Anime - Oh No! Oh My God!

[Bartimaeus]

37 minutes ago, majestic said:

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...

The End of Evangelion really helped me with Asuka (whom I went in between loving and being like "what the absolute hell is wrong with you?") and to a lesser degree Misato (whom I already liked but didn't love) - Rei didn't really need any help. Rebuild, in contrast, helped me a lot with Shinji, I think...but only for the original show, not Rebuild itself. Indeed, put all of the original show characters equally into their first place, gold medal Olympic pedestals over the absolute butchering I saw in Rebuild. Like, yeah, at least I have the original VAs I knew and love to help me connect with them on some level, but what the actual crap was that?

Edited August 22, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

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

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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).

I'm a little disappointed by the lack of comments about Sailor Moon. There were some, but not that many. I really doubt any of them have watched it. The video itself was fun, but I'm not the world's biggest Lynch afficionado. More like the opposite.

Jay might like Revolutionary Girl Utena, it's weird and occassionally disgusting. Not sure what he thinks of animation, let alone Japanese one.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Palpatine

Yeah, pretty much.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

I had major Stargate Altantis flashbacks. In Stargate, Atlantis was a city of the precursor race, and it didn't sink, at least not on Earth. They left Earth, with the entire city, to go to the Pegasus galaxy, where it was put under water to hide it. The entire city being a ship, and the show having been cancelled they invented a way to transport the city back to Earth called the "wormhole drive" - never came up before. Good job.

This is similar, if there had been some NERV research on the spears shown, maybe Ritsuko trying to copy one, maybe that would have worked. As it stands, no, nope. Just do something without any setup, that's why I mentioned Stephen King. Many of his books end like that. Or at least the ones I've read.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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

Not only that, you could have entire plot points taken out without them missing. But of course you're right, not every bit needs explanation, something that the original series understood well enough. But that was a collaborative writing effort, not a one man show.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

I was mostly okay with the anti-universe stuff that happened once Neo and Agent Smith went into the Matrix. It looked terrible, but it was a combination of the End of Evangelion and the ending of the series, and as such wasn't that bad. If Mari had not shown up. Everything from the end of the character moments to that point though:

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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).

I have no idea what they were going for with that scene. Mirror Kaworu's interactions with Shinji? Whatever Asuka and Mari had there wasn't much of a relationship either, if that's what it was supposed to be, with Mari going for Shinji the moment she could, and Asuka being more interested in Kensuke anyway.

But maybe, yeah, I guess someone else hugging her would lead to a broken nose. But who knows with these two.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

I tried to ask myself the question: "How would I react to this if I had not seen NGE before" but can only come up short. First, most of the film relies on prior knowledge that wasn't even in the other rebuild movies. Then there are the plot holes, the terrible CGI, the nonsensical plot points all over the place, the character development that ends up being mostly pointless if it wouldn't turn Shinji into Neo by the end, and any of that, and I can't... no. I don't get it.

I often say I don't get the popularity of X while on a mostly objective level I can still somewhat understand, at least. While I don't find American Pie funny, I understand how someone could. Same goes for any number of rom-coms, or sit-coms. With this, and the pre-requisite of being a fan of the original show, I have no idea... but maybe @KP the meanie zucchini and @Sarex can answer that one, they seem to not have hated it nearly as much as I... well, we... did.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

The End of Evangelion really helped me with Asuka (whom I went in between loving and being like "what the absolute hell is wrong with you?") and to a lesser degree Misato (whom I already liked but didn't love) - Rei didn't really need any help. Rebuild, in contrast, helped me a lot with Shinji, I think...but only for the original show, not Rebuild itself. Indeed, put all of the original show characters equally into their first place, gold medal Olympic pedestals over the absolute butchering I saw in Rebuild. Like, yeah, at least I have the original VAs I knew and love to help me connect with them on some level, but what the actual crap was that?

I initially didn't like Asuka. Before she showed up, I didn't hate Shinji, which is I think the best that can happen for him. I really liked Misato, not only for her voice performance but because she's exactly the sort of broken person that I usually end up being friends with should I run into them. Misato stayed my favorite throughout, but not only for that reason.

Rei I talked enough about, I think. Rei #6 in The Matrix 3.0 + 1.01 just reinforced that some more with her doing her Violet spiel.

Asuka eventually stopped telling Shinji to man up, and I started to like her, and the juxtaposition with Rei. Asuka is canonically half Japanese, but she certainly is 100% gaijin, while Rei is the ultimate, perfect and traditional Japanese woman. It was a little painful to see Asuka trying to fight against that, even though there never was any real reason to. See, that's discussions you can have about the characters from the show, because love and care went into crafting them, even if they are, at times, extremely unsympathetic.

Eh, it's gotten pretty late, and I'll sleep on it a bit.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

29 minutes ago, majestic said:

can answer that one, they seem to not have hated it nearly as much as I... well, we... did.

I dunno, I like utter lunacy and surreal cluster****s such as most of David Lynch's films while you and @Bartimaeus do not. That's pretty much what I got from Evangelion, both the original series + EoE and the Rebuild. I've just accepted that I am a very weird guy and my taste would drive some people insane.

To me the biggest weakness of Rebuild is the CGI, it looks awful and the CGI robot battles could have been taken out with insignificant losses. The second biggest is that I don't think there really was a coherent plan and the writing team changed goals every movie. For example I believe that your most hated character, Mari, was initially intended to take the piss out of waifu stuff but ended up changing roles until she became an insert for Anno's real life wife. Which I guess shows us how the waifu is inescapable, none of us are free from the curse of the waifu and we will end up turning our own partners into waifu/husbando inserts. Well that got weird.

Anyways I think the Rebuild starts out OK, then dives down to meh then OH MY GOD! territory, and rebounds into something that is back to OK. It's hard for me to call 3.0 + 1.01 good because by god the CGI made me want to send myself to hell in order to kill Ronald Reagan, but I think it's OK and feels authentically Evangelion. If yall want to come ar me then well...

 

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I'm a little disappointed by the lack of comments about Sailor Moon. There were some, but not that many. I really doubt any of them have watched it. The video itself was fun, but I'm not the world's biggest Lynch afficionado. More like the opposite.

Jay might like Revolutionary Girl Utena, it's weird and occassionally disgusting. Not sure what he thinks of animation, let alone Japanese one.

Yeah, I was more shocked that Mike would even know what it was to accidentally hear it. Doesn't really seem like something that would stick around in his brain - more of a Jay thing to remember weird, random stuff like that, so it makes me wonder how that came about. IIRC, the only thing they've ever said in regards to animated stuff is that they don't feel like they could really cover it because it's too different of a medium and they probably couldn't make their commentary on it intelligent or entertaining enough.

