Wow, that was a roller coaster. Overall I definitely enjoyed it! But I have lots of thoughts on it https://twitter.com/moon_dweller5/status/1248362920960036866

Once again, all the fight scenes and the updated angel looks are fantastic, I also enjoy the weird beast mode, and the cool halo unit 01 has.

It has some good “world building” talking about how countries can only build 3 evas, putting away unit 02 for political reasons was very nice. I especially loved the trip to the aquarium, not only for fleshing out the universe more, but it also had some great character moments

When it comes to the characters, overall I thought they were written well, I forgot how much Rei changes in this movie, but I enjoyed it. Rei wanting to set up a dinner for shinji and his dad, aswell as her comparing herself to the fish in the tank were very touching

Onto Asuka. I felt her coming into Shinjis bedroom was more natural, and the phone call with misato was interesting, she seemed to double down on her coping methods after shinji chooses Rei. The elevator scene was great. I would’ve liked to see more of her though

Mari is Mari... I did remember how strange she is, both in her characterization and her purpose. Was she just added into further disitamfe itself from the original? Was she made “fan-services” to sell merch? Or is there a meta purpose to her character? (More on that later)

If I’m going to continue to be more critical, the pacing continues to be a little off, and the characterization shallower than the original. Although as it stands on its own I still think the writing is good.

Onto the ending, I thought it was extremely good. The action was great and Shinji trying to save Rei was very touching. But it leaves me somewhat confused, Shinji saving trying to save Rei should be viewed as a good, yet the movie shows us that it’s bad.

Misatos trying to tell shinji to do it for himself and the 3rd impacting starting seemingly doesn’t want us to think what Shinji did was good. So I’m generally curious what Anno was trying to do here.

My first thought, is that Shinji is resolving the “hedgehogs dilemma” he finally wants to connect with someone and overcome his fears. But Anno is showing us that in life even when we do the right thing, fucked up things still happen. It reminds me of this Picard quote.