majestic

I initially didn't like Asuka. Before she showed up, I didn't hate Shinji, which is I think the best that can happen for him. I really liked Misato, not only for her voice performance but because she's exactly the sort of broken person that I usually end up being friends with should I run into them. Misato stayed my favorite throughout, but not only for that reason. Rei I talked enough about, I think. Rei #6 in The Matrix 3.0 + 1.01 just reinforced that some more with her doing her Violet spiel. Asuka eventually stopped telling Shinji to man up, and I started to like her, and the juxtaposition with Rei. Asuka is canonically half Japanese, but she certainly is 100% gaijin, while Rei is the ultimate, perfect and traditional Japanese woman. It was a little painful to see Asuka trying to fight against that, even though there never was any real reason to. See, that's discussions you can have about the characters from the show, because love and care went into crafting them, even if they are, at times, extremely unsympathetic. Eh, it's gotten pretty late, and I'll sleep on it a bit.

I'm a little disappointed by the lack of comments about Sailor Moon. There were some, but not that many. I really doubt any of them have watched it. The video itself was fun, but I'm not the world's biggest Lynch afficionado. More like the opposite. Jay might like Revolutionary Girl Utena, it's weird and occassionally disgusting. Not sure what he thinks of animation, let alone Japanese one. Yeah, pretty much. I had major Stargate Altantis flashbacks. In Stargate, Atlantis was a city of the precursor race, and it didn't sink, at least not on Earth. They left Earth, with the entire city, to go to the Pegasus galaxy, where it was put under water to hide it. The entire city being a ship, and the show having been cancelled they invented a way to transport the city back to Earth called the "wormhole drive" - never came up before. Good job. This is similar, if there had been some NERV research on the spears shown, maybe Ritsuko trying to copy one, maybe that would have worked. As it stands, no, nope. Just do something without any setup, that's why I mentioned Stephen King. Many of his books end like that. Or at least the ones I've read. Not only that, you could have entire plot points taken out without them missing. But of course you're right, not every bit needs explanation, something that the original series understood well enough. But that was a collaborative writing effort, not a one man show. I was mostly okay with the anti-universe stuff that happened once Neo and Agent Smith went into the Matrix. It looked terrible, but it was a combination of the End of Evangelion and the ending of the series, and as such wasn't that bad. If Mari had not shown up. Everything from the end of the character moments to that point though: I have no idea what they were going for with that scene. Mirror Kaworu's interactions with Shinji? Whatever Asuka and Mari had there wasn't much of a relationship either, if that's what it was supposed to be, with Mari going for Shinji the moment she could, and Asuka being more interested in Kensuke anyway. But maybe, yeah, I guess someone else hugging her would lead to a broken nose. But who knows with these two. I tried to ask myself the question: "How would I react to this if I had not seen NGE before" but can only come up short. First, most of the film relies on prior knowledge that wasn't even in the other rebuild movies. Then there are the plot holes, the terrible CGI, the nonsensical plot points all over the place, the character development that ends up being mostly pointless if it wouldn't turn Shinji into Neo by the end, and any of that, and I can't... no. I don't get it. I often say I don't get the popularity of X while on a mostly objective level I can still somewhat understand, at least. While I don't find American Pie funny, I understand how someone could. Same goes for any number of rom-coms, or sit-coms. With this, and the pre-requisite of being a fan of the original show, I have no idea... but maybe @KP the meanie zucchini and @Sarex can answer that one, they seem to not have hated it nearly as much as I... well, we... did.

I'll reply eventually, right now I need to watch that RLM video.

It ties in directly with the film's resolution. There's no escaping it for me. Maybe, but I aso don't see any reason for these films to exist. They supposedly answer questions that I've never found asking myself after the End of Evangelion, and ruin characters that I found myself liking more in hindsight than I did when watching the series. Especially when it comes to Asuka. Ah, well, it's over now. At least, I hope the ending was meant to be serious and there won't be any more NGE content coming. With the success of the last film, who knows...

