Anime - Oh No! Oh My God!

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

Well, I'm both looking and not looking forward to that.  

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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, .

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.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

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?

Spoiler

Yes, I know, techically it's there to show Rei's complete lack of adherence or care for social norms, but really, just don't repeat the scene in the first place and I don't have to think about it.

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.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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, .

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.

Edited August 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Cardcaptor Sakura:

Spoiler

"Then, just like Kerberos, Yue must have taken a material form..."

Guess the very earliest guess I had was correct...a guess I had long-since abandoned because it would've been too weird and out of left field.

Yep, there he goes, getting all glowy and stuff. Stuff's gettin' real weird, especially what with Kero being like he is and all...

Alright, gonna be great to watch the next episode...in a month, .

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

Well the rebuild series was meant to be a revision of Evangelion so I think that's the point. While it could have been anyone who got Gendo involved with Yui and the....whatever the hell the weird ass techno-religious babble stuff was, it was Mari. Given that the idea of her was to destroy Evangelion, I think they were angling to have another character who had been there at the beginning and had some understanding of the techno-religious babble instead of another traumatized child soldier pilot. Just as likely, they could have been flying by the seat of their pants and just made it up as they went along.

I guess beyond that though Mari is there to show Shinji how getting a gf will mean he doesn't need to worry about giant robots, monsters, and can live with depression without going catatonic. Which makes the theory that Mari was an insert of Anno's wife seem more plausible. In which case bold move to make your actual wife waifu bait.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Well the rebuild series was meant to be a revision of Evangelion so I think that's the point. While it could have been anyone who got Gendo involved with Yui and the....whatever the hell the weird ass techno-religious babble stuff was, it was Mari. Given that the idea of her was to destroy Evangelion, I think they were angling to have another character who had been there at the beginning and had some understanding of the techno-religious babble instead of another traumatized child soldier pilot. Just as likely, they could have been flying by the seat of their pants and just made it up as they went along.

I guess beyond that though Mari is there to show Shinji how getting a gf will mean he doesn't need to worry about giant robots, monsters, and can live with depression without going catatonic. Which makes the theory that Mari was an insert of Anno's wife seem more plausible. In which case bold move to make your actual wife waifu bait.

There is a theory going around that the rebuild movies represent Anno's life with NG:Evangelion, its fandom that is going around in circles and that the ending symbolizes his life after Evangelion.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 minutes ago, Sarex said:

There is a theory going around that the rebuild movies represent Anno's life with NG:Evangelion, its fandom that is going around in circles and that the ending symbolizes his life after Evangelion.

Huh. He directed Shin Godzilla and the sets we saw in the anti-universe did look like that so maybe. 

[majestic]

47 minutes ago, Sarex said:

There is a theory going around that the rebuild movies represent Anno's life with NG:Evangelion, its fandom that is going around in circles and that the ending symbolizes his life after Evangelion.

In other words, my initial impression:

On 8/18/2021 at 9:45 PM, majestic said:

Is this one giant troll attempt by Anno?

Was correct. It really is Anno trolling everyone.

[majestic]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Cardcaptor Sakura:

  Hide contents

"Then, just like Kerberos, Yue must have taken a material form..."

Guess the very earliest guess I had was correct...a guess I had long-since abandoned because it would've been too weird and out of left field.

Yep, there he goes, getting all glowy and stuff. Stuff's gettin' real weird, especially what with Kero being like he is and all...

Alright, gonna be great to watch the next episode...in a month, .

 

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:
 

Spoiler

It is not so much out of the left field when you go back and look over all the clues that were dropped, they weren't noticable as clues though. Except Yukito's last name, white moon. That was a dead giveaway drop, but I'm not actually sure if the name comes up more than once (or if at all) until Kaho mentions it. But... others too, ike Shaoran's and Sakura's juxtaposed secondary crushes on moon magic users in the form of Yue and Kaho (to be fair though, Sharoan's crush on Yukito was played as anything but secondary until Dream showed him - and us - something else).

Or how Sakura talked about Yukito being Mystery Transfer Student #0, suddenly showing up at Toya's class. Or how Yukito, just like Toya, always often appears where Sakura is. Sometimes even readily where he can save her, like in that episode where he brings her to his home after she falls from that ledge. There are no coincidences, after all. Only necessity.

But worry not, Toya's ability to see spirits will come up in the Sakura card arc.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, it's actually pretty well setup, but still feels weird after having spent so much time with the alternative persona. It's been so long that my mind had jumped all the way around to it actually being Sakura's dead mom. Whoops.

