First Cuts
Published at my other blog. Redundant, but reposted here so that nothing is exclusive to it.
I’ve been a die-hard fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion for eight years and counting. I’m fairly quiet about this nowadays, but I still consider it my favourite anime, animation, and TV series. This interest also creates a near-complete indifference to anything beyond the original Evangelion TV series and the movie pair Death and Rebirth/End of Evangelion, an automatic rejection, usually sight unseen, of any other production related to Evangelion.
Which brings me to the Rebuild of Evangelion series, a planned four-film remake. With the two films that have so far been released, everything is still true: I am mostly cold and dead towards them, as much as a diehard as I am. The films whittle down all the things I initially loved about Evangelion, until nothing is left that I couldn’t replace with a viewing of the TV series. The magic is gone, save for a few brief flashes of spectacular visuals.
It’s not that Neon Genesis Evangelion is perfect and beyond improvement; it’s neither. Nothing is perfect, and Evangelion is very imperfect. Yet what I love Evangelion for is its emotional power, not its quality of construction; Evangelion’s fragmented and ambiguous narrative reflected the confused and neurotic lives of most of its cast, which gives it a pass from me. These new films are praised for being more straightforward and the characters more stable, but to me that’s the problem, and nothing really makes up for that.
Furthermore, I’m just averse to re-writes. Objective quality may be added in this process, but at the cost of losing the initial “spark” that informs a work’s first incarnation, the knowledge of it being the First Time a work appears. The writers and such may be older and wiser when they revisit the material, able to better perceive the faults before, but they also may have lost what powered that original act. What finally emerges may be better- constructed, perhaps with better artwork, but is also more mechanical, since it is trying to follow a set of steps already choreographed, and cannot return to every good moment.
I only saw the second film recently, just before news of the long-delayed English DVD release, and my mind was not changed: here was still a work to explore only out of clinical curiosity: “What are they going to change now?” This desire will continue to motivate my viewings of later movies, but I don’t feel the urge to really love them. (For my deeper review of this movie, please go here.)
And so it goes, me unable to except new versions of a work and its characters because the original incarnation had just that big an impact on meI have had similar experiences with other works, where my first encounter crystallizes me, rendering me unable to accept any re-imaginings, even those made by the creators’ hands. My rejection doesn’t entirely feel “fair”, but the consumption of entertainment is never “fair”: it’s one of the few places where we can be unreservedly ruled by our caprices.
Click to viewI’ve been a die-hard fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion for eight years and counting. I’m fairly quiet about this nowadays, but I still consider it my favourite anime, animation, and TV series. This interest also creates a near-complete indifference to anything beyond the original Evangelion TV series and the movie pair Death and Rebirth/End of Evangelion, an automatic rejection, usually sight unseen, of any other production related to Evangelion.
Which brings me to the Rebuild of Evangelion series, a planned four-film remake. With the two films that have so far been released, everything is still true: I am mostly cold and dead towards them, as much as a diehard as I am. The films whittle down all the things I initially loved about Evangelion, until nothing is left that I couldn’t replace with a viewing of the TV series. The magic is gone, save for a few brief flashes of spectacular visuals.
It’s not that Neon Genesis Evangelion is perfect and beyond improvement; it’s neither. Nothing is perfect, and Evangelion is very imperfect. Yet what I love Evangelion for is its emotional power, not its quality of construction; Evangelion’s fragmented and ambiguous narrative reflected the confused and neurotic lives of most of its cast, which gives it a pass from me. These new films are praised for being more straightforward and the characters more stable, but to me that’s the problem, and nothing really makes up for that.
Furthermore, I’m just averse to re-writes. Objective quality may be added in this process, but at the cost of losing the initial “spark” that informs a work’s first incarnation, the knowledge of it being the First Time a work appears. The writers and such may be older and wiser when they revisit the material, able to better perceive the faults before, but they also may have lost what powered that original act. What finally emerges may be better- constructed, perhaps with better artwork, but is also more mechanical, since it is trying to follow a set of steps already choreographed, and cannot return to every good moment.
I only saw the second film recently, just before news of the long-delayed English DVD release, and my mind was not changed: here was still a work to explore only out of clinical curiosity: “What are they going to change now?” This desire will continue to motivate my viewings of later movies, but I don’t feel the urge to really love them. (For my deeper review of this movie, please go here.)
And so it goes, me unable to except new versions of a work and its characters because the original incarnation had just that big an impact on meI have had similar experiences with other works, where my first encounter crystallizes me, rendering me unable to accept any re-imaginings, even those made by the creators’ hands. My rejection doesn’t entirely feel “fair”, but the consumption of entertainment is never “fair”: it’s one of the few places where we can be unreservedly ruled by our caprices.