ThatAnimeSnob

I watched all 4 Rebuild movies and this is what I think of them. I am not going to over what I wrote about the series, so check out that one if you haven’t, since it’s more of a comparison than a standalone analysis.

So, the Rebuild movies are the remake of Neon Genesis, and are essentially how Hideaki Anno reevaluated his magnum opus 20 years later, when he was no longer that depressed and had left the shitfest that Gainax became by turning into another modern studio. As such it’s not going to be the arthouse piece it used to be nor a landmark in anime, since it’s a derivative piece of entertainment made in an era where the term classic is about to die out. Almost nobody’s watching old anime anymore, therefore there is no point in telling Zoomers of the classics that defined earlier decades. Even those who bothered to watch the series when it was added on Netflix some time ago didn’t find it to be special after thousands of other shows copied its style. Most of them even said they didn’t like it because it had robots, and Shinji was a crybaby and not an overpowered self insert harem lead in a videogame isekai. So yeah, right from the start you know these movies are not going to be something special for those who didn’t watch and love the series 20 years ago. Which is why the only thing I’m going to do is to compare them.

Starting with the first movie, which was pure fan service for the old fans. Almost identical to the first episodes of the series and with a hundred times prettier colors, so obviously I loved every second of it and gave it a 10/10.

The second movie is where things change and left me partially disappointed. Not so much because it wasn’t an identical recreation of the original, but rather because the changes didn’t make this version better. And by that I refer to the inclusion of Mari, a new character we were calling the glasses waifu, something that was added just for selling dakimakuras. Eventually there was a good reason for her existence, evident by her name. She’s called Mari because she’s a Mary Sue, and sums up the worst traits of the archetype. She’s always great, she always wins, she doesn’t suffer from psychological issues like the other characters, and she always guides a discussion in whatever way she likes by making loaded questions. She’s literally a self insert, thrown in a preexisting story for showing off how amazing she is. Heck, she even makes Shinji her boyfriend at the end. What a load of crap. That aside, the movie ends with the Third Impact, which didn’t make any sense at the time since there was nothing past the Third Impact in the original. What the hell are they doing here? I gave it a 7/10 for at least being rule of cool despite having Mari.

Then came the third movie which was off putting. There was a time skip which changed completely the look of the setting. The Third Impact wasn’t complete and thus the planet is half dead. Everything was mechanical and lifeless, and the characters permanently cryptic and emotionless. Shinji spends the whole film having no idea what is going on and nobody is explaining shit. It’s also where they included Kaworu in the plot, which seemed ill timed. The thing that was making him so deceptive in the series was interacting with Shinji in his daily activities. There were no daily activities here, everything was ugly and joyless. And speaking of which, the setting was also ugly because they no longer drew over the CGI. I could see the damn polygons in most scenes and it made the fights to look like something out of a Playstation 3 cut scene. Also the ending didn’t even feel like an ending, it was more like a cliffhanger to something that was ugly, lifeless, and had no relation to the series anymore. I gave this one a 4/10.

And after many years of waiting the final movie came out and it was not that bad in the first third. It took place in an area that was not affected by the Third Impact where the characters had a normal life in the countryside. You get to see a lot of the minor cast from the series all grown up and with families. This part felt like an actual continuation of the plot, since all these people didn’t disappear and life went on. Unfortunately the rest of the movie was an incomprehensible mess of pseudoscience, religious mambo jumbo, and people infodumping stuff that should have been established in earlier movies and not 15 minutes before the end. Talk about ill-planning. And sure, the End of Evangelion was also a mess in terms of narrative, but at least it ended with Shinji living in a devastated world where the negative consequences of the Third Impact weren’t wished away. In this version they did, the ending is a reality reset where everything is fine and all of them are happy. Hideaki what did you do, you were supposed to be the chosen one. Why did you make your magnum opus into another escapism fantasy? Is this the result of not being depressed anymore? What a load of shit. I’m still giving it a 6/10 for the epilogue-like portion of the movie, but the rest of it is completely against the core message of End of Evangelion.

And that’s what I had to say about the Rebuild movies. The best one was the first because it was identical to the series, thus again proving why retro always wins.