Some two decades back a new trend emerged in film business, one that would hit the world in a stride never seen before, and one that is apparently here to stay. It's the Art Of The First Draft, most commonly associated with established script writers and directors who had at least one runaway success, especially when they're both for one of their projects: The idea that a script needs no revision, and can simply be filmed as is after it was completed. Paving the way was this man, with his 1999 box office hit The Phantom Menace: Wait, no, that's not right. No, actually, it was George Lucas, whose script for The Phantom Menace apparently never underwent any revision, and nobody involved in the project dared to tell him that he's naked. No child on set to ask why the emperor doesn't wear clothes, and the result was... sadly, a box office smash hit that proved you could release any turd under the name Star Wars and fans would gobble it up without complaining. At least until Disney broke the Camel's back and suddenly found themselves with a Star Wars film that seemingly didn't make as much profit as it should, but that's not part of this post. Following this trend were not only the sequels to The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, two films that managed to somehow be even worse than The Phantom Menace. However, Revenge of the Sith is often seen as the best of the three, because it's dark and edgy. I guess. Because I have no idea how you could get that idea. The Phantom Menace was boring, had terrible actors and bad acting, stupid dialogue and nothing made sense, but so did the other two, and they were also ramping up the stupidity to offensive levels. No, this started spiralling out of control, and engulfed the Wachowskis, and even video game maker Bioware, who released an ending to a story much anticipated that was so bad it caused fans to buy ten thousand cupcakes with differently coloured icing but the same vanilla taste and send it to Bioware to make a statement. I am, of course, talking about The Matrix: Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions and Mass Effect 3. All of which will become relevant soon, I promise. The problem with the Art Of The First Draft is that nobody dares to confront their majesties, both out of awe and fearing that they might offend them, they then do not realize that they're standing naked and ridiculous in front of their subjects. That way you end up with these insane messes that feel like it could have been something interesting, if Antoine de Saint Exupéry went in and took everything out that was unnecessary for it to work, and someone who knows what they're doing would have pointed the stupid bits out. The success of the Wachowskis allowed them to make two more supremely messy movies in the Matrix universe full of religious allegory and philosophical nonsense. Bioware's success with Mass Effect 2 allowed their team to create an ending to the series that has managed a feat that hopefully will never be repeated: A cut to black at the end, leaving every plotline unresolved would have been better. Dark Matter, a sadly cancelled TV show that was great fun, ended on a cliffhanger. And it was a better ending than Mass Effect 3 had. And now, after all these years and buried memories of the past, Hideaki Anno has decided to join the Illustrious Circle of Naked Emperors with Neon Genesis Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.01 Thrice Upon A Time, a film that for some reason has an almost 5 star rating on Amazon. And he even does that by building on the blocks of his predecessors. Neon Genesis Evangelion: Neo, Crash Override and Angels! The film begins with a CGI madness and seizure inducing scene where Misato and the Lexx land in Paris to establish a containment field that will revert the effects of the N3I, the Near Third Impact. It's strange technology we humans don't understand. Wait a moment, I head you say, how can humans have built technology to revert the N3I if we have no idea how it works? Well, I also do not know. All we know is that it's slower than 8 bit computers, and that Zero Cool, alias Crash Override and Acid Burn need to fix up the computer stuff before the incoming attack by NERV drives them away from Paris. They're planning to salvage material from NERV's European branch. Mari, whose name is later revealed to be Mary Iscariot. No wonder she's such an alien fan-service insert into the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe. She's a traitor, a whore and the mother of God in the same person. Not sure who paid her to sell out Gendoh Jesuskari. I'm not even sure that works. Is Shinji Jesus then, and Mari actually just Magdalene? Wait, I just noticed I don't care enough. Yes, somehow, my dear, I find myself havin the same look of incredulity on my face. Mari fights off the insane amount of attackers coming at her, then deflects GIANT LASER BEAMS and finally rams the Eiffel Tower into the giant laser beam wielding Pseudo-Evangelion. I'm not entirely certain why NERV spends so many resources building these totally ineffective little attack drones instead of just building a group of four or five EVAs capable of trouncing Mami Mari's EVA. It's baffling and will never be answered, but probably has something to do with Gendo still needing Asuka, who is of course on board the Wunder. Zero Cool and Acid Burn fix the computer stuff in the nick of time and the salvage operation starts. Already we can see how a little overhaul could have saved this. Less attackers, make them more dangerous - WILLE is supposed to be a resistance group, not more powerful than NERV - and drop the silly containment field. Just make it a raid on the European branch for parts to repair or reconstruct Asuka's EVA. You can still have the containment field for Village 3. Just make it something WILLE came up with in response to N3I, and you're good. But never mind that. The film proceeds to spend a lot of time on character building. We meet Toji and Kensuke again, see how their lives went in the past 14 years. Rei #6 learns human interactions and feelings from them. I'm not going to say that he got the idea after watching (or reading) Violet Evergarden because he first started working on this travesty of a film way back in 2014, but it does bear a striking resemblence. Just with less typewriters. Shinji meanwhile sulks around watching a colony of penguins and Asuka is the same as always, except she's shown to actually care a bit for Shinji, which she hides from Kensuke by saying she's not going to let him die while he still has his head up his arse. The movie hits a little snag here. The pacing has slowed, it has interesting character interactions and is actually entertaining, and we can't have that, so Asuka explains off-handedly to Rei #6 that they were all constructed to fulfill a purpse as EVA pilots, and that she only cares for Shinji because it was embedded in her. How much that actually is true for Shinji remains unexplained, but he is once called the boy provisionally called Shinji Ikari, suggesting that he too is just a construct, but Shinji was really Gendo's son - and Asuka once had a mother and a father too. Maybe the versions in this film are just (re)constructions. Shinji did merge with his EVA once, maybe Asuka did too. Must be a reason why she has a choker. Anyway, with the entire character development of our main characters (Misato isn't nearly enough in this to count as main character) thrown out of the window Rei #6 does the only sensible thing in light of the revelation and simply leaves the film by turning to goo. Fuyutsuki helpfully explains to the audience that Gendo is a bit of an ass. Misato and the Wunder show up to pick up Asuka, but Shinji decides to go with them. He has sulked enough after Kensuke explained to him that he's not the only one who suffers, and without Rei being around nothing anchors him to the village anyway. He is immediately put into quarantine in a little box with explosives that SHIELD originally came up with to contain inhumans or otherwise superpowered humans or aliens. Mari and Asuka are shown to have one of these two, except they've apparently gotten really close in the past 14 years. There are more shots of Mari's assets while she's hugging a clearly disinterested Asuka. Gendo meanwhile begins his endgame, moving the Black Moon thing to the site of the Second Impact. Misato moves to intercept. Asuka and Mari pay a visit to Shinji where Mari gets to sniff Shinji once more and tells him that he matures a little. Asuka asks Shinji why she wanted to smack him silly, and he tells her it was because he was indecisive. I have no real idea which scene this is referring to, because it can't really be the end of the last film, the scene at the beach of End of Evangelion or any of their other interactions. A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away maybe she could be talking about him not being allowed to help her with the mind rape encounter at the end of the original series, but that can't really be it either. Never mind, whatever. She probably means the end of the third film. She also tells him flat out she had a crush on him, but grew out of it. Uhm, girl, sure. Lie to yourself there all you want. You grew out of that crush in this film because you had 14 years to play with Mari because you were forbidden to interact with anyone else apparently, so that's pretty much all there is to it. End of Evangelion Asuka broke through her problems by touching Shinji's cheek while he was trying to kill her. For her, that statement might have been true, but for you it isn't. This entire scene is pointless. Mari is as obnoxious as ever and Asuka talks about things that never happened in the movie series. At best she competed with Rei for Shinji's affections becaus she wanted validation. The real Asuka really had feelings for Shinji, this mockery of a character doesn't, never had. But that's fine. Then we get another seizure inducing CGI action scene that reveals NERV actually has three functional Lexx type vessels and could have probably shot down WILLE at any time they wanted, but never bothered to because... hey actually, no idea. Because nobody thought about what happens in this film, and having four ships is cool, so four of them are duking it out while Asuka turns herself into an Angel by awakening fully, in order to stop Unit-13, which fails because haha once again all you did was do what you were supposed to. Because Asuka was designed for this very moment. Shinji then gets into Unit-01 that Cylops!Gendo, who this time around fused with the remains of Adam with no problem because there's no Rei #3 around to stop him, tore out of the Wunder. The ship, funnily enough, stays afloat or whatever it is they do without its main engine. It's fine, really. Please, don't look over your script, just film the first draft. This is where the films finally flies completely off the handle. Agent Smith and Neo enter the Matrix, where they battle each other to a standstill and start talking to each other. Gendo asks Neo why he persists, and Neo tells him: BECAUSE I CHOOSE TO, FATHER! Now let me be your shrink and tell me of your woes. Gendo does, while he walks up to the middle option to start the Synthesis ending to fuse all synthetical and biological life. Because we're out of ideas, we're also doing giant Rei again, except this time it's only her head, not a complete giant naked Rei. We get an army of headless naked CGI Reis instead. Agent Smith reveals that he's just the same as Neo and wants to return home to a feeling of being needed and loved. Misato and Ritsuko meanwhile conjure up a new Spear of Destiny out of thin air to end this nonesense in best Stephen King tradition. When out of ideas, just end it somehow. I guess it technically beats simply erasing the Crimson King, but only by a hair. They successfully reverse the polarity and send Mari with the new spear into the Matrix too. Shinji has a moment where he talks to the other pilot characters, similar to how the series "ended", and they leave. He talks some more to Kaworu who is stuck repeating the same nonsense in a time loop forever and ever because Hideaki Anno apparently wanted to demonstrate how he cannot escape a series he made 25 years ago. That's fair and I can understand some of his frustration, but it's still really bad form to take it out on us like that. Kaworu also talks to Ryoji for some reason that I don't even want to think about. Shinji meanwhile is now fully enlightend, having rejected or embraced his destiny, because since we don't know what the point of his existence was (Asuka and Rei were made to initiate "Another" Impact, who came up with the names here?). He becomes Homura, who takes away Madoka's goodhood and rewrites the universe (for @Bartimaeus that happens in the final film you never watched), removing all the EVAs and Evangelion as a whole from existence. I'm getting the feeling here that Mr. Anno really wants to be rid of that stuff. Fine, you know what, Mr. Anno? So do I. I never want to see this again. Embracing his fate, his mother shows up and pushes him away, killing herself and Agent Smith in the process (I think, at least), stopping Another Impact for good. Mari shows up. Right, wait, Mari went to talk to Fuyutsuki who calls her by her real name and gives her something prior to all of this. She picks up Shinji and they live happily ever after? I guess Asuka is implied to go back to Kensuke, which is fine. It sure beats her being implied to have ended up with Shinji, but that's the only positive thing I can say about it. Phew. What the everblazing hell. Please studios, before you throw money at a director and screenwriter, make sure he signs a contract to have his worked checked and revised by someone else. Preferably someone who understands that most of the time "less" is actually "more" and that you maybe should think about your ending before you write yourself into a corner and have to fix it with inventing a new Spear of Gaius to stop the Another Impact that's going on. However, that's not going to go away. This is incredibly highly rated by fans and was one of the most successful movies in Japan ever. Still, and as much as I hate this, it's probably the best out of the four, if only for the nice character moments, before taking a giant dump on them. In the end, this series took the worst of its precedessors of unrevised scripts. It feels like a first, rough draft, is overloaded with super useless philosophical wanking at the end (unlike End of Evangelion or the ending of the series, which borrowed heavily from philosophical concepts I find useless, but at least it worked and wasn't only intellectual masturbation of the David Lynch kind) and sure could have benefitted from Asuka showing up in real life and slapping Anno silly for even considering to film this. By the way, this is the Giga Shadow in Lexx: Yes, it's coming out of a moon that looks kind of blackish. Does that remind you of something? I'm not sure. Not sure at all. So, what are we going to do now? I think I'll go and read the Sailor Moon manga. That is equally ridiculously paced, and the next arc has BRACK RADY in it, but at least it will have Sailor Pluto in it, the only good thing in Sailor Moon Crystal. It sure beats Anno trolling me for watching his films. Sigh.

