Rebuild Of Evangelion Retrospective

In 1995, the studio of Gainax was planning to do its second anime TV series after Nadia: The Secret Of Blue Water. Gunbuster director Hideaki Anno headed up a new project combining some elements from the latter half of Nadia and allied Gainax with Tatsunoko Production to create a new anime titled Neon Genesis Evangelion. This was intended to be a breakdown of the mecha genre as up until then it was all super robots and space operas. It also blended Christian mythology with a deep psychoanalysis of humans confronting trauma. Evangelion went on to be the most groundbreaking anime of its time, however the final two episodes seriously through audiences off, so a theatrical retelling of the conclusion called End Of Evangelion was met with better praise. Cut to a decade later, Anno decided to do a complete reboot of the franchise branded Rebuild Of Evangelion which would be a tetralogy, and Studio Khara would handle the production instead of Gainax which utilized traditional animation along with CGI that was a step up from the 90s TV production. This 4-part movie series would not be just a retelling of the original story but instead taking it in a totally different direction halfway through the saga. The Rebuild was intended to be more understandable to fans for the new millennium without having to view the original anime.

Starting with Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone in 2007, the first installment covered the first few TV episodes with a couple of new additions where Shinji Ikari is a teenager coerced to pilot a giant mecha called an Evangelion along with the lonely Rei in a post-disaster Japan which is continuously being attacked by monsters labeled as Angels and only the special organization of Nerv can stop them. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance came out two years after that which went over much of the next quarter of the series with the introduction of Asuka and the premiere of a brand-new character, Mari who is original to the movies. Three years later, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo was released and became a full departure from the previous plot taking place 14 years later with the planet suffering the consequences for Shinji’s failed attempt to save Rei. Then, an entire nine years passed until the finale, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, was at long last shown in theaters to great success with Shinji trying to stop his father Gendo’s mad scheme to bring about the apocalypse. The lengths of each film varied, although the concluding movie was the longest of all trying to wrap up most of the loose plot threads.

Originally, Anno was just going to redo the Evangelion saga hoping it would act as a gateway for new generations to make it into the next Gundam franchise with various others eventually making their own take, but he decided to take control of the revamped anime himself with the intention of doing a modern update with another altered ending. Anno changed gears after the second movie gained notoriety with the addition of Mari to the cast, as well as his depression kicked in again after the third chapter while he was also directing Shin Godzilla and voicing the main character in Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises. Anno also had to leave Gainax and founded Studio Khara to reach his ideal vision of a new Evangelion anime. All of these factors along with the pandemic were what caused the nine-year delay of the last movie.

Many American fans experienced the movies in a sporadic manner. The first three films were dubbed by Funimation with some of the original ADV actors with their own physical release. The final movie was instead released by GKids featuring some more of the ADV cast added in which received a separate distribution from the Funimation line. Eventually, Amazon Prime streamed all four movies with a second dub of the first three movies to fit in with the fourth, and GKids released all but the third movie on DVD and Blu-Ray with the first two only being sold as limited single hard-copies. No word so far if the entire quartet will get a physical release and if it will include both dubs.

The Rebuild movies are very aloof from the original Evangelion plot as they start out like the TV show timeline, but as the story goes along, we learn that there is a multiverse, most of which the character of Kaworu is the only one aware of the fact that there are several timelines and that there is an incarnation of himself present in them. When Shinji is fighting with his father in the Anti-Universe in the end and learns of the myriads of different realities with Evas in them are a cycle like Ragnarok that has gone on numerous times. The solution to ending the cycle was removing the Evas and Angels altogether which sends Shinji to a rebuilt reality and was finally allowed to age as one other addition to the Rebuild series is that all Eva pilots are stuck physically as a teenager which is why Asuka and Mari didn’t age during the time skip between 2.0 and 3.0. However, this does not mean that the possibility of future installments of Evangelion aren’t unlikely.

The character of Mari is another major adding to the mix that jarred a few fans. The inclusion of another Eva pilot in some of the Evangelion games that also acts as a possible girlfriend for Shinji is not uncommon. Mari had no presence in first movie, a slight introduction in the second along with playing a part in that film’s final battle, she’s given little to do in the third movie, and the final one only has one scene when she is physically in the same room with Shinji and Asuka. Mari is believed to be inspired by Hideaki Mono’s real-life wife Moyoco who is also a manga creator responsible for Sugar Sugar Run, although whether she was the physical model for Mari is up in the air. Moyocco created a gag manga titled Insufficient Direction which parodies her marriage to a famous anime director which further concretes Mari’s status as a welcome character. This also added to the waifu culture where the main character has multiple love interests which had divided fans since the original TV anime.

The roulette wheel of realities that the finale presents us with informs the viewer that there are numerous outcomes where not only Shinji but much of the cast could have their own distinct conclusions. The curse that leaves the Eva pilots stuck in the body of a teenager represents how otaku and the anime industry can become stagnant when it comes to their willingness to improve themselves without relying on nostalgia. We learn that the multiverse concept means that the Rebuild movies are adjacent to the original TV series just in an alternate timeline, especially when it flashes back to scenes from End Of Evangelion. This presents a more optimistic approach where if someone who forms relationships with others does so to give something instead of gaining you will reach a better level of self-consciousness.

A large deterrent for most watching the Rebuild films one after the other is that there is a tremendous amount of lore thrown into backdrop of the plot. The original TV series delved somewhat into Christian dogma, but the Rebuild movies have more backstory than Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings combined. This is like the technical jargon used in nearly any Star Trek episode, but during the action scenes on the Eva films demand that you have the entire fan wiki hardwired into your brain so you can pick up on every single tidbit they briefly mention like something from the Dead Sea Scrolls or alluding to some military arrangement from the Vatican which can change the viewing experience into an esoteric trivia contest.

Rebuild Of Evangelion was a grand experiment that tested the limits of the creators’ efforts plus the patients of old and new fans. The tetralogy’s prolonged theatrical run made many recognize the weak world-building, but at the same time you become aware of how Anno’s depression brought a sense of deja vu to some of his past productions like Diebuster. For some, the Rebuild films were a coming-of-age ceremony while older otaku are left with a more gratifying conclusion.