When did the last Rebuild of Evangelion movie come over to the States? Like, 2015? I remember watching it in my apartment in Arkansas, back when I was in the Air Force. That was a long time ago. So much life has happened since then. After I watched that one, I decided to write about it. I was kinda bewildered by my experience with that movie. There was a 14 year time jump between it and the second movie, and everyone was pissed off at Shinji, because he had somehow caused Third Impact. The last image I recall from the second movie was Kaoru’s Eva ramming a spear through Shinji’s Eva unit. All of the sudden, in the third movie, everyone but the Eva pilots have aged 14 years—something to do with their use of the Evas. Misato acted completely cold and distant to Shinji, contradictory to how she had been behaving at the end of the last movie. By the end of the third movie, however, Shinji had been duped by Nerve—which seemed to only consist anymore of Gendo and Kozo. After causing another disaster and watching Kaoru die, Shinji was dragged off somewhere by Asuka, alongside the… Third Rei, I believe (not the one Shinji seemed to have saved at the end of the second movie, if I recall correctly).
So what’s going on in this fourth movie? Well, there’s no time jump this time, it seems. Misato’s new organization, which consists of old Nerve employees and new people—along with the new glasses-wearing Eva pilot girl, Mari—are trying to reset an AT field, or base, or something, in the heart of Paris, and they’re attacked by some Nerve robots while they’re doing this. They have these flying battleships that they use as shields, as well as Mari’s Eva, to protect themselves while they do this. Mari’s able to hold Nerve off, and they get the AT field going. This is the most action we see in the movie for over an hour, probably.
For the next long while, we see Asuka drag Shinji and Rei through a red wasteland to a village of survivors, which is protected by a large AT field. We meet grown up Toji, Kensuke, and Hikari. Toji’s a doctor now, and married to Hikari. Kensuke is a surveyor or scientist or something. While here, the third Rei learns what it’s like to be human—works, makes friends, learns about concepts like “Good morning,” “good evening,” “good bye,” etc., and what cats and babies are. Shinji falls into a catatonic state of despair due to what he’s done, and watching Kaoru die. Asuka has no sympathy for him and is angry about how he is behaving. Kensuke thinks he just needs time and space, and allows him to run away to an abandoned building and stay there for weeks. It was cool to see some of these characters grown up, as we never got to see any of them age in the original series. Toji I remembered the most for punching Shinji in an early episode, but then coming around and being mostly cool, until he died when Unit 1 went out of control. Since Asuka was the victim of that episode in these movies, Toji got to live this time. It’s also cool to see these characters because they’re actually well-adjusted, and aren’t suffering from deep emotional damage.
Eventually, the third Rei’s kindness seems to get through to Shinji, and he goes back to the village to help out. It’s then that he meets Misato and Kaji’s son. Misato made sure this kid never met her or knew anything about her, for some reason I don’t recall. Something to do with emotional damage, though. Meanwhile, the third Rei is finding that her body is failing because she has left Nerve facilities, I think. So after spending time watching her learn to be a human, we watch her say goodbye to Shinji, and then disintegrate. Asuka, who’s been hanging out either in her Eva suit or mostly naked for some reason, gets recalled back to Misato’s team, and Shinji decides to go with her. So she hits him with a stun gun and knocks him out.
Shinji awakens to Toji’s little sister Sakura standing over him, who then slaps him and starts sobbing because he got back into an Eva after she’d told him not to. I vaguely remember her from the last movie (apparently she was dead all along in the original series. I went and looked her up just now to recall what she was like in the original series. I guess she wasn’t.) To keep Shinji from doing anything, they put him in a holding chamber. That Asuka and Mari are just able to go in and out of of their own free will, and he seems to just be able to leave later on in the movie. Maybe they didn’t put him holding chamber? I thought they said they were doing putting him in one, though. There’s this pink-haired girl who’s mad that he’s back on the ship. I think she was in the last movie. Her family died in Third Impact, and she blames him. Like everybody else.
There’s some exposition stuff at this point in the movie between Misato and Ritsuko, and Gendo and Kozo. Misato and Ritsuko talk about the purpose of the ship they’re piloting to repopulate the Earth if Nerve succeeds in the Fourth and Final impact, and Kozo and Gendo talk about the Instrumentality Project, involving Christian symbology and names, but also talking about “the Gods,” and other things that wouldn’t exactly mesh with Christian ideas.
After these two scenes of exposition, Misato’s team tells her that whatever Nerve’s headquarters or whatever are in has moved to its final destination, so they have to act now. Misato decides to use the ship they’re in as a weapon against Nerve, and deploys all the seeds it holds containing Earth’s life, or whatever. Then they go to where Nerve is, and try to break through it’s outer AT Field thing. There’s a line about humans trying to pass through to the Gods while still being in sin. My thought on that is that Gendo and Kozo are human, and they’re already in there, but eh. Anyway, Kozo pops up in a big ship and attacks them before they break through. They deploy Asuka and Mari’s Evas, who fight with a bunch of pilot-less Evas, until they drop to the ground, where Unit 13—which looks just like Unit 1—is laid out on a cross. Asuka tries to stab it with one of those giant spear things, but it puts up an AT Field, so she takes her eye patch off, and a power up item comes out from her eye. She rips open the AT Field, but then Unit 13 grabs her and starts choking her. Meanwhile, Kozo’s ship takes hold of Misato’s ship, and they realize that Gendo had been planning this, or something. The Second Rei, I think, appears to Asuka, disintegrates her body, and pulls her into Unit 13, I think.