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I was mostly okay with the anti-universe stuff that happened once Neo and Agent Smith went into the Matrix.

That's the exact kind of stuff where my eyes roll into the back of my skull and I beg for the sweet release of death. ...The End of Evangelion somehow pulled off its shenanigans through its characters in such a way that actually made me cry instead, so you know, I rate it a little bit higher than Rebuild. A little bit...just a little bit. Maybe it's because of The End of Evangelion being personally powerful for me that makes Rebuild feel especially fraudulent, I'm not sure.

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I have no idea what they were going for with that scene. Mirror Kaworu's interactions with Shinji? Whatever Asuka and Mari had there wasn't much of a relationship either, if that's what it was supposed to be, with Mari going for Shinji the moment she could, and Asuka being more interested in Kensuke anyway.

Maybe it was just to show acceptance and tolerance of Mari and all the weird crap she does after all this time by not reacting to any of it all. Not entirely sure, either. If they'd had done a little more with it, maybe would've felt more clear and deliberate, but it mostly stands by itself (I mean, she still won't even call her by her name...after all of this time?) so it feels out of place.

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I often say I don't get the popularity of X while on a mostly objective level I can still somewhat understand, at least. While I don't find American Pie funny, I understand how someone could. Same goes for any number of rom-coms, or sit-coms. With this, and the pre-requisite of being a fan of the original show, I have no idea... but maybe @KP the meanie zucchini and @Sarex can answer that one, they seem to not have hated it nearly as much as I... well, we... did.

I guess for me specifically, maybe it's because, again, I'm an all-character guy. In the original show, I want to figure out what the deal was with Rei right away, why she's so strange and almost seems like someone that has spent their entire life in an isolation tank (ahem); I like Misato but I don't understand why she acts so freaking weird around someone that should basically be her adopted son, and why she has so much trouble with behaving civil around Ritsuko and Kaji; Ritsuko and Gendo don't seem like they're quite on the same page, what's up with that...and for that matter, neither does Misato, what are they all trying to accomplish here; what the hell is wrong with Asuka and what possible reason could there be for her to act this way (oh gosh!); and then...there's Shinji. All of the things I care about generally tie into characters and why they are the way they are and where they're going and what's going to happen with them, including all of the plot, theme, and world stuff. I said it before when I talked about Utena and the Star Wars prequels - if I am not into the characters, I could not give one single crap about your plot, world, or themes, they are completely irrelevant at that point.

If you make me care about your characters, then congratulations, you might have to chance to also make me care about stuff like the Evas, the Angels, Adam, Lilith, the Spears, your world at large, the plot, and maybe even your themes, especially if you start to get all of those things to tie into and matter to and for our characters. Enter Rebuild, where the characters are either bad or shadows of their former selves...combined with all of the plot, world, and theme stuff being half-baked and absolute lunacy...being told in a style of creator-to-viewer communication that is so much worse and full of holes...in art and animation that is so incredibly worse that it hurts to think of how bad things have gotten in the modern anime industry. Honestly, when I think about how much of a failure on pretty much every level Rebuild was for me, my ratings feel borderline generous. The first movie I forgave more because I think it was basically what I expected - an abridged version of most of the original show, and, you know...it wasn't as good as the original series, but at least it got most of the important stuff across while only making relatively minor amenities so that we could get into the new stuff. ...Wow, what an error that line of thinking was. Yikes.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

What KP said I would mirror, this was pretty much par for the course of Evangelion. The plot didn't make any more sense in the original series and it was up to the watcher to dig deep and make connections. I, and I think KP too, simply disagree with many of your takeaways from the movies. I would have replied to your impressions, but the replies would mostly boil down to: "it didn't bother me", or "I disagree".  At the end of the day Rebuild was never going to be NG:E, it was always going to be different as it should be, otherwise what was the point in making it. The funny thing is that even when the Rebuild picks up it's queues from NG:E, it still somehow manages to hit a completely different note for you guys.

 

You know what I'll give it a go.

@Mari I do not get the hate here. At all. Were there supposed to be no new characters in the rebuild? Tbh, that seems like the only reason for the hate. In my opinion she is supposed to be a new character archetype that is supposed to balance Shinji. Where he is a depressed and unwilling in the face of adversity, she is happy and willing to suffer with a smile on her face (her advantage being years of experience). I agree with KP that there were some hiccups with deciding the stories direction, which made her "purpose" a little clunky, but overall I was satisfied with the explanation, even though I didn't get it straight away.

 

@Eva imortality as majestic already mentioned, in the original series Shinji fused with his Eva and was reconstructed. This was a continuation of this idea and in the sea of crazy thing in Evangelion doesn't strike me as out of place at all.

 

@characters Funnily enough I always liked Asuka the least of all the characters in NG:E, but that is probably because I dislike the tsundere archetype. Rei... I never could come to grips with that character. She is a clone of Shinji's mother (full or partial I have no idea) and their affection always struck me as familial bond, especially because we were shown that Shinji had a sexual attraction to Asuka in the original. When Asuka says that she was designed to have affection for Shinji that just kind of confirmed it in my head. Misato, she is the capable and fearless type who is a surrogate mother to Shinji and is crippled by guilt over what she thinks she did to him. This kind of gutted her character in the movies. Genji, the broken mirror. He represents what Shinji is and what he needs to overcome. Shinji, the awkward little boy who no one wants to admit represent at least some part of their childhood and growing up. But people usually hate their own weaknesses and so poor Shinji never stood a chance.

 

@spears of destiny The spears were always created, this was the case in the originals and was continued as an idea in the new movies. It was never specified what the material is but an impact was always needed to create one.

 

@SEELE's plan. All according to keikaku. Again this was all the same in the originals and is where the rebuild mirrors it.

 

@music I liked the music.

 

The rebuild was made because the fans wanted it and because the ending of the original series was unsatisfying. This series gives...well me at least...that, a satisfying ending to a cult series.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Sarex

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

@Mari I do not get the hate here. At all. Were there supposed to be no new characters in the rebuild? Tbh, that seems like the only reason for the hate. In my opinion she is supposed to be a new character archetype that is supposed to balance Shinji. Where he is a depressed and unwilling in the face of adversity, she is happy and willing to suffer with a smile on her face (her advantage being years of experience). I agree with KP that there were some hiccups with deciding the stories direction, which made her "purpose" a little clunky, but overall I was satisfied with the explanation, even though I didn't get it straight away.

