EVANGELION:3.0+1.0
I was never a fan of the Rebuild series.
The animation + first movie series was too perfect and I never understood the need to recreate it. So whatever Anno did with the Rebuild series, it always seemed to be a reinterpretation of the original Evangelion series, nothing more. I also felt that Anno should be doing something different, something new, not recreating his own creation. So when Evengalion: 3.0+1.0 came to the theaters, I wasn’t anxious nor in a rush to see the new movie.
But when I did, boy was I wrong… I was crushed into a cloud of particles and absorbed everything that the movie threw at me. I was amazed by what humans are capable of achieving. When I watched the credits of the movie, I was struck in awe and the music of Hikaru Utada just vibrated through my body and I couldn’t believe how good the movie was. It was the most beautiful thing I ever witnessed in my whole life. When I say “thing”, I include architecture, food, sculpture, animation, movie, music and etc. Of course Evangelion wouldn’t exist if the pre-existing beauty of the world didn’t exist but as of now, this is the peak, the ultimate of human creation.
Just like Shinji, there were times that I wished that I could leave everything behind. As of me, I wanted to leave Japan as soon as possible, learn a different language and stay somewhere secluded from Japanese culture. But after watching this movie I was able to appreciate my nationality, being able to watch this movie without subtitles, absorb the message from the movie as directly as possible. There were times that I envied something that I didn’t have but I am glad that I am here right now, being able to watch Evangelion: 3.0+1.0
I am an aspiring car designer and I am studying/practicing to become one, one day. You could say that it is one of the biggest goals in my life in the near future. However, that also changed a little. Not so much the goal but the perspective on this goal. The beauty of the animation, the drawings, the 3D renderings made me realise the wonderment in being able to create something from your imagination to paper/screen whether it’s a 2D or 3D format. I realised that I wanted to be able to draw/create beautiful things just for the beauty of it, not necessarily because of the career aspect. I still want to be a car designer but I’m not going to design cars/things so that I can simply become one. I want to design cars/things to create something just for the beauty/fun of it. I’m sure that Anno and his staffs weren’t just creating this movie because they wanted to make an “animation”. They made it probably because they love it and I felt that I want to be able to do the same whether it is in car design. That is how much this movie affected me.
The movie itself: When I first started watching it, I was a little worried because it was a little too slow and cool at the same time. Not much of a development was happening but things started to rock when Shinji decides to go back on to the ship. The ending is a little similar to the previous endings of Evangelion but this time, Shinji is the one who saves everyone and the message that comes out of it seems slightly more mature. It’s almost like a message from a Ghibli movie. The message is simple: appreciation. Appreciating the nature of this planet, the people around you, the body you possess, the life you live, despite the sadness, cruelty, anger, pain, conflicts and violence. Yes, if everyone let’s go of their physical body and becomes one, uniting as an energy state, where there is no life and death, there wouldn’t be any conflict or pain because everyone can understand each other immediately. But despite all the pain in the world, there are the good things in life that you can only enjoy by being in a body. That is the message that Evangelion, especially what this Rebuilt series, wants to convey. I think it’s also why the ending ends with a real life footage of a station in Japan. Despite being able to turn the world into utopia, Shinji saves the world that we live in and it’s saying that the best is happening now, out there in the real world.