Watching the Evangelion series before Amazon’s Rebuild movies is a must

Almost two years after Netflix introduced the legendary anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion series to the platform, Amazon Prime Video has launched Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: three times once, the latest installment of the “remake” of four films from creator Hideaki Anno. With a combined production time spanning nearly two decades, the Rebuild of Evangelion films were conceived to introduce the franchise to a whole new generation of audiences who hadn’t seen the original 1995 anime. But like Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 As it has been shown, Anno failed in his mission to produce a condensed, standalone series. Despite existing in a separate continuity and diverging greatly from the events of the original Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Rebuild movies are inextricably linked to the original, making a separate and separate experience almost impossible. And movies are better for that.

The 1995 anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion took place in an alternate 2015 where, following a global apocalyptic event known as Second Impact that decimated two-thirds of the human population, the remnants of human civilization are besieged by an existential threat in the form of otherworldly entities known as “Angels”. Ikari Shinji, 14, the estranged son of the commander of a Japanese paramilitary organization known as NERV, along with his cohorts Soryu Asuka Langley and Ayanami Rei is tasked with piloting a trio of colossal biomechanical weapons known as Evangelion, or “Evas, To fight the Angels in the futuristic fortified city of Tokyo-3.

The plot delves into increasingly complicated impressionistic interpretations, dare I say, of the Judeo-Christian apocrypha as the show progresses, and the name drops everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Spear of Longinus to the biblical figures of Adam. and Lilith. All of which exists in the series without any deeper allegorical intent than the fact that it seemed cool at the time to incorporate it during anime production, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuild’s assistant director and co-director, Kazuya Tsurumaki, candidly stated in a 2002 Otakon Q&A panel.

Image: Studio Khara

In 2006, Toshmichi Otsuki, one of the executive producers of Evangelion: 1.0 You are (not) alone, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Cannot) Advance, Y Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, He said NewType US what both fans of the original series and newcomers could expect from the film series announced at the time. “It will be something that viewers can enjoy if they have never seen the TV series,” said Otsuki, “I want everyone from the hardcore fans of the original to the people who only know it from the licensed stuff to see as a independent film series “. At the time, Otsuki specifically cited the show’s affinity for esoteric jargon and “filling works with difficult words and concepts” as a sore point that the remakes would directly address.

The interview is especially fun after watching the Rebuild movies and Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0. Inexplicable plot elements and proper name concepts such as “Gulf Gate”, “Key of Solomon”, “LC Fields”, “Evangelion Imaginary”, “Corization” and “L Barriers” are yelled breathlessly amidst sequences of intense explosive destruction, as if to imbue the on-screen action with a look of dramatic weight and thematic significance. As much as the producers of the Rebuild films try, these absurdly esoteric elements are part of what Evangelion does, well, Evangelion, and represent a necessary threshold through which any potential fan of the series must at one point or another face. and pass.

Don’t believe anyone, longtime Evangelion fan or not, who tells you they get this shit. They don’t, and that’s the point. Therefore as Neon Genesis EvangelionThe visual identity focuses on its invocation of esoteric archetypal Christian images, much of those images existed without any justification other than through the Rule of literal cool.

As Siddhant Adlakha mentions in his review of Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 for Polygon, “The series has always left its track directly in front of the train, but the logistics behind, for example, a shiny crucifix or a holy spear that appears are not the most important parts of the saga. The sudden injection of these things into a certain scene is usually a function of Gendo being 10 steps ahead of anyone else as WILLE’s heroes struggle to grasp literally hellish concepts just to keep up. “

Image: Studio Khara

No matter how radically Hideaki Anno parted ways with the 1995 series in his Rebuild films, Evangelion as a franchise never escaped from itself and as such, the original 25-episode anime and the 1997 film remain essential to understanding the Rebuild movies. Even the final movie subtitle, Three times once, seems to allude to this fact; breaking with the parenthesis-laden precedent of the three previous installments as he gestures that it represents the third time Hideaki Anno has attempted to finish the series to date. Despite this failure to create a work that exists separate from the original series, Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 offers something by dint of this partnership that neither the original nor the 1997 anime End of Evangelion was able to: a definitive conclusion; one more hopeful, affirmative, beautiful, and explicit in its resolution than any previous ending in the series.

Without spoiling anything, both the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion Y End of Evangelion finds Shinji confronting his fear of being hurt by others and accepting the fact that love and happiness are possible despite that fear, but it is all expressed in horrible and strange apocalyptic images that deafen that feeling of happiness. Those tonally darker endings are not disputed by Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0; in fact, those events happened and mattered to the Shinji from a different timeline. Without a knowledge of those events, the full magnitude of the character reveal at the end of 3.0 + 1.0 – and Anno’s decision to represent the ending with stillness and sunshine – would be lost.

“Eva” is a story that repeats itself, “Anno wrote in a statement. posted on the Evangelion website in February 2007, just seven months before the launch of Evangelion: 1.0 You are (not) alone. “It’s a story where the main character witnesses a lot of horrors with his own eyes, but still tries to get back on his feet. It is a story of will; a story of moving forward, even a little bit. It is a scary story, where someone who must face an indefinite loneliness is afraid to get close to others, but still wants to try. ”

By concluding the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, Anno and Studio Khara have taken the franchise further than ever. Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0The ending couldn’t have existed if it weren’t for the original anime and End of Evangelionand, as such, they are as essential to understanding and enjoying the Rebuild story as the Rebuild movies themselves.