Not at all - for example, I immediately took a liking to Sakura, Toji's sister. She didn't end up being in it too much compared to Mari, but I literally immediately thought "okay, here's a new character whose personality isn't the most foul and ill-fitting personality one could possibly insert into Evangelion, hope she's in this more and that Mari's in this less" upon meeting her. Ah, alas.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

The spears were always created, this was the case in the originals and was continued as an idea in the new movies. It was never specified what the material is but an impact was always needed to create one.

Wait, what? Wasn't the sole spear in NGE from Adam, as Lilith's had been lost and never found as a result of her crash onto Earth, which is why Adam suppresses himself with his own spear? I thought I remembered SEELE basically being "yep, we're screwed if we can't get the true spear back". I know the Mass Production Evas have their own spears, but I'm pretty sure they're fake, lesser spears that weren't meant to be used for more than anything but combat. I guess that in of itself is a little inexplicable, but as it doesn't really feel that important because it just serves as a way for Asuka to be suddenly defeated in a shocking manner...but she had already run out of power and was going to be ripped apart unless she went berserk anyways, I guess. Anyways, point is, feels a little different from Misato and Ritsuko being like "yo Shinji, we just made another MacGuffin that has supposedly been completely unobtainable up until just now in the last 5 minutes, here ya go, go make your wish with it". And never mind the Spear of Gaius - are we ever given an explanation for even the Spear of Cassius existing? I thought maybe there was an explanation someone else would know, maybe it was hinted at some point to be Lilith's lost original spear...but if so, nobody seems to know.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

@Eva imortality as majestic already mentioned, in the original series Shinji fused with his Eva and was reconstructed. This was a continuation of this idea and in the sea of crazy thing in Evangelion doesn't strike me as out of place at all.

Them being "immortal" is probably the thing I have least issue with. LCL is primordial life goop, it delays their aging, whatever, it's fine I guess. They're probably not even truly immortal, just delayed aging until they stop getting exposed to LCL constantly, and if that's the case, I'd totally accept that.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

The rebuild was made because the fans wanted it and because the ending of the original series was unsatisfying.

...Wait, did you just say the fans asking for it is the reason this exists to begin with? In other words, Anno didn't originally envision any of this when he made the original show? If so, no wonder all of this feels like first draft, ad hoc phony baloney. @majestic, a fandumb strikes again... If that's the case, I can kinda almost forgive Anno for this disaster, because at that point, it really is just to print money, and hey, we all like money, I get that. I wish I'd known that going into it...would've had a much more laid back "lmao the absolute bullcrap they came up with for this literal cash-grab, am I right?" approach to it. Somebody should've told me...

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

14 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Not at all - for example, I immediately took a liking to Sakura, Toji's sister. She didn't end up being in it too much compared to Mari, but I literally immediately thought "okay, here's a new character whose personality isn't the most foul and ill-fitting personality one could possibly insert into Evangelion, hope she's in this more and that Mari's in this less" upon meeting her. Ah, alas.

Fair point. I would only say that she is a side character at best, so not much is expected of her.

15 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Wait, what? Wasn't the sole spear in NGE from Adam, as Lilith's had been lost and never found as a result of her crash onto Earth, which is why Adam suppresses himself with his own spear? I thought I remembered SEELE basically being "yep, we're screwed if we can't get the true spear back". I know the Mass Production Evas have their own spears, but I'm pretty sure they're fake, lesser spears that weren't meant to be used for more than anything but combat. I guess that in of itself is a little inexplicable, but as it doesn't really feel that important because it just serves as a way for Asuka to be suddenly defeated in a shocking manner...but she had already run out of power and was going to be ripped apart unless she went berserk anyways, I guess. Anyways, point is, feels a little different than Misato and Ritsuko being like "yo Shinji, we just made another MacGuffin that has supposedly been completely unobtainable up until just now in the last 5 minutes, here ya go, make your wish". And never mind the Spear of Gaius - are we ever given an explanation for even the Spear of Cassius existing? I thought maybe there was an explanation someone else would know, maybe it was hinted at some point to be Lilith's lost original spear...but if so, nobody seems to know.

As far as I know the arrival of Adam triggered the first impact. But either way I misremembered there being 2 spears at the end of the original series, this happened in the movies. So my theory about the impacts being needed for the spears is possibly wrong. Reading about it now there are theories that Cassius is Lilith's spear (from the third movie) and Gaius is created from part of the ship that was the spine of an angel. Need to rewatch some scenes and look in to this.

51 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

...Wait, did you just say the fans asking for it is the reason this exists to begin with? In other words, Anno didn't originally envision all of this when he made the original show? If so, no wonder all of this feels like ad hoc phony baloney. @majestic, a fandumb strikes again... If that's the case, I can kinda almost forgive Anno for this disaster, because at that point, it really is just to print money, and hey, we all like money, I get that. I wish I'd known that going into it...would've had a much more laid back "lmao the absolute bullcrap they came up with for this literal cash-grab, am I right?" approach to it. Somebody should've told me...

Thought that part was obvious, if there was no interest there would have been no "sequels".  My personal opinion is that he was constantly being asked about the ending and this was an effort to give a "better" ending and wash his hands of Evangelion.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

What KP said I would mirror, this was pretty much par for the course of Evangelion. The plot didn't make any more sense in the original series and it was up to the watcher to dig deep and make connections. I, and I think KP too, simply disagree with many of your takeaways from the movies. I would have replied to your impressions, but the replies would mostly boil down to: "it didn't bother me", or "I disagree".  At the end of the day Rebuild was never going to be NG:E, it was always going to be different as it should be, otherwise what was the point in making it. The funny thing is that even when the Rebuild picks up it's queues from NG:E, it still somehow manages to hit a completely different note for you guys.

That's fine, I'm not sure if you have read the thread back when we all watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica, but we had similar disagreements about the anime, except that I liked it. We had some interesting talks about it, so feel free to disagree as much as you want and post about it. This isn't the politics thread where the only winning move is not to play with the regulars.

It might not look like it, but Rebuild being different is not what bothered me, it's being different in ways that are inexcplicable and, at least in a direct comparison to the original, worse. Much as I made fun of the idea that the script for Thrice Upon A Time was a first draft that was simply filmed as is - or animated, in this case - the problems that it actually has seem to come from too much retooling as much as not properly cutting it down to a managable size. It has all the extended runtime the other three didn't have but needed, and when @KP the meanie zucchini says that he thinks Mari may have been intended as something completely different from what she ended up being, then I can see how that could be true.

