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The Evangelion Discussion. ( Spoilers, so be warned)

I don't begin to understand most of what you and Hellkorn both said. Because for one thing, to be blunt, it doesn't lead anywhere, to any result that is applicable in improving conditions of or handling human life and affairs. For that, you need to go outside and do something to help somebody other than yourself. It's again fairly simple. Call me a pragmatist. Reality is quite objective. A table is definitely a table, whether you believe or perceive that it is, or not. Lean over it, and ram your head down onto it. Then look at the bruise on your head and decide for yourself. No one's opinion, from Plato forward, will change one atom in that table, which can be measured by external, physical means. If you still don't agree that a table is there, then that's your problem.

We will learn more and will eventually explain all the phenomena that do exist but are unexplained now. And we will do that not by sitting around discussing theories that only an academic could love, but by going out and confronting and testing the universe in front of us with tools that we develop.

JesuOtako's point, one of many that I appreciated, was the observation that this navel-gazing that Anno portrays through two episodes as the grand finale of a remarkable anime is basically just BS, with capitals (whether or not Anno believed it then or believes it now).

But to assign some deep, thought-out philo-babble to it frankly makes me think some people don't see the table.

I mean it's not like it's that original.

I suspect this is because they are entirely one-note characters and therefore there's no way to screw them up?

Until you speak Japanese fluently, I don't know that this is valid. How can you tell they're not being underplayed, or horribly stilted like seiyuu are trained to be sometimes, lessening "realism" even more?

If you have to gripe about someone...pick Kaworu. Ugh. That was poor acting.

I accused Rei of being scarcely sentient (see previous statement) and lacking in personality and development, especially for how much time we spend on her. Now that's definitely true.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. It's very hard to argue that better handling of the budget or a higher budget used sparingly wouldn't have helped. I'm not saying EVA needed to be more flashy, I'm just saying the avant-garde cheats later were not positive ones, or if they were, they still would have been better with consistent quality and acceptable convention.

Got a reference for this?

Directors who create such difference for difference's sake and accuse the audience of being unable to understand...well...to be honest, they hack me off. -.-'

Quality aside, indeed. I don't think it's awesome, but I'm tired of hearing it's bad. People who say this need to see some more really bad movies.

It's not a basic truth about life, it's a very popular lie. Goodness knows I spent a good portion of the middle of the video explaining why, the red text vs. white text portion and the Fruits Basket counterargument.

KENSUKE:
But there is only one truth for you.
One made from your narrow perception of the world
and from information that was altered to protect yourself,
a warped truth.

TOJI:
Well, one person's perception of the world's bound to be tiny anyway.

HIKARI:
But people only have that tiny ruler to measure their surroundings with.

ASUKA:
And you only try to see things
through the truths that other people have given you.

MISATO:
On sunny days, you feel good.

REI:
On rainy days, you feel down.

ASUKA:
Once you've been taught that,
you make yourself believe that's how you should feel.

RITSUKO:
Even though pleasant things can happen on rainy days too.

Like pparker, I'm pragmatic and logical...

I don't know about a nihilistic worldview in anime (that's far too extreme for the mainstream) but Legato is certainly a nihilistic character, so I used him.

But this should not be glorified as a means to self-redemption and self-discovery. It should not be the focus of the story when the story has a better focus being shelved in its place. In EVA it is, multiple times, and I find it very repulsive. Heck, this is even reflected in Rei in EoE, (while it is arguably taken away from Shinji, or simply subverted, because Anno seems to have sliiiightly changed his mind about his beliefs in EoE. Slightly.)

It's not about what he knows and doesn't know, it's about what he cares about and does not care about, and he doesn't care about things someone being portrayed as self-redemptive should value, the little twat.

Arguable indeed. It's only arguable if you know nothing whatsoever about christianity, which I'm not saying you do, but either way: The christian life is centered around proactivity and personal responsibility.

Shinji IS inactive and it doesn't redeem him, but it doesn't hurt him either, because his redemption is self-deception. This really can't be argued, just look at the before and after third impact comparison.

I don't really care how long the 180 took him. It's a really sad and false 180, that's my beef.

Heck, they're still debated on. There are a million reasons why he might do this, and no one is agreed, isn't that right?

Yup. I think it's stupid in just about every case. (I like quite a bit of Kubrick, too.) You can say "I hope this means a lot to people in many different circumstances," and ideas can slip into and be gleaned from your work that you didn't anticipate because of its depth and quality, but you should ABSOLUTELY know what you want to convey and what you believe about the story you've told.

Toji's involvement was useless, and he was useless...and why the devil does he have a dream about Shinji on that SAME FRIKKIN' TRAIN?

I understand that, but it's not about her becoming a better person, it's about the previous issues with her character that were earthed and unearthed repeatedly gaining some relevance. Maybe 20% of that was relevant, but it was INTERESTING! Why shelve it for more of bloody Shinji?

If your vision of compassion is following the destiny to instigate 3rd impact...while of course releasing Shinji by his own choice, but still...whatever. No thanks. A lot of time wasted getting to very little satisfactory result...

Okay, but it's another ending. I don't need that. Didn't need it from FMA, and I don't need it from EVA. Again, I said that last section was minor and more subjective, but they are trivialities that do concern me.

From what I've seen from your response, actually, I don't think it was so much a misinterpretation as a simplification (with no falsifications, though,) that you found appealing and truthful while I found it repulsive and false. Worldview differences.

Tangling yourself in particulars and dropping the big pictures turns you into Robert Bresson, a brilliant theorist who made Pickpocket and thought it was realistic when it was in fact, a pretty photograph of a redonkulous narrative.

