As we live in our own apocalyptic hellscape, Ignacio Peña wonders why we make art about the end times and whether anime should be held accountable for its sexualization of children in his review of Evangelion: 2.0.
I was reminded a few days ago by Marcus Gorman, the proprietor of this fine establishment, of my upcoming commitment to write a review for Evangelion 2.0 with the following message:
Greetings. Your 10YA review for EVANGELION 2.0 in this hellscape is coming up for next Thursday by 10pm
I laughed when I read this, but I also felt my stomach twist a little. I wasn’t sure that I was actually looking forward to this. Not because I don’t love Evangelion; I impulsively volunteered myself for this review from the excitement I felt when I saw it pop up on his list of reviewable titles, and until this past weekend, I held to the belief that this film is the best version of Eva produced (in so far as the section of this story it tells.) No, I haven’t been looking forward to this because of the very fact that this is a piece of fiction about a literal hellscape on earth, both physically and psychologically, and when I was actually faced with the prospect of pressing play, I wasn’t actually looking forward to seeing this, knowing that for so many people in the world, life has been very hard.
Sure, it was most likely a flippant remark; the ground isn’t literally made of molten lava. Recently, however, my appetite to watch things that revel in some apocalyptic vision of the future is quite small. It’s impossible to watch anything without asking, “Why does this thing even exist?” There is the all-important group of films and TV which are in themselves nothing but popcorn, and are there to help make a person’s day a little brighter. There’s the stuff that’s made which is supposed to be saying something important which, for many of the filmmakers at the helm, hope to deepen the viewer’s understanding about some aspect of the world, and hopefully even effect some change in the process. Finally, there’s the misery porn, upon which Eva 2.0 falls upon the smoldering heap.
That’s a difficult thing for me to write. I have loved the story of Evangelion since my first viewings of the original anime [Neon Genesis: Evangelion] at the impressionable young age of 13. I felt a genuine kinship to the main cast of characters and I identified with the enormous amount of pain these children undergo from beginning to end as I grappled with my own development as a growing human being. The artwork is spectacular, the fight choreography was visceral, and the appropriated Christian imagery appealed to this young Catholic as a personal level of acknowledgement, as if the creator were saying about what I was being taught at Church, “You don’t quite have it right, but have a look here. This is how the world ends.”
At its core, though, Evangelion has always been a story that illustrates the tremendous mental load children go through as they are faced with a crushing amount of responsibility which forces them to grow up. In the series, the result is catastrophic, because at the end of the day, so much depends on children who are ill-equipped to handle the insane moments of anguish and trauma they are forced to undergo in their struggle to protect humanity. It’s too much responsibility to bear, but the responsibility doesn’t go away, so I suppose the series is saying something in this regard, and at that young age, I was receptive to it.
This movie, thankfully, attempts something different, and it would be incredibly successful in this respect if it weren’t part 2 of 4, where the first part felt like a clunky highlight reel of the show’s first few episodes and the third part is actually just quite stupid. The reason is this: The three children at the heart of this film actually feel like children. Shinji stops being a pathetic coward who runs away from everything and for a good chunk of the film tries to make life better for his friends by cooking lunches for them. Rei develops a crush and wants to do something nice for Shinji. Asuka shows some humanity and tries to do something nice for them in turn, while still being the selfish Asuka that is so familiar from the original show. What’s wonderful about this film is we get a small story about these children learning to work and live together, and on this level, it’s quite a beautiful story to the very end. Everything regarding the children’s stories are brilliant, and even the original show didn’t allow for us to have such a nuanced glimpse of their inner lives. There’s a tremendous amount of brutality in the film, and yet, the film ends with Rei and Shinji making choices on behalf of the other’s happiness. On a character level, the movie ends with a glimmer of optimism in a maelstrom of misery, and I find it to be quite a welcome note to end on.
The rest of the film is where this thing really starts to fall apart. I could forgive it if these giant aliens that might or might not be from God were attacking the Earth because that’s just what giant monsters do, but the implication that everything is a result of some power struggle between Shinji’s father Gendo and a group of old men is just as confusing and maddening as it was in the show, and more than anything I just found myself frustrated by it all. This was an opportunity for a more concise and effective story, and anytime we cut to Gendo’s continued subterfuge against his bosses just seemed like a tremendous waste of storytelling. Now that I’m older, I can clearly see how messed up the entire endeavor behind Nerv, the agency responsible for the Evas, is: forcing young children to fight giant monsters in a robot where you feel every injury as your own is inhumane. Better then that the real struggle for the adults in charge should be to grapple with the politics of trying to find a solution that removes children from the equation, who, let me remind you once more, are children.
Which leads me to this: Anime doesn’t just need to grow up, it probably needs to go to jail. As I mentioned earlier, I was 13 when I watched Neon Genesis: Evangelion for the first time, and so I didn’t really understand how inappropriate it was to sexualize Rei and Asuka the way they are, but I certainly notice it now. There’s a shot in this film that is an upskirt shot of Asuka lying in bed, and the way I see it, that’s a predatory shot on behalf of the director. In essence, we have Asuka, a child, in a state of vulnerability, and the director has chosen this particular angle to put in his movie, with the only purpose of the shot to be to titillate. The shot has no other storytelling purpose. And yet, I have to say again: Asuka is a child. As is Shinji, as is Rei. Asuka later wears an experimental plug suit that is new to the film when she pilots Eva Unit-04, and she asks the adult in charge, Misato, why the plug suit was so revealing. It’s a wink and a nod, because guys, it’s fan service! Except it isn’t. Again, it’s predatory. Asuka is a child, though you wouldn’t believe it the way she’s drawn. Things like this go beyond what I remember ever appearing in the original series (which I had only just recently rewatched a couple of years ago).
In the time since Evangelion has become an anime cultural milestone, there have been a staggering amount of hyper-sexualized figurines of Rei and Asuka that have been made and sold since, and I have to ask if it isn’t time that anime be held accountable for allowing for such things to continue; because I go back to my first question: Why does this thing exist? Because the film for me now repeatedly undermines its attempts at telling a good story about these kids growing up because the director, along with every other adult in the film, seem to need reminding that these are just children, and they shouldn’t be put in a situation where they feel every dismemberment and they shouldn’t be sexualized for our entertainment. With several years between attempts at telling this story, I would have expected some maturity behind the storytelling itself. It’s a shame that it’s only gotten worse.
— Ignacio Peña
10 Years Ago: Films in Retrospective 