Let's look at one particular point in the talks between Shinji and Asuka, and that's when Shinji says Asuka wanted to beat him up over not being able to decide whether to rescue her or kill her. When did that happen? The last time the two had any contact with each other before Asuka almost broke through a wall of apparently really solid glas to beat him was when she was piloting Unit-03, which was corrupted and turned into an angel. Shinji refused to attack her and wanted to save her, and they turned on the dummy plug system.

There was no indecision in Shinji there, he refused to hurt Asuka. if Asuka wanted to beat him up for not doing his job in spite of her being in Unit-03, then that would be fair. As it stands, it just looks like something that should have been caught in a script revision. Perhaps it refers to something else, although I wouldn't know what (outside of directly referencing an alternate reality or timeline). Asuka doesn't work in this retelling at all, or in order to make her work, you need to use your meta knowledge of having seen the original show to fill in the gaps.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

@Mari I do not get the hate here. At all. Were there supposed to be no new characters in the rebuild? Tbh, that seems like the only reason for the hate. In my opinion she is supposed to be a new character archetype that is supposed to balance Shinji. Where he is a depressed and unwilling in the face of adversity, she is happy and willing to suffer with a smile on her face (her advantage being years of experience). I agree with KP that there were some hiccups with deciding the stories direction, which made her "purpose" a little clunky, but overall I was satisfied with the explanation, even though I didn't get it straight away.

I can only answer that one from my point of view, but Mari is a mostly unneeded addition of a character that in design and behaviour does not fit into Neon Genesis Evangelion's overall world building. Hence all the jokes about her being an alien in disguise. That she then has some of the most cringeworthy dialogue and is framed in what little time she has in the first three movies as nothing but fanservice didn't help her.

It might be wrong calling her an alien in disguise, she's a fanfiction insertion character that serves as a narrative band aid to make the second movie work in spite of Asuka having to control Unit-03, much like the Vatican Treaty is needed to explain why Unit-02 is being dectivated. It's all really just there so Mari can end up in Unit-02 and Asuka gets hurt by the Dummy Plug system. In the original, there were other characters to chose from, and Toji was the poor victim, right around the time when he was tentatively starting his romance with Hikari.

When you start thinking about her place in the narrative, it becomes even more problematic, because in addition to feeling like a fanfiction addition to the NGE universe, her role in the narrative is also simply superimposed over an existing plot, curiously part of it and separate from it at the same time. Mari always shows up whenever she is needed to do something, does that, and is then gone from the film again, unless it's time for her to talk about her big boobs or wiggle her ass in the camera. She initially tells Shinji to not tell anyone she's there, then she is suddenly inside NERV HQ without anyone mentioning it, and eventually she's part of WILLE even it seems as if nobody outside of Shinji and Asuka ever talks to her. In fact, with the chaotic way the second movie went, you could have cut her out and nothing would change, it's almost as if she was inserted into the film after it was already almost finished.

In the new X-Files seasons that were made recently, there's an episode where the showrunners decided to retroactively insert a third agent into the narrative. It was one of the funniest, strangest and best episodes of the show, even in spite of the declining quality of the alter seasons and the abject failure of the new season's story arc. But it was played as a joke, while Mari feels like the same, but played for serious.

In reality she was probably, like @KP the meanie zucchini speculated, meant to do something else, but in the end turned into a stand-in for Anno's wife, because he is to Shinji what Yui was to Gendo, someone to help him overcome his depression. Assuming for a moment that is what happened to Mr. Anno in real life. I know he often suffers from depression, I don't know if meeting his wife helped him overcome it.

If that was her function though, she pretty much failed, because she only does that at the end, after Shinji self-actualized on his own. Zarathustra would have been proud of him, rejecting expectations and simply choosing for himself, like the Übermensch is supposed to. Hence the comparison to Neo when he changes from simply being the Chosen One to choosing to be the Chosen One at the end of The Matrix: Revolutions.

These things might look like a joke on my part, but they're fairly deliberate.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

@Eva imortality as majestic already mentioned, in the original series Shinji fused with his Eva and was reconstructed. This was a continuation of this idea and in the sea of crazy thing in Evangelion doesn't strike me as out of place at all.

It migt not have looked like that, but that didn't bother me that much. It's a throwaway thing that may or may not have come about by the time Mr. Anno decided that every pilot except Mari was to be a construct of a sort, in some manner (whether or not that is true for Shinji is something else). Whether by design or simply as a side effect, the pilots not growing old isn't that bad. It has to be a side effect of piloting the EVAs, by the way, otherwise Mari wouldn't stay the same over the course of the almost 30 years since the Second Impact. Like @Bartimaeus said, maybe it's the contact with the LCL goop.

It's part of Mari's problems though, as a character that was alive prior to EVAs being built, she was clearly not designed to be a pilot, or changed accordingly, but yet she's clearly also capable of abandoning her humanity and becoming an "angel" - or rather, specifically, one based on Adam, because the way the movies are set up Adam's offsprings are primal vitality with only instinctual intelligence, while Lilith's offsprings (life on Earth as a whole, that is) are intelligent.

That Rei's ascended form is different lies in her origin as a partial Yui/Lilith hybrid. So when, how or why did Mari get enough "Adam" in her to be able to transform into an unthinking beast mode "angel" when it's needed? Shouldn't she be different altogether, like Shinji? Shinji just transcends his humanity to become something else, apparently.

By the way, that's one of the things that made sense about needing Rei and Asuka to pilot Unit-13 for the Another Impact. The impacts (except the first one, that was Lilith's landing on Earth) were always the result of contact between Adam and Lilith, a combiation of both Seeds of Life that was never meant to happen. Rei was derived from Lilith, so Asuka's form being an Adam beast mode is fine (if you don't find the idea that Asuka was designed in some way to be terrible, like I do), both are in the same EVA, and as such the impact begins. At least until it is stopped - by humanity having transcended the need for Gods, in the form of Yui, Shinji and Ritsuko's newly created Spear of Destiny.

The basic premise isn't that bad, which is more or less why I said that the anti-universe stuff was fine. It's the NGE equivalent of Sheridan telling the Vorlons and the Shadows to get out of their way. Not quite, but similar enough. The execution would have required some more setup. They had two movies in 2.22 and 3.33 to set up construction of a new Spear, and didn't. They had those two movies to make Mari an actual character, and didn't, and then she's suddenly both pivotal and useless for the plot of the final one.

