Evangelion and Me

 

Neon Genesis Evangelion, and really the Evangelion franchise as a whole, rarely needs much introduction. Though rarely discussed outside of the anime community in my experience, it’s not a complete unknown. Perhaps you’ve seen artwork of the characters somewhere, statues of the titular Evangelion mecha, heard that one anime-fan in your life bring it up, or perhaps you just knew that bit of trivia that the late, great Robin Williams was a fan himself, owing to that scene in One Hour Photo.

For the anime community it holds a place of high regard, though not without its detractors for various reasons. It almost seems to be a rite of passage for many of the Youtube Anime Review community to have to cover it at some point in their career. On the early internet, debates over its themes and characters ran rampant (Rei or Asuka often being the biggest question, because the internet is just like that). If not debates, then there was much in-depth analysis into the characters themselves, the themes, or how to make sense of the pseudo-religious iconography. Fanfics as well are plentiful, with everything from retellings and sequels, to crossovers with other properties such as Warhammer 40k, X-Files, various sci-fi and even odder ones like the Tomb Raider series.

Evangelion, despite the rocky end to its initial production, has been a constant presence in the world for the last 25 years. If not through the re-releases of the original series, then by the Rebuild movies or just simple advertising and Evangelion themed merchandise. Think of a product, there’s likely an Eva-version of it somewhere.

I’ve wanted to talk about the series myself for a long time, but how I did that was always a question. I could go into the series in-depth, explain how the movies or video games relate. Talk about the production hell or go into the biography of its creator, Hideki Anno. I could, but I won’t. That’s been done by a thousand people before me and will probably be done by a thousand people more. There's no take I can up with that's original and not a regurgitation of something I've heard elsewhere. So any of this that does come up will be organic in the writing. If you are interested, a simple Youtube search will give you more than you need, but better yet, I’d say just go watch it first. If by the end of this post I’ve convinced you to do so, then all the better, but that's not the purpose of this.

 

Just in case, to get it out of the way, here is the watch order:

1) The original 26 episode run of Neon Genesis Evangelion (Any version, the Perfect Edition is a good choice).

2) The End of Evangelion feature movie.

3) The Rebuild of Evangelion Quadrilogy.

After this, anything else is supplementary and you likely won’t care unless you’ve become a dedicated fan in some way. That said, you don’t need to go and do all that before reading this, as this post will be relatively spoiler free all things considered, though broad strokes of the endings will be covered.

Like many anime fans my age, I grew up on what had been translated and televised amongst children’s programming in the UK. Pokemon, Digimon, YuGiOh, Beyblade, Zoids and Cardcaptors were major parts of the post-school and Saturday morning TV time for me and my siblings. It wasn’t until I was a teenager did I get more insight into anime with a few episodes of Bleach and Naruto, but we didn’t get the internet till late so I missed that typical entry that many fans seem to talk about. Instead, I received a subscription to one of the many monthly magazines that we get over here. These can be anything from model builds to DVDs sets (and incidentally the Lord of the Rings miniatures game featured elsewhere on the blog came in the same format). The series for me was one called “Manga Force”, and outside of the episodic shounen “children’s” anime I’d been used to at this point, this was really my true entry into anime. 

This magazine showed me Akira, Ninja Scroll, Macross Plus, Ghost in the Shell and Perfect Blue, some of the greatest and arguably cult classics in their own rights. Naturally, amongst these came two more relevant to this post; Evangelion: Death and Rebirth and The End of Evangelion (EoE from now on).

The former is a movie length clip show, a shortened retelling of 24 of the original episodes (leaving out the original ending two episodes, though I didn’t know this at the time). It was brief, it was mad, and it served as a recap or primer of the series, even though I hadn't seen it. A smattering of robot-on-kaiju fights and enough of the character beats to give you an idea of who everyone was.

 

The latter was even more insane and the track "Komm, süsser Tod" will stick with me for a long time. I watched EoE more than a few times before I was able to get onto the internet and watch the original series. It is, as the name may suggest, the end of the original series and the accounting of a literal apocalypse within the setting. We watch as the main character, Shinji Ikari, is dragged through the whole thing, steered by the machinations of those vastly more powerful than him. People are murdered in droves as monstrous mecha fight it out and the very fabric of reality is shredded all in the name of people seeking godhood. Amongst it all, Shinji breaks and as part of the catalyst of it is handed the keys to the event itself.

