Anime - Oh No! Oh My God!

[majestic]

3 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Man, do you know how many times I re-wrote and edited out her name in this little side-discussion about her because I kept remembering "wait, Majestic doesn't even know if she survived yet"? Good lord, give a guy a reaction emoji at the very least, my gosh!

In my defense, I was stuck at my brother's wedding today, and only came home recently and started to post.

8 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I didn't even notice that, to be honest - I guess I was already semi-consciously interpreting it that way because there's no way this could be considered to be simply a remake or "improvement" of the original. Had to be some kind of "alternative" telling. Mainly, it was the beginning and the end in that image that made me groan and laugh, . But seriously, she is the worst. You know what? She's worse than The End of the World. Yeah, there, I said it. What an ill-fitting, odious abomination from an entirely different universe to insert squarely straight into Evangelion. To have literally anyone else from the entire rest of the cast serve her "role" would have been grand. At the very least, The End of the World fit into their own little messed-up universe and was loathsome on a character level - Mari is revolting on even a meta-level. Gosh dang, I think I would've preferred even literally The End of the World to take her place. And every time I think Rebuild has shook her, there she appears again... It's slightly PTSD-inducing.

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*

15 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

No, I did get through the entire first episode.

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.  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

The thing about Mari is that she is actually the entire reason for the plot of Evangelion. Without her Shinji would have never gotten in the Eva because

You'll have to watch the movie to find out

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, majestic said:

In my defense, I was stuck at my brother's wedding today, and only came home recently and started to post.

No excuses! ...Okay, I guess excuses are alright, grumble grumble.

17 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

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

Oh, also, one other thing: Kaworu more or less directly spoiled it at the end of 1.11. Said something about not letting bad things happen to Shinji again or "this time" or something like that. Felt way too meta, suspected from then on, especially as events diverged more and more in 2.22.

9 minutes ago, majestic said:

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*

Right to all of that. She feels even more pointless past 2.22, where you could literally remove her from every single scene and sequence and...make the slightest of modifications to the scenes and she wouldn't be missed even one iota.

4 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

The thing about Mari is that she is actually the entire reason for the plot of Evangelion. Without her Shinji would have never gotten in the Eva because

Where is the middle finger emoji at?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 minute ago, Bartimaeus said:

No excuses! ...Okay, I guess excuses are alright, grumble grumble.

Oh, also, one other thing: Kaworu more or less directly spoiled it at the end of 1.11. Said something about not letting bad things happen to Shinji again or "this time" or something like that. Felt way too meta, suspected from then on, especially as events diverged more and more in 2.22.

Right to all of that. She feels even more pointless past 2.22, where you could literally remove her from every single scene and sequence and...make the slightest of modifications to the scenes and she wouldn't be missed even one iota.

Where is the middle finger emoji at?

[Sarex]

13 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

The thing about Mari is that she is actually the entire reason for the plot of Evangelion. Without her Shinji would have never gotten in the Eva because

 

  Reveal hidden contents

You'll have to watch the movie to find out

 

Hahahahahaha

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Hahahahahaha

Wait until they find out what I mean.

[Bartimaeus]

This movie is unreasonably long, I'm only halfway through where I paused. Here I go again...

The music in Rebuild is pretty weird. It started out almost entirely with music from the original show in the first film, but then I think transitioned to weird modern stuff during the second movie, and then entirely during the third. Presumably meant to signal a divergence...but it still feels weird. Almost none of the new stuff works all that well, but I guess it mostly doesn't detract either. Mostly - generic "epic" music isn't really my thing, and that's usually the weakest stuff in this. And now...some of the original show's music is creeping in towards the end again.

"OH CRAP, SHE DID EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED!" Boy, I'm getting deja vu here, feel like this has happened once...or twice...or a dozen times before. Sometimes get the feeling that everyone doing literally nothing would've averted all of this nonsense.

My reaction to seeing Eva Imaginary:

Let's not do CGI ever again, mmkay?

