What’s the meaning of Evangelion?

[$lave]

There’s hundreds of thousands of hours of content examining neon genesis evangelion, but what does it mean to you? Is it all really meaningless?

 

[Stiff]

I thought it was really interesting at first, but halfway through I started to feel like the writer didn't actually understand any of the religious symbolism he was invoking. It turned out I was right and he just thought it looked cool (it did).

Not that it became less good because it wasn't appealing to or building on my vaguely culturally-informed thematic proclivities, the general narrative decline just made it clear that it wasn't coming around for a clean landing, least of all on some topical religious commentary.

Anno has said that he didn't know how Evangelion would end when he started working on it, or even really when it was done (1st quote on page). He described the inception of the project within his dejected personal state, and the need to do something other than LDAR. This is probably more relatable than anything in the actual show, since nobody is the chosen one who will simply be called upon to save the world in a way that only they can. Oh, to be given such a purpose ready-made. Pure fiction.

I can't relate to Gendo because I wouldn't sacrifice my son to bring back my wife (redundant). I can't relate to Kaji because I wouldn't curve Asuka (uh, when I first watched it I mean ). Rei is pretty much the same as Shinji. Misato and Asuka are basically the only real people in the show.

It holds up visually and I'd still recommend it broadly, but it feels like a missed opportunity to tell a cool esoteric kabbalah story.

Spoiler: Select Quotes about Religious Themes from the Production Team

Source

Hideaki Anno (Creator/Director):

I'm not into Western civilization, you know. Somehow I don't trust Western civilization very much ... It doesn't relate to me, so I can use it. If I were a Christian, I'd be too scared to use Christian stuff ... To equate apostles and angels is [something] to complain about from a westerner's point of view. There is an American worker in our company, and he scolded me for many things, saying it was wrong. That's normal. But I didn't care about that and just did it.

Kazuya Tsurumaki (Assistant Director):

There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

Hiroyuki Yamaga (Animation Producer) on the inclusion of Jewish and Christian symbology:

I don’t know exactly why. I suspect that Mr. Anno may have read some book on it, and there were some thoughts he wanted to express on it. I personally am glad that, rather than Christianity, he didn’t express some obscure Buddhist theme, because then it would have been linked more with [millenarian Japanese doomsday cult] Aum Shinri Kyo.

bonus meme:

I don’t dislike David Lynch, but on the other hand, he’s not someone I’m a huge fan of, either. As far as Anno, there have been people who have called Evangelion the anime equivalent of Twin Peaks. [LAUGHS]

 

[Gornostay]

The "Religious Symbolism" meme got so out of hand for so long. The Occidental mind breaks upon contact with human expression. Decades of High English Classes as the primary introduction to art will do that.

When watching Evangelion who is actually struck by, of all things, the occasional cross? Why would you think THAT must be the important part? Yes, Anno didn't arrange the entire production as a coded *message*. If he had thoughts on Kabbalah why the fuck wouldn't he just tell you?

Evangelion is Anno making something. Does Anno not interest you? Why are you homing in on religion in a show which you recognise as not about that? Of course I would still say that it's a more honest and interesting exploration of broadly religious themes than anything coming out of the english speaking world. The work is not learnedly Abrahamic, but it is authentically existential. And authentically human in general. Anno channeling his own feelings refracted through pop culture stuff he likes and an eclectic pile of vaguely world ending significant aesthetic stuff he collected from our eschatological tradition amounts to something real we can actually study.

An analysis of religious symbols as a statement on religion in Evangelion is akin to something like looking for the real history of the battles in Hue in Full Metal Jacket (I have actually seen that suggested online before).

Evangelion is held to a very silly and deranged standard on this, not so much anymore, I think this stuff is vestigial. I attribute it to culture cringe in people who were into anime ahead of the curve. This isn't any kind of honest criticism. It's a white nerd struggle session. "Ah yes, I see now that the religious symbols were shallow. It's about nothing. It is not real culture. It is not worthy of my high school English class".

Tell us, what is a work that makes good or proper use of "religious symbolism". What is their correct purpose, and what do we get from this correct use? What should I be caring about rather than Evangelion if I want to be a serious artsy person?

