Review: Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time (2021)
What does "ending" Evangelion even mean?
I remember reading an interview with South Korean singer PSY where he said that after the global success of “Gangnam Style” he fell into a great depression, possibly even suicidal, as he felt the pressure that his next song had to fit the style of “Gangnam Style” and everything he creates since will be compared to that. I see this kind of emotion in a statement like this captured as a major theme of the final Evangelion film. This film occupies a strange position as it’s simultaneously the fourth film of the Rebuild of Evangelion films that reconstructs the story and narrative of Neon Genesis Evangelion the TV series and films from the late 90s and a sequel to the first three films released in 2007-2012, but also given the film’s title of “Shin Evangelion” it also shares commonality with Anno’s contemporary output, now 4 films that begin with the word “Shin”.
Over the past week I’ve gone through all four Evangelion rebuild films for the first time, a viewing endeavor that I’ve long neglected despite having seen the original series and many of Hideaki Anno’s other works. Anno is a very fascinating creative who is now becoming a wider household name, not just for anime fans, but now considered among great contemporary Japanese directors. He is known to make things that are both outside of the norm, but still extremely familiar, heavily influenced by entrenched cultural figures like Ultraman. I have no hesitations about labelling Anno as a “creative”, as he works across animation and live action, having a unique style and whose work always sparks widespread discussion and criticism. As (hopefully) the final feature of Evangelion, this film grapples with not just the fictional history of Evangelion’s plot in the new films, but also his own interiority as channeled through the main characters. A grand gesture that doesn’t give the best answer, but if a worthwhile experience to engage with.
The Evangelion Rebuild films are the result of a series of new Evangelion films that Anno made at his then-new Studio Khara, following the bankruptcy of his former studio Gainax. This is evident in their original title ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版 (literally “Evangelion New film”), dropping the 新世紀 or “New Genesis” in the title off the original tv series and films. These first three films can be considered an indirect remake of the Evangelion series roughly 10 years later with new creative control, keeping much of the core elements but with a new direction, hence the use of the term “rebuild”. It starts of fairly similar to the original storyline, though with updated visuals that fit high quality cinematic anime of the time, and done in a way that is recognizant of the original series (many brief references are made to different figures and images from the original), while plot details change later on in the second film, particularly in the second half and including a brand new Eva pilot Mari, marking the films’ distinction while still somewhat tethered to the original narrative, consciously or unconsciously. The third film marks a complete divergence in the timeline by introducing a time skip in which the structures within the world have changed drastically and the viewer has to piece together (along with Shinji who has no recollection of that time) both what has happened and what is presently happening. A clever decision, but I find it a bit too lore-focused and ends up feeling very confusing. The film surprisingly, considering this felt like a trilogy, ends without resolution, dropping a “to be continued” end card. Another film seemed to be on the horizon but would not be released until 9 years later in 2021.
On this note, while I’m interested in the way these films are titled, I want to make sure not to put too much emphasis on the subtitles of 序破急 (Jo-ha-kyu), narrative concepts of movement and style taken from premodern Japanese theater, as it falls into the cultural essentialism hole. While Anno does somewhat adopt each one in their respective films, I rather see him as simply appropriating these concepts for his own machinations, playfully changing 急 to the English letter Q. With the fourth film having a different name of Shin Evangelion, following Anno’s Shin Godzilla, the film challenges us to examine it more broadly through the creator’s past and present, rather than an individual feature.
Most reviews and comments of the films of the rebuild trilogy (primarily the first 2) find issue with their resemblance to the original series, something that inflects criticism of the series. Indeed, at a glance there is a close resemblance between the original TV series and these movies. The setting is the same, the characters look the same, the inciting moment of Shinji being told to pilot the Eva unit 01 as well as other early plot points follow that of the original series. However, once I actually sat down and went through those films, I did not get the sense that I was “rewatching” the original series with updated animation. There was still something different despite watching the same characters and settings. While the plot may bear resemblance until the end of the second film, the narrative discourse is a far from it, and neither are the characters. I see these rebuild films, while Evangelion, are actually a re-casting of Neon Genesis Evangelion, both the characters and the story elements, and this is a problem, which I am reading that Anno felt and gave him struggle in making the fourth film.