And so he breaks the world… almost.

Shinji saw some shit.

We get no true resolution. Just two broken children lying on a beach in the ruins of the world. That was the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It took me a long time to get an understanding of it all, even after I’d hunted down the original series so I could watch it properly in full. Look around and you’ll find any number of people calling Shinji Ikari weak, or a wimp, or stupid. Those same people perhaps a few years later reassess that once they've become and adult and can look back on thier younger selves. He is in fact, a very real, very normal fourteen year old boy with all the neuroses and selfishness inherent to that. It’s the world and circumstances around him that make him appear weak, compounded by a very real passivity to his personality. In the end, he’s tremendously relatable, and I think it’s this, more than the mecha-on-kaiju fights, more than the fanservice, or strange iconography, that makes Evangelion stick with people. And I think this depth of portrayal is not solely confined to Shinji himself, but it’s the one you’ll typically see related to, as many fans were teenage boys and young men themselves.

It’s no secret that Evangelion bears all the marks of Hideki Anno’s battle with mental health. Much like the idea that you can supposedly trace Sylvester Stallone’s career through the Rocky movies, you can do the same with Evangelion and Anno. More than just the production issues, the way the original series ended, the way certain characters are portrayed, right up until the ending of the fourth Rebuild movie (which is a definitive ending unlike previous entries), all of it is shaped by Anno’s feelings and the way he perceives the world. Shinji Ikari is Hideki Anno himself in a lot of ways.

The core of the original series came down to the idea of the “Hedgehog’s Dilemma”. That people desire to be close to one another, but fear it all the same in case we hurt each other with our spines, so we put up walls. It is referenced directly in the show by Ritsuko, but also is displayed by the very idea of the AT-Field, the “barrier of the soul” and the actions of the characters themselves. Much of the series displays the loneliness caused by this, the character’s inability to talk and express their feelings properly to each other, to be truly vulnerable, to cope with loss, to just walk on their own two feet.

The AT-Field.

So, whilst I enjoy all of the series, its comedic slice-of-life moments, its mystery and esoteric imagery, and its over the top combat scenes, it's whenever I’m feeling melancholy or lonely that I tend to look back at Evangelion. Those are the times I relate most closely to Shinji Ikari, because much like him, I feel these ways in spite of the people around me. We pop in those headphones, turn on the music and the world turns around that little bubble. In fact, I’m doing it right now, even as I type this sometime around two in the morning. 

There are people we could talk to, could visit, but it’s easier to be alone and wallow.

We could do something, make a move, but it’s easier to just sit and watch.

We could make a difference, but it feels like everything is against us, and we’d never succeed anyway.

We could make a connection with someone, but we might get rejected.

So why not just sit with the status quo and do nothing?

For Shinji, all of this led to the apocalypse, and many he cared about dying without him being able to do anything to help them. Even in the preceeding events, action could mean him making things worse.

For me, it means sitting alone in my flat at almost thirty-two years old, yearning for something that I can’t quite put words to. I’m not as paralysed by it as Shinji can be, but then the fate of the world doesn’t rest on my shoulders either.

The stakes are rather different, but the point remains the same. It's not about saving the world even in Shinji's case, that's just the background. It's about growing up and becoming an adult. Making choices and owning the outcomes.

  

 

 

At so many points in the series Shinji fails to do this and is left distressed by what happens, culminating fully during EoE and the third Rebuild movie in different ways. He reacts by shutting down, closing off, running away and yet still expecting someone else to just do something. He only does what he is told to do, purely out of fear of being abandoned again.

 

You have to get up and do something. You might make mistakes, but so does everyone. You might get hurt but you can grow and learn from it. One of Shinji’s mantras earlier in the series is “I mustn’t run away” and it’s always a bit more than that, in that it should be “I must step forward”. It’s going to be hard, you're gonna have to fight other people for it, but there’s always people at your back and if you’re lucky, that one special person will take your hand and run alongside you.