HK...people that can or want to think like you and I are few and far between and there's nothing wrong with that.

pparker wrote:

Reality is quite objective....

Sorry if I'm being a little blunt- I can get worked up about this sort of topic.

pparker wrote:

I don't begin to understand most of what you and Hellkorn both said...

You're taking a bizarrely literalist reaction to all of this. Don't see anyone in this thread (or Anno for that matter) arguing that your house is a hologram or anything like that.

And downplaying philosophical examination and discussion like that isn't helpful, especially when it's of someone from a time period and nation that has had some of the greatest influence on human history in the past two thousand years. We would not be the world we are today without Greek rationalism, period.

(Plus, most of post was rambling about non-philosophical points. Discussion of animation, film, novels, et cetera -- which you yourself are participating in -- isn't tangibly productive, so I suppose it also "doesn't lead anywhere.")

Also, I'm not sure why you extended that paragraph to mention the organic writing process that writers have, other than a further interpretation that either of us have proposed that Anno made a SOOOOPER DEEEP narrative or whatever.

I would venture that he's learned a lot about what he wrote that he "didn't know" when he wrote it I also speculate that's why he doesn't "explain" Eva. Not because he refuses to, but because little specific explanation existed in the first place besides his own general knowledge, cursory studies in psychology, and his psychological state that filtered the writing. Most of any reasoning he would give now is someone else's interpretation. From what little he has said, there wasn't a lot of conscious deep thought or planning involved on his part. Again, that's speculation partly based on some personal experience.

With regards to psychology there's good reason to believe that Anno more or less skimmed through the DSM-IV manual of personality disorders for the basic crafting of his characters.

You hit one of my planned points exactly regarding classical philosophy, where I agree with you, vs. what the subject is today. I've decided to delete most of what I was writing, which was off-topic anyway, but I'll pop in a bit of it:

"The problem with Western philosophy as a subject is that it has become so esoteric and has lost touch with "reality" to such a degree that its usefulness is almost nil now. Until the late 19th century, certainly, it was a vibrant profession and pursuit, providing significant contributions to actual advancement of civilization. Then, from what little I know, it went purely atheist. Doesn't matter what your personal beliefs are, the rejection of "spirituality" or a potential non-physical source and motivation for living things, for lack of better terms, is date coincident with the beginning of the decline of philosophy into an ivory tower academic exercise vs. a popular subject.

From an analytical viewpoint, a significant section of potential knowledge was arbitrarily excluded from the one subject that was supposed to be fundamental to the pursuit of all knowledge. It abandoned its purpose, in other words. My personal viewpoint is, that section was the most important one, and one that ultimately will be validated, but not by anyone in philosophy in its current state because it is now "taboo" and not to be considered seriously. The most likely candidate subject is physics, which will one day have to acknowledge that it has found the limits of physicality, and will turn its attention to the non-physical to maintain progress and interest."

@HK - The reason for my "bizarrely literalist reaction" was that, yes, I perceived what I consider to be reference to the time-wasting argument about whether "reality" is "real". If reality is only subjective, then by simple logic you cannot prove anything in the physical universe objectively. That's a dead end in terms of contributing to advancement of knowledge. Just mental masturbation.

Now you have to give me a break. Just the sheer volume of deeply analytical posts in this thread alone--many of them yours--not counting other sites, points to a perception of extreme depth and complexity in Eva.

Maybe I err in extending that to over-estimation of Anno's conscious intentions by you or others. I think Anno is an exceptional talent, but a primarily un-selfconscious one when he wrote Eva (not speaking psychologically of course). He can, or could at the time, intuitively produce works that are intensely thought- and analysis-provoking without consciously designing them to be that way. Maybe he's more intentional about that now, having seen the response to his earlier work.

I tend to divide types like Evangelion and Paranoia Agent, which work on a more visceral and psychological level, and works like Mononoke and Texhnolyze, which aspire to more emotionally and philosophically nuanced ideas.

But I don't see a materialistic rejection of metaphysics as a negative.

(Not that I wish to say that, in general, the one sort of appeal implies a lack of the other or vice versa though; I'm sure plenty of titles combine the two. Haibane Renmei being a possible candidate.)

I assume you say this in answer to pparker's disapprovals. If so, I understand your context of the word 'metaphysics'.

And with that, I'll end my digression and let the thread get back on-topic.

pparker wrote:

You hit one of my planned points exactly regarding classical philosophy...

I agree that there is a lot of circle-jerks out there, and I have don't have the same sort of admiration for them as I do with Marcus Aurelius. But I don't see a materialistic rejection of metaphysics as a negative. I mean, alright, the only thing I know with 100% certainty is that I exist -- but to get stuck on that point just induces useless paranioa.

the idea that self-imposed meaning has no place in our lives is something I cannot abide by.

Though I suppose I would agree with the nihilists arguing that there is no intrinsic purpose--

Anno's approach is definitely an organic one... I definitely agree that some of the details of Eva were not worked out when Anno made them -- just what the fudge is going on with Seele and the Evas when they're initiating Third Impact? -- yet I think another part is that Anno probably doesn't like the idea of being constantly hounded by fans who want to know every nook and cranny of the story.

Frankly, you lost me at paranoia. I don't get the context, or technical meaning you may be using of the word here.

To jump to the ABe reference, though, I re-listened to the interview... You may have dubbed in the other thoughts from somewhere else.

There are two possibilities here:

a.) The physical stuff is truly that much easier to solve.
b.) Somebody isn't actually trying very hard to solve the "soft" stuff.

If I understand correctly, you are making an invalid assumption that a belief in metaphysics, or a non-physical existence of and cause for life, implies lack of self-determinism. The two are not mutually exclusive.