Oh look, Mari is here again, and we have another shot where she's sticking her ass out holding Asuka, followed by focus on her boobs while still holding Asuka, talking about if she's interested in cute boys at all. Oh my, Mari dear, don't tell me you're interested in some hot threesome action here. What a sizzling scene, I'm sure someone masturbated to that fantasy. Please just go away Mari, really. Not even Love Live! was that bad, and that included Nozomi rubbing everyone's boobs at least once. Except for Ericchi's, I think. Here, have some Love Live! music: There we go with the Shinji sniffing again. Rooftop, glasses, big boobs. Yeah. Sure Mari. Uhm, guys, don't be like Star Trek Discovery, the LaGrange points are a little further away from Earth than you think they are. And by "a little" I mean in the ballpark of a couple hundred thousand kilometers you dweebs. Yes, I've reached the point where I'm complaining about nothing at all. Very well done there, film. Well done indeed. NERV has a Lexx copy called "Erlösung" with "Opfer" type systems. What? Oh, and another one called Erbsünde. This keeps getting better and better. Halfway through, time for a break. I remember a time when NGE was a mech anime that deconstructed common mecha anime tropes and was mostly about the characters. Do you remember that too? Because his film certainly doesn't, and now that Mari's fighting with a laser whip and Asuka has the sawblade cleaver thing from Bloodborne, everything is... getting worse all the time. If this keeps up it'll be the first time my brain breaks enough to make me stop and never go back.

When Asuka says that they were designed with inhibitors in place to limit their potential and Rei's feelings were designed to include some feelings of care for her son (sort of), does that mean what I think it does? That literally every single piece of character development in this film, and the films before, what little there actually is, was completely worthless anyway? Great way to make me like this part, movie series. Really. Just when, for the first time ever, you're not abject moronic or outright terrible, you pull that out of your hat? Asuka keeps checking up on Shinji without him noticing and it's probably nothing but residual programming from Gendoh. Sure, fine. It's a pity I can't delete something from the Prime Video library. Go to hell. Die in a fire. I hope every disc containing this travesty of a film dies at the same time without anything left to reconstruct it.