I have believed for the longest time, not in a God or gods, but in the power of human choice. Our choices define us, define our path, define our successes and failures and more than that, they so often define others. Any choice we make can either invalidate or confirm the choice of someone else. There’s over seven billion people on this planet all concurrently choosing and sometimes your failure is nothing to do with you but the composite choices of dozens or even hundreds of others that just happened to direct the flow of things against you. There can be malice there, but it can also just be life.

 

Do nothing, choose nothing and you'll still subsist in the flow of it all. Hollow and lonely. 

In Evangelion, despite all the biblical references on display and the very real godlike beings in existence, at the core of the story it is people who shape everything, the gods often being puppets or tools for their machinations. The choices of the few caused the rapturing of every soul on the planet, all in the interests of sitting at the head of becoming gods themselves. At the same time, another choice saw this become outright war and the mental manipulation of their own son, purely out of grief for the loss of a wife and a desire to be with her once again. No matter how many other characters may have chosen, none of this could be prevented and it took the remaking of the world over and over for an incarnation of Shinji Ikari to put an end to it, but only after he’d been able to accept his grief and weaknesses and choose to do so. Those with power put every single event into motion and sweep everyone along with them, most characters still choose, still fight for thier own desired outcomes.

In the real world, politicians and world leaders shape the world around us, and I could no more prevent a war than Shinji could prevent the apocalypse, even if he became a key piece in it all. Even the smallest person can choose to live and thrive against the hardships of the world however, as shown multiple times with the side-characters in Evangelion, and as seen in real life in so many situations.

 

This is all just considering the physical. There are choices on other levels to, choices in perception and thought. You feel how your feel and that is very real but you can also often choose to ignore, shape or direct those feelings to something different from what they are. Do you like yourself? Are you happy? Perhaps not, but you can choose to find a way to change that. 

It’s only very recently that I’d noticed my belief system in some ways had parallels to the ideas presented in Evangelion, and much of that had to be illuminated by the final movie in the series. Nearly twenty years of watching and rewatching that world, and I might not be that awkward, lonely wimp of a teanager like Shinji any more, but it’s still a part of me. I try to take the lessons I’ve gleaned directly or indirectly and keep moving forward, though I do wonder where I’ll find my own happiness, much like Shinji and Anno himself by the end of it.

Shinji and Mari.

This whole post really did devolve into a bunch of navel gazing around my own thoughts and feelings, but I think that is something that Evangelion truly has the power to do. It might not be Shinji for you, but I think there’s something in there that everyone can truly call back to. Perhaps it hit at the right time for me, discovering it as a teenager. I think so often it’s easy to hold things up on a pedestal and forget to outgrow them, I’ve certainly done that with other things and even people. I appreciate that I can put aside Evangelion and only return to it as needed however. It serves as a reminder to not backslide into certain periods in life, but to instead step forward.

I’ve lived alone now for nearly nine years of my life, broken up only by a failed relationship that’s the core of my fears of connection and abandonment. The recent lockdowns exacerbated a lot of the Shinji-esque mentality that’s stuck with me over the years to a point where loneliness has a hold that’s very difficult to shift, even in a world as “connected” as we live in. The desire to get out and make connections is balanced entirely by that fear of getting hurt, but I mustn’t run away.

At least I don't have to get in the damn robot.

Thank you for reading.

Movie Thoughts: Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

So, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. The latest in Phase 4 of the MCU, another entry in the post-Endgame/post-Infinity Saga live-action comic book adaptations presented to us by the House of Mouse and Kevin Feige. (And doesn't Kevin want us to know it, check those credits).

If you're reading this, be ready for spoilers, cos I'm not planning to mince words. The spoilers aren't just for this film, but also for Wandavision and Spiderman: Far From Home at minimum.

Without further ado, was it good?

Ehhhh…

That's really hard to say, Marvel generally does well with the spectacle of seeing the big heroes on screen, the actors are generally good (Cumberbatch and Olsen were a treat) and it at least feels well put together.

However I'm leaning towards the idea that it was not good. The tone shifts a lot, the pacing is all over the place, characters are either wasted, underutilised or lacking in personality or motives, and the writing and plotting just falls apart. Remember when the MCU's continuity generally held together and made sense? Not so much any more!

