Harry Potter and the Expanding Universe

Harry Potter often gets called "magical". For one thing, it's a series about magic, but the word often gets applied to the world and the story and the characters, too. Sometimes it even gets applied to the writing.
But the truly magical thing about Harry Potter is that it's universal. Everyone loves it. Male, female, young, old - everyone. People who have never read a book have read those books. People who have never watched a film have watched those films. The sheer number of people reached by that franchise is unprecedented. It's magical.
And, because every single one of those people gave Warner Bros. money, both they and their rivals have been trying to replicate that magic ever since.

The list of potential The Next Harry Potters is quite long and fairly depressing. Narnia, Dark Materials, Eragon, Lemony Snicket, Percy Jackson, Spiderwick Chronicles and many others all tried, and failed, to recapture the universal appeal of Potter. And that's just the ones based on books. Some of them were good, some of them were very very bad, but none of them managed anywhere near the numbers that their producers aimed for, let alone hoped for. The closest anyone's come at this point are The Hunger Games, which mostly appeals to girls, and Twilight, which mostly appeals to morons, so neither of them have the all-encompassing audience scope we're talking about.
The studios are getting so desperate now, and are so rapidly running out of books, that they're actually making a pornographic Twilight fanfic movie. The situation is dire.

Following the similar fates this year of Beautiful Creatures, Mortal Instruments, and the second Percy Jackson, Warner Bros. (who didn't make any of those, but were certainly watching) has come to the conclusion that no-one will ever be able to recreate the magic. So, in the absence of The Next Harry Potter, they're bringing back The Old Harry Potter.

Cynical as that intro is, I'm actually quite excited about this. In fact, shockingly, I'm more excited about this than I was about Star Wars Episode VII. More than I still am about Episode VII.

To clarify: I am an absolute squealing Star Wars fanboy, where I'm only a casual fan of Harry Potter. I think Potter is pretty good, but I adore anything Star Wars - so I'm a bit confused to find myself more interested in returning to the wizards than the Jedi.

What I think matters here is that, in both cases, it's the world that draws us in. The stories are good (mostly) and the characters are fun (mostly) but it's the worlds created around those things that really take hold of our imaginations.
The reason I prefer Star Wars is probably because that world is so much bigger and better-realised than Harry's - a whole exotic galaxy versus one castle in Scotland, a couple of houses and a government building. But, conversely, that may also be the reason I'd rather see more of Harry Potter.

The new film - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - is based on a small book that J.K. Rowling wrote for Comic Relief in 2001. The book is supposedly one of Harry's textbooks from school, with descriptions of the magical creatures found in Rowling's world and notes from Harry and Ron in the margins.
If that sounds like a terrible idea for a film, it's because it is. But from this starting point they seem to be extrapolating out a story about Newt Scamander, the fictional author of the book. I say "they" but I mean "she", because the screenplay's being handled by Rowling herself.

Now, that's pretty interesting. It makes my Star Wars comparison more apt, for one thing, because Harry Potter seems creator-controlled to an extent that only George Lucas has really managed before. Secondly, it's interesting because this is J.K.'s first movie script - she helped with the others but they were mostly penned by Steve Kloves - and I really want to see what she can do with it.
As the series went on, the books began to work better as films anyway - whether unconsciously or not, I think she wrote them with the film adaptation in mind. Deathly Hallows is my least favourite of the books by a huge margin, but was turned into among the best of the films. I'm quite excited to see how that will translate when she writes directly for the screen.

What excites me far more, though, is that we're finally getting out of that school. Hogwarts was great, don't get me wrong, and she did brilliant things with it (the Inquisition vs. Dumbledore's Army plot from Phoenix is probably my favourite thing in the whole series) but it severely limited the series' scope and the kind of stories it could tell.
One of the great many things that upset me about the final book is that we did, in fact, get out of the school, and the end of Half-Blood Prince seemed to hint at this huge exploratory quest across the wizarding world. I was so up for that! But then Hallows had maybe two new locations (both just houses) and otherwise they just revisited places we already knew or sat there in that bloody tent. It felt like such a waste.

Fantastic Beasts, on the other hand, will be set not just outside of Hogwarts, but outside of Britain. It opens in 1920's New York, apparently, which is already blowing this world wide open - other than one quick reference to Salem in Goblet of Fire, I'm not sure America's even been mentioned before.
The animals in the book version of Fantastic Beasts are found all over the globe, so if this is a film about Newt Scamander writing that book (which seems pretty likely) then it could almost be a globe-trotting Indiana Jones type story. Maybe that's too much to hope for, but it's certainly going to show us parts of this fictional world that we've never seen or heard about.
That's what's got me excited for more Harry Potter. Ever since we heard about Charlie Weasley (who works abroad with dragons) I've wanted to explore Rowling's world and learn more about it. And it looks like I may finally get that - Fantastic Beasts will be showing us far more of this world than the original stories, and that's fantastic.