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

@characters Funnily enough I always liked Asuka the least of all the characters in NG:E, but that is probably because I dislike the tsundere archetype. Rei... I never could come to grips with that character. She is a clone of Shinji's mother (full or partial I have no idea) and their affection always struck me as familial bond, especially because we were shown that Shinji had a sexual attraction to Asuka in the original. When Asuka says that she was designed to have affection for Shinji that just kind of confirmed it in my head. Misato, she is the capable and fearless type who is a surrogate mother to Shinji and is crippled by guilt over what she thinks she did to him. This kind of gutted her character in the movies. Genji, the broken mirror. He represents what Shinji is and what he needs to overcome. Shinji, the awkward little boy who no one wants to admit represent at least some part of their childhood and growing up. But people usually hate their own weaknesses and so poor Shinji never stood a chance.

Asuka has good reasons for acting like she does though, as do Shinji and Misato. They're all living in the same appartment because they're all variations of the same problem - or maybe, better put, demonstrate different coping mechanisms as a result of the same underlying psychological problem. I'm not sure I agree that Misato is the capable and fearless leader type. She mostly winges it, often takes a course of action against all rhyme and reason and drowns her sorrows.

Asuka is attracted to Shinji, but Shinji is the way he is, and Asuka is the way she is, so she's aggressive towards him to keep him at arm's length while still pining to be close to him, both emotionally and physically. That's an apparent contradiction that I can tell you from personal experience does exist like that in real life too. She misundertands Shinji's apparent attachment to Misato so she's trying to emulate her, and she later misinterprets Shinji's emotional attachment to Rei, and she fails as a pilot when she sees her fears confirmed by Shinji rescuing Rei, but not her. That... among other things, was the emotional core of the original series, and almost all of it is gone in the new films.

Rei was, for a moment in 2.22, exhibiting real character growth with her plans for a dinner with Shinji and Gendo. It was one of the few moments I really liked, and that's part of the reason why hearing Asuka say that the pilots were designed like that made me almost angry enough to turn the film off and never go back, and that does take some doing. 

In the original NGE, Rei was a clone of Yui and part Lilith. It was both an attempt at recreating Yui and a way to create a vessel for the Third Impact and/or Gendo's attempt to rejoin his wife. That she needed constant medical supervision plays into Rei simply gooping it up in Thrice Upon A Time. She becomes the focal point of the Third Impact when she absorbs Adam, creating - well, here we are, again - a Lilith/Adam hybrid.

24 minutes ago, Sarex said:

As far as I know the arrival of Adam triggered the first impact. But either way I misremembered there being 2 spears at the end of the original series, this happened in the movies. So my theory about the impacts being needed for the spears is possibly wrong. Reading about it now there are theories that Cassius is Lilith's spear (from the third movie) and Gaius is created from part of the ship that was the spine of an angel. Need to rewatch some scenes and look in to this.

Lilith's spear was lost on impact with Earth, either destroyed or otherwise unfindable, and therefore Adam deactivated himself with the Spear of Longinus. That, at least, was the official backstory of the original series. It's not exactly out of the question for NERV to have found the Spear of Cassius somewhere. I don't have a problem with them coming up with a new Spear made by humanity, not the precursor race that created the Seeds of Life, just not as a last minute solution. Setup, then payoff. I mean, with the way the movie ended it was, I think, pretty clear that this was the intention, aside from Mr. Anno finally telling everyone that he doesn't want to do any more NGE, what with having Shinji simply erasing NGE from existence and then eloping with Mari into the real world. That part of his life is now well and truly behind him, by the looks of it.

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

The rebuild was made because the fans wanted it and because the ending of the original series was unsatisfying. This series gives...well me at least...that, a satisfying ending to a cult series.

I'm going to disagree here, the ending of the series was unsatisfying because it wasn't an ending, even if it made sense in the context of it (again, parallels to Lost's ending). It was not a resolution to the series at all, an unending if you will. The End of Evangelion I thought was sufficient in explaining what was going on and the ending was satisfying enough.

Actually I don't see the different between Thrice Upon A Time's ending and that of End of Evangelion's. In both the impact is averted, humanity continues on - in EoE should they choose to, taking a silly detour into solipsism, in Thrice Upon A Time simply because the impact didn't get far enough to get to that point. In both the characters manage to transcend their problems and continue, in EoE it was Shinji and Asuka on the beach, where Asuka indeed really "grows up" faster than Shinji, and in TUAT it was Shinji with Mari and Asuka with Kensuke (presumably, at least).

However, and that's the disclaimer I have to make here, I also found the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie to be a satisfactory ending to the show that complementend and explained a few things that were left open, and it did so by having the main character being dragged into a carwash and exit as a car, complete with a highway chase scene to follow.

That's something you could attempt to watch if you want a really inexplicable show mired in allegory and metaphor to the point of being almost impenetrable because it also contains stylistic and artistic elements that you're meant to disregard, in addition to an entire character with plotlines that are simply there for insanity's sake.   

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

Thought that part was obvious, if there was no interest there would have been no "sequels".  My personal opinion is that he was constantly being asked about the ending and this was an effort to give a "better" ending and wash his hands of Evangelion.

For me, it's more about whether Anno intended for there to be sequels or further explanation of mechanisms and story in Evangelion or whether he was just doing it because fans were demanding that he do so. Like, was this whole universe loop mechanism really intended in the original Evangelion by Mr. Anno? If not, then...pretty much literally of this was just silly nonsense that he was doing and made up way after the fact purely because fans had been demanding that he do so for ten years, in which case, yeah, I wish I had known that going into it so I could've approached it with a "this is just going to be silly nonsense" mindset. Instead, what I was told was that it's not simply a remake of Evangelion, but actually a direct continuation of it not constrained by the same budgetary and creative limitations that he originally faced while the original NGE was being made that would meaningfully and satisfactorily conclude the entire series.

If that really is the case, then the good news is that it becomes even easier to separate Rebuild from Neon Genesis, because it would really truly not have much to do with the original intended narrative.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

Fair point. I would only say that she is a side character at best, so not much is expected of her.

True...but I didn't know who the heck Mari was when she first appeared in 2.0, and I found her immediately jarring and off-putting the very first scene she appeared in. I don't think I would want this character in literally any show ever, especially given how utterly pointless she is to...everything and everyone, but especially not Evangelion whose emotional core and foundations rest upon its characters. It's such a weird character insert that never gets any decent setup and inexplicably goes nowhere until literally like the last fifteen minutes of the final movie...and by then, we've spent ten hours on this, and you couldn't find the time to do anything meaningful with her during that entire time? What...