So far Mari had more screen time in the opening of Thrice Upon A Time than in the other three combined. That's the strangest part about inserting an alien from P7S-441, if you do that, why not give her enough screen time to do anything interesting to warrant that inclusion, like, at all. This is how the Mari looks when she's not zapping the audience or the other characters with her telepathic* defense mechanism: So much for fanservice, right? Well, this is the one that cosplayed as Lt. Tyler, his name is Kaiael, and with a name like that he really fits right into Evangelion. Coming up with other sci-fi universe tie-ins is more fun than watching these films. The Madoka bit was a joke, but Rebuild being a retelling of NGE makes it all the worse for me. That's why I kept saying that I'm probably unfair in my "rating" of Clear Card. If I had never seen NGE but only these films, I'd probably still not like them, but at least I wouldn't sit here making fun of them at every turn, or actually having to turn them off to go do or watch something else in between because I can't take it any more. Having the name and the characters attached makes it so much worse, much like Star Trek: Discovery. Discovery might have been an OK sci-fi show (in its first season, not in the others, the other two aren't just bad Star Trek, but also super bad in everything), it's just such an utter failure as Star Trek that it ended up one of the worst watching experiences I've ever had. The same goes for Star Trek 2009, which arguably at least was fun, stupid sci-fi action schlock with decent actors and high production values. I guess... your time with Clear Card won't be as miserable as mine then. Heh. We'll see. No, actually, I really didn't. Mari isn't entirely wrong about it, though, because unlike the bit in Sailor Moon Crystal which reinforces terrible stereotypes of hysterical women made all the worse by her needing to be convinced by Mamoru that he desires her and not a nine year old girl after throwing a tantrum that was so immature that you can't possibly think she's capable of giving consent in any meaning of the term , Shinji would most likely really benefit from having a friend who isn't messed up, someone to show him that there's more to life. Not necessarily getting laid in the process, that's just hyperbole added because I really don't like Mari, and her suggestion is so incredibly stupid in the face of the reality of these films that I don't even know where to begin. Or is it really hyperbole? Mari's suggestion really is the NGE-esque equivalent of a rom-com scene where either the friends of the male lead or the friends of the female lead suggest to him/her to vent their frustrations by getting laid for a change. Gah. Mari if you want to help Shinji then do something about it. Or get the hell out of these films. Seriously. If yelling at him would work Asuka would have set him straight already. I mean, show-Asuka, not this travesty of an underdevloped girl stuck in a plug suit that's "too revealing" indeed. What a meta scene that turned out to be, because it really was revealing. The quality of this entire movie series. *Maybe I should mention that in Stargate, it's explained as a chemical influencing people's brains, but that doesn't make sense unless they specifically evolved to avoid humans, so telepathy it is for Mari, really. On the other hand, maybe that's why she sniffed Shinji, to come up with a better chemical mixture that makes everyone believe she's part of the team for no reason. Hmmm.

I'll get to Nadia eventually, I'm just not sure when. I meant any new works from Anno from now on, not any old ones of them. He did work on Sailor Moon with Ikuhara. That doesn't show up in his credits, and he wasn't paid for it (according to the interview with Ikuhara), he apparently just wanted some original character artwork for his contributions. Guy was a huge Sailor Moon nerd. Or still is. Anno was the key animator on the Uranus and Neptune transformation sequences and Sailor Moon episode 103 (the first episode where Sailor Chibi-Moon shows up). Wow, that was so inexplicable. Usagi turns from hysterical and jealous of Chibi-Usa to super friendly with her after Mamoru proves to be a god twixt the sheets. That must have been a pretty good night, to have such an effect. Seems so awkward to use that particular stereotype in a 2014 adaptation of an older manga. Really, why not just... not include it. Assuming it even is in the manga like that, but it probably is. Everything else that was baffling was too. Lexx is pretty fun though, although it's live action sci-fi in the end. It also has terrible CGI too, but more of an excuse, it's from 1996 and was the pioneer show for new techniques to combine CGI with live action shots. As such it looks like it had a shoestring budget, but it allegedly cost 13 million dollars. Silly me, how could I forget. Thanks for setting that straight. So, about that third Puella Magi Madoka Magica movie, are you planning to watch that now, or was Rebuild not quite that bad? I watched the opening sequence with Mari singing and having an extended, completely pointless action scene. Shinji, Asuka and Rei #whatever are currently walking through I wasteland, where I paused because it's really late and time to try and sleep a bit.