The reason I'm less positive about returning to Star Wars is that, essentially, Episode VII seems to be doing the opposite.
The best thing about Star Wars, like Potter, is its world - its universe, if you prefer. A galaxy of magic-wielding samurai, space-pirates and innumerable planets each with their own crazy-looking aliens and cultures. Even when the story of Star Wars is not so good, the world it creates is never less than amazing.
Purely due to the size and strength of this world, Star Wars has almost limitless storytelling potential. You can pretty much tell any story you want, around the central ideas of interstellar conflict and the Force. Some of the best tales to come out of that world are the ones that have nothing to do with the main story of the films. The Knights of the Old Republic games, for instance, have fantastic stories, and are set thousands of years before any of the films even happen. The best episodes of The Clone Wars are the ones that deal with random squads of soldiers, or mercenaries, rather than the central characters or stories.
Episode VII had the potential to be about anything - they could have taken this story wherever they wanted. It could have been hundreds of years after Return of the Jedi, or on the other side of the galaxy, or going on at the same time but dealing with totally different characters and events. They had an entire universe to explore!

But the more we learn about Star Wars Episode VII, the less likely it seems that this is what they're doing. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and potentially even Harrison Ford are returning as the original cast, which ties us to a location and period barely removed from the original films. There's talk of continuing the story of the Skywalkers, which conclusively ended with Jedi and, if you really wanted more of it, got extended in various other media anyway. And finally, worst of all, they just announced a Yoda origin movie.

They've been talking about making standalone films in the Star Wars universe ever since they announced Episode VII. That sounded great, since "standalone" seems to imply independent stories like those best episodes of Clone Wars. For a few days it looked like they might make a Jedi-based Seven Samurai homage which, apart from being directed by my nemesis Zack Snyder, was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for!
It looks instead like "standalone" meant nothing of the sort. They're doing Yoda's origin, and it seems almost inevitable that Han Solo and (groan) Boba Fett will be next.
This, and the fact they're sticking with the Skywalkers, means that they're limiting the scope of new Star Wars movies to the stuff we've already seen. I fully expect Episode VII to have a sequence on Tatooine - a crummy, backwater desert planet that isn't important in any way, except that we've been there before. They have a huge universe to play with, but they're hiding in the same tiny corner of it that we've already explored.
It's the equivalent of making a ninth Harry Potter film about Albus Severus Potter (snigger) at school with Scorpius Malfoy, while also making an accompanying side-movie to explain the (presumably pretty unpleasant) origin of Hagrid the gamekeeper. It's obvious and uninspired and it doesn't really excite me at all.

Instead, J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. are finally making their universe larger, while Star Wars seem to be making theirs smaller. I want to see more of these worlds - I want them to surprise me and show me things I've never seen. I still believe that Episode VII could do that - it is Star Wars, after all - but Amazing Beasts is already doing it just with its premise.
And that's the whole point, isn't it. If the ideas behind your film are unique and interesting and capture the minds of enough people, then you could be on to The Next Harry Potter. It might even be magical.

Mangaphobia 03: The Movies of Evangelion

Last month, Mangaphobia tried to untangle the convoluted knot that is Neon Genesis Evangelion. It failed. To understand why it failed, check out this incredible easter-egg from the DVD, which helpfully lays it all out! Needless to say, this is not the kind of knot that can be unpicked. This kind of knot requires scissors.
The scissors in question are the various Evangelion films that have come out since, each of which tries to unravel the chaos of the series in different ways. The first two films present an alternative ending to replace the series' last two episodes which, you'll remember, were thrown together after they ran out of time and/or money. The rest of the films (currently three, but I've only seen two) constitute a full reboot of the series, starting the story from scratch. Let's look at those two approaches separately.


The End of Evangelion

Technically, the series' first film is a strange two-part compilation piece called Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth. We won't dwell on that one because the first half (Death) is a re-edited seventy-minute cut of footage from the series, presumably to get newcomers up to speed, and the second half (Rebirth) is just a preview of the first twenty-five minutes of the then-in-production second movie, The End of Evangelion.

The End of Evangelion (which finally drops all mention of noble gases from the title) also splits handily in two - with the first half covering the events leading up to the oft-discussed Third Impact, and the second half dealing with the catastrophe itself. One of these halves is surprisingly good, and the other is a nightmare. In more ways than one.

When the show began grinding to a halt, it was often easy to forget you were watching a giant robot show. About halfway through the series, the Angels stopped being animalistic monsters for the Evas to fight, and were instead often weird floating geometric shapes or fractals that shoot lazors. They looked cool and had some cool powers, but they didn't lend themselves to decent fight-scenes at all. The battles got shorter and less entertaining and the show began to focus on other things instead, like nonsensical lore and Shinji's lack of personality.
So when SEELE inevitably betray and attack NERV, as they were clearly always going to, we've almost forgotten about the mechs. With Rei missing, Shinji (being Shinji) ignoring the sirens and alarms, and Asuka bordering on comatose, the film itself doesn't remind us about the Evas either - all the fighting is between regular troops with maybe a couple of tanks or trucks.
When things finally do kick off - when Asuka flings a battleship across a lake and starts kicking helicopters out of the sky - it's like rain after a drought.

Watching the Evas fight blobby monsters through the series was satisfying, but seeing them pound real military hardware is somehow even more so. Maybe it's the scale, the novelty, or the real-world familiarity; but whatever it is it's awesome and it's my favourite fight in the series.
Then, when Asuka has singlehandedly destroyed all their dudes, SEELE send in their own squad of Evangelions. Nine identical white Evas with wings, broadswords, and freaky grinning lips (there's no longer any pretence that these are machines). And so we get our first battle between equally-matched Evas - there's even a brief swordfight in the middle - and it's as new and thrilling as the fight before it.

