EVANGELION 2.0 – You Can (Not) Advance
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Evangelion is now, seemingly, a Tsurumaki vehicle. Or at least, a 21st Century GAINAX show rather than one of the 90s where Evangelion stood as the superlative example.
In principle this would be a good thing. Tsurumaki gave us FLCL and did a good, if very idiosyncratic job on Diebuster (aka Gunbuster 2). He’s becoming a sort of go-to guy when it comes to applying a modern spin on old GAINAX properties. He has enough personality to make them fresh and with a show like Eva, that even the tamest of anime fans have probably seen at least four times, this is important. Yet, Eva 2.0 felt very confused. Or as an old fan I did. Perhaps Diebuster is a good starting point to understand just where this second film is coming from because watching Eva 2.0 is how I imagine diehard fans of the original Gunbuster felt after seeing Diebuster. It’s very much a what is this I don’t even sensation peppered with cautious interest because of the sheer energy and verve witnessed onscreen.
So this is an Evangelion experience paired down to constituent parts, but not necessarily the constituent parts you’d expect. Very little of the psychology is given president. Nor, to my own chagrin, is much of the basic characterisation. Humour and action take much more of a central role with Eva 2.0 than invasive psychological analysis or weighty character development, and because of the breakneck pacing very little time is allowed to build the characters before Things Go Wrong, thus neutering the Serious Drama. If it held true to the humour and action and somehow geared the plot to avoid the harrowing moments that were so dependent on the drier, more staid elements then it might feel more successful. But no, it harkens back to those traumatic scenes with none of the buildup that made them so affective in the original.
The plot itself deviates mainly in how familiar events are ordered, and the introduction of Mari causes a slight disruption to expectations (though it’s no where near the level the hype/excitement suggests). As predictably fanboyish as this sounds, she probably embodies the film’s biggest failing. Not because she’s a bad character in and of herself, but because she’s a very thin GAINAX archetype in a show than sealed its reputation on completely exploding thin anime archetypes. I’m reserving judgment on the whole because Mari’s barely present here and when she is it’s all very enigmatic, but she didn’t offer much in the way of the vitality that many were expecting. I’m hoping the potential anarchy she could bring will get more attention in the third film, and judging by how Eva originally behaved with its characters, it’s penchant for dramatic u-turns, that’s a sensible approach to take. Like the character herself, the hint of disruption is there, lurking in the background jumping out in rather incongruous moments, but feels unimportant and superfluous at this stage. I’m sure GAINAX’s merchandising division would beg to differ but from a narrative standpoint I struggled to see the point of her inclusion. Time will tell.
One thing that feels genuinely contradictory to the ethos of these films – making them accessible to everyone etc. – is that I can’t imagine anyone getting this without having seen the original series. It feels lazy to say that but this film really is quite a shambles without extensive knowledge of the characters. The plot can do whatever it wants, and it certainly does with us reaching the Third Impact by the end of the film, but the genuine worth of Evangelion for me, the rise and fall of its characters, the disturbing, joyous, endearing insight into their minds, is very sparse and messy here. There are lots of illusions to character backstory – Asuka, for instance has a hand puppet baring eerie similarity to her mother’s, and Misato gets a shitey montage depicting her survival of the Second Impact – but it’s all so toothlessly underdeveloped. There’s not enough time to take stock on how these artifacts and memories created the people we see in front of us and it makes for a very bewildering experience.
So, get ready to dust off the zimmerframe and stamp it up and down in a rage because it’s time for the choleric fanboy conclusion. Studio Khara (GAINAX Veteran Retirement Village) have seemingly done the opposite of what they to set out to do here. Rather than give fans and new folk alike the distilled Evangelion experience, something everyone finds accessible and entertaining, they’ve given us something very fun and brisk that’s still mired in all the convoluted rubbish of the original series without its running time to give even the vaguest entry point for comprehension. I was lucky to see this film in a cinema – not so much because of the audio-visual experience, which is lovely, but because of the audience reaction. All the moments where we may’ve winced or sat in quiet dismay in the past are a truncated parody of themselves, deserving of the mock laughter they received. It’s a fantastic film in many superficial ways but very odd when considered in terms of what made Eva special. If there was one positive thing I took away from watching Eva 2.0, though, it’s that the subsequent films are guaranteed to be absolutely demented. By the way things are progressing (that being into batshit insanity) it feels like these films are very much Eva curios rather than a definitive experience. This isn’t a bad thing at all, just . . . tricky to consider.







I could open with a prolonged gush about my love for Evangelion; the draft before this had a hundred word introduction doing just that until I realized I wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t been said before. Yep, I love Evangelion for exactly the same reasons you probably love Evangelion. No end of personal accounts could really differentiate my experience from anyone else’s, so lets just suffice to say that Evangelion is special.
Stage 71 deals with the later part of the series – around episode 24 of the anime. Ritsuko has destroyed the dummy plug, Kaworu has received his orders from SEELE and Gendou is preparing for Instrumentality. Misato recounts the day of the Second Impact and Shinji gradually realises he has no one left. Consequently, this latter part gives rise to one of the most appealing aspects of the manga so far: Shinji’s massively different relationship with Kaworu. After Kaworu’s previous attempted advances (yes, those kind of advances) on Shinji he no longer considers Kaworu a friend and discards him appropriately. Rather than taking the ‘loved-lost’ approach of the anime Sadamoto seems to be playing the out-right isolation card for Shinji, suggesting a much more muted descent for the forthcoming Instrumentality. I genuinely respect Sadamoto for taking this route; it partly addresses much of the controversy over Shinji and Kaworu’s relationship and spins it on its head while making a clear, definite break from the anime. These subtle (and no-so-subtle) breaks from the original are what make Evangelion’s manga such essential reading for Eva fans.
This boxset features six volumes encased in the extra-thin style DVD cases, each featuring the spangly new cover artwork by Sadamoto seen on the original NGE Platinum releases (except for volume seven’s Kaworu due to the obvious lack of a seventh volume). The box itself is similar to the original box set container only smaller, made with sturdy cardboard featuring Asuka and Rei in the artwork and metalic silver finish. Each DVD itself has five episodes of the series, apart from volume five which has six (accommodating for episode 26) and volume six of the collection features the director’s cut editions of episode 21 – 24 in full. Every single episode (including the DC versions) is fully remastered visually and audibly and there are no other extras previously seen in the single Platinum releases; purely the episodes alone with the option between the English language track or Japanese with subtitles.