I didn't, not really. I just wanted to express my incredulity there, or disdain for all of it, or... hell if I know. I also should really do an editing and proofreading pass before pressing submit reply, some of those sentences are really weird, but I was in a bit of a rush to get the post done. Grannyragi was easier to make fun of, but it really was English VA Shinji that caused me to abort, or rather, all of his alone time with Misato. Misato was my favorite character in the original show, and much of that was Usagi's performance as her seiyuu. I thought it kind of hilarious that she would have an English VA that sounded like an older woman, just like Usagi did in the original dub of Sailor Moon, but really, between Megumi Ogata and Spencer Whatshisface, sorry Shinji, I'd rather you sound like a girl than that. No, that was because it was the closest to the show and all the cracks weren't as readily obvious when you haven't watched the original series three months ago. Not making sense is the name of the game here. Asuka goes from wanting to belt Shinji to dragging him away, trying to rescue him right after he almost destroyed the world. Again. With no setup. Nothing. That started out as a joke after Kaworu's alternate timeline/quantum reality/time loop sort of comment at the end of Evangelion 1.11, because Lexx employed the same concept with the Time Prophet who forsaw the fall of His Divine Shadow, a cruel tyrant ruling over the League of 20.000 planets from the central government planet called the Cluster. However, the more I saw of Evangelion 2.22 and 3.33, the more I started noticing actual parallels, and my original plan, to mirror but invert the Red Letter Media Star Wars: Holiday Special Half in the Bag episodes, fell apart. You know, they started out talking about everything but the Holiday Special, and only got to it in the second episode. I thought it would be fun to start talking about 2.22 and mixing in Lexx stuff and end this with a complete post about nothing but Lexx istead of dealing with what was clearly shaping up to be insanity and a complete waste of time in the form of Evangelion: Thrice Upon A Time. Then... well, then 3.33 happened, and Misato suddenly commands a battle ship designed to kill Gods that looks an awful lot like the Lexx, and KP and Sarex started talking about the anti-universe, which is also a huge part of the Lexx setting. In Lexx, there's the Universe of Light, and the Dark Zone. His Divine Shadow rules over the Universe of Light, and in order to escape, Lexx and her crew travel to the Dark Zone and have the silliest adventures there. After the end of the miniseries and in the first season of the regular TV show they even go and cause a new big bang to rebirth the universe. Anyway, Lexx has a council of disembodied brains (some of them are eaten over the course of the show, both by cluster lizards and a cannibal character), an aggressive female character telling the obstinate, mostly useless and cowardly Stanley Tweedle to man up at every opportunity, and she's trying to win the affections of someone who can't give them, although they are not the same characters. There's Kai, the stoic character who only does what he's told to do. He has an excuse, he's pretty dead, being only a reanimated corpse. Technically not that different from Rei. It has really terrible dialogue (on purpose) and is making fun of itself. Yes, actual dialogue from the miniseries. Tim Curry plays a character called "Poetman" who sums up my feelings while watching Rebuild of Evangelion perfectly: Then there are the times when the show has dialogue that is about as impenetrable as the one in Evangelion: Kai is sometimes such a Rei: And sometimes he just goes off the rails: Anyway, enough quotes for now. Back to some more talk about 3.33: The basic idea, to have a 14 year time skip and pull Shinji out of stasis where he was kept isn't so bad. The film begins with a seizure inducing cacophony of light flashes and CGI madness that looks curiously terrible compared to most other CGI animation where Asuka and Mami Mari risk their lives to abduct Shinji. Instead of then using Shinji as a fish out of water character to explain what happened in the past 14 years in an organic manner everyone starts treating him like his father treated him for his entire life. He reacts as Shinji must. He can't help being Shinji at this point, and while 14 years, a seventh extinction event having happened and fighting NERV can certainly change people, Misato plays the hard assed commander that she never really was, only this time for real. She has no time to explain anything to Shinji, wich causes him to run away when Rei offers him the opportunity. Misato has a moment of being herself by not remote detonating him, and then is gone from the film until the very end. Afterwards nothing happens, except Kaworu and Shinji using music to synchronize because for <no real reason> they need to control a Pacific Rim Jäger mech two seat EVA. Meanwhile Gendoh of course has set everything up for Shinji to cause the Fourth Impact, off screen of course, crossing Kaworu's plans, whatever they were because screw setting things up. Kaworu figures out that that Gendoh did - something - to mess up his plans, and implores Shinji to stop what he's doing, but he's doing it regardless and then wonders why it doesn't work as promised. Because why not. Guess Asuka is right when she calls Shinji an idiot all the time. Kaworu spews random nonsense about turning into the thirteenth Angel, such a terrible fate for the first angel, Misato rushes in from her pause to kick some ass, Asuka sacrifices her beloved Unit-02 to make <unexplained new EVA> go kerblammo, then Gendoh turns off Seele, which... wait, what, how does he do that, and if he's always been secretly working behind SEELE's back, why hasn't he turned them off much earlier? Kaworu once again kills himself to prevent the new impact. Shinji, Asuka and Rei land somewhere, and Asuka starts dragging Shinji away, in a display of... absolutely unwarranted care (?) for someone she just wanted to beat up earlier in the movie. Apparently she and Misato understood off-screen that they really screwed up by treating Shinji the way they did. Or not. Because why should anything be set up before. Just do it! <insert Shia LeBeouf meme here>. Sometime before that Mari tells Rei that her former self was more fun to be around. Mari is beginning more and more to remind me of Lt. Tyler from Stargate SG-1. In Stargate SG-1, the SG teams always have four members. When SG-1 suddenly comes back talking about a fifth member and their team leader still being stuck under fire, calling him Lt. Tyler and behaving as if he was always part of their team, everyone else is pretty weirded out. Tyler turns out to be an alien who can telepathically alter memories to make other sentient species think he's a friend when they've never met before. It's their defense mechanism. Mari is someone like that too. An alien from the outside who inserted herself into the story so she's not hunted down and killed by some other alien species. Yes, I'm pretty sure that the theory that this is just one giant trolling middle-finger to the NGE fandom is the best explanation there is. It has to be Anno trolling, or else he just wants to cash in on NGE by expending the least amount of effort possible. Either one works for me, and good for you Mr. Anno, good for you. Just don't expect me to watch anything you do from now on, ever again. Oh, right, I forgot that Mari told Shinji to start enjoying life. Dear lord Mari, dear lord, I'm sure that set him straight now. Shinji, just get laid, that will solve everything. It certainly did for Marion in Natsu e no Tobira. Anyway, with the film actively ruining my idea of making a Lexx post next, the only thing that's left now is getting it over with.