Man, well, that was an absolute load of... What the heck was I supposed to get out of that? It was just one bit of nonsense after the other. Does any of that mean anything to anybody, besides the basic character stuff anyways (which is barely even a thing in Rebuild)? I'm sure it must, but man. The first half of this sort of reminded me of what I liked in the original Evangelion series and was pleasant enough (if a bit weird feeling), the second half of this was a CGI seizure-inducing action nightmare (although not as bad as the third, which was truly loathsome) while being punched in the mouth non-stop with endless nonsense that just...kind of happened. If nothing else, I think I got over my hatred of Shinji - rewatching the original show should be freaking awesome now. Any time Shinji might start to annoy me and I'll just be like "hey, at least he's not Mari".

Please watch the following video and pretend it's about Mari (existing) instead of Joe Biden (becoming president):

(P.S. Turns out...yeah, Mari didn't matter at all and could've easily not been here. Big surprise that someone you did absolutely nothing narrative or character-wise with didn't end up mattering character or narrative-wise. Wow! @majestic is gonna love this.)

I give Rebuild a...4.5/10 as a whole. That's almost good*. 6/10 for the first movie, 5 for the second, 3.5 for the third, and...a 4.5 for the fourth, I guess. My headcanon is that none of this ever happened and that the series finished with The End of Evangelion. Thanks for coming to my metaphorical crucifixation at the hands of Hideakki Anno's Evangelion, I hope you (or rather we) all burn in hell...or at least get gooped and sucked up into Human Instrumentality.

Spoiler

*Pst, a 4.5 is not even close to "almost good". A 6.5 is "almost good", while a 7 is actually "good".

(e): Restructure of my post because I accidentally more or less repeated an entire few sentences.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Luckily, I have Alex Jones here to help explain Evangelion for me:

Phew, at least I understand everything now. He had to call SEELE "Google", but that was just so he didn't trigger the psychic vampires sucking out his brains. Anyways, the gist of everything is that it's actually Gendo, not SEELE, that is turning the freaking frogs gay, so there you go.

[majestic]

Well, there's only one answer to that:

 

[Sarex]

@Bartimaeus should get a medal for persevering until the end! Congrats!

As for the movies, they did a lot to explain what was going on in the originals as far as the story goes, as far as the characters go it was mostly a rehash of the originals (minus she who shall not be named), although this time around he gave us some closure and didn't blueball the ending. Overall I much prefer this ending to what we got with NG:E, I would even go so far to say that I like it very much.

I think it goes back to what KP was saying, these movies are made for the people who already watched the original series and so a lot of the character interactions have been skipped or have simply been sped through. Overall the focus was more on the "story" this time around.

As for what the story is, this is how I understood it. The rebuild is the continuation of the original series. At some point after the ending of NG:E someone wished for a restart of the world, it's also hinted that this restart may have happened a couple of times with different variations of reality, ie. wishes being made that affect the world. Gendo's wish being that all barriers are removed and thus all beings become one (this was a theme in the original series too) so he can be with his wife again who is now part of the original Eva (and after the second movie part of Shinji?), so he tricked pretty much everyone from the beginning to make this scenario happen. Now to make this happen he needed the spears, ie. wishes. That is why he needed the impacts to happen as they provided the materials for the spears, ie. fuel for the wishes. The rest is I think pretty clear by the end of the last movie, Shinji mans up confronts his father and with the last spear wishes for the end of Eva and thus choosing to grow up and face the world on his own.

As for the ending itself I think it's a comment on the real world being interesting enough without Giant robot battles and magic technology.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I can't imagine not posting this if Alex Jones and anime are mentioned together.

Anyways I think Rebuild is some good ideas, some awful ones, a few great ones, and some hideous cgi slapped together. Overall I think it is the most satisfying ending Evangelion is going to get, which may not be saying much but I liked it all the same. Like usual, I think cgi does make most things worse, and while it may have destroyed the budget hand drawn animation would have looker much better.

And I was completely serious about Mari, the anti-universe sketches show how she basically started the events of Evangelion. Without her there might not have been a Second Impact and there definitely wouldn't have been a NERV.

[Sarex]

10 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

And I was completely serious about Mari, the anti-universe sketches show how she basically started the events of Evangelion. Without her there might not have been a Second Impact and there definitely wouldn't have been a NERV.