The absolute best thing about these battles, though, is that they finally conclude Asuka's character-arc. She started the series compensating for her fear and insecurity with a mask of bravado, but we slowly watched that confidence disintegrate to the point where she could barely control her robot. Then the series just ended, with no payoff for her (or anyone else's) story. Here, at last, we get to see her overcome her problems and finally become a fully rounded character - and a badass one, at that.
Asuka's is by far the most effective, but we also get closure for a couple of the other characters, too. Misato, who until now has dealt with all her problems by either shouting at them or sleeping with them, finally spurs Shinji into action by being honest and open for the first time - treating him as an equal rather than a child. She undermines this slightly by promising him sex afterwards, but it's still character-growth.
Later, we even get a tiny bit of lip-service to show that Gendo has realised and accepted what a monster he's become.
In all three of these cases the characters just flatly state their motivations out loud like they're in a David S. Goyer film. The dialogue is tone-deaf and unnecessary but, because it's driving both the characters and the narrative forward (and because this kind of clarity is so rare in Evangelion), it's incredibly welcome nonetheless.

Then, at exactly the halfway-point, Third Impact happens.

The reason SEELE are attacking NERV in the first place is to ensure that Third Impact begins their way, not Gendo's way. So, who wins? When it does begin, who causes it?
Confusingly, SEELE and Gendo and Shinji's Eva (but not Shinji himself) all seem to initiate Third Impact simultaneously but independently. Gendo's actions seem to maybe be the most significant, but I have no idea why.
How does he start this enormous, worldwide cataclysm, exactly? Why, by groping the pert, naked, underage breast of his wife's clone, of course. He's merged himself with Adam, apparently, so that makes it ok. Rei looks unhappy and lets out a gentle rapey sex moan and then the whole world goes totally mental.

When I say totally mental I mean stuff like this. And this. And particularly this.
There is tonnes of crazy nonsense from this point on, as those pictures should illustrate, but the main important details are that Rei merges with Lilith, who takes Rei's shape and grows to the size of the Moon, then Shinji's Eva becomes both a giant crucifix and a giant tree and also merges with Lilith-Rei, and then everyone melts. Everyone. In the world.
You see, our human bodies are held together by something called an AT-field, which is generated by our soul, and not by the molecular bonds that hold together normal animals and every other form of matter in the universe. Angels and Evas are powerful enough that they can actually project their field (or their pilot's?) for use as a weapon or shield. Oh, and it stands for Absolute Terror field, because why not. When, in the series, Shinji melted in his pilot-seat, that was his AT-field collapsing and that, on a global scale, is what happens now.

This, at last, is what SEELE meant when they talked about the Human Instrumentality Project: the removal of unconscious psychic barriers between individuals and a return to the primordial soup. One enormous sea of souls, with shared experience and emotion; it's the end of pain and suffering and, most of all, loneliness. It's even accompanied by an upbeat, happy song - presumably to show how wonderful and euphoric it is.
It's also utterly demented.

I'll give it this, though: crazy madness it may be, but at least it's clear. We understand what's happening at all times - though NERV's second-in-command does outright narrate most of it to us (how does he even know this stuff?) lest we get totally lost. For perhaps the first time, we clearly and unambiguously understand what is happening in Evangelion, even if we're still not quite sure why it's happening.

What I don't understand is the sudden and jarring use of sexual imagery. There's nothing wrong with using sexual imagery in itself (at least, not if you have a point to make), but when you've been using another type of imagery - say, religious imagery - as strongly and as frequently as this show has, why throw a different and previously unused kind of symbolism in there too? What are you trying to say with that?
I get that giant naked Rei would be giant and naked - that's fine, and it fits the themes of Adam and Lilith and humanity's return to Eden ("Neo-Genesis" is almost right there in the title) - but why does she swallow Shinji's painful-looking Eva-tree into her face-vagina? Why does she have a stomach-vagina and hand-vaginas, for that matter? Why must we demonstrate the breakdown of AT-fields by having her sat astride Shinji, basically her own son, with their bodies merged at the crotch? Why do SEELE's Evas, who for some reason now all have Rei's face, writhe and moan orgasmically as they impale themselves on their spears? Why does Gendo grab her boob?
How does any of this fit with the Biblical myth motif that we've stuck with until now? I want to believe there's a valid reason for it, symbolic or otherwise, but I'm honestly not seeing one. It just feels gratuitous and gross, especially since it's all Rei - a passive, emotionless, child-like sex-doll.

I have heard theories that this unpleasantness is actually intentional; that the show is subverting anime-viewers' desire (perhaps even expectation) for sexualised fanservice. By giving them exactly what they want, but putting it in a highly disturbing context, it makes those viewers uncomfortable and disgusted in themselves.
That's the theory. My only response is to quote Yahtzee Croshaw: "Talk about it being 'ironic' all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that someone's rubbing themselves off to it even as we speak."

Fittingly enough, The End of Evangelion opens with an infamous scene where Shinji masturbates over Asuka while she's unconscious and injured in the hospital.
Many people use this scene as the go-to example of everything that's wrong with anime. Personally, I have no problem with it. It's icky, absolutely, but it's a very intentional character beat - showing us that Shinji is, in his own words, "so fucked up".
What I do have a problem with - what is an example, for me, of everything wrong with anime - is that it took us twenty-six episodes to reach this point. That's roughly thirteen hours with this character and, after all that, our best and only understanding of him is that he's pretty messed up.
Even worse is that, after a further ninety minutes, that's still the best we've got.

