You're pretty much completely wrong about all of this. I don't even understand how you could watch the show and come to any of these conclusions.

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Best care anywhere.

What is Project Zohar?

No, it's just a dub change. I don't know Japanese, so I didn't want to be all "THIS IS THE TRUTH!" about it.

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ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

And the second movie is up

Zor

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HAIL ZOR! WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms
WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL
http://zortropolis.myminicity.com/
http://zortropolis.myminicity.com/ind
http://zortropolis.myminicity.com/tra
Terran Sphere
The Art of Zor

This video has moved me to action. I haven't ever sent him an email before, but now I think I'll do that to sort of repudiate those other emails he's gotten about the original series's ending. I feel like he should be offered multiple perspectives about that. (I'll just suppress my bitterness about what I'd call an overly positive judgement of the movie itself.)

Man the series ending totally rules. The fact that people hated it is good because it got us End of Evangelion which ALSO rules :v

I never got the confusion about the ending. I get people not liking it, I suppose, it does come a little out of left field, but is it really that hard to understand? Especially when coupled with EoE, which I always though was pretty obviously the intended final two episodes given it features some shots that are exactly the same, just expanded and given context. I mean, I just finished Eureka 7 which is literally the longest amount of time I have ever invested in any Japanese media at all, and about the fifth Japanese show I have actually watched all the way through and even I picked up on some of the Japanese culturally specific stuff being brought up in Evangelion? Is it that hard?

But it's EXISTENTIAL! And FREUDIAN! And INTERNAL!

That's about the sum off the complaints for the most part.

---

ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

There's a few reasons for it that I suspect are prominent. First, most people aren't used to surrealist art in general, and thus lack many of the mental tools needed to understand a surrealist narrative. At least in EoE the audience can latch onto the whole process of instrumentality to provide a framework for the imagery, and the instrumentality sequence doesn't start from the instant the film begins. This framework is technically there in the series ending as well, but you have to piece that together yourself.

Second, the budgetary issues become more and more obvious as the series goes on, and some people I've seen simply dismiss the series ending due to how this forced them into an art-house movie surreal approach. This may seem unfair, and it is. But some people think they need to pick and choose endings, and go for EoE because of this.

Third, depending on how you interpret the series ending, it may actually contradict EoE in terms of how Shinji's character growth comes to a climax. I'm sure you can reconcile the two, but again if you are the type who thinks you must choose one ending over the other you probably won't go through the effort.

Lastly, and I know people also dislike EoE for this as well, it just plain got darker in a hurry. Right after the battle with the Angel Zerul, Shinji gets even more depressive than before, Asuka gets nearly suicidal, Rei's true nature is revealed... I know there are some people who just don't like a tone shift like that so near to the ending. I would guess that's why Rebuild 2.22 ended on that particular battle.

But hey, who knows for sure. Sometimes a meme is just a meme.

Challenging audience expectations is generally a bad idea for mass media. I imagine its worse than usual in the extremely hidebound genre of 'science fiction'.

EoE's ending was fantastic. Their was literally no better way to end the series.

I feel sick. :V

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Best care anywhere.

What is Project Zohar?

Yeah those are reasons people don't like it, but it's the genuine confusion. There seeme to be a huge number of people who never worked out what SEELE/Gendo were doing, or what the third impact was all about and seem completely baffled by what the last tw episodes are, as if they are entirely disconnected from the rest of the show. I don't know how, it just wasn't that complicated.

I dunno if I would say the show got darker either, it just came to its logical conclusion. I can't point to many episodes even early on that were all sweetness and light, even the synchronised dance fighting one had its darkish and kinda creepy twist.



I like it better translated as "disgusting" myself, but hey.

Would you believe EoE was the first time I ever saw or even heard of Evangelion? They played it on HBO years back at night.

I had no idea what was going on but it seemed really great. :V

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Best care anywhere.

What is Project Zohar?