Knowing where to start is tricky, so I'll go with the trailers. We've known for a while that this Doctor Strange movie would have supporting hero characters in the form of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch fresh from her Disney+ series, and America Chavez, a new introduction to the MCU.

Strange, following from his supporting role in Spiderman as the catalyst for bringing in mutiversal Spidermen and associated rogues gallery, appears to be having multiversal troubles of his own. Wanda being there makes sense, being part of the more 'mystical' side of the MCU after her powers were retconned from being granted by an Infinity Stone to having always been present as the Scarlet Witch is some prophesied being in Wandavision. America Chavez, whilst new, has a powerset that auto-includes multiversal travel, by way of punching star-shaped holes in reality. A little silly, but there it is.

Notably, we got no true villain from the trailer, aside from maybe us having an evil!Strange.

Very soon we learn that it is Wanda herself that is the villain of the film. Hot off the back of what many viewers rate as her villainous acts in Wandavision, and in possession of the rather corrupting Darkhold, Scarlet Witch is here to hunt down America Chavez. And why do you ask? She wants to steal the girl's powers so she can travel to other realities to be with the two sons she created in Westview.

Already there are problems with this premise. Any reality with copies of her sons would naturally have its own Wanda she would have to replace or steal from in some way. The focus is all on her sons and not on her equally missing husband, Vision. (Nominally I guess they couldn't get or didn't want to include Bettany for this film, but after Wandavision the absence feels glaring, not least because he is in some way, alive again). On top of this, she originally created the two boys purely from magic, and whilst this was done via out-of-control grief and with meddling from Agatha, no reason is given for her not being able to just recreate them.

There's a lot that can and should be covered as a follow-up to Wandavision, and whilst Doctor Strange does deserve his own film, this one in particular should've been the Scarlet Witch movie, with him once more supporting if needed. But then, this yet again showcases the failure of the MCU to trust fully in a female-led film, despite their supposed dog whistling for mighty and fabled DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION.

Before anyone gets their backs up about that last sentence, my gripe is with how often these ideals are done in ways that are cheap, lazy, stereotypical, at the cost of pre-established things, or even downright offensive. If you're going to champion a cause, do it well.

Captain Marvel was awful, with an unlikeable 'hero' enough that her Endgame presence was supposedly reduced, and also her now sharing title space for her second movie with Kamala Khan and I assume Monica Rambeau. The less said about how much Black Widow soiled the memory of Nat's better showings up to that point the better. (Also Widow should've had a film in Phase 2 or 3, and one better than what we got).

In fact, Wandavision may be the best female-led production in the MCU to date… if you ignore the kludgy attempts to 'redeem' her and keep her heroic by the end. Even as a huge grief-driven mistake, she still enslaved and dream-tortured a few hundred people with no recompense to them.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is certainly its sequel however. Imagine it, a fully Sam Raimi directed, Evil Dead-style movie with the titular Scarlet Witch as the villainous lead. Keeping the Darkhold as the corrupting influence so that she can still be broken from it by the end if you wish is just fine, but perhaps the idea would be considered too dark for the MCU. We get glimpses of it, but Raimi was clearly reined in and I'm left wondering what was in his original extra 40 minutes and what we lost to reshoots.

So instead we have this as a Doctor Strange movie, though it's not as if he's completely devoid of story. In his first movie, he obtained and utilised the time stone to defeat Dormmamu, turned Mordo from Kamar-Taj and became close to being the Sorcerer Supreme many would recognise from the comics. He was the one who found the path to victory in Infinity War and Endgame. We learn in Spiderman that being erased from existence for five years cost him the position of Sorcerer Supreme (Wong holds it), and that he still has that self-assurance of his abilities to mess with and attempt difficult spells as one of the most powerful humans in the MCU. Truly the man who learned to astral project so he could read whilst he slept in order to learn magic.

So we start his second film with a variant of him dying and him attending the wedding of Christine, his love interest from the first film. Oof.

