By seeing the title the cat is already out of the bag for Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (which I will be calling 4.0 in this review). If you’ve been reading my reviews on the Rebuilds you were likely expecting something critical, but maybe not something so alluding. Or, you know, maybe you were. I have been very critical of the Rebuilds, after all. In addition to that, I’m a serious, bonafide fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) and Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (EoE), and it seems to me that those who vehemently dislike 4.0 really connected with the previous iteration. I want to make clear: I am fine with sequels, requels, reboots, and remakes. I really enjoy the experience of seeing something new constructed out of what’s old. What I don’t like is 4.0.
The majority of what I’ve explored throughout my reviews is how NGE and EoE construct their foundation on exploring the difficult pursuit of growing up. Although growing up is biologically inevitable, it is psychologically dependent upon yourself. Maturing is not predicated upon experience. I remember hearing often in grade school the idea that good art came from suffering, and while some will take the word “suffering” and define it as though merely wrestling with creative materials is “suffering”, what is really being said is legitimate hardship causes people to produce good art. And, apart from art, they may say the same about wisdom. Although one cuts their teeth upon enduring suffering, not all wisdom is acquired via suffering, and nor is wisdom and growth wholly dependent upon specific experiences. Thus, I would not argue that the pursuit of maturity, wisdom, and growth is predicated upon experience. Otherwise, everyone poor and destitute, and I literally mean everyone, would also be very smart. Additionally, everyone who is financially and materialistically stable would be a moron. We also know that is not true because anyone accessing the internet in a comfortable fashion is likely a part of the top 5% of wealthiest people in the entire Earth’s population. You are probably very financially and materialistically stable, and you are (probably) not a moron.
Our pursuit of psychological maturity and growth is exactly that: to be pursued. NGE and EoE, as I’ve come to interpret them right now, showcase the danger of psychological (including emotional) stagnation, and that one would do well to learn to accept reality in all its facets, including the ones they do not like, to exist within it. Apart from reality there is no ability to function within reality. Otherwise, your goals are unachievable because they are not based in reality. Your fears are undefeatable because they are not based in reality. Soon, you too will no longer move within reality, and people will either delude themselves and move within your own reality (think someone who enables an addict), be expelled or leave your reality (one rejecting another to preserve their unreality, or the other giving up on the one for the sake of themselves), or try and help you see reality (enduring, patient kindness shown to ween one off unreality and bring them to reality). NGE and EoE explores these facets through its complicated, deep characters. Its metatext is stark and while it never becomes overt text, it is a clear subtext that permeates the material. Growing up, maturing, and the recognition that one is responsible for accepting or denying reality. Or, to put it more frankly: you are responsible for yourself (hence the final episode title, “Take Care of Yourself”) and thus must accept every decision you make, even if someone is urging one upon you, is ultimately your own decision. Accept this, and continue to make decisions. Ideally, good ones.
I was going to write that 4.0 begins with this idea. That it continues to explore the concept of maturity and growing up in a curious, new manner. And, if I did start my thoughts on 4.0 this way then you probably would have agreed with me. But, the movie does not begin with the Grandma Rei (or, Rei Tentative Name) material. Rather, the movie starts with a ridiculous action set-piece that is downright ugly. It’s just… really ugly looking. Channeling the opening two fight scenes of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (3.0), 4.0 decides to inundate its audience with 3DCG spectacle and chaotic imagery. It’s… really not good. It sets up the barest of groundwork, but it’s largely cut-able from a movie that is beyond 2-hours long.
But then, afterward, 4.0 not only explores but continues ideas from NGE and EoE. Shinji is stricken with guilt over the events of the Rebuilds. Finally, there’s an active acceptance of his own involvement in reality. Shinji doesn’t escape reality like he does during the opening segments of EoE, he accepts what he’s done in a way that is quite emotionally engaging. His hardship at the start of the film is accepting that everyone (well, not quite everyone) still wants to be his friend: still wants to love him. This stuff works pretty well. Or, well enough. And new Rei, or Rei Tentative Name, also has some great material, too. As Rei Tentative Name is learning about who she wants to be, someone both like herself but apart from her previous self, we sort of explore this microform version of what NGE and EoE explore. There’s a softness that is much needed after the overly nonsensible events of the previous movie(s), and watching these characters move throughout their world with total acceptance of their situation, including a strong gentleness, feels so extremely right after so much wrong. And while I was not at all a fan of the Asuka material during this period, including another ugly-looking scene where Asuka aggressively force-feeds a depressed Shinji (like, really ugly animation here. Shockingly bad choice), I could overlook the problems for what was being done right.
