[EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)

[Peter Svensson]

> No.  "Realizing he has value" is basically another way of saying "convincing himself he's perfect".  

V, it took me the better part of a day to figure out how to respond to this. 

I don't think you realize it, but you came across with that last response as going "You're suggesting that Evangelion doesn't 100% mesh with my own personal philosophy! How can that be!?" If you can watch TV 26 and not get the message that the episode is about Shinji learning that his life has value, and that he is valuable not because he's a pilot but because he's a human being who is loved, then I sincerely suspect that you aren't as much watching Evangelion for what it says, but rather you are watching Evangelion for how you can make it say what you want it to.

I could be wrong, I sincerely hope I am, but that is how you come across. As someone who wants the show to validate their own personal philosophies and viewpoints, and twists and contorts it until it does so, not realizing that you are doing so in the process. To be blunt, isn't it convenient that Gainax created a series that is perfectly in line with your own ideas and that everything in it corresponds to things you personally hold as true?

I say this not as an insult, but because I suspect you don't realize that you're coming across that way and that you should reflect on why it is that I'm getting that vibe from what you write. But as it stands, if I'm at all accurate in what I'm getting from your writing, then there's no point of discussing Evangelion with you because you aren't interested in the Evangelion that Gainax made, but in the Evangelion that you've interpreted. A show which isn't about the Hedgehog's Dilemma but about refuting that nasty, horrible Existentialism. A series which doesn't end on a hopeful note about how life is precious and worth living, a moral that personally helped me through serious depression when I was fourteen, but about how otaku are losers and shouldn't just expect to be given things.

That you could take the ending of the TV series and interpret it as you have makes me suspect that you don't actually watch the show you have invested so much time in, but have filtered it so much that you talk about the Evangelion in your mind rather than the Evangelion that is on screen. 

So please, take some time to reflect on the show, and consider that perhaps the show isn't about the things you believed it to be, that it has morals that aren't precise matches for your own, because as it stands, I don't think it's possible to actually discuss the series with you on any level beyond that of the production and behind-the-scenes.

Now, on that route, I have to also disagree with your claim that the show works best if you imagine that the TV ending isn't really an ending but cut scenes from the End of Evangelion which only make sense in context. We have precious little information about the series directly from Anno. But what we do have from his time at Anime Expo is that he is not only proud of the TV ending, but believes it stands alone. 

If the End of Evangelion was meant to be a continuation of the TV series, wouldn't it be numbered accordingly? Wouldn't it have been advertised in such a fashion? Gainax didn't announce Death and Rebirth as the continuation of the series, but as a new ending. They have never, EVER, treated the TV series as just part one of a longer saga. Heck, if what you're suggesting is true, that the TV show is not an ending and only makes sense if you assume that there's a section in Magokoro Wo Kimi Ni where Shinji goes from observing Instrumentality to participating in it and then leaves it, and that Anno, who was not afraid of breaking the fourth wall into tiny little pieces in EoE didn't refer to the TV series metatextually during the film for whatever reason, that when they released the TV ending on LD that they didn't add a next episode preview to it that lead to the films.

That rather than the simple, "The TV series is one ending, and End of Evangelion is another" that you're suggesting that there's a complicated release schedule that involves Gainax deciding to use deceptive marketing and framing the film as alternative episodes instead of using episode numbers that make sense in context, that any and every production note or behind the scenes info we've ever gotten about the films decided to omit a simple fact that would make everything click into place.

And all of that is because you don't like the idea that the TV series ends on a downer and instead have to make the TV ending not actually end anything. 

*Sheesh*

Peter Svensson