they're always ruined in the end

evangelion 2.22: you can (not) advance (hideaki anno, 2009)

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Even though it feels kind of like exalted fan fiction, and even though I can now understand what people are saying, the ending of this movie still kicks ass the second time around. I sort of hate it if I think about it—maybe?—but if I’m not thinking about it, it rules. Like hell yes, Shinji! The power of love! Save the girl! Destroy the… world? OK, sure, we all become our parents sooner or later.

Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance starts by introducing us to a new character, Mari, who fights an Angel in an unfinished Eva unit and wins.¹ As with Asuka’s introduction in the show, the Angel is attacking outside of NERV HQ because Kaji has something important in a suitcase. This time, the important thing is the “Key of Nebuchadnezzar,” not Adam, but Kaji delivers his cargo to Gendo just like before. And never fear, the introduction of Mari does not mean we don’t get Asuka; she arrives in all her glory and takes out an Angel in single combat.

There’s a middle section to this movie where we get to see the pilots hanging out and being kids, in a way that corresponds to the middle stretch of the show. It contains a subplot that is really, amazingly stupid, where Shinji is cooking lunches for everybody and then both Rei and Asuka decide to cook lunch for him and then they’re in like… a waifu competition, I don’t know. Asuka is definitely in a waifu competition. Rei seems to think that by mastering cooking she will bring Shinji and Gendo together. When she invites Gendo to a dinner party, he’s not going to go, but then he sees Yui admonishing him to take care of Shinji so he agrees to attend. Of the many parts of this subplot that are dumb, I think this moment is rock bottom, because like—really, this is the time you think “Yui wanted me to look after our son”? Not… all the other times?

But then American NERV disappears again, an extra unit is shipped over again, and a test pilot is needed again. On the very same day as the party. Asuka, knowing the party is important to Rei, volunteers to do the test. This means she’s the one in the unit when it goes crazy and she’s the one who almost dies when the dummy plug system takes over. She’s also out of commission when the next Angel shows up, but that’s all right because Mari shows up to go joyriding in Unit 02. Well, it’s not all right, actually, because Mari loses, despite going beast mode, and Rei also loses and gets taken over by the Angel. Shinji, who has run away after the dummy plug incident, comes back and saves Rei, who has resigned herself to death. When she tells him it’s okay, she can be replaced, he says she can’t: there’s only one Rei.

Rei is able to break free from the Angel and the power of love has triumphed, except this moment also causes the Third Impact and the world is going to end. Then the Lance of Longinus comes down from heaven and spears Unit 01. Kaworu descends from the heavens, vowing that this time he is going to make Shinji happy. End movie.

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One thing I can feel myself tediously fixating on as I watch these is why the things that are reproduced are reproduced. Kaji’s introduction is very different, but one of his first lines to Shinji remains a quip about how Misato sleeps at night. The reason she says it is different, but Rei still broods over her spontaneous use of “thank you” to Shinji and how she’s never said that to Gendo. The second of these seems like a clearly significant character moment and the other doesn’t, but here they both are.

Asuka shows up with a new last name and a new mental relationship with dolls; she doesn’t cry in her sleep now, and in general seems much less vulnerable and much more together, but she still crawls up next to Shinji because she’s lonely. Asuka and Rei get stuck in an elevator after Asuka’s piloting is threatened again, but this time when Asuka tries to slap her, Rei stops her hand.²

But, then, there are all the big differences. It’s not Toji in the rogue Eva, it’s Asuka. Eva 02 gets a new pilot, but it’s not Kaworu, it’s newcomer Mari. Etc. Which of these things matter, and which of them don’t? Which of these things have to happen every time, and which don’t? Does it matter that this version of Gendo seems, for a moment, to soften toward his son, agreeing to Rei’s weird dinner party plan? Or does it not really matter because Gendo’s plan now is to bring Shinji and Rei together and thus cause the Third Impact?

One reason all of this sticks in my mind is that the ending of this movie is basically the more awesome version of the ending of the last movie. Shinji runs away again. Shinji comes back again. Rei once again undertakes a dangerous mission with the goal of protecting Shinji (this time, so that he won’t have to pilot again). Shinji saves the day again and tells Rei that she matters to him as a person again. The degree to which this is the same ending is really underlined by the way Rei carries Shinji’s broken Walkman with her in the entry plug instead of Gendo’s broken glasses. There is a lot of looping and repetition going on here. The music that plays both when Shinji rescues Rei and when Shinji fails to rescue Asuka are both old standards, for instance.³

But I can’t really tell if all of this is going somewhere or if it’s just wasting my time. Like End of Evangelion, the Rebuild movies obviously exist as commentary on the phenomenon of Evangelion, and in that sense I can imagine even the waifu contest going somewhere eventually. But I don’t really care about Evangelion as a cultural event. I care about it as a work of art. Even if the ultimate goal is to send up nerds who want to see cute little Rei try to cook food, I don’t really understand why I need to be along for the ride, or even why it’s a good use of anybody’s time. At least End of Evangelion has the excuse of being in the moment.

Still, I am keeping an open mind. Maybe it’ll turn around. Maybe I’ll turn around.

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• In the show, Shinji and Kaworu were the world’s first straight male U-Haul lesbians and in the manga they were the world’s first “will they or won’t they” for being friends. Kaworu grimly saying that this time he is going to make Shinji happy… what new weird territory is being opened up here.

• Something I always wondered about in the show finally gets an answer. What are Rei’s pills? They are food, apparently.

• There’s a lot about this movie that is fun if I’m not thinking about it, but enraging if I am. Rei buying a kitchen knife and grimly staring at it is very funny. In the actual plot where Rei is trying to cook to make Shinji feel warm and fuzzy or whatever, I just feel like… what is this? What is this stupid bullshit?

• Mari showing up in this story with an apparent lack of interest in whatever the hell’s going on here reminds me kind of how sometimes you meet a group of people with a lot of history and you realize the most important thing you can possibly do is make sure you, yourself, don’t learn any of it. Do not absorb that information. They were all born the moment you came in the door.

• The Angels in this remain really unsettling and creepy. I am kind of glad to be watching these on my laptop and not like. At a movie theater.

• Misato gets much drunker in these movies.

• Something that bothered me: when Fuyutsyki says oh, the Angel is a “corruption type.” What do you even mean, man. You do not know enough about Angels to give them types.

• Mari is in a little add on to the Evangelion manga, the upshot of which, given her appearance here, seems to be that she is… an immortal lesbian. Or a clone. I guess she could be a clone. I prefer my version.

• The obligatory moments of Perv-O-Vision in this movie are really dancing close to the edge for me with some of these shots of Mari and Asuka… even if Mari is, as she seems to be, an immortal lesbian.

• I’m really grumpy! Grumpy about this movie, this post, etc. Sorry. If before I was cranky Pingu, now I feel like this cat:

  

1. Mari’s fighting style is, I think, notably more visceral than our three original pilots’—it’s actually a bit like the corrupted Unit 03’s. This is true even before her second fight, where she deliberately becomes beastly.

2. And then they make peace because they’ve both cut their hands up trying to use knives in their waifu contest.… shoot me. No, shoot whoever thought of this.

3. It’s almost as if you cannot advance….