 

[Stiff]

The "Religious Symbolism" meme got so out of hand for so long. The Occidental mind breaks upon contact with human expression.

Excuse the occidental mind for noticing when something is absolutely drenched in recognizable symbols and explicit religious language.

Evangelion is Anno making something. Does Anno not interest you? Why are you homing in on religion in a show which you recognise as not about that?

I stopped when I recognized it wasn't about that. People wouldn't need to dig around in the symbols and non-allusions if Anno knew what he was doing with the plot the first time. It's fine that he didn't, but that isn't the viewer's fault. It doesn't need to literally be ABOUT religion, but metaphors and syncretism are satisfying low-hanging fruit. Better than

OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU

An analysis of religious symbols as a statement on religion in Evangelion is akin to something like looking for the real history of the battles in Hue in Full Metal Jacket (I have actually seen that suggested online before).

Evangelion is held to a very silly and deranged standard on this, not so much anymore, I think this stuff is vestigial. I attribute it to culture cringe in people who were into anime ahead of the curve.

OK well I saw it a few years ago cause I was bored and I carried 0 baggage in to it, I just made this face when I saw the tree of life but it wasn't about secret jews.

This isn't any kind of honest criticism. It's a white nerd struggle session. "Ah yes, I see now that the religious symbols were shallow. It's about nothing. It is not real culture. It is not worthy of my high school English class".

Tell us, what is a work that makes good or proper use of "religious symbolism". What is their correct purpose, and what do we get from this correct use? What should I be caring about rather than Evangelion if I want to be a serious artsy person?

Not that it became less good because it wasn't appealing to or building on my vaguely culturally-informed thematic proclivities, the general narrative decline just made it clear that it wasn't coming around for a clean landing, least of all on some topical religious commentary.

All I said was that the most apparent thing ended up not having anything to do with anything, which is a problem because there wasn't really anything else going on other than Shinji's impossible self-pity and some declining intrigue about the Human Instrumentality Project, which was also selected as a name because the Kanji looked cool.

Evangelion is cool. It looks cool. It's just not that deep.

 

[Gornostay]

I stopped when I recognized it wasn't about that. People wouldn't need to dig around in the symbols and non-allusions if Anno knew what he was doing with the plot the first time.

What does that mean? Knew what he was doing with the plot? The implication when people say this is that if any deviation from social realism isn't a deliberate project to encode a hard statement about reality in symbols it must be some incompetent retard stabbing random keys on a keyboard to get the thing finished "ummm... errr.. and then...". Evangelion is obviously not that. He just made the fucking thing. This work is not a rational statement about reality. It's personal.

You aren't saying it's a failure for this, but you are, is the thing.

I don't have the quote on hand, in fact it may be something I heard in person from someone who heard it, when asked what 2001: A Space Odyssey was about, Stanley Kubrick answered with another question. "What is Beethoven's 5th about?".

You're choosing to frame this negatively, which I think makes everything you say dumber. You want to say that Anno, as an artist, does not know what he's doing. The way we can get there is to suggest that the plot doesn't work right. But is this really a plot work? Or is plot perhaps subordinate to other things which are going on? Is the work even a failure of plot? More specifically you're suggesting that symbols aren't justified in their use. Again, it's just a charge that this particular element has to do what you think it should.

It isn't the viewer's fault for thinking there might be something to these symbols. But concluding that there isn't and that this is a problem is the viewer's fault. That's the viewer choosing to be a faggot.

It doesn't need to literally be ABOUT religion, but metaphors and syncretism are satisfying low-hanging fruit. Better than

OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU OMEDETOU

Yet we all remember Omedetou. What is some "satisfying" metaphor and syncretism driven work you prefer?

All I said was that the most apparent thing ended up not having anything to do with anything, which is a problem because there wasn't really anything else going on

Fuck you. I am going to pin your scalp above the door of my own retarded forum.

 

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Evangelion is cool. It looks cool. It's just not that deep.

It doesn't need to be deep.

Evangelion as a whole is Anno's way of self-therapy. Instead of writing a gay diary he just made anime where he showed his neuroses under a veil of cool aesthetics and memorable characters. Even if you don't understand a thing, there's artistic harmony in the original series.

Asuka is best girl. Rebuild is not canon.

my own retarded forum.

