1mo ago

u/loaExMachina explains the worst scene in Evangelion

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/15734804

40 comments

I mostly like the last paragraph about trauma just making you fucked up in the head.

Also mirrors his father having Adam embryo in his hand.

Unpopular opinion: I hated Evangelion, and always think that people give too much meaning behind the imaginery and symbolism.
Sure, trauma, failure, loss are bad, but lots of stuff made no sense even with extensive explanations by fans.
I love Madoka, and think it communicates similiar concept much better.
- Not unpopular and not wrong. It was one of "The Firsts" that really influenced people.
  I don't love Evangelion, but I don't hate it. I lump it with other media of that era like Matrix, Lain, Friends & Seinfeld, etc. They walked so others can run.
  
  The first Matrix stands the test of time.
  Lain... never got into it. Friends aged badly.
  I have yet to watch Seinfeld.

because we don't really want to see Shinji anymore
I was feeling that by episode 2

So what was the other scene 😰?
- a girl, asuka, is in the hospital. shinji is visiting and shakes her while crying 'wake up wake up' this shaking makes her vest unzip...
  shinji, who is incredibly mentally ill, traumatised, and depressed responds to this by whipping his dick out and jerking off
  fun fact: the maker of the manga said he was uncomfortable with drawing a scene where shinji and another guy, kaworu kissed, but never said anything about this scene
- Never seen the show, but from the post the comment is from, the contrast went from unconscious girl and blood on hands to unconscious girl and jizz on hands.
  
  It's a story about a bunch of mentally ill people abusing each other. It's very crude and meant to show the worst parts of humanity and what trauma does to them.

Yeah, I remember when I was younger my older brother thought that show was the shit, so like 25 years later, I decide to pick it up on a whim. Watch a couple episodes, and couldn't get into it. The older women of the series were extremely inappropriate towards the child protagonist, and I just couldn't get past it. I was like "Damn Japan, you just gonna go full Japan on this show, huh"

The meta narrative about Evangelion's creation is why I love End of Evangelion so much.
In short: Anno thought he would have more than 2 seasons, but Gainax pulled the plug while they were about to finish the 2nd season. This is why the last 2 episodes of the TV series take a hard turn, Anno couldn't rewrite more and want to at least give some resolution to Shiji's story. Fans absolutely hated the ending though, but Gainax later offered to make a movie so Anno decided to make End of Evangelion as a replacement for the final 2 episodes but with an entire season of story compressed down just to show the fans how ridiculous it would have been while also "ruining" parts of the story just to upset them. Fun fact: The scenes with fast flashing text are taken from death threats Anno recieved from fans after the TV series ending.
End of Evangelion is Anno basically flexing his story writing while giving a giant middle finger to his fans in movie form.

I’ll never get why people have to ruin shit and constantly make up theories and interpretations that only exist inside their head.
It reminds me of when I was in school and a teacher would make up some bullshit about symbolism in a book and later you’d see something the author said where it’s like “uh no it’s just a shoe, nothing else”.
- constantly make up theories and interpretations that only exist inside their head
  If you're annoyed at people trying to make sense of their world, I've got bad news for you. Humans are meaning making machines. It's just what we do. You might as well be annoyed by eating and breathing.
  
  Another point that people often miss is that the reason why there's symbolism in everything that children read in English class is because... the teacher chose it. If there wasn't a clear line of evidence suggesting that there's strong themes and heavy symbolism in a particular book, then the teacher obviously wouldn't have chosen it. If your job is to teach literacy, you're not going to pick The Cat in the Hat as a teaching example.
- Eva isn't really a 'the curtains are blue for no reason' type of series, though. Part of the fun of it is interpretation and analysis. Like utena, if you just look at the surface, you miss a lot. That might not be your thing, and it's fine, but analysis doesn't ruin a story like that for people who enjoy doing it.
  The thing with interpretation in class is that you're forced to do it for a grade. It makes it boring and annoying. I've read multiple longass analysis of utena that were highly entertaining because i chose to read them. like chipping away at a block of wood to carve a figure might be the height of tedium for one person, and an awesome saturday night for another.
- Media literacy moment
- "That’s why my favorite book is Moby-Dick. No fru-fru symbolism, just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal."
  
  I said this quote in a job interview and I immediately realized nobody understood the reference when one person wanted to strangle me.
  
  Truly the most american book: Violent man has a confusing revenge fantasy against a cheap source of oil
- okay describe from your objective standpoint why a scene where shinji beating his meat was included in the 'wow cool robots' anime then
  
  Because he's a fucked up kid. Don't need to read deeper into it than that.
- That's the thing about symbolism. What you get from a piece of art is what you get from it. It doesn't matter if the creator intended it or not your interpretation is perfectly valid, whether others agree with you or not.
  
  whether others agree with you or not.
  I think this is a big part of why people don't understand or don't like this sort of analysis - so often, its written not as "I like this because it reminds me of X which I value." but as, "The curtains were blue which is the author representing the sadness of the character as they are going through this event." or worse yet, "The curtains were blue which is the author representing the sadness of the character as they are going through this event. Write a paper agreeing with me on this." When objective, non-personal interpretation that enforces author's intent as the true meaning (while also ignoring author's intent) is often what is taught and what people are exposed to, its no wonder that people view the whole practice as nonsense.
- Did you watch Evangelion?
  
  Every version since I first saw it on TV in the 90s.
- You ever play “The Beginner’s Guide”?
- Robert Frost comes to mind.
  Road Less Traveled has abso-FUCKING-lutely NOTHING to do with what people claim.
  
  Every christmas people listen to the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen like it has anything to do with Christmas.

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