 28, 2018 04:03
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Zeruel posted:English dub ruled Honestly it's my favorite out of the monster-of-the-week episodes, except for Ramiel. I love the unconventional setup.
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Nov 28, 2018 04:09
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gently caress, how could I forget baloney pony. Also PHILOSOPHY, HUH
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Nov 28, 2018 04:47
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Also, Gendo's muttered "She who must be obeyed..."
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Nov 28, 2018 04:51
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A bit of support for the ww2 allegory bit is the number of characters named after Japanese warships
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Nov 28, 2018 05:13
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Zeruel posted:English dub ruled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-HgKRAtXaI
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Nov 28, 2018 06:54
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Intel&Sebastian posted:please do, it's in HD and has good music All of the music in the original series/EoE is better than all of the music in the rebuilds So is almost everything else
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Nov 28, 2018 09:44
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Also HD comes with the monkeys paw of frankly substandard CGI for most of the action in the first two, Ramiel is really the only sequence that benefits from it
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Nov 28, 2018 14:30
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the Sahaquiel fight is fully sick and I will not hear otherwise!
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Nov 28, 2018 20:01
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the escape goat posted:the Sahaquiel fight is fully sick and I will not hear otherwise! They really did a great job on the rebuilds on that one. In the rebuild Unit 01 actually looks like a person running really fast.  
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Nov 29, 2018 00:43
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And then it starts to Naruto run...
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Nov 29, 2018 01:07
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I feel like the supersonic (or super sonic) running shockwave thing was a little cheesy, but it was still good. Just not a fan of 3DGC in general.
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Nov 29, 2018 01:07
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Anno and co. seem pretty likely to be up to date on Western sci fi, or at least what was contemporary for them, considering they named their resin kit business after a Larry Niven company. Anyway, I think this is probably the direction 4.0 will take. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSyKX-hpQs
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Nov 29, 2018 10:14
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I'm not sure how much there is overlap in this venn diagram, but Austin Walker at Waypoint (whose scholastic discourse is one I am always interested in hearing on video games) gushed about Evangelion a bunch on their latest waypoint podcast: https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/pa537v/finally-we-have-an-excuse-to-explain-evangelion Starts 40ish minutes in.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:32
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the escape goat posted:the Sahaquiel fight is fully sick and I will not hear otherwise! Ak Gara posted:They really did a great job on the rebuilds on that one.  That scene, and in fact all the CGI in the rebuilds, looks like total unmitigated rear end. Like it's seriously embarrassing that a group of experienced professionals thought it was acceptable to put out something that ugly. Sahaquiel looks like something from a loving Ps1 game. I've been rewatching Babylon 5 recently, and it's 20-year-old CGI looks leagues better than the rebuilds'.
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Nov 30, 2018 02:44
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It's cool OP.
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Nov 30, 2018 03:15
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Zartosht posted:
uh i love b5 and all but this is one of those cases where i'll need you to show your working
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Nov 30, 2018 03:45
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Zartosht posted:
PS1 cgi looks way cooler than any American tv crap
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Nov 30, 2018 04:14
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In Training posted:PS1 cgi looks way cooler than any American tv crap I mean yeah but that’s because American TV doesn’t have the budget for CGI. So it’s the equivalent of being the king of poo poo mountain.
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