It doesn't look that way, though. It really seems like Shinji might have an arc this time, like Asuka and Misato before him. Unfortunately, this potential arc is delivered via the same introspective dream-bollocks the series wasted so much of our time with. As Shinji is absorbed by Lilith, his consciousness merges with Rei's and they talk over his problems. Yet again.
Despite the movie's increased budget, these dream sequences still devolve into the same characters-talking-on-a-minimalist-background that the series ended with. We also get incoherent scenes from Shinji's childhood (maybe), a montage of crayon drawings and the backs of animation cels, a bizarre fight with Asuka in their flat and, worst of all, a sequence of live-action clips of real people going about their lives. That live-action sequence is actually rage-inducing, as Shinji and Rei have an entirely nonsensical voiceover discussion about the nature of dreams that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else in the film. Then, somehow, this navel-gazing causes giant-Lilith-Rei's neck to explode and she bleeds all over the Moon. Oh there you are, obnoxious ambiguity! We missed you.

Yet, tedious and annoying as this stuff is, Shinji does actually seem to be making headway as a character. He starts this psychoanalysis stuff unable to face life as an individual - it's all misery and pain, and everyone hates him. This comes to a head when he and imaginary Asuka have a weird argument that's mostly non-sequiturs, and he ends up strangling her. This is what drives Rei to make all the humans melt because, clearly, they just can't get along.
But then, after that insufferable live-action interlude, Shinji, straddled by his mother's naked clone child, begins to realise that life without individual people is no life at all; that his identity is defined by relationships to others. Without the potential for conflict, there is no potential for joy.
It's a simple, obvious point, but it's the closest this pretentious cartoon ever comes to being profound.

One interesting thing, for me at least, is that this is the complete opposite of the point the series was making. The original ending seemed to show Shinji embracing Instrumentality - welcomed into a communal dream-world by people both alive and dead. Here he rejects the process, choosing to remain an individual. I'm not sure what this change means exactly, but I thought it was interesting enough to mention.

With some basic truths finally figured out, Shinji's Eva bursts free from Lilith-Rei's eye (her normal eye, not her forehead vagina-eye) bringing an abrupt end to Third Impact. The giant Rei begins to fall apart, the souls go free, and Shinji's body reforms itself in Earth's new primordial sea. As he floats to the surface he has a positive life-affirming conversation with the soul of his dead mother (I've stopped trying to understand what, who or where her soul is at this point). Showing a hitherto unseen level of self-awareness, Shinji tells her that he'll always have doubts and fears about being alive, "But that's just stating the obvious, over and over."
Honestly, Shinji says that. Finally, this character seems to have evolved. He found some of the answers he was after, he figured out his crippling insecurity, he got closure with his mother, and he decided life is worth living. Character development! I may not have liked much of the fourteen hours it took us to get here, but I'm willing to give it a pass because, in the end, we did complete the main character's arc. There was a point to all this. That, at least, is something.

Except, of course, that the film's not over. There's one last scene, later, as Shinji wakes up on a beach of the new sea, with the remains of Rei's giant head decomposing in the background. He's lying beside an unconscious Asuka, who must also have reformed herself from the goo. Then, in a sequence designed to mirror the opening masturbation scene (random shots of the scenery over Shinji's quiet grunting) he strangles her. Just as he did in the dream, before he figured himself out. Then, when she unexpectedly moves, he stops and just cries pathetically to himself. Then Asuka calls him disgusting. Because he is.
Why does he do these things? What reason has this film given us for him to do them? There's only one answer we have: because he's pretty messed up. This is not a new, less insecure Shinji; it's exactly the same confused mess of a character from the start of the film. Which means that, ultimately, this is the same confused mess of a cartoon that it always was.

With that, all goodwill that The End of Evangelion earned evaporates. It gives us a great first half, with some of the best action and character-beats of the entire series - it even clarifies some of the show's more obscure loose ends - but then falls back into the same cycle of pretentious, repetitive nonsense. There's some imaginative imagery but, ultimately, it's just a meaningless parade of giant white boobs.
This film dealt with enormous, life-changing, world-shattering events. And Shinji learnt nothing from them. It seems Evangelion learnt nothing from them, either.


Rebuild of Evangelion

Ten years after the disappointing end of End of, Evangelion got rebooted. Still developed and created by much the same team that worked on the original version, Rebuild of Evangelion would be a series of four films that would retell the entire story in a shorter form with better production values. I was planning to avoid it - this franchise has wasted more than enough of my time - but, since the whole point of Mangaphobia is to give this stuff the benefit of the doubt, I clenched my teeth, downed a pint, and watched it anyway.

At the time of writing, the first three Rebuild movies have been released, but I have only been able to get hold of the first two. The first film is either called Evangelion: 1.0 or Evangelion: 1.11 - both titles are used and I don't know what the difference is - both with the subtitle You Are (Not) Alone. Because it just wouldn't be Evangelion without a title that doesn't mean anything.
1.1 is essentially the first five or six episodes of the series crammed into ninety minutes, with a few minor design changes (see: Lilith) and improved visuals. There's more CGI, for one thing, and some of the backgrounds are improved. It's basically the same, though, with the majority of it either using or possibly tracing the same animation.
I won't dwell on it, except to say that it's weird being reminded how great this show was at the beginning, back when it was fresh and interesting and full of promise. Maybe it's because this is streamlined into movie format, losing all the unnecessary stuff, or maybe it was always this good. Either way, the mysteries haven't gone stale and the characters haven't started annoying us yet. I still hated Shinji, of course, but that was residual hate from my prior knowledge, not because of anything he actually does in the film.
1.00 is good, in other words.