(e): @majestic has the right of it - it feels like literally only Shinji and Asuka even know who Mari is, she never interacts with anyone else, and the scenes she's even in with those two are almost entirely weird, inexplicable, and/or pointless. Even the scenes where she and Asuka are working together in their Evas, she mostly just sits back and throws batteries or whatever at Asuka so that Asuka can do everything herself. Even when Asuka is infected and needs to have her Eva terminated and it seems like Mari is going to serve some purpose and goes berserk through some super secret technique that the others don't know about...nope, brushed aside, Shinji's gotta pilot the Eva and do it himself. Every fight, just about literally every scene she's in could just have her be written out with nothing changing because of it. It's so incredibly strange. It's almost like they literally wanted her to be a pointless, aimless character, and I have no idea why. Does this character only exist in Shinji's and Asuka's minds? That would almost make more sense... But no, Fuyutsuki has a short conversation with her right at the end, and I think Misato acknowledges that she at least exists during 2.0 when she arrives, so I guess she really is supposed to exist in the narrative.

(e): Lots o' edits for this final paragraph, probably done now.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

@majestic I definitely need to rewatch the original series and the movies. I seem to have forgotten a lot of things.

I couple of years ago (maybe 5 or more...) I gave Puella Magi Madoka Magica a go and stopped watching it either on the first episode or on the second. I don't remember my opinion on it at the time, but for a while I kept it on my hdd to give it a go again, but I seem to have since deleted it.

I think that Asuka was referencing the second movie, I have rewatched the scene and while you are right and he did not want to hurt her, he really didn't do anything other than get strangled. Perhaps she wanted him to do something more, or perhaps she wanted him to be the one who stopped her and not an automated robot (Asuka is not the most rational character), or the most probable reason that she is angry with him is that he would have let her kill him.

Re:Mari

Do me a favor, I know you hate the movies, but give the last 5 seconds of the second movie a listen (end of the preview for some evangelion movie in an alternate reality...) there is something there about fanservice.

I don't really know what to say about the character other then she really didn't bother me at all. As can be seen from the previews, they either changed their minds about the direction of the movies (which I'm 99% sure is the case) or possibly the previews happened between the movies, but let's focus on the 99%. When the whole rebuild has a somewhat disjointed story it's not a surprise that the characters are also like that, so when that is the case I have some understanding for the character. Let me just say that I agree with both you and @Bartimaeus that she sticks out in the movies, but it's just that it doesn't bother me. By the end of the 4th movie, she had her place.

She was never going to save Shinji, she could just show him that he can be happy, he still needed to get that place on his own.

I don't know why you guys hate Anno's wife, what has she ever done to you.

Re: Imortality

I think a lot of stuff was left unanswered. Looking at the previews it looks like there were going to be at least two more movies. That was all relegated to being mentioned by a couple of characters as past event.

Re: Characters

I think you are putting too much stock in what Asuka said to Rei, I think she was just trying to be hurtful. If there really were any modifications like she said, how was she able to transcend human limitations in the end.

Re: Spears

As I said, I need to rewatch it all at some point. I am misremembering a lot of things, even from the previous movies.

I'll laugh my ass off when after all of this he does something else with Evangelion, even though I don't see how he could after all of this.

Re: Ending

The difference is that in one ending we get "Disgusting" and in the other we get a resolution, character growth and an uplifting note.

 

@Bartimaeus I like your optimism in thinking that the original series was thought out from start to finish. I personally do not share that opinion and I think that is crux of it, how I see it and how you see it is different. If I fooled you with anything I said I apologize, but it's simply how I experienced the movies.

I'll repeat what I said above, I think Mari is the casualty of the how the story was told. Either there are some missing movies, or the story was changed and her character suffered for it. Overall I was ok with her character and the movies as a whole, especially after seeing the ending.

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Sarex

[Bartimaeus]

My memory of the original show outside of The End of Evangelion (which I watched separately and a couple of weeks after watching all of the original show in one sitting) ain't too hot either, and you watched it longer ago than I did.

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

I think that Asuka was referencing the second movie, I have rewatched the scene and while you are right and he did not want to hurt her, he really didn't do anything other than get strangled. Perhaps she wanted him to do something more, or perhaps she wanted him to be the one who stopped her and not an automated robot (Asuka is not the most rational character), or the most probable reason that she is angry with him is that he would have let her kill him.

Interestingly, this would seem to imply that she was actually conscious and aware for all of that. One, that must've been terrifying having your own Eva get hijacked like that and being able to do nothing about it; two, if this is indeed what she was talking about, I can see what she would mean. There are only a few pilots and she's helplessly sitting there watching her own Eva try to murder Shinji after...uh, having already dispatched Mari? Oh gosh, I can't remember what happened in the fight where Unit 04 gets infected vs. the fight where Rei gets absorbed - they've blended together in my head. Well, ANYWAYS, I'm pretty sure if Shinji failed to stop Asuka, that would mean all of their deaths (including Asuka's) regardless, so yeah, I can understand being mad at him for it. It's less about him being indecisive about multiple possible choices and more about him being indecisive about the single possible choice that he wouldn't take but should've because...yeah, it was the only choice (especially seeing as, uh, he could've been a lot more gentle with destroying Unit 04 than the dummy plug).

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

Do me a favor, I know you hate the movies, but give the last 5 seconds of the second movie a listen (end of the preview for some evangelion movie in an alternate reality...) there is something there about fanservice.

Sure as heck don't remember seeing that in 3.33. ...Did I forget or did this just never happen? (e): No, nothing in this preview ever happened. Dang, now I'm intrigued and wish that we'd seen that version instead of the complete disaster that was the actual 3.33.

Quote

Mari's character has a tumultuous development history, with Chief Director Anno knowing little more of his intent for her than that he wanted her to "destroy Eva". Unlike the others, her character was not Anno's idea, but rather the result of an explicit request by the producer, Otsuki, for a new main female character. Anno accepted it as a way of differentiating the Rebuilds from the anime series, but believes it was for commercial reasons.[24][25] Assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki ended up shouldering much of the responsibility for Mari, and Yoji Enokido was also recruited during a writer's retreat to provide an outsider's opinion - Enokido is considered an outsider, and his characterization ended up being mostly his brainchild.[26] This is in contrast to the existent NGE characters, which were all based on Anno himself to varying degrees.[27][28]

Quote

Much of the disagreement revolved around how (and how much) to integrate Mari into the preexisting Eva framework, and the nature of her personality.[29] At one point, Mari was to do little more than appear in the pre-title Third Angel sequence and to later observe the Tenth Angel's destructive power (the latter idea shown in the first movie's trailer for Ha).[5] Various ideas were tested in early script drafts and storyboards wherein Mari took over part of another character's role from NGE, which was eventually abandoned due to the desire to give Mari her own identity. Her personality changed from various different themes, like being a mysterious and quiet girl, or the dojikko archetype of a clumsy and careless girl, all in an attempt to differentiate her from Rei and Asuka.[28] Other suggestions slowly began to surface as Anno could only give vague directions to his writers - one of his first was that the character should be an "Onee-san" or be an animal lover. The ideas were so generic and vague that Tsurumaki considered Mari to have had "multiple personalities"; "a different character in each scene she appeared in", making it difficult to give her a consistent characterization and psychology. Anno decided to postpone discussion at the time. It was during this "script retreat" that Enokido was brought in as an outsider.