How's 3.33 going?

Edited August 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 minute ago, Bartimaeus said:

How's 3.33 going?

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.

[Bartimaeus]

Please do, I want to experience the disgust and annoyance all over again.

[majestic]

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.

Edited August 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

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 right Gendoh right hand guy whose name I should probably recall but for some reason can't, right now. Yui's former professor.

I can't believe you forgot poor Fuyutsuki's name, . And also, I actually thought he was like the only one to get noticeably aged up - lord knows Misato didn't (I guess looking ridiculous in her current get-up is what we got instead?), but at least the English voice actress did a good job at sounding old and raspy. ...Because she wanted to sound old and raspy. Yes, because she wanted to, @majestic, and for no other reason - quit hating on my incredibly lovable English dub VAs*!

*If you don't, I'll start watching Sakura in English just to spite you. ...And, well, obviously myself too, because that crap sucks.

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

At first this began as  annotated for the hard of thinking version of NGE

Oh, *that's* why I was more okay with the first one. Now it all makes sense!

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

including how to talk to Shinji so he doesn't run off immediately and does the one thing he should not go because god damned Misato how f*cking dumb can you be, talking to Shinji like that?

Yeah, that's fair.

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

No, that's part of her charm! Asuka being Asuka is like the best part of this entire thing, even when it makes no sense!

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

Lexx

¿Que?

Edited August 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I can't believe you forgot poor Fuyutsuki's name, .

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.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

And also, I actually thought he was like the only one to get noticeably aged up - lord knows Misato didn't (I guess looking ridiculous in her current get-up is what we got instead?), but at least the English voice actress did a good job at sounding old and raspy. ...Because she wanted to sound old and raspy. Yes, because she wanted to, @majestic, and for no other reason - quit hating on my incredibly lovable English dub VAs*!

*If you don't, I'll start watching Sakura in English just to spite you. ...And, well, obviously myself too, because that crap sucks.

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.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oh, *that's* why I was more okay with the first one. Now it all makes sense!

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.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

No, that's part of her charm! Asuka being Asuka is like the best part of this entire thing, even when it makes no sense!

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.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

¿Que?

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.

Quote

Xev: What kind of robot are you?
790: One that wants to live in your underwear.

Yes, actual dialogue from the miniseries.

Tim Curry plays a character called "Poetman" who sums up my feelings while watching Rebuild of Evangelion perfectly:

Quote

Poetman: Bla bla bla bla bla. Dullness. Ethereal, ephemeral dullness. Allegorical dullness. The blunted boredom rises from the gorge of her insufferable lips and floats like the tedious feather of a long dead bird until it lands it nakedly tired memory next to your fleshy feet.

Then there are the times when the show has dialogue that is about as impenetrable as the one in Evangelion:

Quote

Bog: Pattern making is an art. Every piece of meat is different, it has a different personality, a different scent or soul. The art is the nose that knows the flow that goes into the bouquet. Balance and counterbalance.

 

Quote

His Divine Shadow: The Giga Shadow is the end, and it is the beginning. First will come the Cleansing, which will feed the Rebirth. The Giga Shadow is the new life beyond order. A time of pain and rejoicing. Our destiny.

Kai is sometimes such a Rei:

Quote

Kai: I'm an animated corpse, a mockery of life. I do not have wants.
Kai: Though I am an integral part of it, the prophecy will be, or not be, as it is in the cycle of time. In any event, I do not experience motivation.

And sometimes he just goes off the rails:

Quote

Kai: I killed mothers with their babies. I've killed great philosophers, proud young warriors, and revolutionaries. I've killed the evil, the good, the intelligent, the weak, and the beautiful. I have done this in the service of His Divine Shadow and his predecessors, and apparently the fun never ends!

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.

Edited August 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

Just don't expect me to watch anything you do from now on, ever again.

Nadia's pretty good...er, maybe wait until I finish it and know for sure, though, .

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

If it worked for Crystal Usagi, why shouldn't it work for Rebuild Shinji?

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

Lexx

¿Que?

Actually, all of what you wrote sounds pretty much like RoE to me right now, so I can't blame you for making the parallels, .

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

I'm the lord of making massive additions and revisions to my posts (both before AND after I've posted them), so it's not like I can say anything about it.