But, if you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly where my experience went down hill. 40-minutes in and the movie immediately goes down hill. Like, almost laughably so. An event takes place that characters essentially shrug off (That otherwise seems irrational to shrug off) to the point that nobody even talks about it. It just happens and then boom, next scene.
And so begins the next scene after next scene of just truly weird sequences explained through nonstop gobblydygook. Like, constant prepetual gobblydygook. Oh, and these scenes aren’t just weird, but ugly, too. I was flabbergasted about how ugly this movie was. There were times I was just snarking, chortling, and borderline guffawing at the absurd ugliness of 4.0. Scenes of 3DCG vomit nonsense where locational awareness is at an all time low, scenes of character-and-Eva redesigns that just look uncool, scenes of combat that literally look like wire-frame skeleton fights on YouTube, scenes of iconic recreations done like low-cost cosplay; 4.0 looks like it was intently animated poorly. It’s insane. Making sense of visuals is incomprehensible. What’s happening is entirely comprehensible, but the scenes themselves mean nothing. They’re constant retreads of previously done better material, an assertion that we really haven’t moved past 1997. The contrast between NGE and EoE in terms of visual proficiency is off the charts – because 4.0 isn’t even on the charts; it’s below it. And Gendo comes out of this movie looking so bad. Like, literally, he looks terrible. It’s so funny. It just can’t stop being an ugly, unpleasant movie to watch. Everything is just truly out of this world in terms of bad decision making. I can’t even believe we’ve gotten to this point, and yet here we are.
And I have to talk about the visual profile of 4.0 because it is by far one of the sleeziest, horniest movies I’ve watched since Under the Silver Lake (my wife giving a definitive, confident, “Yes.” in agreement), and I watched that 4 years ago at this point. God forbid you be a woman in this movie because if you are, your butt, breasts, thigh, or any other part of your body a heterosexual male or homosexual female finds pleasing will be center-screen, including during a dramatic scene in which multiple women are crying and one of them collapses to the floor with – I kid you not – the camera on the floor behind her so we can watch as her thighs open up in a kneeling position and her crotch lowers into frame, butt completely taking up the screen. It’s essentially a clothed pornographic scene while a woman weeps over someone’s decision in a skin-tight rubber suit. And I’m not even describing the worst offending scene in the film. My wife, honestly, was most shocked that every scene of a woman piloting an Eva (which is very often) was placed in a position where you could watch the pilot jerk this-way-and-that and watch her breasts bop like a cup full of water. People lost their minds over this movie being another amazing success from Hideaki Anno and completely ignoring the grotesque sexualized gaze of so many women here. It’s preposterous, and it never stops. Even down to the final frames of the film and the final lines of dialogue are we assaulted by sexualized imagery of the female body. I know this is a really harsh thing to say but I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone celebrating this movie is someone completely comfortable with every scene of female fetishization because they are already routinely fetishizing women by following provocative Instagram models, collecting off-brand nudie figures, and convinced that watching pornography is “normal every once in a while”. Like, this was truly egregious and there is 100% no chance of convincing me otherwise.
My complete frustration and utter shock at the sexualization in 4.0 is perhaps the primary reason I feel this is a 1/10 film through-and-through. We all know the team behind Evangelion has had to put up with the worst of the worst when it came to the fan-response to NGE’s finale. Hideaki Anno was even suggested by Hayao Miyazaki to take several months off after finishing NGE so that he could disconnect, unwind, and gain perspective during such a hard period. EoE came from a position of sincerity, yes, but it was also an abrasive declaration of directing people toward accepting reality, regardless of it’s difficulty. It assured absolute positivity toward what was true because it was better than what was false. Shinji’s denial of Instrumentality is the pursuit of what is to come, not a return to what was. It’s lesson is something we legitimately can learn from even if the concepts of Instrumentality, Evangelion, and Angel Attacks are completely untrue. Anyone yearning for “the good ol’ days” is deluded by nostalgia and too cowardly to face their future.