Quote

In response to mounting pressure from fans after her first teased apparence during the preview at the end of Evangelion 1.0, Anno progressively increased her role and space in the story. Most of the new ideas ended up discarded and rejected by the rest of staff, who couldn't come to a consensus. In draft number 7, for instance, Mari would pilot Unit-02 together with Asuka in the same entry plug, in draft #11, Mari was depicted as an European classmate of Asuka's. Other ideas included playing up to stereotypes of her British nationality, like her first meeting Shinji in a train station, or having tea time on the roof of the school in draft #13. Tsurumaki felt particularly unsatisfied, and felt that Mari could never be distinct enough from Asuka, Rei or Misato. Tsurumaki eventually came up with the idea of her falling from the sky by way of parachute, as a way of having her do something bizarre and different.

Quote

Enokido was asked for his input, and he suggested Mari to be a "neutral and lighthearted" character inspired by harem and shounen manga.[30] Enokido's suggestion was that Mari should serve as a rival for Asuka who ultimately usurps her. Enokido wanted to go so far as to have Mari become the main pilot for Unit 02, say anta baka to Shinji and even kiss him, though this was eventually discarded by Anno and other writers. Tsurumaki, in particular, protested one of the proposed alterations as “I’m an Asuka fan, and I won’t be happy if this scene gets cut”.[28] Anno's assistant, Ikki Todoroki, suggested scenarios like her being a guest at Hikari's house, and a rival with Asuka for Kaji's affections and control of Unit 00, beating her in a synch test. One inspiration for her demeanour were the miko women of Shinto temples.[31]

...The emperor has no gosh danged clothes indeed. Figure out what the heck you want to do before you just go and do it, George Lucas. And that's just Mari, nevermind the entirety of 3.33...this is all complete baloney! No wonder Rebuild felt like a giant pile of patched together garbage, good lord. And apparently everyone will just eat it up...not me, no sir, not me.

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

The difference is that in one ending we get "Disgusting" and in the other we get a resolution, character growth and an uplifting note.

Hey, if they could've gotten there soundly, all those things would've probably been okay with me. But how you get there matters - as it is, "disgusting" made way more sense and fit way better for moi, . And to be honest, an ending like that may be ambiguous, but boy is it sure poignant and memorable when done right, and I think The End of Evangelion mostly did. Mostly. ...Mostly.

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

I like your optimism in thinking that the original series was thought out from start to finish. I personally do not share that opinion and I think that is crux of it, how I see it and how you see it is different.

Eh, all of the original show excluding the End of Evangelion was made in one go, so I think it's a lot more likely than in the case of this nearly fifteen year project where they clearly had severe developmental issues both pre- and during production. I mean, even The End of Evangelion was released just a year and four months after the show concluded. ...Actually, how the hell does that work? How is it that traditional animation is apparently so freaking expensive when it only took them just a year to make The End of Evangelion while this Rebuild crap took so much longer? Quoting myself from a few pages ago...

On 8/20/2021 at 12:26 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Sometimes I wonder how much it cost to make The End of Evangelion vs. one of these movies. With how ungoshly long credits in big CGI movies are, you'd almost think it'd be more expensive at some point to make the CGI...

Maybe it's less to do with costs and more to do with nobody knowing how to do it anymore. That'd be even worse than if it was just because studios were being cheap.

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

I don't know why you guys hate Anno's wife, what has she ever done to you.

If she acts the same way in public as Mari does, I do indeed despise her. However, I seriously doubt that, .

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

16 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I dunno, I like utter lunacy and surreal cluster****s such as most of David Lynch's films while you and @Bartimaeus do not. That's pretty much what I got from Evangelion, both the original series + EoE and the Rebuild. I've just accepted that I am a very weird guy and my taste would drive some people insane.

Sure wish I could be like this sometimes. KP's gonna watch Utena and be like "yeah, it was a pretty weird but good time, what's the problem?". Screw you, KP (but not really, ). In regards to Mari, I also just read somewhere else that Mari wasn't even initially supposed to be in 2.0 at all but was only supposed to appear in 3.0, but after fans saw her and wanted to see her earlier, he apparently caved and gave her a part in it and increased her role thereafter. The fandumb strikes again...

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Big yikes, if that is how Mari came to be... I mean if that was the case she turned out great!

26 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Hey, if they could've gotten there soundly, all those things would've probably been okay with me. But how you get there matters - as it is, "disgusting" made way more sense and fit way better for moi, . And to be honest, an ending like that may be ambiguous, but boy is it sure poignant and memorable when done right, and I think The End of Evangelion mostly did. Mostly. ...Mostly.

It's certainly memorable I'll give it that, then again I would guess Mari is memorable for you and @majestic.

28 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Eh, all of the original show excluding the End of Evangelion was made in one go, so I think it's a lot more likely than in the case of this nearly fifteen year project where they clearly had severe developmental issues both pre- and during production. I mean, even The End of Evangelion was released just a year and four months after the show concluded. ...Actually, how the hell does that work? How is it that traditional animation is apparently so freaking expensive when it only took them just a year to make The End of Evangelion while this Rebuild crap took so much longer? Quoting myself from a few pages ago...

Point taken. Although that still doesn't mean they had the complete story outlined or if they did that things didn't change along the way.

29 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Maybe it's less to do with costs and more to do with nobody knowing how to do it anymore. That'd be even worse than if it was just because studios were being cheap.

3d is simply faster to produce, edit and control. There are people that still do 2d, but it's becoming a dying art.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Mari whom? What were we talking about again?

(Apples to oranges, pal...apples to oranges, .)

[Sarex]

17 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Mari whom? What were we talking about again?

(Apples to oranges, pal...apples to oranges, .)

