End of Evangelion

After 'The inevitable Half-Life 2 thread', I suppose this one should have been called 'The inevitable Eva thread'. My wife ended up working over-time yesterday, which left me at a loose end for the evening, so I ended up doing something I'd been contemplating for a while - Cracking open my copy of the 'End of Evangelion' DVD and watching the movie complete with audio commentary.

I really should warn anyone who hasn't watched this movie and intends to do so that there might be spoilers beyond this point.

As far as anime goes, Eva is by far my greatest love. I've watched the entire series from beginning to end (including the movie) twice now, so last night was my third time of watching the movie. Watching 'End of Evangelion' along with the commentary actually hit home to me just how disturbing the entire movie is - The themes and ideas expressed are.... Well, pretty depressing. For those of you unfamiliar with the Evangelion canon, it should be explained that the original series ending was two episodes of what can only be described as a pure mindfuck - A fascinating delve into the psyche of the characters in the series as well as the the wider concept of humanity itself. The very ending of these two episodes seems to be a kind of 'happily ever after' moment that left a lot of unanswered questions. This left a lot of angry and frustrated viewers at the time, to the extent of the series creator Hideaki Anno receiving death threats (some of which, ironically, are flashed up for brief frames towards the close of 'End of Evangelion'). So, Anno went away and came back with 'End of Eva', a replacement scenario for those final two episodes which, rumour has it, was nothing more than a big 'fuck you' to fans of the series. But what a great 'fuck you'!!

Anyway, back to the disturbing theme - It actually takes a session with the audio commentary to gain a real understanding of just how disturbing some of the movie's imagery is (although you can get a very good idea without it, some of the more graphic scenes need no explanation), mainly because those most disturbing moments only actually last for one or two frames, or are so subtle that they need to be pointed out. For example, there is a brief montage of flashed through images from Asuka's mind - The first couple of frames depict a vision of her rotting corpse. Later, when Asuka is attacked by the rest of the S2-engine equipped Eva series, her Evangelion is speared through the head (more specifically the eye), at which point we see Asuka holding her own eye and screaming. In the scene that follows, what I'd never noticed before until hearing the commentary was the blood literally pouring from Asuka's eye as she leans forward... This scene is incredibly harrowing at the best of times, but touches like this just make it more so.

Then there is Misato's death scene - At first glance, she is simply consumed by an explosion, but watch the scene frame by frame and you realise that she is actually ripped in two by the explosion.

Throw in all the violence, intense sexual imagery and deep religious roots of the movies ideas, and you have a work of genius that makes for uncomfortable and yet riveting viewing throughout. I'd challenge anyone to find a more thought-provoking movie, you just can't help but spend days after every viewing evaluating the goings-on in your head, from the beginning right through to the movies final words... "How disgusting.." There's so much more I could write about this - Hell, you could make a book out of it.


Anyway, back in the real world, some changes to my first review for Hexus and the completion of my second means that I'm actually well on top of everything I have planned at the moment - It's been a while since I've been able to say that! I have next week off work from my 'real' job, although I don't have anything planned... Hopefully it will just involve a lot of sleeping in and relaxing, although I may have some X800 Pro-based review action coming my way... We'll see.