I saw The End of Evangelion in theaters

I sat in on most of another friend's rewatch of the Neon Genesis Evangelion show in the weeks leading up to this. but let's stick to the movie:

You hear about this shit? It's kinda crazy!

I have seen the movie a few times before, but never as a cognizant adult with enough stimulants in his system to have true self-awareness. Just quick bullet point thoughts this time instead of a Proper Blog Post because I snarfed down a burger and chili fries immediately after the movie so I'm probably going to straight up pass out in 45-60 minutes.

• Next to me in the theater was a 50-60 year old woman alongside a 16-28 year old man. She sat up at attention to the edge of her seat the second The Song started playing. Shout outs to them, probably.

• Instrumentality is just Newtypes from Mobile Suit Gundam. Newtypes are all about the simultaneous horror and beauty of being able to intimately connect with other human beings. Take a horny, depressed otaku's musings on that whole thing plus some overly literal extrapolation beyond any boundary of reason and now you've got Instrumentality.

• It really benefits from theater speakers. BIG LOUD SOUNDS

  • Old news, but great vocal performances all around. Kotono Mitsuishi as Misato stood out in particular for me this time. I don't know if any voice actor in the biz can simper and scream and sob as well as Megumi Ogata.

• I completely forgot about how the credits are right in the middle.

  • The benefit to this is that the theater lights snap on immediately after that final scene on the beach. That effect is wild.

• I flipped off the screen at the same time as the guy in the live action footage flips off the screen like I promised I would.

• To truly understand Evangelion you must learn that it is tokusatsu before it's mecha. If you're out here calling it a "deep deconstruction of the mecha genre" or something you gotta start digging deeper boss.

  • (THERE'S LITERALLY CAMERA / SOUNDSTAGE IMAGERY ALL OVER THE PLACE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU DUDE)

• SSSS.Gridman, SSSS.Dynazenon, and Gridman Universe by Studio Trigger, Akira Amemiya, and Keiichi Hasegawa are the true successors to Evangelion; I've thought this ever since I saw the first episode of SSSS.Gridman at Anime Expo 2018 three months before it aired for real and I only think it more now.

  • To understand this, see the previous point.
    • Human Love is more psychedelic than Robot Love is more dramatic than Human Love etc etc
      • they got shiro sagisu buddy.
  • eva can posture all it wants with judeo-christian terminology and imagery that feels weightier to a western cultural worldview but fighting the big monsters is and has always been a metaphor for human emotion and struggle.
  • the much vaunted "hedgehog's dilemma" and shinji's conflict and the conflict of all people who have been depressed in the same way as shinji, is the feeling that you'll always get burned if you get close to other people, framed through the lens of "i'm a bad person who burns everyone i get close to"
    • it is impossible to avoid all conflict without also abandoning all identity
    • gridman literally defeats alexis kerib with the power of healing and finitude.
      • IMO you aren't true, deep friends with someone unless you've had real-ass arguments and come out the other side
    • maybe the ideal world is indeed devoid of conflict. that is an ideal we can work towards but always with the understanding it will never happen because life is finite. we must settle for healing instead. we cannot stop the waves but we can learn how to surf.
      • we're all sick of hearin about that kintsugi stuff as a metaphor but it's a resonant image for a reason
      • Gundam is about this too. Watch Turn-A and G-Reco and maybe you'll learn something.
  • shinji and shinjo are one letter apart

• those boys at Gainax sure knew how to draw stuff. movie looks good!

Keep the theatrical releases comin, GKIDS! I'm havin a blast!