I think there's a definite downward spiral to be found in the show's atmosphere. For a few episodes after Asuka's arrival, it seems like Shinji might break out of his shell a little and things show signs of working out for everyone, but then everything kind of implodes. In fact, I'd say it divides pretty neatly into four distinct, successive moods: bad, better, bad, worse.



I get the impression that's a pretty common way of getting into the show. People see EoE and want to know WTF they just saw, so they go and watch the series from the start. Even if you don't quite follow along with the movie, it's a pretty intense and memorable experience, I think.

You're getting what I'm saying backwards. Read again. You're thinking that people dislike it because they don't understand it: I am saying that they don't try to understand it because they don't like it, and that alone could account for a lot of the people who claim they were confused by it. Most people don't put mental effort into understanding things that they don't enjoy or stories which go 90 degrees to the genre they expected. If that's confusing you, think of it this way: they came for the giant robits, and were confused and outraged when the show dropped the pretense of being part of that genre at the last minute.

Also, the lack of framework to understand surrealist narrative and the possible contradictions with the (slightly) more straightforward End of Evangelion film are valid reasons someone might be confused by the series ending. Or even by EoE's own surrealist scenes. It just isn't an art form many people come in contact with on a daily basis.

Really, the "logical conclusions" of Eva were always intended to be dark. Its a deconstruction of 1980's and 90's super robits anime cliche's. What else would you expect, given the various shades of triumph most of those shows had?


A friend of mine tried to introduce me to the Eva that way. I was confused.

But seriously, at the time I didn't really think about anime as a separate thing from western animation (oh, and my friend only brought the subtitled version. Yay?) and it was years until I bothered finding out what the fuck I watched that night. I didn't regret it, though that's partially because it introduced me to other, less obtuse anime.

Correction:70s and 80s robot anime. The show owes quite a bit to Mazinger Z for its deconstruction. Or at least, mostly the sanitized TV Version. Go Nagai hit on a lot of the darker elements in the manga when he first wrote it.

When Kabuto gets in to fight his grandpa's enemy Dr. Hell, he doesn't know what he is doing and wins only through the absurd power of Mazinger Z. And, like in the recent adaptation "Shin Mazinger", he accidently kills people without realizing it when he first pilots it.

There's other parallels between their basic setup of Kabuto Koji/His Granpda and Shinji/Gendo, but taken to a deconstructive place, with heavy abandonment issues and so on.

---

ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

Okay, lets just settle on a compromise proposition: all Robit anime since the seventies is deconstructed in Eva. The whole show isn't just about Shinji/Gendo. Last I checked, Asuka was a deconstruction of the usual "arrogant rival" archetype found in "real" robot anime series like Gundam and so on. Happy, Majin Nitpick?

Well, I could go on and talk about the influences of Devilman and Ultraman on eva in terms off scenes, visuals, and other little details, but .. .

---

ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

I for one did not get it, and I watched the anime.

It jumped from fighting robots to ... Shinji in isolation to a window shattering and Shinji joining people... in heaven?

There were background plots yes, but I don't even know how others manage to connect the dots as they did.

---

Suffering from the diminishing marginal utility of wealth.

The surface meaning is always the easiest level to experience a work. I had no interest in any deeper themes or symbols until I started to understand the meanings of works I already enjoyed.

How does anyone arrive to the conclusion of collective hive mind?

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Suffering from the diminishing marginal utility of wealth.

I have no idea, because I hate Evangelion. I'm just saying that developing an ability to actually appreciate literature is a gradual process, and its best to start with things you already like. Its quite seldom a work is entirely devoid of meaning.

Very true, it's why those X and Philosophy books exist.

Hell, I started learning that stuff using Godzilla and Buffy.

---

ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

Pretty sure I only started to care about 'themes' and 'messages' rewatching Blake's 7. So it really doesn't matter where you start, so long as you decide to be open to that level of the text.