Temporal Paralysis

okto, or rather, Singapore, aired the first movie of the hit franchise, Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone, on 10 p.m. Sunday, 16 November. A lot of fan community chatter expected that the television broadcast concord to the original content of the film. Unexpectedly, I have to admit I’m a new viewer to the entire Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. (You wa shock!) Read on for my opinion of the movie, and probably, the franchise itself.

I couldn’t cared much about the oft-mentioned "symbolism" that the franchise frequently abused: replace "Rasengan" name with a Biblical reference, and all hell breaks loose. Therefore, I shall instead, take on the film as a first-time viewer.

I expect the wimp nature of Shinji Ikari to be, well, wimpy. The scale in which he wimps about, however, is tremendous. To be honest, considering the entire world lies on your hands, you would be taking serious about your job; Shinji, however, takes his job in a nonchalant fashion, as if he did not cared whether humanity and life on Earth will eventually survived or not.

Throughout the entire film, I felt agitated at both the voice acting, and the actual character’s indecisions to make solid decisions. Perhaps it was the father-child conflict, which Shinji wanted an acknowledgement from his father, to validate his existence. Maybe it was that Gendou Ikari wasn’t looking forward to having a son, and that he prefers females instead. Or it was the sense of detachment and loneliness Shinji always felt: whatever it was, I never bothered to look into the detail between the lines, because Shinji distracted my attention throughout the film’s running span.

Maybe that was because of that, it requires a second, or a third, viewing of the show in order to get the other details.

The theme of the show seemed to be confusing: was it about doing your job even if it conflicted with your wish for normalcy? Was it about recognising the deviance of the situation and accept that things happen and move on? Could it even be about the silly fawning of Ayanami Rei, which about 95% of the otaku audience that watched the show seemed to dream about?

I don’t know. I would expect the film to be good, and it did decent enough on the pacing and the flow of the story. The angels took on as a "monster of the moment" cliché, and the "introduction, prep, fight, debrief, private moment" cycle is executed, to a certain degree, in orderly fashion. It did well enough to introduce an enigma in the final scene, much like how "The Fellowship of the Ring" (pardon my lack of good movie knowledge) concluded with the quest still undone.

Of course, Evangelion 1.0, both subtly and overtly, reminds the audience that it is but a series of movies in the franchise. I could cheat and skip forward with actually acquiring the DVDs and watched the original series, but I find no motivation to do so. (The question of the perfect feminine figure that is Rei, was a part of the hate for the franchise.)

I’m not saying that the franchise sucked: if anything, I couldn’t find a reason not to watch the series. Probably it was because I was inducted into animé during the "moe phenomenon" — defined by character designs that emanate a sense of endearing from its viewers — that put me off from watching it. Even so, I still bothered to buy older shows that nobody fancy, so it wasn’t a question of a generation gap.

I think it was how the franchise concluded, and its subsequent milking of it, that finally put me off.

I would prefer to watch Evangelion if only people didn’t ramble about "How Rei must be my wife!" or "What is the Dead Sea Scrolls Apocrypha related to the pact?" As for the actual film, it finally reconnected me, to a certain degree, of what the anime community is all about, yet it also left me with a bitter aftertaste of "WTF is going on?" due to my mind trying to retch out a clearer understanding of the show. Indeed, others have call it a "mindfreak" (replace ‘freak’ with the famous expletive), I would call it "an intellectual trap."

Now I wouldn’t call it a good art, because seriously, I wasn’t really a hardcore fan of Ayanami Rei. It’s actually because I wanted to put in a picture of Rei with the moon in the background that appeared in the scene of the movie, but I am too lazy to do so.