OK, let’s talk about the Evangelion Rebuilds.

First a couple of disclaimers: This is my stream of consciousness, so if I get rambley or tangenty, I’m sorry.

Second, these are my thoughts after watching about a dozen “Evangelion explained” videos. These informed my thoughts, and some of them were good, but none of them quite 100% hit it for me. Please don’t comment with links to YouTube essays, I’ve probably already watched them.

OK, so, the rebuilds.

More than one person told me not to bother with them, saying they just don’t see the point of them.

Don’t worry, I’m here to help.

Evangelion is, in many ways, a story about destructive cycles. Each of our main characters spent most of the original anime struggling to — and mostly failing to — break their own self-destructive cycles.

Shinji, Rei, Asuka, Misato, Ritsuko and even Gendo find themselves repeating the same behaviors over and over across the series and the movies. This isn’t an accident, it’s not because Hideaki Anno ran out of ideas.

In End of Eva, when Shinji decides to leave instrumentality, he tells his mother that, while he still doesn’t know how to be happy, he’s going to keep trying to figure it out

I argue this isn’t just Shinji’s statement, it’s also Anno’s.

Eva itself is a cycle for Hideaki Anno, a project he has finished twice now and is about to finish for a third time whenever 3.0+1.0 actually comes out.

Speculating about authorial intent can be a bit of a cheat when it comes to analyzing any sort of artwork, but Anno seems to go out of his way to make it so that, if you want to understand Eva, you have to make some guesses about his own intentions.

What we know is that Anno’s depression, and a book he read about Freudian psychology, changed the course of Eva halfway through the series. But he’s famously tight-lipped about the meaning behind some of the more ambiguous aspects of the story.

You could usually just say “fine,” and ignore authorial intent. Take a “the author is dead” perspective on it. But you can’t do that with Eva, because the meta — the story of the story — becomes part of the narrative in End of Eva.

Inside instrumentality, we see a live-action version of reality, which not only featured footage from an audience screening of the recap film Death and Rebirth, but we literally see Gainax studios — and shots of Anno’s hate mail and death threats.

The creator of the story, and the story of how the story was created, are a part of the story now. It’s not just a story told by Anno, it’s also the story OF Anno. Additionally, it’s not just a story being told to you, it’s in a very real way the story OF you.

Watching Eva makes you a part of the story, and I know that sounds hokey as shit, but hear me out.

The first rebuild movie is, as has often been observed, essentially a more straightforward retelling of the first handful of episodes of the anime, with a few (seemingly) small changes to the narrative.

One of the first things you might notice are the changes to the environment. The ocean is red. There’s a red stripe on the moon.

This, many people think, implies that the Rebuilds somehow take place after End of Eva, as part of some kind of time loop. The ocean is already LCL, and the moon stripe, well, you know

Of course, these get explained away in 2.0 as results of this continuity’s second impact. Still, there are questions.

I’m not going to deep dive into the time loop theory, because that’s not my focus here, but if you want to know my opinion on it, the answer is “Maybe!” It doesn’t matter.

The important thing is that YOU saw the red ocean in 1.0, because you also saw the red ocean in End of Eva. Whether or not you made the connection in your mind, you saw both of those images, and that was intended.

Eva 1.0 intentionally retreads a lot of the same ground as the anime, which makes the small differences pop out all the more.

One such difference is the much-earlier introduction of Kaworu, which on one level is definitely a stronger narrative choice for a character that appeared in only one episode of the anime but turned out to be an important part of Shinji’s story.

Translations, of course, will vary, but they all seem to agree on “this time.” This might just be a clue toward the time loop theory — kaworu, being an angel with the soul of Adam, remembers his past life/lives.

But I would argue it’s also a message from the author to his famously hard-to-please audience: This time, you’ll be happy.
That is, this is the one he thinks SHOULD make you happy. That’s part of the cycle of Eva.

In 2.0, things start diverging more and more from the original anime. Plot points change a little, or a lot, or are completely dropped to the point where we get third impact too soon.

The title of this one is “You Can (Not) Advance.” That’s the meta thread in this movie: the plot moves forward, and changes are made, but it doesn’t manage to escape from itself — the story still ends up in the same place. It’s different, but we’re still caught in the cycle.

Which brings us to 3.0, the one half the fandom seems to full-on hate. It has no root in the anime, it’s completely unexplored territory. “You Can (Not) Redo.” We’re not in “remake” territory anymore (if we ever were).

The movies before this — even 2.0 — could easily just be called “remakes” and there would be no need for a time loop (or other) theory, we’re just seeing the same story with glossier animation and some minor adjustments.

But even the minor adjustments were advancing the meta story — the story of the story, and the story of you taking in that story. 3.0 is where the meta story takes center stage.

Shinji, good ol’ audience surrogate Shinji, awakes to a reality that finally matches his image of himself: everyone he cares about hates him, he’s a desteuctive force, he is incapable of doing good.

(Mf said desteuctive)

A lot of the complaints I’ve read about this movie deal with the fact that it never quite gets around to explaining exactly what the hell happened and what the hell is going on. That’s a jarring feeling, after two movies that were so full of the familiar.

Everything familiar is now alien. From the characters to the earth itself. Rey is more doll-like than ever. I understand why people would be frustrated by this — Shinji is just as frustrated!

Shinji’s one source of comfort (and, by extension, ours) is Kaworu. Kaworu is the character we remember (and, potentially, the character he also remembers). The situations are different, but his role is the same.

Kaworu is an angel, and with this comes a very specific purpose. But that purpose gets superseded by his love for Shinji — he loves Shinji more than his nature wants humanity destroyed. In the original anime, this resulted in his choosing to die.

But, in the world of 3.0, he thinks he has it figured out. He’s not just going to save Shinji, he’s going to make us happy.

I said “us” instead of “him” there by accident, but it’s still true — Kaworu is Anno, the author, and Shinji is us, the audience. Shinji is the epitome of a passive protagonist, at nearly every turn things are happening TO him, instead of his affecting the world.

Shinji’s lack of agency across all of Eva is a reflection of us, because as the audience we also don’t get to affect this world. Kaworu wants to change the world of Eva for Shinji, Anno wants to for us. Now, the question becomes whether they CAN.

Kaworu thinks so (in a scene that’s very popular with the time loop theory crowd). Kaworu and Anno are both repeating Eva in the hopes of making Shinji/us happy.

But Anno knows one thing that Kaworu does not: You Can (Not) Redo. Kaworu dies again to save Shinji again, but still didn’t make him happy.