Next, Misato and Ritsuko meet Gendo some weird red landscape they all can get to, apparently. Ritsuko shoots Gendo in the head multiple times, but it only momentarily knocks him down, and reveals a glowing, cross-shaped hole where his eyes should be. He’s apparently ascended or something, using the information of the gods or whatever. He goes into Unit 13, and they realize they can’t stop him, but Shinji shows up and says he’s gonna pilot Unit 1 again to fight his father. Pink-haired girl and Sakura show up with guns to try and stop him, and Sakura actually tries to shoot Shinji, but Misato jumps in the way of the bullet. Earlier in the movie, she flashed back to when she was cheering Shinji on at the end of the second movie, just before Third Impact, and she states that as Shinji’s legal guardian, she’s still responsible for whatever he does. They let Shinji go, and Sakura treats Misato’s wound.
As Shinji and Gendo start fighting, they end up locked together, falling into some weird “anti-reality” space, I think it was called, to the “Golgotha Object.” The two spears they’re carrying, “Hope” and “Despair,” Gendo plans to use at this “Golgotha Object” to make a wish. The two Evas fight in some virtual reality created by the gods or something, spanning across Shinji’s memories, and Gendo fights far more aggressively and effectively than Shinji, while yelling that Shinji doesn’t understand. Eventually, Shinji stops fighting and starts talking to Gendo. So Gendo explains everything, and seems to indicate that the End of Evangelion happened, but Shinji rejected it. That was Gendo’s initial wish, and now his new wish is to see his wife again, but everyone around there is Rei. Also, they see “Evangelion Imaginary,” which appears as the Black Lillith thing that was hung up on a cross in the original series. It comes off the cross, floats up to the world above, and turns into Giant Naked Rei from End of Evangelion. Also, all the weird wandering Evas out in the wasteland that I forgot to mention earlier start turning into less giant, headless, naked Reis, and start floating around.
Misato decides as a last ditch effort to convert the power of her ship into making one last spear for Shinji to use to cancel out Gendo’s wish with his own. Also, Mari meets Kozo in his ship, he calls her “Mari Iscariot,” gives her permission to use his ship or something, and then he explodes into tang, like everybody did in End of Evangelion. I didn’t really understand the exchange, to be honest. Meanwhile, as the final preparations for Misato’s plans are finished, she orders everyone else to abandon the ship but stays on, as someone still has to get the spear to Shinji. I realized then that we had to watch Misato die again, and got kinda sad. In any case, she pilots the ship through Giant Naked Rei’s eye—with help from Mira and her Eva—gets the spear to Shinji, and then her ship explodes with her still in it.
In the next few scenes, we learn about Gendo, Kaoru, and Asuka’s deepest issues. Gendo was always a loner and hated being around people until he met his wife, and then when she died, he thought being left with a son was punishment for himself, so he kept himself distant from Shinji. He realized he was afraid of Shinji, and I Shinji forgave him, they realized they were similar in some ways, and then he stepped off the virtual train they were on. Next, Kaoru appeared, but Kaji also appeared to explain to Kaoru that he thought making Shinji happy would make himself happy, and that he had to live his own life, or something. So he also exited the virtual reality—this time they were in a garage. Next, Asuka relived her childhood, being without her mother and father, thinking everyone hated her and would only except her as an Eva pilot, but Kensuke appeared to her and comforted her, and she also left. Finally, the second Rei appeared to Shinji, and Shinji explained that he planned to make a world where they wouldn’t have to pilot Evas, and that she could be whatever she wanted. She likes that, and leaves.
Back in Unit 1, Shinji’s gonna stab through Unit 1 with the spear, but his mom appears as Unit 13, takes the spear away from him, and pushes him out of Unit 1, taking his place as the sacrifice. Shinji sees her and Gendo together, and goes back to reality, where the less giant, headless, naked Reis are turning into people and animals and descending back to Earth. Shinji appears on a beach, and Mari lands just offshore in her Eva, which disappears as she jumps out into the ocean. As Shinji reaches her, the scene jumps to him at a train station—I think the one we first met him in in the original series—and they’re there together, all dressed up. Mari’s coming on to him, he’s acting far more reciprocal and confident than he would have in the original series, they run out of the station together, and the credits roll.
I think this ending makes more sense than the original End of Evangelion. I think it also had way less disturbing imagery in it, which is nice. It also felt less bewildering than the previous movie. Most of the characters that blamed Shinji for everything wrong in the last movie seemed to be more forgiving in this one, except for Asuka. Of course, Asuka is Asuka. She’s less loud and obnoxious, and more reserved than she was in the original series, although she’s also 14 years older than she was, even if her body remains that of a teenager. She just has a raging hate-boner for Shinji. She seems at least tolerant to everyone else. Meanwhile, we learn that Misato is a bit more conflicted about than she seemed in the last movie. She doesn’t just seem to blame him for everything that happened, like she did in the last movie. She also has a line to Ritsuko about being stoic being better than being emotional. I liked her a lot better in this movie than I did in the last one, as a result.
I didn’t watch any of the other movies again before I watched this one, so a lot of the characters, names, and events weren’t fresh in my mind or anything. Most recently, I watched the first episode of the original series again with my brother, when he saw it was on Netflix. I might have understood things a bit better if I had watched those again, but then again, knowing Evangelion, maybe not. Overall, although I did like the last movie, I probably liked this one a bit better. It felt more coherent to me, and dealt with some of the things I found confusing from the last movie. If I recall correctly. But yeah. I just wrote this because I remembered writing a thing for the last movie, and I thought, “eh, why not do it again?” I haven’t posted on this site in a while, but I remember writing about the last one on here, so eh.
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
baratheonpilled