Then I watched Evangelion: 2.22 (or maybe 2.0) You Can (Not) Advance and, from the very beginning, it's clear that the game has changed.
We open with not just a sequence we've never seen before, but a character we've never seen before using an Eva we've never seen before to fight an Angel we've never seen before in a location we've never seen before. After a first film that stuck so close to the series, 2.20 is very very different. There are a few beats and events that we recognise, but they play out nothing like they did originally. This thing is very much its own beast.

It's not just different in the events of its story, either - its entire approach to telling that story is different. For instance: I now understand Second Impact. If you read my first post you'll understand just how big a deal that is. I don't yet know exactly what happened (in fact, what happened in Rebuild seems substantially different to what happened in the series) but I finally understand the significance and meaning of the event.

Second Impact was the literal wrath of God.

Whatever form the events took (the oceans turned to blood, for one thing) they left humanity with absolutely no doubt that God is real and that He is vengeful. This is something that becomes apparent while Misato says Grace and eats her lunch, and that unassuming little scene explains so damn much. This is a world where religion is an accepted fact - where it would influence everything, from science (souls, AT-fields) to business (SEELE, NERV) to politics (the Eva project, Instrumentality). This is a world where it actually makes sense to follow the instructions of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It explains everything.
Finally, after sixteen hours of dancing around its own premise and never giving an inch, Evangelion just hands us the information we need to put everything together, and it all suddenly clicks into place.

This was such a shock to the system that I wasn't really sure what was going on any more - and it was far from the only shock. Rei was smiling and showing emotion; Asuka was openly expressing her feelings; Gendo was acting like a human being; Shinji was displaying social-skills and even had friends! What the hell was I watching?!

The friends in question are a couple of boys from school, who Shinji saved from an Angel in the first film. He saved them in the series, too, but then one of them was almost immediately involved in a horrible event which almost killed him, and we never saw either of them again. In this film we actually get to see Shinji and these guys hanging out and having fun - Shinji actually has a personality, it seems, and he's beginning to come out of his shell.
The same horrible event does occur here, too, but it doesn't happen to a minor side-character - it happens to Asuka. This comes just as the three pilots are really starting to connect and bond, so the shock of the event, and its effect on Shinji, are far more powerful and earned than they were in the series. In both versions, it causes Shinji to quit - but where, in the series, he returned to NERV apparently on a whim, in Rebuild he makes a very conscious decision to go back and help Rei. It's driven by character choice, not by story requirement.
2.02 ends, incredibly, with Shinji Ikari personally causing Third Impact through sheer force of will, driven by his overwhelming determination to save Rei. This is pretty much the polar opposite of the passive introvert sociopath he's always been until now. In End, I considered it progress when Shinji learned the simplest of life-lessons, but now here he is reshaping the world through his own agency and choices.
I can't believe I used to hate this guy!

Evangelion: 2.202 is a revelation. It's what Evangelion always should have been. This cartoon always had such potential, but the show just left it there to stagnate. 2.2 is what that potential looks like when it's actually realised.
The characters are multi-layered and relatable, neither of which were true before, and they progress and change along actual arcs. Those arcs are then intertwined with the main arc of the story, so that the drama is always personal and engaging, and we always feel meaningful stakes. There's perhaps less fights - the Angels are mostly of the weird-geometric-shape variety - but the action is always informed by character and the final battle is spectacular and huge. It still has mysteries and weird mythology, but they're less invasive and, thanks to our better understanding of the world and our newfound investment in the characters, we find them more engaging. Actually, because of the new girl and her unknown agenda, even the mysteries are grounded in character.
After getting so much wrong for so long, it's ridiculous how much this movie gets right.


It's barely one month since I started Mangaphobia, and already this project is paying off. Left to my own devices, I would have stopped watching after The End of Evangelion and never looked back. But, because of the pledge I made on this blog, I forced myself onwards and actually found a smart, engaging anime that I really enjoyed. It's a start!

I'm now completely torn on whether or not to hunt down a copy of Evangelion: 3.?! You Can (Not) Redo. On the one hand, the Rebuild series seems to be blossoming into something fairly special but, on the other hand, I've been burnt by this franchise before. Twice.
It can't be long until Shinji starts repeating his issues ad nauseam and Rei starts growing extraneous vaginas, and I don't want to be there when that happens. But, on yet another hand, the preview shows Asuka looking badass with an eyepatch, and I would very much like to be there when that happens.

I think, rather than watching it now and having to write the third Evangelion post in a row, I'll hold off watching the third movie until the fourth one, Evangelion: Final, is released and I can watch them both together. I hope they change that title, though, because It Does (Not) Conform.

Elysium Review

In 2009 a weird little film came seemingly out of nowhere and blew my mind. It's such a bonafide classic that I seriously can't believe it was only four years ago. Chances are it blew your mind too. District 9 blew a lot of minds.
With it, semi-South African director Neill Blomkamp delivered one of the smartest, tightest science fiction movies in recent memory. A social allegory about apartheid, prejudice and xenophobia, using fantastical elements to comment on current real-world issues, it followed in the great tradition of sci-fi but did so without once becoming ponderous or slow - grabbing our attention with an inventive documentary style and propelling us into a world that could so easily be our own. District 9 felt deeply tangible and immediately relevant, staying with you and asking probing questions.