Yay, I finished it. EVANGELION 3.33: THE GIGA SHADOW AWAKENS. Almost. Where to begin? Perhaps with the one positive point. Unlike the other two, this felt - structurally, at least - like a movie, instead of the hot mess you get when you cram 24 episodes worth of content into two 105 minute films. Freed from the shackles of serialized storytelling in a 25 minute format, the movie then does... absolutely nothing with it. The pacing is still a mess, going from nigh-unfollowable fast paced, chaotic action to an absolute dead crawl that feels like half an hour (it probably is), only to culminate in another "hey almost" sort of Near Third/Third/Fourth/Final Impact where a whole lot of things that were never set up suddenly pay off. Okay, so the film begins with Zev/Xev "Mari" Bellringer and Asukai rescuing Stanley "Shinji" Tweedle, because only Stanley has the key to the Lexx, which makes him an annoying, yet sadly necessary member of the crew. For those who don't know, and I presume for a bit that's all of you seeing the lack of comments from the last time I made these posts, here are the characters involved: Zev, or Xev? I think I'll let you pick whom you like more. The problem with Zev is that she's the only female character on Lexx, aside from the ship herself, so she gets to do all the fanservice on her own. And that's actually - quite literally - her sole reason to exist. She's more agressive like Asuka, but eh... in that case we need to turn Asuka into a creepy undead assassin. That doesn't work, but neither does this film! I can already hear you go "NANI?" at this, but bear with me. Zev, or Xev - and for the love of god never google Xev Bellringer because that apparently is not only a character name in Lexx but also a porn star name that tracks much higher on google search results than an obscure German/Canadian sci-fi show from the late 90ies, and I just found that out the hard way looking for that second image. Why are there two? Well Eva Habermann eventually got fed up playing the fanservice girl and they replaced her with Xenia Seeberg. Zev gets absorbed/eaten by Lyekka after her death. Lyekka is a sentient plant consuming humans or whatever comes into her clutches by invading their minds and becoming something desirable. Anyway, to get the crew to allow her to stay on, she consumes Zev and transforms her into Xev. Yay! Zev's entire raison d'etre really is fanservice. That's because her character was designed to be this way. Originally an undesirable woman on a remote planet, she disrespected her arranged husband after he said he doesn't want her, by punching him in the face. The clergy can't have that, so she is sentenced to being transformed into a sex slave, a procedure involving physical alteration into a desirable woman with extremely heightened libido as well as mental programming making her obedient (well, madly in love to the point of doing anything) to whoever she first encounters. Except in Zev's case it goes wrong, she is not only transformed into Fanservice-Girl, she's also fused with a bit of cluster lizard DNA (terrible creatures who enjoy eating human flesh), and the mental programming is actually transferred to 7-90, a robot head. 7-90 spends the rest of his life pining after Zev, but can of course not do anything, being a robot. Well, only a robot head. Zev is reall into Kai, but Kai has a small wrinkle. Or rather, a not very hard wrinkle, because he's undead and with no blood circulation has a hard time getting it ha...rd. Wow. And you know what? That sentence isn't nearly as bad as this film was. Kai Well, he'd fit right into any anime, huh? He's the last of the Brunnen-G, a reminder that His Divine Shadow kept as reanimated corpse to mock the prophecy that the Brunnen-G will be his downfall. It's a pity, really, beacuse... nowhere in the prophecy it was stated that the last Brunnen-G needs to be a alive to kill His Shadow. That's what you get for mocking, Shadow! The Divine Predecessors (aka SEELE): The brains of previous Divine Shadow hosts serve as a council for His Divine Shadow, at least until they're loaded onto the Lexx and Stanley, Zev and Kai abscond with it. Finally, this is Stanley Tweedle, Guard 4th class: Stanley was once part of a group of rebels, but ran afoul of a group of Nigerian Princes promising him rescue. They ended up extracting secret rebel plans from him, plans that His Divine Shadow used to almost annihilate the Heretic movement. He since spends his time doing as little as possible as the lowest ranked Guard in the Cluster administration. Life turns from bad to worse for him after annoying a superior officer and is condemned to organ donation. The clerk tells him that he'll probably lose an eye, a kidney and an arm. When he doesn't show up, that sentence turns to complete dismemberment. Running for his life he accidentially manages to get the key to the Lexx, the most POWERFUL DESTRUCTIVE FORCE IN THE TWO UNIVERSES. He's also a real Shinji, and he's got the supreme hots for Zev. Too bad for him that Zev doesn't want him, although he's literally for most of the time the only fully functional male within lightyears and she suffers extremely under her increased sex drive. And the entire reason for this long assed post about an old TV show with terrible production values and bad acting, the quintessential b-movie version of a sci-fi show that I can very much recommend to anyone who enjoys a heavy dose of self-irony, bad production values, hot fanservice, ridiculous dialogue and incredible world design. Plus, slight spoiler, His Divine Shadow is played by none other than Malcom McDowell in the final episode of the miniseries (sometimes called the first season). That means @KP the meanie zucchini I guess, unless he already watched it. This is the LEXX: The Lexx kills both a God in the miniseries and is powerful enough to obliterate planets. And she really looks an awful lot like the "Wunder", which is German for wonder, in case you don't know that from all the Nazi Wunderwaffen anyway. The Lexx is bioengineered and alive, by the way, so every now and then she just stops to eat... something. In the Cluster, she's fed with the remains of the dismembered, and there are a lot of executions by dismemberment going on. Wait, did you want to talk about Evangelion 3.33? Right, sorry. What a mess. I need to let that one sink in some more before I even attempt to seriously make a post out of it. What the hell, Mr. Anno? At first this began as annotated for the hard of thinking version of NGE, now it's gone completely off the rails, with a 14 year time skip, characters who have learned NOTHING in those 14 years, incuding how to talk to Shinji so he doesn't run off immediately and does the one thing he should not because god damned Misato how f*cking dumb can you be, talking to Shinji like that? Same goes for you Asuka, although you really never had your head screwed on straight, so someone should probably make sure she doesn't interact with Shinji for a while. Guys, really. Oh, and being an EVA pilot makes you immortal, gg, that's why Mari is still around from pre-impact times. Sure, why not. Why... not. Or is everyone actually immortal, because nobody from NERV really looks like they've aged. Not even decrepit close to death old Gendoh right hand guy whose name I should probably recall but for some reason can't, right now. Yui's former professor. Well, here's to the positive thing. Two and a half more hours, and I'll never have to see that again. Time to rewatch Lexx.

I started watching it when I posted I'm off to watch it, but I still have 15 minutes left. Shinji is about to do what his father wants him to do even though Kawuro figured out something's wrong. I stopped there, took a nap, watched a Deep Space Nine episode and... yeah, trying to do everything to not go back. Had a good hearty laugh when Misato launched the Lexx. I made that comparison based on the cyclical time loop or alternate reality nonsense introduced by Kaworu's babbling in the first movie and meant it as a joke, and then that happens... but I'm going to post more on it anyway.

Well... pretty boy sure knows how to make an entrance, right? "Cards created by Clow. There is one wishing to become your master. A girl chosen by Cerberus the Selector. Her name is Sakura. To see if she is truly worthy of being our master. I, Yue the Judge, will now conduct the Final Judgment." -- Yue I'm bishōnen to the core, you guys. Just look at me! I sometimes wondered if everone being totally into his timid, wallflowery and slighty stupid looking civilian identity is a comment on bishōnen characters, but that seems really out of place for Cardcaptor Sakura. It doesn't really comment, it just demonstrates. Story talk:

In other words, my initial impression: Was correct. It really is Anno trolling everyone.

Well, I'm both looking and not looking forward to that. Good, good. It's time to finally find out who Yue really is. Heh. A pity about them not enjoying it enough to continue though. I guess I can understand that. One some, uhm, "objective" level. Really. No, I don't. How can you not love watching Sakura clean house and battle a tree. It's so adorable. My biggest problem with the scene, apart from reusing it to draw parallels that could have been shown much better - and were shown much better in the past - was the reuse of the tired old comedy trope where Misato picks up her beer can only to reveal that something's still censoring the nudity. It was mildly funny (if totally expected) for Shinji, but for Asuka it doesn't even make sense in the framing of the rest of the film, or the first one, or what makes Asuka's breasts so much different from Rei's? I really don't get it, but I'm also the wrong person for this kind of "comedy", which almost always falls flat for me, unless it's the silly shadow play in Men in Tights, while that is a different setup, it's similar, and a riot in general. Funny, I love that movie, but only in the dub. The German dub is so much funnier than the original. It seems like a rather clear basis for the stylistic elements of Ms. Takeuchi's work, and for Utena as well. I don't know enough about it, to be honest, to say that for sure, but I'd be surprised if she and some other parts of the Sailor Moon creative team didn't at least have Natsu e no tobira as inspiration, manga or OVA. It also looks different from many other 80ies anime and OVA I've seen. I'll be off to subject myself to Evangelion 3.33 now.