And yet, here we are at 4.0, a film whose actual title is very pointed. With three official versions of Evangelion existing (NGE, the manga, the Rebuilds), or three on-screen endings (the last two episodes of NGE, EoE, and now this) we “return” to something new a third time around and ponder “another life”. And yet, the brutality of EoE’s ending is more legitimate, both a showcase of accepting real consequences and the future hardship to come. Here, Evangelion ends in a wholly unrealistic manner and those watching learn nothing. Or, if they learn anything, it’s that maybe if you turned back time you could get a big-tiddy girlfriend. Very cool.
But worst of all, 4.0 is a capitulation to what NGE and EoE defied in 1995-1997. By pursuing such a sexualized, libido-infused visual profile to itself, surrounded only by some of the ugliest animation decisions I’ve ever witnessed in my life, Hideaki Anno has simply given the otaku what they want; a world of uninhibited sex. I’m sure it wouldn’t take that much searching to find fan-edits of scenes from this movie where character’s chest or genitals are entirely exposed. Not only Rei but everyone is now a doll to be used by the sex-crazed. And worst of all, Asuka’s defiance of the perverse combined with a gentle yet firm patience is replaced with Comiket’s latest sex-imagery: torn plug suit galore. Sorry Asuka, you really are just a doll.
This to me asserts what I already felt was true when Hideaki Anno cosigned on Me!Me!Me! a few years ago: he himself has not grown up, matured, and moved-on from his life in 1995-1997 and has gone beyond the criticism of Otaku. He has no become a creative whose endeavors are defined by the existence of Otaku. For, how can one continue to make criticism of Otaku without accepting that Otaku is their muse? We are a whopping 20+ years later and he’s still making this ridiculous franchise with such clear disdain. “There are no more Evangelion!” the film cheers with such absurd text, finalizing with real-world footage that ultimately feels less realistic than a crying Shinji and disgusted Asuka. Hideaki Anno has “made anime real” by having Shinji, Mari, Rei, and Kaworu exist in the real-world at a real train station and every otaku clapped! Just pathetic. And even if the film was one giant ironic venture, a hateful, purposefully bad movie to mock fans, then that’s just plain mean. It, also, would still be in subservience to the Otaku, a film served on a silver platter a la Me!Me!Me!. It seeks to criticize yet only feeds. A project made to mock those that would make it land in Letterboxd’s Top 250. And that’s just by reading it with such cynicism. Honestly, I don’t know whether to think Hideaki Anno made 4.0 in earnest and therefore made a bad movie on accident or if he was playing 4D chess and was mocking Evangelion fans by making something so terrible with intention. Either route is unworthy of an over 2-hour movie. Criminal.
4.0 is perhaps the most juvenile piece of media I have watched in literal years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something this delusional and this outright unethical. It’s celebration of what is not real by slaving over animated sexual imagery, wholly intangible action set-pieces, and completely uncompelling dramatic material between characters who don’t matter is impressive. I can quite literally say I’ve never seen anything like 4.0, and I hope I never see anything like it ever again.
The Rebuilds were a complete waste of my time. In every way it was the opposite of NGE and EoE with no sense of clever commentary or, worst of all, enjoyment. This movie is boring, boring, boring, and I routinely talked with my wife overtop the movie after about an hour and 20 minutes in. We would get up to get snacks, take long bathroom breaks, talk, and then go, “Alright, guess we’ll finish the movie now.”. And then, when it was over, we audibly said in unison, “That was bad.”
It was.
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Melvin Benson is the Founder, Editor-In-Chief, and Lead Host of Cinematic Doctrine. Whether it’s a movie, show, game, comic, or novel, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s rich, he’s ready and willing to give it a try! His hope is to see King Jesus glorified as far as the east is from the west!
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