Blomkamp's second film, Elysium, is not like that.

Elysium does draw ideas from current social issues in a similar way - healthcare, immigration, capitalism, reliance on computerisation and the unfair distribution of wealth all play major parts - but, unlike District 9, the movie doesn't necessarily comment on them. They're used in the construction of this world and its story, but not in a way that can really translate to our own. Where the attitudes and politics in District 9 felt current and realistic, the ones in Elysium are pushed to absolute, fictional extremes.
This is a bleak future where Earth has become overcrowded and poluted, and the privileged few - the 1% - have retreated to a designer space-station called Elysium. While the rest of humanity struggle and suffer in Earth's wretched slums, the citizens of Elysium have lives that are carefree, decadant and, thanks to miraculous med-pods, free of disease and disability. This status quo is maintained by Earth's robot police state (controlled from Elysium) and by Jodie Foster's heartless defence secretary, Jessica Delacourt, who has no qualms about shooting down unarmed ships full of desperate refugees.
It's easy to see how this world ties into real issues, but it's equally obvious how cartoonishly extreme it all is. It's also a world that quickly falls apart if you look at it for long. The omnipotent med-pods almost completely break the premise - there's no conceivable reason they wouldn't also exist on Earth, and none is given - and a few points involving computers left me totally bewildered. It's hardly the flimsiest premise of the summer (in fact it’s one of the sturdiest) but the problems are there.

Luckily, while the premise is shaky, the details are exquisite. Blomkamp makes this world a real lived-in place, whether in Elysium’s gleaming corridors or the grimy, sun-bleached Earth. It’s a world with graffiti on the walls where every prop - from the weapons to the clothes to the ships to the robots - looks like it belongs in this place, and has done for years. This worldbuilding extends to the characters too; both the main cast and supporting bit-parts are real people with real lives happening in and around this story.
The character we follow through that story is Matt Damon’s Max, an ex-thief now working in a factory, building the self-same enforcement robots that we first see breaking his arm for backchat. Following an industrial accident, Max is blasted with radiation and told that he only has a few days left to live. With nothing left to lose he dons a strength-enhancing mechanical exoskeleton and vows to reach Elysium, at any cost, where he knows the equipment exists to save him.
This story would be compelling enough alone, but it becomes entangled in a larger political struggle on Elysium which pushes the stakes much much higher. The film never loses sight of the personal struggles at its core, though, with Max and others all personally invested for their own reasons. Max is surprisingly selfish, in fact, like District 9’s Wikus before him, but because we understand why (this is certainly a world that would breed selfishness) and because Damon is just so good in the role, we’re always behind him.

Also keeping us on Max’s side is the fact that the villains are downright despicable. Foster's Delacourt is a nasty piece of work - the embodiment of Elysium’s elitist cruelty - but her dirty work is handled by a mercenary named Kruger, played with insane glee by Blomkamp’s usual partner Sharlto Copley. Kruger is a psychopath - introduced as a murderer and a rapist - who only works for the authorities because it lets him kill without consequence. He’s genuinely scary, becoming more and more unhinged as the film goes on, and ever more determined to take Max down.

It’s sometimes easy to forget that, on top of the clever allegory and everything else that’s going on, District 9 is also a terrific action movie. As Max clashes with Kruger - and with various robots too - we realise that Elysium is the direct extension of that. The reason that the themes here are not as deeply explored as Blomkamp’s debut is that, first and foremost, Elysium is an action film. And it’s a damn good one.
The fighting is tight and close, feeling personal and exhilarating. Whether punching a robot or blasting at Kruger with a railgun, the violence is always emotional and driven by character. It’s also brutal - Max fails a lot more than he succeeds, even in his exo-suit, and he spends much of the film on his back, bleeding and bruised, which isn’t always the case for action heroes. We never get fatigued, however, because the action is constantly changing and introducing new and inventive elements - there are katanas and energy-shields and an awesome gun that fires exploding scatter-bullets.
The effects involved - the CGI ships and robots hunting Max - are gorgeous, looking every bit as real as the practical ones we see in Max’s factory. Elysium itself, a ringworld hanging just at the edge of space, looks wonderful, and there’s a fantastic stop-motion-looking med-pod sequence that I’m not going to spoil. The entire film looks amazing, honestly, from prop design to lighting to the way the action's shot. There's some interesting choices, like filming the space scenes in a handheld style and using some strange proto-bullet-time tricks during fights, but they're always engaging and they add to the rough, lived-in texture the film already has.

My one complaint - my only complaint, beyond the dodgy premise - is that, gorgeous as this film is, it looks just like Mass Effect. Everything from the robots to the orange computer interfaces looks exactly like those games. And Elysium itself doesn't just look like the Presidium, it is the Presidium, both within its white corridors and outside in its gardens. This is probably (hopefully) just a coincidence, but when Kruger starts shouting threats in a garbled South African accent, it's a coincidence that's impossible to ignore.
But in the end everything, including any unfortunate similarities to game franchises, comes together into one phenomenal experience.