Well, here's to one last hurrah of an air of authority on the matter, I guess. I should stand by what I say more often, really, and just mark the thread as read without actually reading it. Ah, well, here goes nothing: That's easy to explain, because the "several prominent medical researchers" are akin to the 0.1% of climatologists who deny climate change, and the 0.1% of physicists who are still trying to find the aether. The difference is that while the anti-relativity crowd doesn't get any false equivalency media time*, the fringe science groups for climate change and vaccines do, for some reason, helped by a good deal of lobbying by some very powerful and wealthy individuals (there's an actual conspiracy for you, although it's really just out in the open) and trolling on social media. Take Byram Bridle, for instance, a "prominent" Canadian immunologist who thinks that the vaccines are poison because the spike protein is cytotoxic, and he's citing an actually old Japanese study where it was shown that rats and mice reacted badly to having an insane amount of mRNA injected. Much, much more than what's in a human approved dose. He also said he "fought" to be allowed to read the study, while it's really just publicly available, albeit written in Japanese. The guy was all the rage a while ago on Russia Today and a host of anti-vaxxer YouTube channels and other alternative health and medicine media outlets. The rats have been injected with much higher dosages of the Pfizer vaccine that humans would get. The vaccines themselves, by design, cause inflammation (= cells that build the spike protein after having the mRNA introduced through vector viruses or lipid nanoparticles are eventually disposed of by the body's immune response), it seems logical enough that severely overdosing it causes problems. If that didn't happen, the vaccines wouldn't work. This is, by the way, the study Dr. Bridle had to "fight over" to get access to (maybe he meant he had trouble finding a Japanese translator, because clicking on that link sure isn't anything you need to fight over), and this is the EMA approval document for the Pfizer vaccine. The study is talked about on page 48 to 50. Just so you know this isn't made up. And no, I'm neither a medical reseracher nor can I read Japanese, I got the two links through five minutes of googling around a bit. You'd think news outlets letting the guy talk would fact check with even greater care, but who does that in this day and age. Ain't nobody got time to do things that don't generate ad revenue - or fit the desired narrative. However, don't go and claim you present an argument, you just - by your own admission - pick something up on the news and post it here, and most of the time it's just that. Still no sign of Israel actually stopping the third doses. In fact, Israel just approved the booster shot for younger people, first for everyone aged 50 or older, and recently 40 or older. My Moderna shot came with an list of ingredients that I had to read through first to look for known allergies. <imagine HK47's voice here> Mocking tone: People don't think you're a flat earther doing your own research for nothing, it's because you keep repeating the same pattern of any flat earther who does his own "research", and assuming for the moment that you're really just relaying what the news tell you, it's time to look for a different news channel than Russia Today or some other radio station, because that one really has it in for any vaccine that isn't Sputnik V. I wonder why that is though. All of this isn't to say that Big Pharma isn't an actual problem - it is, often, and for hundres of millions of people worldwide. You just need to look at the insulin prices in the US, or the attempts to price gouge HIV treatments, side effects that show up due to insufficient testing, and any number of such occurances. Vaccines, however, aren't. Sick people generate much more income for Big Pharma than innoculated ones, and it really takes some mental twisting to come up with the idea that vaccines are supposed to make you sick, contain microchips or are used for population control, which bit by bit I wish they were actually really made for. *Although in this day and age, it looks more and more like it's not about false equivalency any more but about generating as many clicks and viewership as possible to sell some more ads. It really is unlikely that anyone here was involved in any Covid-19 research, but what does that matter? It's not necessary to understand - at least in basic principle - how an mRNA or vector vaccine works, and there are a ton of helpful people who take the complex subject matter and try to make it accessible to people. They often have YouTube channels or are sometimes on TV too (though not often enough), but are really often the punching bags of conspiracy nutjobs, anti-vaxxers and flat earthers. The German RKI for instance has a YouTube presence that explains how what and why the vaccines work as they do, how coronaviruses infect cells, and a bunch of other things. It's not perfect, but they're really helpful and use props to visualize what's going on. Like this one: The only problem is, obviously, they're German. The guy has a PhD in microbiology by the way (appeal to authority, kek) and probably drives a nice Porsche financed by Big Pharma, Bill Gates, Soros or whoever else is at fault for the plandemic. Where's Alex Jones when you need him? There's no way he's doing these for the benefit of people and to help them understand. Nah.

I overexaggerated for effect. Marion is 15, so he's uninteresting for the real Pedosus anyway. I mean, there's video evidence that Pedosus doesn't like Chibi-Usa's 16 or 17 year old version, while he's really into her while she's nine, but when taken in a modern context, Natsu e no tobira it is really inappropriate in both the (mostly implied) age difference and the very questionable consent (at best) given, Sarah is really forceful in her persuit, in the beginning, the first time they meet she kisses Marion without consent - well at least he's not asleep when it happens, RIGHT, MAMORU? - and then later it really gets worse. To the OVA's credit, everything about is is inrecredibly artistic. The soundtrack is perfectly fitting, the backgrounds vary from simple and elegant to detailed and dreamlike, and the character designs really seem to be the origin for later works of the 90ies, with its more angular features than the usually more rounded ones of the era. It was more enjoyable than RoE simply for that alone. This was, by the way, the YT suggestion: You really need to turn off the sound, because Mr. Narrator is one more case of people who should not narrate videos, but he also thinks it looks incredibly French, so at least he's not a complete nicompoop. You can look at the first minute. The OVA contains a drawing of Zeus' affair with Leda (here's some greek mythology for you ) later on, and I think it is also in this video (that means bare breasts, just in case, so NSFW eventually if you watch it in full, but why would you). I mean, really, look at that first minute of the video and tell me that doesn't look at least enticing, especially when you've just seen that opening shot of Evangelion 3.33 with the singing Mari and Eyepatch!Asuka in their CGI spaceships. That it turned out to fall a "little" flat and misses the mark of its animation promise by a good deal wasn't exactly something easily predicted. I did read a plot blurb, but it just mentioned an affair. After a while I thought he'd start a little Romeo and Juliet style teenage forbidden love affair with the mayor's daugther. But no, not really. Yeah. At least it didn't spawn a thousand different spin-offs to follow. I think I'll just finish Princess Tutu now, that didn't turn out to be what I hoped for either, but at least it's good. Oh, it also really demonstrates that Ikuko Itoh likes these sort of characters looking at underwear joke, like the one where the four girls in Sailor Moon are stuck in that narrow alley. Because there's a really small character (in body size, not age) in the second season that walks underneath Ahiru's skirt and starts looking for her duck tail while she's a girl, and it startles her so much she turns back into a duck. Princess Tutu is also a great contrast to Rebuild of Evangelion in terms of framing. There are certain times when characters in Princess Tutu, are drawn with a certain amount of sexual appeal, but it always serves a narrative purpose, and isn't there because Ms. Itoh thought the fans would appreciate Mari complaining about squeezed boobies in her ill-fitting plugsuit. Funny, as much as I complained about showing both Shinji and Asuka running out of the bathroom naked because they're startled by Pen² (because it's far too unnecessarily direct in immediately drawing parallels between the two, compared to the original show), at least the two scenes made senes from a narrative point of view. If only the others were as well done. Speaking of Rebuild of Evangelion, it has the same feeling that Clear Card did. Made by all the same people with all the same assets, but it's just wrong and doesn't work. Except it is worse for Clear Card still, because I would rate the original Cardcaptor Sakura a good deal higher than the original Neon Genesis Evangelion, even though that comparison is only truly there for demonstration purposes. The two animes have nothing in common, other than having terrible follow ups made way later. Still, I never thought I could use NGE as an example of why staying away from Clear Card is a good idea. I'd still like to get validation for my point of view, obviously, but I think I just killed every chance that you'll ever try Clear Card. Not-a-spoiler:

Yeah, and he got his ass handed to him by a Mini-Jotaro. Didn't get any further than that though, because Evangelion. Well, and the marriage thing.