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

The setup is your meta-knowledge of the series and knowing that Shinji and Asuka are supposed to be...something to each other? Isn't that enough and totally satisfying on a character level? (No, no it's not.)

I was having a real Dr. Phil seizure reading the second half of your post once you actually got into the 3.33 stuff because I was actually trying to make what you were saying make sense for 4.0 instead and, well, it just wasn't working. Then I started to remember some of what happened in 3.33 and was like "oh yeah, that was a movie too! I just watched that, actually". I thought I was being hyperbolic when I said I wouldn't remember anything from Rebuild in a week or two, but I may not actually have been, because a lot of this is already starting to blur for me. That's how you know I really loved it, .

Hopefully you get at least a little enjoyment out of the first half of 4.0. I did - not a ton, but...enough. It was a little weird, but it felt like a long-deserved respite after the first three movies. You might not because it's still probably not really that great, but...

Edited August 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

9 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Nadia's pretty good...er, maybe wait until I finish it and know for sure, though, .

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).

21 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

If it worked for Crystal Usagi, why shouldn't it work for Rebuild Shinji?

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.

24 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Actually, all of what you wrote sounds pretty much like RoE to me right now, so I can't blame you for making the parallels, .

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.

40 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The setup is your meta-knowledge of the series and knowing that Shinji and Asuka are supposed to be...something to each other? Isn't that enough and totally satisfying on a character level? (No, no it's not.)

Silly me, how could I forget. Thanks for setting that straight.

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I was having a real Dr. Phil seizure reading the second half of your post once you actually got into the 3.33 stuff because I was actually trying to make what you were saying make sense for 4.0 instead and, well, it just wasn't working. Then I started to remember some of what happened in 3.33 and was like "oh yeah, that was a movie too! I just watched that, actually". I thought I was being hyperbolic when I said I wouldn't remember anything from Rebuild in a week or two, but I may not actually have been, because a lot of this is already starting to blur for me. That's how you know I really loved it, .

So, about that third Puella Magi Madoka Magica movie, are you planning to watch that now, or was Rebuild not quite that bad?

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Hopefully you get at least a little enjoyment out of the first half of 4.0. I did - not a ton, but...enough. It was a little weird, but it felt like a long-deserved respite after the first three movies. You might not because it's still probably not really that great, but...

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.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

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.

But you'll miss the part where Shinji gets shot in the head and patched up by a country doctor!

[Bartimaeus]

13 hours ago, majestic said:

So, about that third Puella Magi Madoka Magica movie, are you planning to watch that now, or was Rebuild not quite that bad?

Yeah, uh...my average rating was lower for the two Madoka movies than the average for the four Rebuild movies. Here's a major difference that should tell you enough: while I may have mostly hated everything that Rebuild did...I also hated everyone in Madoka, and that's kind of a big deal for a person that experiences things through characters, to say the least. The only character I hate in Rebuild is Mari, and she's only in like...I don't know, maybe 15% of it? Sure feels longer, but I'm pretty sure it's not that much over the entire run-time of all four movies.

...Though I suppose that might be a little unequal, because Rebuild had the unfair advantage of having already had me pre-attached to this universe and its characters. But I'm not trying to account for literally every factor in how I perceive and consequently rate these things - my 75/25 subjective/objective rating rule exists for a reason after all.

13 hours ago, majestic said:

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.

I really thought you already had Usagi in mind when you mentioned that about Shinji, .

Edited August 22, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, uh...my average rating was lower for the two Madoka movies was lower than the average for the four Rebuild movies. Here's a major difference that should tell you enough: while I may have mostly hated everything that Rebuild did...I also hated everyone in Madoka, and that's kind of a big deal for a person that experiences things through characters, to say the least. The only character I hate in Rebuild is Mari, and she's only in like...I don't know, maybe 15% of it? Sure feels longer, but I'm pretty sure it's not that much over the entire run-time of all four movies.

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.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

...Though I suppose that might be a little unequal, because Rebuild had the unfair advantage of having already had me pre-attached to this universe and its characters. But I'm not trying to account for literally every factor in how I perceive and consequently rate these things - my 75/25 subjective/objective rating rule exists for a reason after all.

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.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I really thought you already had Usagi in mind when you mentioned that about Shinji, .

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.

Edited August 22, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

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.

[majestic]

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.

Edited August 22, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Oh come on, if you can sit through Discovery you can deal with this. Do you really want to miss out the cgi army of headless nude female bodies Gendo unleashes to 

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

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.

