Evangelion, Thrice Upon a Time: Full of love.

Absolutely, unbelievably, overwhelmingly riveting. Downright sublime. Anno stuck the landing. He stuck the landing so hard. Perhaps because I’ve rewatched the entire Evangelion saga so many times, read the manga and had done all my homework in order to write two pieces specifically about 3.0’s Impact mechanics I was able to actually follow and decode everything rapidly unfolding onscreen. There, shockingly, was no point at which I actually felt lost within the imagery. The Gates of Guf and that which lies beyond. The Vessels of the Adams. Mark 5. Unit 13. The Evangelion’s curse of immortality. The Lilin. The L Barrier and coreization. Mari’s true identity. Second Impact. Near Third Impact and the actual Third Impact that happens offscreen in-between 2.0 and 3.0. Fourth Impact. Another Impact. The Ayanami series. The Black Moon. The Failures of Infinity. Asuka as the Ninth Angel. Ayanami’s soul still contained within Unit 01. The Lance of Longinus. The Lance of Cassius. The Real. The Imaginary. Believe it or not – I get all that. I could have turned to my brother and said “Yeah, I understand everything that’s happening right now. Of course they’re going to descend below the Sea of L at Ground Zero to intercept the Four Adams before they can awaken Black Moon Chalice and head beyond the Gates of Guf in order to reignite their Second Impact, which is actually End of Evangelion’s Third Impact, as the Fourth Impact.” and had that not be the obvious satirical punchline. Really the only thing I didn’t have fully pinned going into this was what the Key of Nebuchadnezzar actually is, but that’s something which isn’t even all that relevant since it’s just a fairly standard substitute for the original’s Adam fetus. It did open up a couple new questions in regards to how characters relate to one another in the ending sequence, but by and large this genuinely all made sense to me. Actually comprehending the overload of nonsensical jargon made all my prior endeavours feel rewarding in a way that surely only Evangelion could achieve.

That left me with enough breathing room to really soak in all the beautiful character moments. Because there were an abundance of them in this film. That ending was everything it needed to be and more. Hooly dooly. Whether the Rebuilds or the other supplementary material actually possess any level of design synergy with the original project is still highly in question, but as an alternate route this has been utterly masterful. I have always been a proponent of the Rebuild. Sitting in the cinema basking in the melodies of Beautiful World back when Madman did their Evangelion Marathon event is probably one of the most cathartic moments I’ve ever had in my life. Once the credits started rolling I remember getting up to go refresh myself in the break between films, but then sitting right back down because the song had just washed over me. It was beautiful and mesmerising. That moment in time is so precious to me. Evangelion has always been a deceptive favourite of mine. It’s honestly something that I’d take a while to think of if you asked for some favourites, but when I reflect on it all it becomes pretty apparent how much I love it. The anime saga is one of the things I’ve rewatched most, it’s one of the things I’ve written and talked about the most, and the single anime series I have the most merch for turns out to be Eva. So yes I have always held the films in high regard. But even after how blown away I was by 3.0’s storytelling and set design, Thrice Upon a Time really just upped its game by several orders of magnitude. Did Evangelion actually need this? Debatably so since the manga had also used this rewrite as its ending and with them in tandem it kinda reveals that this might have always been Evangelion’s final destination, but by and large no. Much of its happy endings and character revelations are story threads already encoded within the original, and really all the Rebuild has done is draw them into a more visible position. However I still am thankful that the Rebuild exists. The way it parrots End of Evangelion at the end to finally redeem its most tortured characters is just sweet. It’s sweet and full of love. Overflowing. The body may be different but the heart is there. I cherish the Rebuild of Evangelion and I do not care who knows.

I’m not gonna make any kind of analysis or explanation video because, given that it’s Evangelion Final, I’m sure a million and one other people have already done it better than I ever could, and at least while it’s fresh I feel as though commodifying my emotions into a truly presentational form would betray the undiluted happiness that spreads within when I reflect on the film. Dissecting it with any specificity would only impair the warmth it makes me want to bask in. The only reason I’ve ever published things in the first place is because sometimes there are particular thoughts or feelings I want to draw out and frame, rather than simply letting them fade. Envisioning the square confines of a blog post or video as a form of metaphorical display case. So I guess there’s a part of me that, no matter how brief, no matter how insubstantial, just feels compelled to bleed into the collective narrative, become a face in the crowd, and say that, yeah, I was here. I watched it. I felt the love. My goodness, I feel it. Thank you, Evangelion. You have done great things.