Okay, I just had an @Bartimaeus moment. Well, "just" implies an immediacy that is not there, the moment I had two three (it took me actually one to write this post!) hours ago, however its outcome just ended. Instead of watching Evangelion 3.33 while doing my cardio, I randomly scrolled through my YouTube suggestions and stumbled upon something that... kind of caught my eye. The most ridiculous part is that it is actually Love Live!'s fault - Japanese name similarities seem are hard to deal with for YouTube. In one of the later seasons or spin-off seasons of Love Live! featuring different characters from the first anime, there is a song called Natsu e no tobira: Now, for sanity's sake, I would suggest to not actually listen to that. By eye-catching, I don't mean the girls' beach outfits, although they were probably made for just that. No. Natsu e no tobira also happens to be the name of a 60 minute anime OVA from 1981, an an early film work from Madhouse, which at the time still cooperated with Toei. Madhouse is a studio I don't think needs any introduction. It is a 70ies manga adaptation, looking like this: That, by the way, is the OVA's protagonist, Marion, who in spite of his name and looks is just a really pretty boy. Or so at least was the suggestions of the opening animation. But never mind that for now. What I mean is, I looked at that, and figured I need to see it. I had no real idea what I was walking into, and boy oh boy, I cannot catch a break at the moment. I don't mean that the OVA was bad by that. In fact, it looks rather distinct, and it is set at a school in France, at an indeterminatable time when coal fuelled trains still roamed the countryside. The character designs, at least for Marion and later Sarah, immediately reminded me of something else. Of course Marion and everyone else don't look like the opening animation as seen in the animated gif would suggest once the opening is over. He then looks like this: If you find this to have some very striking resemblance to the Sailor Moon manga, then that is not a coincidence, because apparently Naoko Takeuchi used stylistic elements from 70ies mangas to come up with the looks for her characters. That seems fairly evident when you look at them side by side: Long hair nonwithstanding, anyway. This is pretty boy Marion's manga version, in case it isn't exactly obvious. People these days need lots of exposition. And now, with knowing that this probably served as an inspirational basis for Sailor V and/or Sailor Moon, what do you think could this possibly be about? Yes, of course. Inappropriate romances. The core of the OVA, and apparently the manga, is an affair between Marion and Sarah, the wife of Count Cluny. You see, while she has a rich husband and all that, he seems to travel extensively often, and he's either her age or a little older, and deep down, Sarah is really into young boys. And she likes feeling them up when she has a chance, without consent. I mean... I'll put that one in spoiler tags because it contains Marion's bare butt, it's not exactly NSFW but let's not risk anything: Sarah proves to be relentless enough and eventually manages to seduce Marion. Cue entirely too long but incredibly artistic scenes of their affair. I have to say, regardless of what this really is about, it looks fantastic. It's set in France, like I mentioned before, and it looks the part too. While it's entirely from Japan, it does have a certain French flair. You know, in the same way French movies look, uhm, French - the common film language, set design, artistry, equipment used, and so on. When you turn on your TV and catch a French film, you can almost immediately tell it is one - this is similar, only animated (same goes for me being able to tell when what I am watching is German, and therefore almost automatically bad... probably not bad, but for all the reasons I like French films, I dislike most German films). Back to the plot overview, well, next to them are four more tragic figures. Marion's friends, Jacques, Lind and Claude, and Ledania, the local mayor's daughter. Ledania: I wonder what that profile reminds me of... Claude and Marion: Oh, now I do. That looks a bit Utena, doesn't it? Or rather the other way around. This is Lind: No silly caption this time, except he does look a bit like the two faced bastard he turns out to be. And finally, the somewhat less sophisticated country boy, Jacques: He goes about town and carves LEDANIA into every tree he finds. Guess that counts as romantic. Spoilers from here on out: I honestly don't know what to make of it. It is a tragic lovestory between several characters, one which is really inappropriate, but always pretty artistic in its animation, art style and background design. Is it good? Well that's the thing. It was an hour that did not bore me, but it was also not very interesting. Hard to judge. It's probably better than the 5/10 on imdb suggests it would be, but it's not truly a classic either. It does feel aged in many respects, but that is well mitigated by it being set in a still aristocratic France in the days of yore where Counts still ruled, uhm, counties and gentlement settled their differences with pistol duels. What I can tell you is, however, it wasn't what I hoped for. Eh. I have to admit that at least the affair isn't entirely framed as something positive. Marion initially thinks it is, but he comes to a much different conclusion by the end indeed.

Pornareffu, his wee wee tiny.

Boy do I have fun things to look forward to then.

Well, there's only one answer to that:

In my defense, I was stuck at my brother's wedding today, and only came home recently and started to post. End of the World was fairly effective, I mean, not really within the storyline beacuse the storyline was nothing but a comment on metaphysics with artistic inclusions that you somehow were supposed to filter out, and some ludicrousness relating mostly to Nanami and her episodes. He was a pretty despicable character, and that was pretty good. Mari on the other hand, so far, was nothing. She was just there, looked out of place in terms of character design and behaviour and had fanservice in each scene. At least she got a new suit from somewhere (don't ask where) that fit her boobies. Good thing she was also cable to launch Unit-02 on her own, and unleash it from its shackles. With, like, no setup. Nothing. Nothing she did in that film would have been necessary if Asuka could have just piloted Unit-02 and they would have developed any other character to the point where he could be the poor guy to try the Angel corrupted Unit-03. If you want to change it up use Kensuke, not Toji. Done! *sigh* Ah, okay. You mentioned you thought it wasn't bad, so I guess that's as good as it can get with the first episode.

Don't eyeball me!

Well, look at your Mari explanation picture confirming the multiple realities/parallel timeline thing. Yay, I guess.