I could not resist...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Sure wish I could be like this sometimes. KP's gonna watch Utena and be like "yeah, it was a pretty weird but good time, what's the problem?". Screw you, KP (but not really, ). In regards to Mari, I also just read somewhere else that Mari wasn't even initially supposed to be in 2.0 at all but was only supposed to appear in 3.0, but after fans saw her and wanted to see her earlier, he apparently caved and gave her a part in it and increased her role thereafter. The fandumb strikes again...

Well I might not watch Utena because I found out something I wouldn't enjoy. You see

[Bartimaeus]

37 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Well I might not watch Utena because I found out something I wouldn't enjoy. You see

 

  Hide contents

 

 

A few more episodes of Nadia. The halfway mark suddenly changed in the last episode in a kind of subliminal way: normally the graphic plays...

...And then an angelic voice sings out "the secret blue water" (there's no "of" said, oddly) while a very short background piano sound effect plays. But there was no piano this time.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

 

[majestic]

Poor Dr. Phil is having a good deal of seizures today.

I, uhm, I don't think I ever hit the mark with idle speculation as much as I did with Mari. It almost looks like I looked the info up before posting, but I really didn't. Well, that does confirm that she was edited into 2.22 after the fact, that she was made as an extremely different character to be easily distinguishable from the others, and that she was indeed... well, harem manga fanservice waifu bait that was supposed to steal Shinji from Asuka before someone on Anno's writing staff had an issue with that idea - which admittedly wasn't the best but at least more interesting than what we've got out of the whole thing as it is now - and all of that only because a producer wanted a new female lead and Anno immediately envisioned her to be someone who destroys his connection to the series.

Great, and she ends up with Shinji anyway.

This is by the way the quote from Enokido:

Quote

In “Urusei Yatsura”, Shinobu is the Japanese girl who was one’s childhood friend and always by one’s side, and Lum is the “alien girl”. We say “alien”, but [such characters] perhaps [have] an “American” image. Rei and Asuka exactly fit the pattern of this “perfect lineup”.
Now, coming up with a plan as regards the third girl who must compete with this “ultimate combination” seemed to me a very difficult job. In addition, Director Anno had not, up to this point, developed anything himself, but, expressing the desire for a completely new character, had left Mari’s development to others.
"This being the case, my first proposal for an additional type was a Sapphire (from [Tezuka Osamu’s] Princess Knight) type. If Rei and Asuka are completely different types, I wondered if a “neutral”, lighthearted type who battles with an “innocent” image would be good. At this point, though Anno-san agreed that it would be good, he thought a Wato (Chiyoko) type (from [Tezuka’s] The Three-Eyed One) would be more realistic, and he got quite excited about it."

What we can deduce from these interviews though:

There were many drafts, not just one. This makes everything worse, actually. If that is the revised outcome, then simply filming the first draft might have been the better idea.

I wondered about how Mari appears to have been edited into 2.0 (is there a difference between 2.0 and 2.22, or are these just the different dubs?) after the fact. Turns out that's at the very least semi-true, wit her originally not supposed to have been in the second film at all, and said Mari feels like a fanfiction character, turns out she's the only character not developed by Hideaki Anno. She's still from the official staff, but it's as close to fanfiction as you can come under such circumstances.

I don't know anything about the characters Enokido mentions, or where the differences are, but if the goal was to create a character sitting between Rei's Betty* and Asuka's Veronica*, then that went to hell in a handbasket. Oh, and it kind of throws a spanner in the works of the idea that she's a stand-in for his wife.

Anyway, I'm super tired and I think that'll be all for today. Maybe tomorrow there will be more interesting replies from me.

*Now before you strangle me for getting that "obviously" wrong, it isn't from a Japanese cultural point of view, where Asuka clearly is the exotic gaijin. I mean, even Enokido says so, and he was a writer on the original NGE. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

Can't really keep up with the thread anymore.

What is this Evangelion stuff you guys are watching? Movies?

I'm checking Funimation now, so I'll wait a little more before finishing LoGH and starting JoJo.

 

I watched Danganronpa this weekend (which was stupid because I have the game, which is longer and now spoiled).

Big spoiler below:
 

Spoiler

I expected they were in some kind of simulation,  but no,

Spoiler

everyone died.

 

Steins;Gate is next.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

What is this Evangelion stuff you guys are watching? Movies?

The rebuild movies. Sarex and I enjoyed it, Bartimaeus and majestic hated it. Especially Anno's waifu.

6 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

I'm checking Funimation now, so I'll wait a little more before finishing LoGH and starting JoJo.

Oh ho. Soon all of us will have seen the sheer insanity that is DIO.

[Bartimaeus]

8 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Can't really keep up with the thread anymore.

What is this Evangelion stuff you guys are watching? Movies?

The original show from the 90s is Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it is good albeit it has its quirks. There is a four movie remake/continuation of it called Rebuild of Evangelion that we all watched recently that majestic and I despised, .

11 hours ago, majestic said:

I wondered about how Mari appears to have been edited into 2.0 (is there a difference between 2.0 and 2.22, or are these just the different dubs?) after the fact.

I believe what happened is that she was used in promotional imagery and advertising for Evangelion as a whole long before 2.0 was ever released (Anno mentioned that he suspected she was mainly for commercialization...), which is what sparked the fandom asking to see her. Pretty sure she appears just the same in 2.0 as she does in 2.22 - IIRC, 2.22 is a few minor scene additions and modifications as well as some image/graphical updates.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I believe what happened is that she was used in promotional imagery and advertising for Evangelion as a whole long before 2.0 was ever released (Anno mentioned that he suspected she was mainly for commercialization...), which is what sparked the fandom asking to see her. Pretty sure she appears just the same in 2.0 as she does in 2.22 - IIRC, 2.22 is a few minor scene additions and modifications as well as some image/graphical updates.

When has listening to the fans ever made anything better? It made Pillars of Eternity worse with each patch (and the gameplay wasn't very good to begin with), it certainly made these movies even worse, I'm semi-positive that the final showdown between the Cleganes in Game of Thrones was inserted because it was a super popular fan theory (one of the dumber ones at that), it pretty much ruined WoW with Cataclysm, really... you can implement some ease of use changes the fans would like in your game when you interact with them, but otherwise, yeah, listening to the fandumb = bad idea.

Granted, we could argue that Disney didn't listen to the fans and ruined Star Wars that way, but giving the fans what they wanted would probably be just as awful.

*That's still somewhat normal for Japanese working culture anyway, I recently saw a video of a Japanese guy who said he once got chewed out by his boss for over an hour because he replied to a yes and no question with the Japanese equivalent of "of course" (mochiron, in case someone's interested), which isn't the keigo way to talk to your boss, and that happens to natives, so how are we silly gaijin supposed to get that right? kek