Hmmm, I didn't catch that part at all. Maybe I should have rewatched the previous movies before watching the last one. I just don't get what part of the movies show that she remembers the previous worlds.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 minute ago, Sarex said:

Hmmm, I didn't catch that part at all. Maybe I should have rewatched the previous movies before watching the last one. I just don't get what part of the movies show that she remembers the previous worlds.

It's not exactly that, it's that she was the one who introduced Gendo and Yui. So she's been piloting EVAs before the other pilots were born or vat grown.

[Sarex]

14 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

It's not exactly that, it's that she was the one who introduced Gendo and Yui. So she's been piloting EVAs before the other pilots were born or vat grown.

Oh wow, the ****ing photograph... Missed that completely.

 

You know what. Maybe I'll rewatch the movies.

edit: Yeah, now I see that she was the one in Gendo's sketched memories...

Edited August 20, 2021 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Oh wow, the ****ing photograph... Missed that completely.

 

You know what. Maybe I'll rewatch the movies.

edit: Yeah, now I see that she was the one in Gendo's sketched memories...

Yeah, she shows up in the photograph in 3.33 and in the Gendo memories in 3.0 + 1.01.

What makes Mari very different than the other pilots is that she actually wanted to pilot the Evas out of free will, while the others were forced into it or built for it. I think they tried to show this early on with the singing, beast mode, and boob fixation as both more knowledgeable about Evas and more carefree about fighting monsters but all of that can be read as fanservice for mecha pilot waifu.

[majestic]

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

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

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

Yeah, like Pen Pen starting a family, Kaworu and Shinji playing piano together, and Aoba rejecting humanity and killing Makota with his space ripper stingy eyes.

[majestic]

Pornareffu, his wee wee tiny.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

Pornareffu, his wee wee tiny.

Oh so you've gotten around to Alessi? Has he encountered Jotaro yet?

[majestic]

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:

Spoiler

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:

Spoiler

Oh dear. The four boys are all going to the same academy. They're part of their own little club, the Rational Party, a group of students being annoyed by the immaturity of their fellow students, and claiming to be rational over being emotional. As such, Marion in particular dislikes women, who he, like any good old chauvinist, sees as creatures of emotion, rather than rational thought. This does not bode well for Ledania, who is in love with him.

When Ledania sends Marion letters expressing her feelings, they meet, and Marion rejects her. Marion runs way in the rain, but collapses, and finds himself in the clutches of Madam Pegasus, who he initially also rejects, but she's not having any of that. As it turns out, like any good old chauvinist, Marion simply projected his own insecurities and distate for his emotions onto women. He notices that because he actually falls in love with Sarah during their affair.

With her husband gone, they spend most of the summer holidays at her house. Eh. You can imagine what they do, but you don't have to, because it's also on screen. Anyway, in the meantime, Claude becomes more and more distraught by the absence of his friend Marion, and the other two both love Ledania.

What I can say in "defense" of this setup is, more or less, that it follows through with the potential side effects of such a sordid affair. Marion really falls in love with Sarah, but as her husband comes home, she of course quickly breaks off the affair.

Lind and Claude come up with the plan of telling the Count about his wife's affair. Claude backs out because it is dishonorable, however, Lind really does that, only to find out that the Count of Cluny is not only well aware of his wife's proclivities, he also sort of approves or at the very least doesn't care. Lind is suitably disgusted by that revelation. I'm not judging, really, at least not the Count. His wife, uhm, yeah, how about finding more appropriate boy toys?

Claude ends up confessing his homosexuality and love to Marion (well, we're talking mid 70ies manga here, and early 80ies adaptation, so that's kind of a big deal), who violently rejects his clumsy and somewhat forceful advances - not entirely out of disgust, but he really just loves Sarah. Yeah, who would have thought that affairs like that could potentially become problematic? What? No, not me.

Anyway, Claude commits suicide over what happens. Lind proposes to Ledania, but is beaten up by Jacques who cannot let a dishonorable biatch like Lind propose to the glorious Ledania. They both want to settle this like gentlement, by a duel.