The problem lies in the fact that Evangelion is not simply a TV series and movie from 1997, but has become a major global franchise, one of the most lucrative and profitable anime-original franchises, and that weighs heavy on continuing it. The Evangelion trilogy oscillates between being a part of the Evangelion media franchise while also, in literal terms, Anno’s “new” Evangelion series. The clash of these two things is what detracts from the films. From a creative perspective, these films are a new “building” using the same building blocks of Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinji, Unit 01, father issues, angels, interspersed titles, all of it), a recasting of all elements of the original show in a new way that doesn’t rewrite the old. The characters, despite looking the same (with updated designs), seem to act slightly differently, and the same can be said about the setting and lore. This is most obvious in Asuka’s last name “Shikinami” instead of “Soryuu”. However, when such things happen like repetition of the same plot points, even some of the exact same shots are re-rendered in film quality animation, it begins to feel more like a playful twist rather than a complete remake. When the third (and shortest film) comes around, its very stylistic and engaging in the story progression, but ultimately it ends up confused on how to come to terms with itself and ends somewhat incomplete after the third impact is completed.
The struggle to end Evangelion seemed to weigh heavy on Anno, given some interviews and comments made during this interim period between the third and fourth films. The direction of these films became lost, both in what it is and what its trying to do, and as a result Anno himself became lost. He’s often seemed like a very personal director, and this situation is very reminiscent of when he was originally creating Neon Genesis Evangelion, struggling with the financial and creative troubles of Gainax’s early releases. Things turned around with his work on Shin Godzilla, revisiting one of the pillars of Japanese culture but “recasting” Godzilla as well with targeted incision. The careful recasting of cultural pillars along with the stylistic growth he had made with the rebuild films of abstract dialogue that overbears the viewer with lore and technical information and opaque imagery that precede high action that carry the story to new conclusions is what births the new Evangelion film, which is distinctly a Shin film.
Shin Evangelion works with Evangelion as a concept much more effectively than the first three rebuilds do, though a great deal of groundwork is already done, setting up this conclusion. For the first part of the film, Shinji is lost within himself, spending time with the survivors of the impact, spending time with old characters who are grown up and meeting new characters who have been implicated by his actions. While witnessing the final fight between Nerve and Wille, something that is much greater than Shinji but is created by him, he knows only he can step in and defeat his father and end the cycle. The film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime features bombastic action between angels and Eva units, quick lore dumps that are difficult to comprehend, ominous dialogue, accentuated by characters’ interiority and memories. It’s a captivating visual and narrative experience that is very unmistakably Anno’s style (supported by Tsurumaki and the team at Khara).
The way the narrative is set-up places similarity between Shinji and Anno himself, both are on a quest to “end” the story by their own hands. There’s a lot in the movie to support this link and isn’t a far cry away from some readings of the original series that have been made. The world of Nerve, Seele, and Wille is something much larger than Shinji, yet he remains still the primary actor in it, forever changed by his impact. Likewise, much like how Evangelion as a media product has become so much grander over time, not just the creative endeavor of Anno’s psyche back in the 90s. Yet, he is the one who created Evangelion, both Neon Genesis, and the rebuilds. On the other hand, I see similarities with Gendo as well, linked to his depression but also pushes him into creative directions. A key theme of the film, as is often said explicitly frequently by characters in the film, is of hope and despair. Evangelion as a whole is about this metronomic swing between the two, and I read in Shin Evangelion, they have now been codified within Shinji and Gendo as conduits for Anno’s own hope and despair. Finding hope in Shinji to confront Gendo and his mother also runs parallel to Anno finding home to confront his own creation that he struggled to bring to an end. While its not a one-to-one analogy, and somewhat a cliché of hope triumphing over despair, I believe that it plays into a lot of Anno’s introspective tendencies as a director making it much more fascinating in its context.