No, Elysium is not as good as District 9. But, then, the last film I saw that was as good as District 9 was District 9. Despite drawing from social issues to build its world, Elysium is aiming no higher than just delivering an exhilarating action film - which it manages with violent ease. The fact that the setting and characters feel so real, that we care about everything we see on screen, and that this film can spark conversations about current affairs, show just how much smarter it is than the action we normally settle for.

+2 Blog of Recommendation

It has been a loooong time since I last rolled a d20.
Ok that's not strictly true, since my siblings and I occasionally run quick games together; but it’s been many years since I was involved in anything that could be called a real campaign.

Last week, that changed. Some friends have begun a fortnightly Pathfinder quest, and it's already been great fun - in just the first session, our druid threw his wolf at a robber. He threw his wolf. You can play Skyrim until the end of time, but you’ll still never get to fling a vicious canine at a guy flailing around on buttery stairs. I’d almost forgotten how freeing and inventive tabletop games can be, and I’d almost forgotten how great that is.
If you want to get a taste for yourself how great it can be (and also how badly the rulebooks are written) then our GM - the multi-talented omni-geek Emily King - is chronicling our adventures for all to enjoy. The Roleplay Diaries are just one small part of the collaborative Hex Dimension website, so take a look at some of their other nerdery while you’re there. Unlike my stuff, their articles are both insightful and quick to the point!

Coincidentally, while we’re on the subject of tabletop gaming, another friend has recently started playing Magic: The Gathering, and he’s also started a blog to follow his progress. Magic’s something I have dipped my toes into but, along with Warhammer and the Pokémon card-game, I’ve discovered I’m simply way too cheap to keep buying booster-packs and cards to keep up with the competition. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the mechanics of the game from the sidelines, and Tap for Awesome is a good place to do it! It can be a monstrously complicated game, but Mark clearly lays it out so it’s not that hard to follow - give it a look if you’ve ever been interested. He’s threatening some comics-related posts in the future, too, so I look forward to those.

I hope that’s given people some new and interesting content to chew on. As for the content here at NerdTech, we're seeing Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 follow-up Elysium this weekend. Look out for that review soon, and yet more Evangelion shortly after. Until then, may you all throw natural 20s.
Failing that, throw a wolf.

Mangaphobia 02: Neon Genesis Evangelion

I admittedly haven't seen much anime - that is the whole point of these blogs, after all - but, even so, there are certain repeating ideas that even I can't help noticing crop up again and again. In the handful of sci-fi I've seen, for instance, the world has almost always been ravaged by some ill-defined catastrophe in the recent past. A world-changing disaster that everyone knows about but never really talks about. If I had a better grasp of Japanese culture I might be more confident saying why - but it seems likely that, like Godzilla, this is an echo of the atom bomb.
Mentioning only stuff I've seen and remembered (which isn't much) Akira had the Akira Incident, Nadesico had the Jovian War, and last episode's Cowboy Bebop had something called the Astral Gate Accident. In Evangelion (or Neon Genesis Evangelion to give it its full, meaningless nonsense title) something terrible happened fifteen years before the series - an event called "Second Impact" - which irreparably altered the lives of everyone on Earth.
All of these apocalyptic events are kept ambiguous and vague - we know only that they happened and that they were very bad - but where Akira is ambiguous because no-one really knows what happened, Bebop is vague because the Accident doesn't actually affect the story, and Nadesico is secretive because the details of the War are being actively covered up, Evangelion withholds everything about Second Impact just for the sake of being withholding! Everything that happens in the show is a direct consequence of that event - it informs every facet of this world and its characters - yet we're never told, even in broad terms, what it actually was.

That's one of Evangelion's two main problems in a nutshell. Nothing is ever clearly explained at any point. Ambiguity is fine in small doses, but when every single thing is kept uncertain and unclear, nothing ever means anything. Naturally this is less of a problem at the start of the series than the end - as the early mysteries seem as though they might lead somewhere, and maybe even have solutions that make sense. But no, when we reach the big expository reveal scenes later on, they're just as ambiguous as the questions they attempt to answer.
Take a scene near the end of the series, for example, where we discover that one of the characters is a clone (which we'd already guessed anyway). We end up in a laboratory full of identical girls floating in tanks, all dead-eyed and unmoving. These are empty human husks, we are told, that contain no soul. Now, the specifics are about as clear as mud, but I think the clone we know as a character does have a soul - I'm pretty sure it's the soul of the main character's dead mother, or possibly a clone of that soul, but that doesn't make any sense and how did they get hold of a dead woman's soul either way? It's possible the clone girls may actually be bodily clones of the mother, too, but that's somehow even less clear.
While a bit confusing, it's at least semi-coherent - but then it plunges into the abyss. We're told that these clones are secretly being used as autopilots, even though they're just lifeless shells, and even though the autopilots we've seen in action were psychotic automated murder-bots. This is presented as the shocking answer to the big autopilot mystery (one character almost says exactly that), but I didn't realise the autopilot was ever a mystery in the first place (I assumed it was just that - an autopilot) and, even if it was a mystery, this solution solves absolutely nothing and just makes the already mega-confusing mythology even more murky and incoherent! When the series is over, we understand far far less than we ever did before.

It's the same mistake Prometheus makes: not explaining everything is not the same as never explaining anything. A few mysteries, like the exact origins and motives of the monstrous Angels, can actually benefit from ambiguity - but there's no benefit to being equally vague about important central story questions like, say, what the hell are the goddamn Evangelions, anyway? I read online that they might be yet more clones of Shinji's mother and, if that is the case, then I really have no idea what this show is even about.

