That you could never answer”
By its nature, the third Rebuild of Evangelion film offers no definitive and final statements on anything. Not on Shinji nor any of the other characters. Not on Evangelion-The-Franchise. Not on its genre or its medium. Not on broader philosophies of art or the world. Not even on the literal events of its own plot. It is, fundamentally, incomplete. As much as any piece of criticism attempts to reckon with the film, it must too reckon with this fact. To write on any part of the mainline Evangelion series is to acknowledge that what you are writing doesn’t matter and may well be entirely wrong.
Yet, for all its incompleteness and intermittent obtuseness, Rebuild 3 does induce a wide variety of feelings in the audience. Largely not pleasant ones, either. Throughout, Rebuild 3 feels, to its core, sick, fake, cynical, wrong. Not in the same shellshocked-to-near-death sense as End of Evangelion. It is more akin to being many years into reckoning with your own neuroses, when even the breakdowns, the severed friendships and burned bridges, the self harm, and the unhealthy coping mechanisms, all of that, begins to feel as much an annoyance as anything else. It is “Oh God, are we doing this again?” in film form.
What is “This”? As with much well-accomplished art, the Rebuild films are open to broad interpretation. Throughout, I found myself contemplating Rebuild 3’s relationships to the franchise’s broader themes dealing with the bleakest parts of mental illness, but also with the franchise itself. Certain shocks of imagery do, definitely, feel like pointed commentary on What Evangelion Has Become. A few stretches of the film feel downright sickened by the whole thing. Evangelion, in another time and place on the internet, was compared--in terms of influence on its country’s pop culture--to Star Trek.
Parts of the Rebuild films and the third in particular, seem to ask if it’s been worth it. There is a reason the infamous “ME!ME!ME!” music video chose to portray its doomed otaku protagonist as having specifically Eva figurines. Conversely, you certainly don’t have to toss many stones to hit someone who’s of the opinion that Evangelion “ruined mecha anime”, it was something of a stock contrarian otaku take for years. In certain niches of the internet, it still is.
Elsewhere, the film lacerates the character of Shinji so thoroughly and mercilessly that it seems to mock the very idea of a heroic narrative. This is especially true toward the film’s end, where Shinji once again fails to learn from his mistakes and once again nearly causes the end of the world. If Rebuild 3 has a major flaw, it’s perhaps that it makes it all too easy to distance yourself from Shinji. Many of us carry heavy weights on our shoulders, but certainly few of us are guilty of causing most of an apocalypse. Twice. The one moment of reprieve he gets--his relationship with Kaworu--ends in explosive death, because he cannot bring himself to trust another person.
The magnitude of one’s failures certainly can feel like the end times, so the impulse is understandable, but at some point this starts to all feel a bit like penance whipping. How many times do we need to watch Shinji ground to dust? He’s barely alive by film’s end, literally dragged around by the wrist by Asuka as he finally is forced to leave the tape recorder he’s clung to since the opening episodes of the original series behind. Maybe there is development in this version of the character’s future, maybe there is not. Hell, maybe he deserves all this, for his failure to rise to the occasion thrust upon him, or simply for being an abusive ass in End of Evangelion. In the moment, none of these questions feel relevant. Rebuild feels defeatist and anti-triumphant by design. It’s horrifically reductive to phrase it this way, but it occasionally feels like an evil twin of Gurren Lagann. It is a nightmarish, browbeating apocalypse. A planet, and a narrative, crucified.
Evangelion on the whole inspires endless contemplation. Articles, websites, and so on exist that tear the franchise down to individual frames. It is a world one can get lost in, if they’re not careful, and it’s easy to gaze hopefully to the sanctioned creators--the “canonical” source of all this, whether they're Anno or not--and pray for reprieve and finality. But if the New Century Gospel needs a Book of Revelation, it’s not to be found in Rebuild 3. None of this is to detract from the film’s immense artistry. It is, by any conventional metric, a good movie. It’s just not a very inspiring one. Which, of course, is not something every film--or any film--needs to be, but it's not difficult to divine where the sharp divergences of opinion on Rebuild, and this film specifically, come from. It is easier to respect than like and easier to like than love.
The irony is that Rebuild 3’s highs and lows, are, fundamentally the same as those of the entire series. This is an anime about Shinji. I struggle to think of many other fictional characters so utterly damned by their being such. You can play the tapes over, starting from episode 1 of the original series, as many times as you like. The story in them will never change.
And if you liked this review, why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?