Ledania meanwhile goes looking for Marion, who once more went to the Count's estate, only to be rebuffed (well, duh). Ledania finds them there, tells Marion about the duel, he rushes there (the same scene as the opening animation), gets in between the two and is shot. The closing narration suggest he survived, but did not return to school. Lind moves to Paris, and only Jacques remains, who still waits for an answer to his proposal to Ledania.

The end!

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.

Edited August 20, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Oh so you've gotten around to Alessi? Has he encountered Jotaro yet?

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.

Edited August 20, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, majestic said:

Yeah, and he got his ass handed to him by a Mini-Jotaro

Imagine your power being to turn people into little kids and getting your ass beat by a little kid. Lmao.

[Bartimaeus]

6 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

It's not exactly that, it's that she was the one who introduced Gendo and Yui. So she's been piloting EVAs before the other pilots were born or vat grown.

That's such an utterly ludicrous and ad hoc manner of "mattering", though, and feels like a Star Wars-level of absurd detail no-one in their right mind should ever care about. That could've been anyone, and the fact that it didn't matter at all in the original story (even though it should be literally the same there) makes it feel borderline revisionist to me.

7 hours ago, Sarex said:

As for the movies, they did a lot to explain what was going on in the originals as far as the story goes

I vastly prefer an ambiguous or even no explanation over a bad explanation. In broad strokes, I guess the story's...fine, for the purpose of fulfilling the intended goal, but on a real level, it feels like one bit of arbitrary nonsense after the other made by someone that didn't know how to get their plot, characters, themes, and world to all tie into each other in a satisfying manner. And never mind the animation. ...So yeah, I found The End of Evangelion to be way more satisfying on pretty much every level, even if it was difficult to parse the details and more ambiguous. It also didn't literally make me feel physically sick like Rebuild did, so there is that too, .

7 hours ago, majestic said:

finds himself in the clutches of Madam Pegasus

And that's all you needed to know. I think I can do without any more "BIG BROTHER!!"-ing or "Pegasus!"-ing it up in anime for the time being. Glad you enjoyed it more than RoE, though, .

More Nadia: this is for @KP the meanie zucchini : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/uydiwp9cg2vwkbv/7dY7dua4yY.mp4

(note: slight choppiness in the frame rate is my video recorder's fault, not the show's)

[majestic]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

And that's all you needed to know. I think I can do without any more "BIG BROTHER!!"-ing or "Pegasus!"-ing it up in anime for the time being. Glad you enjoyed it more than RoE, though, .

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,

Spoiler

mostly Rue's evil alter ego Krähe, in her ballet outfit, when she's trying her best to appeal to Mytho,

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:

Spoiler

Did it at least pay off to subject yourself to live action comedy terror?

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

26 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

No, I still plan on trying it. I want to feel the wrongness myself - especially because if I've learned anything from RoE, it's that it will make the original look even better in hindsight. It's just that there's about a 0% chance I'll watch more than a few of the first episodes and the couple that you said that were actually good.

26 minutes ago, majestic said:

Did it at least pay off

In the sense of them loving it, no, it didn't - said it was very well-made but just didn't hold any inherent appeal to them. Regardless, my aim of finally getting an answer on Sakura was fulfilled, which also means I can finally finish the second arc, .

26 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

Yeah, I didn't really have...too much of a problem with that particular scene. It was a bit too indulgent for me, but at least it felt like there was some kind of purpose. Unlike everything with...Who-Know-Who. ...I should've listened to her in Japanese, maybe she would've been slightly less repulsive - even just her voice in the Amazon English dub is simply nails on a chalkboard for me. A better character and maybe I would've gotten used to it, but all of it together made for easy yet utter intolerance.

26 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

It is kind of amazing how watching Evangelion's action scenes is completely unappealing AND makes my brain bleed, and then seeing something like that is like...well, it's obviously a bit more crude in terms of technique and style than something modern, but who cares when it works and doesn't give you an aneurysm? Looks like a dark and dingy proto-Utena almost, .

Edited August 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus