Review of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo
The unwarranted hate towards this movie has been baffling. Many critique the story for not explaining much, others critique it for having dumb characters that simply do not trust each other, and other critics simply go for the idea that it wasted our time. To those people I say, what is your point? This is Evangelion for crying out loud. The Neon Genesis Evangelion TV show was precisely all those things combined except it was much longer and much more monotonous. This film definitely has a lot of value to it and is much better handled than anything the TV series ever did. If there wasone saving grace the TV series ever had, it was its main character Shinji. Many people might call that blasphemy, but it is no further from the truth. Going psychologically into the mind of a depressed kid who has the entire weight of the world on his shoulders is something you do not see much in anime. In this movie, they go full force with this concept. Shinji through his one shining moment in the last movie where in which he tries to save Rei, actually ends up being the one who causes the third impact killing probably millions...OUCH! It's like kicking down an already beat up puppy. To make matters worse, his old friends do not trust him anymore and he never was able to rescue Rei. Everything is once again thrown all at him, causing him unbelievable pain. Also, his father Gendo still does not care for him...things just don't go well for Shinji. However there is one more light of hope in his life. Kaworu becomes friends with Shinji and acts as the stool that keeps him standing in order for him to never give up. The friendship is incredibly well handled and much more believable than his short appearance in the TV series. The ending of the movie uses all of the above themes such as the friendship/relationship, Shinji's ongoing fight with depression and him trying desperately to make things better no matter what the cost. The ending is incredibly emotional and tragic because like I said before things just simply never go well for Shinji.
As for the plot point of his friends not trusting him, I believe that they have good reason. He not only killed millions, but he could potentially be used in a ploy by Nerv (who are the bad guys now) to crush the rebels. Them being not trusting towards him is understandable because they do not want to reveal their own plans to the enemy. Though I must admit, the rebels not revealing anything to Shinji at the end when he is about to make things worse was quite dumb on their part. Oh, and Asuka is still as annoying as ever!
The movie is incredibly well animated thanks in part to the large budget, and by god do they like to show it off! Many minutes are wasted with montages of preparing for battle. The other flaw with the movie is that not much of the actual plot is revealed and things are still incredibly clouded in mystery. That is to be expected in an Evangelion movie but I still wish they could have given us more instead of wasting our time with mech transformation sequences and some abnormally long pauses. Once again, to be expected in a Evangelion movie. I do wish they could have stepped away from these flaws though. Also, gratuitous pointless clone Rei nude scene...ONCE AGAIN, to be expected. LOL! Let's hope that the last movie at least resolves the plot and gives us the answers we want.
In the end, I enjoyed Evangelion 3.0. It ain't a masterpiece and has many flaws, but Shinji's depression psychology and friendship with Kaworu is the main focus of the story, and it does it extremely well. That is what this movie is about, a point critics tend to gloss over.