Christine remains a major part of the story throughout, with a running question of "Are you happy?". She, or variants of her, criticise him for his need to "be the one always be holding the knife", Strange's demonstrated cockiness and belief of smug superiority from his surgeon days. A flaw he's likely not fully overcome, and what could've been the arc for this film, had the story been different, as I don't believe he experiences growth past this here. We also meet a Strange variant who destroyed his reality trying to "get" his own Christine, drawing parallels to the Strange from the recent What If? animated series.

And yet, by the end of the film the only growth our Dr Strange seems to have learned is to be a bit more respectful to Wong. Him repairing the watch seems meant as him growing past his accident and Christine, but I'm not so sure this flows. Him respectfully attending her wedding at the beginning seems to show this already, and the accident is the subject of his first film.

However, we know that the director/writer team for the first Doctor Strange movie left this production because they were unable to continue building on his characters arcs in this sequel, which is why Raimi is at the helm here. This is a shame, because he really is a side-character in his own movie.

To cover the last of the three main characters, America Chavez is more of a plot macguffin than a character, at best a generic, snarky teenager than anything more. From a rather utopian-looking reality that allows for two women to have a child (supposedly, I haven't researched so if I'm wrong I misheard), her powers activate when she's scared enough. She has no control over this, which causes her traumatic event of getting stung by a bee and throwing her moms somewhere into the multiverse and seeing her jumping realities at random for what appears to be a good 8-10 years alone.

America appears to be presented as a pro-feminist, progressive character, two mothers and wearing a pride-flag pin on her chest, yet interestingly only learns how to use her power after getting a pep-talk from Strange and requires him (and variants of him) to constantly save her throughout the film. I am possibly over-analysing here, but it seemed incongruent with messaging we typically see these days, especially when paired with Wanda's motivations and role. That the two things that made me consider her to be a pro-feminist character (not a criticism, just an observation) were downright subtle compared to more cludgy writing we've seen in other media was a pleasant surprise, which made it even more odd to see America as the damsel and macguffin. (Cynically, that subtleness may be for China’s benefit however).

Then again, perhaps it all would've been clearer with better writing for the character, and I have to wonder if the lack of control is true for her comic counterpart. We essentially got her first steps on the old "hero's journey" in this film, but it feels thin and I have to wonder if she'd have benefitted from an introduction before now (I think being in Loki would make a lot of sense), to give us a more capable and assured America, even if she remains Wanda's target and needs to team up with Strange, but in a way that's more partnership and less damsel in distress. I'm thinking "America Chavez, Guide to the Multiverse" here.

However, I think I've rambled about the characters enough, let's talk about other oddities, such as missing characters. I've already mentioned Vision, strangely missing when by far he's the character most connected to Wanda, and currently a big question mark in the MCU. Sticking with Wandavision, there's also the absence of Monica Rambeau, though we could at least expect that she's tied up with SWORD.

A final one for Wanda would be Hawkeye. The two were given a bond during Age of Ultron and Civil War, and we've seen nothing from him since in relation to Wanda, likely due to screen time concerns. Clint had his own grief-rampage and regret of it after the fact, so who else would be better to try and reason with Wanda, even if it proved fruitless. We can guess that Strange wouldn't know to contact him for that reason, and he's presumably busy with family and Kate Bishop.

For Strange, the main missing character would be Mordo. This is made even more hilarious considering we get a variant of him, though reportedly he was gonna show in a deleted scene where he fails to hunt down Wanda and gets beheaded. This being removed was good, as it would've been a huge waste of Chiwetel Ejiorfor, who is a great actor.

That said, the idea that Strange did not call for any assistance in stopping Wanda feels odd. The pacing made it feel like things happened quickly, and they did at least rally a bunch of sorcerers at Kamar-Taj, but considering what they gathered to stop Thanos (who wanted to remake the universe), when Wanda may cause multiversal destruction, it's hard to justify. Not helped in the least by Endgame showing that sorcerers could portal from even extreme distances like Titan to Earth. The lack of use of portals in some circumstances is another issue, especially for anyone who's a fan of the Portal video games.

He still knows Spiderman even if he doesn't know that it's Peter Parker under the mask, who they bring him up to make a butt-webs joke! We also have to wonder chronologically where the post-credits scene for Shang-Chi falls, as he and Marvel's Katy were picked up by Wong.

