"The End of Evangelion" Turns 20 Today

[Raxivace]

The movie not-so-famously dismissed by Sight & Sound as "Disneyesque bromides" is now 20 years old.



I think it's funny that even 20 years later, despite (Because of?) the information available about it online, I still see a lot of misinformation and rumor spread about the movie- even now on random forums and such you'll still see people claiming Anno only made it because he hates Evangelion's fans or whatever. I don't really think that's the case- in a lot of ways I think its an optimistic movie, believing that even if the entire world were to fall apart in such a spectacular fashion that as long as you're alive the possibility of finding happiness still exists. Some dismiss that as naive but whatever. It's personally had a pretty big impact on me, and I've spent the last several years watching various films and series that influenced it, from Jean-Luc Godard movies to something relatively obscure like Space Runaway Ideon, just so I might have an even slightly better understanding of one of my favorite films.

It's a shame that here in the U.S. there's never been a decent release of EoE, despite how controversial and important of a movie it's been to anime. Funimation might fear want people confusing it with the Rebuild movies (BTW, 1.11 is coming up on its 10 year anniversary on September 1st, which is personally crazier to me), though I'm not sure how likely I think that is. I've been hoping for a while now that someone like Criterion might put out a decent release of it, but that seems to be a pipe dream. One day I believe I'll own a pristine blu-ray of this movie, one way or another.

Also fuck Sadamoto's manga adaptation. It's fanfictiony in a bad way.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I think everyone is well-aware of the impact it had on me, and if they aren't, here's the personal essay I wrote about it, and here's my most thorough analysis attempting to explain what I think it's all about.

I think there's a lot of misinformation out there because, unlike with more academic subjects in literature and film (say, Shakespeare, or Hitchcock films), most all of the "information" has come from fans whose own "knowledge" has come from a mix of analysis, speculation, theorizing, etc., and without the rigorous formality of a peer-reviewed academic setting, there's no way to safeguard against bad information getting out there and spreading. The "Anno's revenge" theory comes (I think) from the fact that during one section of the film you see some hate mail that he received after the series' ending, so fans speculated that the film was to get "revenge" on all of those who hated the series' ending.

I also seem to recall reading (but this could be just another case of misinformation spreading) that Anno made NGE/EOE without having seen anything from Godard; though it's quite likely he saw any number of films influenced by Godard and took inspiration from them. It's really hard to ignore the similarities, especially towards the end, when you've seen enough Godard. Plus, I always loved taking one review quote I read about Godard's Breathless and applying it to EOE: "It's at once an homage to the American gangster film, and an attack on the very ideas of America, gangsters, and film" to "It's at once an homage to Japanese mecha anime, and an attack on the very ideas of Japan, mecha, and anime."