Mean

 

[Stiff]

It doesn't need to be deep.

Evangelion as a whole is Anno's way of self-therapy. Instead of writing a gay diary he just made anime where he showed his neuroses under a veil of cool aesthetics and memorable characters. Even if you don't understand a thing, there's artistic harmony in the original series.

Asuka is best girl. Rebuild is not canon.

Ya if it wasn't clear I should have said "which is fine" at the end there. I agree with 100% of this (also rebuild is sincerely terrible).

What does that mean? Knew what he was doing with the plot? The implication when people say this is that if any deviation from social realism isn't a deliberate project to encode a hard statement about reality in symbols it must be some incompetent retard stabbing random keys on a keyboard to get the thing finished "ummm... errr.. and then...". Evangelion is obviously not that. He just made the fucking thing.

Evangelion is not an incompetent work, but the plot does come off as "ummm... errr.. and then...". Anno's own production commentary affirms this. Directorial talent and art/animation carry.

This work is not a rational statement about reality. It's personal.

You aren't saying it's a failure for this, but you are, is the thing.

I AM saying this. Anno led me on. I was young and naive and he made me feel like we were going somewhere together, but we weren't. We ended up precisely nowhere, and no one is there to clap for me.

Also, it's barely personal. Shinji wakes up every day to face completely baffling, arbitrary, insurmountable odds for no personal gain. Animators and writers are not like Shinji. Oncologists are like Shinji, they fight an imminent destructive force that can't be reasoned with, using weapons that are often insufficient. An artist who THINKS he's like Shinji is probably insufferable. If you can wallow and get no work done for 4 years straight, and then just pick up where you left off, you're not that pressed.

I don't have the quote on hand, in fact it may be something I heard in person from someone who heard it, when asked what 2001: A Space Odyssey was about, Stanley Kubrick answered with another question. "What is Beethoven's 5th about?".

You're choosing to frame this negatively, which I think makes everything you say dumber. You want to say that Anno, as an artist, does not know what he's doing. The way we can get there is to suggest that the plot doesn't work right. But is this really a plot work? Or is plot perhaps subordinate to other things which are going on? Is the work even a failure of plot?

I'm saying that Anno as a writer was flying by the seat of his pants. It's not really a plot work, it's more like Anno's attempt to reconcile his need to find meaning in his own self-pity with the need to make a COOL show that people will think is intruguing. He has all but said this btw. It worked.

More specifically you're suggesting that symbols aren't justified in their use. Again, it's just a charge that this particular element has to do what you think it should.

It isn't the viewer's fault for thinking there might be something to these symbols. But concluding that there isn't and that this is a problem is the viewer's fault. That's the viewer choosing to be a faggot.

AAAUUUUGHH MY MOM IS A COMPUTER AAAAAGGH!!!

Evangelion is narratively deficient. So is Disney's Fantasia. It's still a beautiful work. It is what it is. It's Anno's fault for blueballing the western audience with a lack of esoteric hebrew mysticism.

Yet we all remember Omedetou. What is some "satisfying" metaphor and syncretism driven work you prefer?

2001: A Space Odyssey

Fuck you. I am going to pin your scalp above the door of my own retarded forum.

OMEDETOU

 

[Hank Wimbleton Groyper]

You know, I kind of appreciate Anno's honesty in ensuring his utilization and fascination with Christian aesthetics was not correlated with actual Christianity. Many Japanese artists share, I assume, a similar taste for Christian mythos as he does, but the way they portray them doesn't get filtered properly by the audience (including particularly Christian viewers), and are taken as faithful depictions of actual Christianity... when their actual thought process was "tall blonde priest with a gun is cool"

 

[Gornostay]

Narratively deficient? It has a great narrative. I loved watching it. It sounds like you wanted it to solve reality for you. In your own life you will encounter many people bearing crosses who seem like they may have some kind of answers for you, but turn out to be standing on air if you talk to them. Anno at least offers you a brilliant /m/ conspiracy show which at least has interesting existential perspectives, which again, are a better answer for religious questions than most actually practicing religious people can offer you.