I kinda just ignored that, to be honest. I'm not gonna let any more of the idiotic plot crap get in the way of my characters.

52 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

Yes. But I think we may get something out of Evangelion that most other people don't (or maybe the other way around - they get something out of it that we don't which leads us to focus on different things), especially given the ratings I've been seeing others give this.

57 minutes ago, majestic said:

Halfway through, time for a break.

I had to do that right around where you did as well, my brain was melting, especially after the previous hour of being slow character stuff and then to suddenly jump into seizure CGI action. Plus, it's a really gosh-danged long movie.

[majestic]

Quote

It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.
                                                                                                                                                       -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

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.

Edited August 22, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I kinda just ignored that, to be honest. I'm not gonna let any more of the idiotic plot crap get in the way of my characters.

It ties in directly with the film's resolution. There's no escaping it for me.

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yes. But I think we may get something out of Evangelion that most other people don't (or maybe the other way around - they get something out of it that we don't which leads us to focus on different things), especially given the ratings I've been seeing others give this.

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...

[Bartimaeus]

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

Wait, no, that's not right.

No, I'm pretty sure that is actually a picture of George Lucas.

P.S. Apropos of nothing, I just heard Mike say the words "Sailor Moon" out-loud in an RLM video, this is peak RLM. Although they used this mildly scary giraffe version of her to visualize her, but I'll forgive it unless Mike is actually a super secret Sailor Moon fan in which case he should've used better art (but thank goodness they didn't use SMC art).

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

I actually consider The Phantom Menace to be the best out of the three...but I mean, I have it at a 3/10 while Revenge of the Sith is 2.5/10 followed up by Attack of the Clones at 2/10. ...The Holiday Special is sitting at 1/10, the only thing I've ever given a 1/10.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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. 

Presumably the same reason Palpatine self-sabotages himself at every single step of the process in obtaining and corrupting Anakin - because the writer is a complete buffoon and the same conclusion is going to be reached regardless of whether any of the steps to get there make sense.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

Rei #6 does the only sensible thing in light of the revelation and simply leaves the film by turning to goo

I was pretty envious of her, not going to lie, especially considering the drastic turn the film did the moment she was gone.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

There are more shots of Mari's assets while she's hugging a clearly disinterested Asuka.

I couldn't tell if this was actually Asuka's way of showing that she *was* interested. Like...this is Asuka - wouldn't she rage and fight tooth and nail with that level of physical contact if she was uncomfortable with it? I thought maybe they were doing something there, but...no, nothing ever came of it. Gosh dangit, fine (...and it's not like I wanted that to be a thing anyways, but I thought, you know, just maybe, they're actually finally going to do something with Mari...a big fat NOPE).

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

Palpatine crap again, I think - Gendo wants Shinji and Asuka to arrive, it's all part of his grand plan that he has foreseen everything for...but for some reason he's also fighting that from happening through other measures he's undertaking at the same time. What if they actually blew up and died on the way there, you doofus? Just like what if you actually killed Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan before they could rescue the Queen or get a warning back to the Senate or... Crap like that happens constantly in this Rebuild, and it's super annoying and George Lucas-esque.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

I actually wondered what the crap was going on there when that was going on, and especially where the three ships that had been attacking it suddenly went, but then I realized, I don't care.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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 can accept these two ancient spears simply existing because it's part of the backstory of two Seeds of Life arriving at roughly the same time on Earth and both of them having their own with the explicit purpose of making sure only one seed is dominant. That feels legitimate enough and makes enough sense and fulfills some kind of logical purpose. Misato and Ritsuko suddenly conjuring a new one out of thin air, on the other hand? Nah man, I don't think so.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

Preferably someone who understands that most of the time "less" is actually "more"

That's what I keep saying: prefer ambiguity or even nothing at all over utter lunacy, stupidity, or inexplicability.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

Yeah, I rather liked the first half (even as weird as it kind of felt). If it was just that first half, I probably would've given the film around a 6.5/10. That's a fine-enough rating, that's about what I gave just the original TV Evangelion prior to The End of Evangelion (which was about an 8 and drug the series as a whole up to a 7). Unfortunately, the second half happened and drug it down to a 4.5 instead. Woof.

48 minutes ago, majestic said:

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.

Absolute freaking mystery to me, especially for original fans of the show. I can only assume, again, that what I got out of the original series was totally, completely, utterly, incomprehensibly different from what others did.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Bartimaeus