Help Me I Don't Even What Is This: "Neon Genesis Evangelion"

So I'm starting a new column. I think of myself as a film person, but there are plenty of “classic” film and TV series that I haven't seen. Lawrence of Arabia, The West Wing, The Adventures of Ford McFarlane: never seen 'em. So, as a combination personal journey/excuse to write, I'm going to watch, every week or so, a “classic” and review it.

Now, if you read this blog, you know I loves me some giant robots. I'm all about that Gundam shit, and I love Macross too, as well as more obscure stuff like Dragon's Heaven. But I'd never seen Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Which is weird, because I love schoolgirls!

Neon Genesis Evangelion is arguably the most influential anime of all time, next to Mobile Suit Gundam. If MSG is Japan's Star Trek, NGE is its Twin Peaks, a mindfuck series full of dense symbolism. Superficially, it's about a teenage boy who is coerced by his distant and emotionally abusive father into piloting a giant bioengineered cyborg to defeat aliens known as “Angels” that are attacking what's left of humanity. And for the first half of the series, that's all it is. Every episode is a different battle against whatever weird abomination is coming for humanity this week. But around the halfway point, the series begins to turn inescapably depressing and intense. Monster-of-the-Week battles give way to a razor-sharp deconstruction of the mecha genre and a brutal dismantling of the psyches of the main characters as their every flaw and trauma are analyzed.

It's funny...I went into Evangelion having been told that it would fuck my mind, not only with its dick, but with a multitude of mind sex toys that I could only begin to imagine. That it was one of the most gruesome and traumatizing series in all of anime, possibly all of televised media. It certainly is all of those things, but I believe that Evangelion actually has an optimistic and humanist streak to it that few people give it credit for.

It...could just be Stockholm Syndrome, though.

Don't get me wrong...the entire latter half of Evangelion painstakingly profiles the mental breakdowns of every major cast member, and how those breakdowns lead to some kinda apocalypse. But it's some kind of beautiful fuckery...and when the deconstruction and psychological analysis comes in, the effect is of a lens coming into focus, in that the psychological handicaps of the main characters were always there from the beginning. We just didn't notice them, we weren't focused on them. But we come to realize that these are not mecha characters, but real people who act like mecha characters. And any real people who would act like mecha characters would have to be fucked up in the head. But at first, it's the usual mecha ensemble: the whiny, pushover main pilot, the hot-blooded mecha jockey with a need to prove him-(or her-)self. The aloof father figure who made the titular robots.

But after the second half (and this is where that whole brilliant deconstruction thingcomes in) the series asks piercing questions. Just what kind of person WOULD be that whiny, that reluctant, and yet that desperate to please? What kind of person WOULD be that hot-blooded about everything, and take every and all competitive situations absolutely personally? (The answers, for those playing at home, are 1. Someone with avoidant personality disorder, who doesn't feel loved or needed unless he pilots the world-saving robot, and 2. Someone with both histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders, who pilots a giant robot and lords over everyone else as the best pilot in the world to make up for her cripplingly low self-esteem).

Not stopping with the characters, Neon Genesis Evangelion presents some terrifying implications with its plot and setting which end up skewering tropes of the mecha genre. Oh look! Spunky teens are piloting giant robots! Wait...aren't they...technically child soldiers? Jesus, no wonder they're so fucked-up.

Oh look! The mecha super-powers-up when the pilot is in mortal danger! It...turns out it's because the soul of the pilots' mothers are trapped in the machines. And they'll protect their children at all costs.

Oh...the...the...bad guys are somehow inexplicably drawn to fight the heroes. It...turns...god...they've imprisoned an Eldritch Abomination underneath their headquarters, from which they reverse-engineered the titular robots. And now city-sized monsters beyond human comprehension are attempting to make contact with that abomination to bring about the end of mankind.

It...phew.

Evangelion is a trial. It doesn't start like that. Truth be told, the first 15 or so episodes are some very awesome, crazy mecha action. And it's good action, too. Well-animated, thrilling, high emotions and even higher-caliber weapons. If it had stopped there, it wouldn't be regarded as a classic, but as quite solid. But much like the plot does with the characters, eventually the series takes that solid foundation and liquefies it into quicksand, dragging you down as you fight to keep your head in the air.

But like I said, it's odd that it chooses to randomly interject with quite optimistic statements. And overall, I believe the theme is very humanist and progressive. The one phrase that absolutely sticks out to me is uttered by the main character's long-dead mother: “If he wants to survive, anywhere could be like Heaven. He has a chance to be happy anytime because he's alive.”

Now, previously in the series, we've seen characters get horribly injured. We've seen incomprehensible alien horrors, affronts to the laws of physics and morality. At least one character has been mind-raped and irreparably broken. And yet, through the character of Yui, the series maintains that as long as any human is alive, no matter how fucked-up the world gets, they at least have the chance to be happy.

And really, when you break it down, Evangelion is essentially all about characters trying to be happy, but being so fucked up by circumstances beyond their control that they have no idea how to make it happen. And in trying to make it happen, they either participate in terrible things or allow terrible things to be done to them.

Which is why I wanna clear something up right now: Shinji is not a little bitch. I honestly have no fucking idea why US otakus hate Shinji. If your father left you, constantly spurned you emotionally, then manipulated you into piloting a robotic death machine that transferred all pain it experienced to you, and made you fight against alien fuckwagons that drive human beings insane by their mere presence...you would be whiny and withdrawn too.

But I digress. Evangelion is such a strange beast because while the events within it are absolutely terrible, little brilliant lights of hope shine through. The sheer scale and intensity of the horrible incidents contained within make one think about whether that hope is enough. But in addition to the aforementioned quote about survival, even the basic premise of Evangelion is humanist and optimistic. When faced with horrifying, unearthly monsters, when faced with a flooded and decimated world, we did not yield. We adapted. We reverse-engineered those monsters into giant fucking killer cyborgs, and gave them gatling guns the size of oil tankers.

Now, part of the theme of Evangelion is whether that was the right thing to do. Because those same titular cyborgs become instrumental in the destruction of humanity. It's never shown that humanity did anything to attempt to actually communicate with them. But humanity is so fucked-up emotionally after a near-apoclaypse, that like every other character in the series it does its best to do what it thinks will make it happy; “happy” having the meaning here of “prevent terrifying biological fuckstorms from beyond the stars from ending all life on earth”.

I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet seen it, but the ending confirms all of these themes, in a way that seems terribly depressing, but really isn't as depressing as you'd think. Note: the ending I'm referring to is the movie End of Evangelion. The actual last two episodes are arguably a much more positive ending, depending on what the fuck they mean. In fact, it's the better ending, because (as I interpret it) the major characters actually find some closure. But even the actual ending has some oddly optimistic undertones.

Basically, I liked Evangelion. It was terribly depressing and dense, and you need a fucking Encyclopedia Britannica's worth of ancillary materials to understand the more important aspects of the plot. Also, all of the “religious” symbolism is basically for dick. It means almost nothing, except for the very largest of allusions (HURRR ADAM AND EVE, THEY CREATED ALL LIFE HURRR). But I really appreciated both the characters and the damaged, dogged philosophy of the series: that even when all humanity is pretty much fucked, if even one person decides to make an effort to be un-fucked, there's hope for us. And that's kind of great in the world today.

I give it three mothers' souls trapped in genetically engineered cyborgs out of four. I give it three traumatized children out of three. I...

...I need a hug.

My. Face. When.