Considering the challenges in the ‘feature-length retelling of the TV show’ concept, I sometimes wonder why the studios bother. They need a keen eye for what to retain and what to leave out in order to condense the storyline effectively, it has to entertain the viewers on its own merits so we can momentarily forget the old version but at the same time it has to remain true to what made the original good enough to be worth retelling.
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RahXephon for example suffered greatly from the condensed plotline issue and Eureka Seven lost a lot of the spirit of the TV show, so both were disappointing to me. The Evangelion rebuild in particular is an undertaking I personally wouldn’t enjoy being responsible for since it’ll piss off a significant proportion of the fanbase regardless of what the production team do. Over the past decade and a half it’s bred so many conflicting opinions that whatever approach is taken, it’ll hit somebody’s sore spot square-on.
To be honest, I have more important things to do with my time than speculate on the motives behind the Rebuild; I’d rather spend it on deciding whether I enjoy it as *just* a series of movies. As in, how well it tells the story compared with the great-yet-flawed TV series rather than questioning its status as a cash-in. Aside from the usual problems with the Feature Film Remake, You Can (not) Advance also has to contend with being part of a greater whole, which makes it a slightly different experience from, say, those remakes of Rah and E7. To put it another way, this is a two hour-long episode of a mini-series; fulfilling a role not unlike that of the first Higashi no Eden movie sequel.
I really didn’t know how to judge The King of Eden because I’d be jumping to conclusions before I’ve seen the film that follows. Even so it felt incomplete somehow, but that could easily be attributed to the fact that its main role is that of a link between the prequel TV run and the final movie. YC(n)A is in a similar situation: I could for instance complain about how Mari doesn’t get the screentime I expected from a prominently-advertised New Character, but how do I know she won’t play a pivotal role in the third film? The simple answer is that I don’t, so I’m reserving a solid opinion on her for the time being.
I recall the promo art and the gossip when her appearance became common knowledge, but the reality isn’t nearly as dramatic as I expected. It’s a bit anti-climatic really; not that the writing’s necessarily at fault there. Rather, the fans’ doom-mongering was unfounded (she’s hardly the most extreme fanservice figure to emerge from Gainax and its relatives, you know?) and she merely fills some minor positions in the narrative that were left vacant from the rewrites. Unless Mari is given something bold and unexpected to do, I don’t think her introduction is that big of a deal. Yet.
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Although I have sentimental attachment to the franchise, the nerdrage and marketing campaigns have left me disinterested in everything about it apart from the production itself. I’d also like to think that I can appreciate it without being blind to its flaws; for instance, juxtaposing an innocent-sounding pop ballad-type tune with a scene that’s violent or otherwise hard-hitting works brilliantly once but loses a lot of its impact when employed twice in the same feature.
Watching the whole film a second time though yielded some satisfying observations, such as enjoying the cheeky bits of humour without them being distracting, and little details such as the marine wildlife reserve laid out like the Tree of Life. The decontamination sequence reminded me a bit of The Andromeda Strain too, but that says more about how my mind sometimes makes weird connections more than anything.
One of my favourite scenes was that of the depiction of an early-morning Tokyo-3 in its updated, CGI glory: familiar scenes such as the capital’s skyline and crowds of commuters are given the NGE twist with its iconic retracting buildings and so on. Another fave moment was the awkward Shinji and Asuka bedtime scene, except this time they’re lying back-to-back and it’s expanded to a more insightful section of dialogue between them.
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Perhaps the problem with YC(n)A is that there aren’t enough of these moments. The background art and conceptual planning that went with it is one of the franchise’s most overlooked aspects for me, and in terms of taking a moment to stop dashing around and examine what everyone’s up to and why, it’s sorely lacking: the narrative is more concerned with moving things along in time for the next set-piece. For a two hour feature it covers the ground so quickly that certain plot points that were particularly significant before are given a much more cursory treatment.
It’s also a striking example of how the Gainax alumni have changed stylistically (for an even more extreme example, watch the two Gunbuster OAVs back-to-back) because the aesthetics that are merely revamped old-school make the new ones look out-of-place. Yes, I know this isn’t strictly speaking a Gainax production but it feels like it has one foot in the 90s heyday and one in the 00s: the redesigned plug suits and especially the rendering of Unit 02′s The Beast mode look like they don’t belong.
In a more straightforward sense it’s also a transition piece thanks to its middle-portion status. This is after all the part of the story that fooled the viewers into thinking “it’s just a mecha versus monsters show, innit?”, before going batshit insane and pulling the rug from under them in the final act. I shouldn’t be surprised then if this film is a relative no-brainer next to whatever must follow; You Are (not) Alone rarely strayed from the series while this one makes some more marked deviations so if the third is to continue the trend I think it’s going to throw up some twists that are very unexpected indeed.
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Which is why I’m happy to let the events of this movie whizz past me and why I’ve not tried to sift through the info deluge to pick out the real clues from the red herrings (some people have taken the trouble, and quite impressively too). I liked some of the updates, such as the re-written entrance of the Ginger Whinger and the designs of the Angels, but other lingering feelings of mine were ambivalent and mixed: Mari neither ruins nor revolutionises the story, and it somehow feels too short despite being two hours in length.
Most worryingly I’ve written an entire post without feeling compelled to go into more depth into those familiar characters I love, hate and/or love to hate. What about a certain redhead whose obnoxious neuroses helped to popularise the tsundere archetype? Or how Kaji is too cool for his own good? Or how Misato is still awesome and my favourite of the bunch? It’s not a bad movie as a cinematic experience so it’s earned a place on my Blu-Ray wishlist, but I was after something more. I wanted glimpses into their troubled psyches in true Anno style, rather than seeing them playing out their roles with the entertaining-yet-overused tropes that the series debunked so infamously…unless saving that U-turn for the final film is indeed the ace that Rebuild has up its sleeve.
Oh yeah, the new arrangement of the Hikaru Utada end theme is lovely.