The narrative as a science fiction mystery story is fine. The Angels, NERV, instrumentality, all of it actually makes sense and works rather brilliantly as a cool sleeker, edgier, and more complex expansion of various tv science fiction premises and literary classics. I

Again, this is an absurd standard you'll only see Anno held to because racism is real but only towards the Japanese. The film raises existential themes, and then doesn't resolve them enough so it's a failure. Again, who has a satisfactory answer to these questions? 2001 does not solve the human condition. Nobody can. And even if somebody else could, a failure to do so would not say anything about the quality of the work. Only Anno's ability to solve the human condition.

It's not a personal work because Shinji's particular material condition is a METAPHOR for being a depressed animator (when we win all english teachers are going in gas chambers), it's a personal work because Shinji and everyone else are ultimately human and there are existential problems which are universal to all of us which we can turn to confront at any point in life.

Have you seen any of Anno's other work? Have you seen Love + Pop? Have you seen Gunbuster? Have you seen Royal Space Force? The man is trying to deal with life. And doing a rather admirable job.

You know, I kind of appreciate Anno's honesty in ensuring his utilization and fascination with Christian aesthetics was not correlated with actual Christianity. Many Japanese artists share, I assume, a similar taste for Christian mythos as he does, but the way they portray them doesn't get filtered properly by the audience (including particularly Christian viewers), and are taken as faithful depictions of actual Christianity... when their actual thought process was "tall blonde priest with a gun is cool"

Again, I imagine he probably still has a better grip on this stuff than most westerners. He maybe read one book on eschatology and associated symbols. You think the average churchgoing elderly American has seen any of this esoteric hebrew stuff before, or has any idea what it means? Do any white people have a sufficiently organic and felt appreciation for Heidegger that they could write something like Wonderful Everyday? Umineko is probably the best integration of the western esoteric tradition and the western mystery writing tradition into a new story since these things were in vogue. There isn't even a western work in the running to compete, let alone beat it. Many Japanese ones, however.

The Japanese can and do play around with foreign ideas and symbols on the level of tribal tattoos. "Woah, cool exotic thing I don't get", but to say this is all they have going on is a cope for the ailing sickness of our own culture relative to theirs. They are also brilliantly capable of actually understanding and working within our own traditions. To the point that many of our traditions find more continuity in Japan than in their own homelands.

Yes, Japan gave us the tall evil gunpriest (something we actually did too, Equilibrium is an awesome movie), but Japan also made the most compelling Christian film of the century so far.

No Christ is Kangoloid is going to express their relationship with Christianity in a more compelling fashion than Sion Sono did with Love Exposure. Of course this is not a film about theology. It's about being an existentially challenged modernite encountering these ancient traditions in their anemic and corrupted modern forms. Which is very authentic and honest. It's the movie we would be making if our culture didn't have AIDS.

 

[Stiff]

It sounds like you wanted it to solve reality for you.

No it doesn't I just remembered 3 or 4 prominent thoughts I had during the show and one of them was "ok so the kabbalah thing is not going anywhere" so that's why I mentioned it. The others were that it holds up really well visually, Asuka is the only real option for best girl, and the original final episodes really dragged.

It's not a personal work because Shinji's particular material condition is a METAPHOR for being a depressed animator (when we win all english teachers are going in gas chambers), it's a personal work because Shinji and everyone else are ultimately human and there are existential problems which are universal to all of us which we can turn to confront at any point in life.

It's personal because the characters are literally human persons and their problems are existential in nature so it doesn't matter if they're analogous to anything you might actually experience

I'm getting baited in to negativity cause you keep defending the show from things I'm plainly not saying. Here: a narrative/thematic element in the show I like is the AT Field. I like that people's egos and "absolute terror" about being exposed and judged create their physical forms, that Angels project their AT fields as shields and weapons, and that the globalists in SEELE want a world where these fields are broken down and there are no individuals.

However, I don't especially like that Shinji is congratulated for deciding he wants to exist in his original fearful and affected state rather than revising it to a state of real egoism, because it makes his self-acceptance end up seeming like he was more afraid of not existing than actually craving existence. The only thing that changed about him was that he gained a new fear. It's like deciding you actually want to live only after you've already jumped off the bridge. Not worth much.

Ok? Now get off my BALLS

I watched the show once forever ago and this thread is making me remember various things I liked and didn't like so maybe I'll watch it again and have a real opinion