The film ends in following through with this imperfect parallel, with Shinji after executing his hope and leaving behind it all getting with Mari, the Eva pilot unique to Anno’s rebuilds. Mari is a conflicted character, as she was introduced mechanically as a way to disrupt the “remaking” of Evangelion as a new element, but as a result lacked some character depth. However, Mari also comes to adopt how Anno has changed and bears symbolically more of Anno’s more recent direction rather than how he was in the past. Shinji getting with Mari is weak in narrative terms. She lacks the depth that the other characters have, and Shinji had seemed more romantically interested in Rei and Asuka (as did fans of the franchise I am assuming). However, Shinji as the embodiment of Anno’s hope ending with the character that breaks from the past I read as the visual expression of his moving away from Evangelion and into this new era of his career, marked by the “shin” movies.
The concluding theme of Shin Evangelion, as many people have picked up on, is of “letting go”, in a way destroying the idea of evangelion in order to move on. Though, as much as Anno may or may not want to, Evangelion as a media product cannot be let go, its too big, too successful, and too dispersed. There were even rumors a while back about alternate entries into the franchise like Gundam. However, and this is the much more interesting part, letting go of Evangelion as an object of nostalgia is what is possible and in a way more difficult. Throughout the trilogy, Neon Genesis Evangelion was something that was always there, acknowledged, but also something that was beyond the new films. It acted as somewhat of a supertext, being chronological and structurally before the films, which was as history has unfolded both a creative masterpiece and a super success. During the confrontation between Shinji and Gendo, scenes from Neon Genesis Evangelion (including even the title logo) begin to play. In this scene, the images from Neon Genesis Evangelion are rendered as projections imposed onto the two, perhaps encapsulating Anno’s personal impression that he was being imposed on as “the Evangelion director” when he wanted to be more. Though of course this may ring hollow when much of his own actions, particularly with the new films, seem like he does it to himself too. Nonetheless, the superimposition of the images is fascinating in how it pulls down Neon Genesis Evangelion from being a supertext into being part of the text. That’s one part of this film that I believe really emphasizes Anno’s growth, that he is now able to directly face it rather than try to make something different that is still beholden to his past. Nostalgia, to this film, is the source of both hope and despair. It is the simultaneously the thing that weighs heaviest, always being defined by a better past (real or fictional) but also a sign that things were and can still be better, a source of inspiration and motivation. If one considers Shin Evangelion is the hope film, then its direct response to the rebuild trilogy is as despair films. Letting go of that past, directly facing and letting go of the weight of nostalgia, is what allows Evangelion to truly end, and the world to still continue, as Shinji runs off hand in hand with Mari in the cheesy final scene.
Shin Evangelion is a film with a complicated history, a messy cross-section of its reconstructed story, media franchise, and its creator. Its almost too much for just one film to take on but it exemplifies exactly what Anno is doing right now and what he is now known for, casting off the “creator of Evangelion” label, one that was possibly self-problematized. Shin Evangelion is just as much of a “Shin” film, following up from Shin Godzilla, than it is a new Evangelion film. The “Shin” label has almost become a brand now, with four films now with this title that all about Anno using his matriculated idiosyncratic directing style to recast icons of Japanese popular media in new settings and storylines to interrogate their meanings and deliver a message. I find these to have mixed quality, where his collaborations with Higuchi Shinji in Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman being the most narratively and textually resonant, whereas Shin Evangelion and Shin Kamen Rider felt more unfiltered yet somewhat indulgent. Despite being a mixed bag, Shin Evangelion is a messy, sprawling culmination of Anno’s creative endeavors that confronts the weighted history of the franchise and his own relationship with it, solidifying this new era in his career.