Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: A Spoilerific Analysis

WARNING: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!! THIS IS AN ACTUAL PROPER SPOILERIFIC LOOK AT EVANGELION 3.0+4.0. AS OF WRITING THERE IS ***NO WAY*** TO WATCH THIS FILM OUTSIDE JAPAN. IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS THAN YOU’RE NOT GONNA WANNA READ FURTHER. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

I feel truly blessed to have seen Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 in its original run. For those who don’t know, I live and work in Japan! My Japanese isn’t perfect, so I’m not crystal clear on every last detail. But I got the majority of the film! I’ll be going into a lot of the juicy details, and my current feelings about this final installment in the Evangelion rebuild series. So if you don’t want spoilers, THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!!

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Evangelion and Religious Imagery

1036full-neon-genesis-evangelion_-the-end-of-evangelion-screenshot (1)I don’t know if this is as much of a thing anymore, but back in the day there were a lot of people who really couldn’t stand Neon Genesis Evangelion’s religious imagery. People would call it pretentious, say director Hideaki Anno was a hack who was trying too hard to be deep, all around try to discredit it as a thing to be made fun of. Considering Evangelion is on its way to Netflix I figured it was a good time to talk about that subject.

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Evangelion Episode 1 and Framing

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One of the reasons Neon Genesis Evangelion stands as one of anime’s biggest cultural icons is the boldness of its framing and shot composition. Nothing that came before it and very little that came after conveys quite as many things as Evangelion does in the dynamic composition of its space. Most vividly this is seen in the construction of Shinji’s space, cold and distant by default but veering on tense and claustrophobic in moments of conflict. In the first episode of Evangelion alone there’s a lot to pick at in the way Shinji is framed, and we’re going to do just that.

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