For another thing entirely, the story for this film was penned by the same writer who did Loki. Considering what Loki did for the multiverse and time-travel in the MCU (and by all I could swear on do I hate it), it is incredibly odd to not have Kang or the TVA involved in some way or even mentioned. Then again if there was an overarching plan I could've had input on, I'd have introduced America with them, but it seems the MCU is lacking in this oversight these days. Loki himself or Sylvie, due to being magic users, are options too.

Of course adding all this would make for a mess, but the MCU has expanded without thought and consideration for wider effects. Time-Travel and Mutiverses just skim the surface. "What is X doing", will forever be a question made harder by instant teleportation. With everything being such high stakes all the time, we need more grounding.

Another issue is power levels. Strange and Wong often seem to stand around for long periods of time without utilising any of the much more useful magic they've demonstrated in the past, but then sometimes still do. We all saw the trailer shot of Strange magically buzz-sawing a bus in half, and yet he doesn't use it on the big monster that threw the bus in the first place. Him and Wong try to hold this bus-throwing monster down with a chain and their own weight and physical strength instead. For some reason. Muscle Wizards they are not. At other times Strange summons snakes once and this odd cat head thing in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. I've seen many people criticise the magic music fight scene, but if the more creative aspects of magic had been more consistently used, as per his fight with Thanos, I think it would not have registered that way.

Wanda too is ridiculously powerful, keeping Strange and America on the run throughout (which is fine as a horror villain) and solo-killing the entirety of the Illuminati. What an awful way to introduce Krazinski as Reed Richards. Her powers remain as vague as ever, from the original red smokey telekinesis and hallucination inducing she started with, to what now appears to be reality warping and "abilities as needed" like being able to travel through reflections. Darkhold-provided or not, balancing her back down for future appearances may be difficult, and despite the ending, I don't believe she's gone just yet.

I don't think I have anything further to say that has not already been covered by others. The film feels like a litany of missed opportunities in so many ways, I could possibly ramble a lot longer than the 2000+ words I've reached so far. Let me know what you think.

The memory store will always be a fucking stupid idea and the epitome of lazy writing however.

Peace!

Rohan First Stage Complete!

Well it's been a hot minute since I've been on here. And that's really cos it's taken me a hot minute to finish painting the Rohirrim. Painting was never my favourite part of the hobby, I definitely enjoy building and playing more, so motivation is tricky to get sometimes.

That said, Theoden rides again!

 

This was the original 300 points I planned for, and was entirely built from the Pelennor Fields box with the exception of the King's Huntsman. I'm incredibly proud of the Royal Guardsman conversions.

I've already got the expansion to 500pts prepared as well:

 (Didn't even notice I'd knocked Theoden aside).

This expansion will be a lot quicker to prepare, as I'm using official guardsmen and had already painted one of the additional Outriders. The Deorwine sculpt is fantastic too. In fact, the only work required will be to add a banner to the additional Guard in Theoden's group.

Future expansions will almost definitely be Eomer and some Riders and a decent unit of Grimbold's Helmingas. The inclusion of my Huntsman and unmounted Outriders show it clearly that I did not want to stick to pure cavalry. As I've already planned to get a detachment from Minas Tirith, I felt the Helmingas would form a good hammer to a Gondorian Shieldwall.

HOWEVER!

This series of posts was supposed to detail the build up of two equal forces, and Mordor has been greatly neglected.

Despite finishing the Kardush conversion and basing and priming the front line Orcs, that remains the full extent of the work. The Troll Chief is still missing an arm! Green Stuff will be employed to finish him up however, as I want him to look as unique as possible.

I have turned an eye to expansion here too:

 

I've made one and a half Black Numenorians, but I think the first expansion will go to the Ringwraith (a spare Rohan horse and the extra wraith body from the Witch King sprue), and a retinue of Warg Riders. I'm using the Fell Wargs from the Hobbit range here, which are probably amongst the best of that range and I prefer them to the LOTR plastic Wargs (the metal ones are good, but that would be expensive).

The Wargs give the force much needed mobility and ranged power, and a Wraith is always powerful, and synergises well with Kardush.

Let's hope my next update comes along quicker!