So what is it about?
Xenon Genesis Evangelion is about a teenage boy called Shinji Ikari who, after receiving a message from his long estranged father, goes to meet him for the first time in years. He arrives just as a giant monster attacks the city, and it turns out his father doesn't want to talk or reconnect - he just needs Shinji to pilot a giant robot for him. Because, naturally, only certain teenagers have the ability to synchronise with these mechs. Shinji's understandably reluctant and more than a little unhappy with his dad (there's screaming and tears), but eventually he goes along with it and somehow beats the monster attacking the city - albeit getting his robot torn to pieces in the process. Shinji agrees to keep piloting, despite utterly hating the experience, and from here we meet the various other pilots, scientists and soldiers that make up the anti-monster military agency NERV.

Simple as that sounds, we're actually hammered with mythology and mysteries from the very beginning. The robot in question is an Evangelion (or Eva), which is definitely part-organic and quite possibly alive; the monster is an Angel - one of several unearthly attackers prophesised by the Dead Sea Scrolls; NERV is controlled by some shadowy organisation called SEELE, who pretty clearly have an ulterior motive for all this; and there's something very fishy about the ethereal Rei Ayanami, NERV's other Eva pilot (spoiler: she's a clone).
On top of that plot-relevant stuff, there's also a whole host of Christian imagery and references used - from the names of NERV's three supercomputers (Casper, Melchior and Balthasar) to the Angel exploding in a cross-shaped beam of light when it's killed.

At first, that Christian stuff just seems to be decorative - adding some interesting flavour to this world and its imagery - but as the series progresses, we find that it goes much deeper than that.
The first clue, seen above, is an off-hand mention of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is a science-fiction mecha show where the soldiers and scientists are getting their information from a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old real-world religious text.
That's... odd. It gets odder still when we learn later that SEELE's entire shady gameplan is to doggedly following the Scrolls to the letter, for no readily apparent reason.

Things finally go from odd to batshit when Shinji's commander - a woman called Misato Katsuragi - takes him into NERV's cavernous basement and shows him a giant blobby monster-thing that they keep down there nailed to a cross. This is an ancient and powerful being called Lilith - the first wife of Adam in real-life Biblical myth (Lilith was created equal to Adam and refused to do his bidding, so God replaced her with the inferior and subservient Eve). Lilith and Adam (another giant monstery thing) are important because they're somehow involved in the unclear events of First and Second Impact (First Impact being a similar event that happened millions of years ago and kickstarted life on Earth... I think). It seems like this stuff is common knowledge, too, because Shinji doesn't freak out or ask any questions about the insane things he's being shown.

A big problem with all this is that we have no idea how literal Evangelion is being. Sometimes people in the show talk about this stuff like it's a metaphor - like Lilith and Adam are our genetic ancestors in an evolutionary sense - and other times it sounds entirely literal - like they are literally the direct progenitors of the human race. We learn later on that the Angels are God's various prototypes for humans, before He settled on our own tiny, weak, fleshy design. I can only assume that's meant exactly as it sounds, because I have no idea how else it could be meant. This is a cartoon where people are following the literal instructions of Biblical texts, yet the same people have developed a very non-religious, scientific definition of the soul.
Souls, by the way, are incredibly important to every aspect of this mythology, and are the most inadequately explained aspect of the whole mess.

Getting back to the story, Misato explains that the Angels are attacking in an attempt to reach Lilith and that, if they ever succeeded, doing so would cause the hypothetical Third Impact, which would be much bigger than Second Impact, but probably still just as ambiguous and unclear.
What's weird is that when SEELE's sinister motives are finally revealed, their endgame is also to cause Third Impact - beginning something called the Human Instrumentality Project, which will bring about "the next stage in human evolution" (a phrase which always makes my brain bleed). Why did they pour their worldwide resources into stopping the Angels if they ultimately wanted the same thing? Well, because the Dead Sea Scrolls told them to, probably. Those guys seriously have no motive beyond fulfilling ancient prophecies.
It's ok, though, because Gendo Ikari, Shinji's absent father and leader of NERV, knows what SEELE are up to and has no intention of letting them get away with it. It turns out he had his own secret plan all along: to initiate Human Instrumentality by causing Third Impact!
Wait...

All three major factions in this programme want the same thing - namely the end of the world. It's possible that it will happen in slightly different ways depending on which party actually succeeds, but it's still pretty damn hard to root for anyone when the thing they're fighting over is who gets to press the big red apocalypse button.

The answer to this should be obvious. If we can't root for NERV or SEELE or the Angels, then we should be rooting for Shinji and Misato and the other characters who are just doing their jobs and fighting monsters and aren't trying to bring about the end of the world. But that brings us to the second major problem with Argon Genesis Evangelion: there really aren't any characters. What there are instead is cardboard cutouts defined by one trait and one trait alone, who never progress or change or learn anything.
Shinji is scared of everything - Angels, responsibility, death, change - but mainly he's afraid of human interaction. Gendo loves his dead wife and feels nothing else, which is why he doesn't care about his son and why he's only nice to Rei who is carrying his wife's soul (probably). Misato is good at her job and bad at her life, with problems in all her personal relationships. Rei is an actual cardboard cutout, with seemingly no emotions or personality - a hollow, empty robot, despite being the only clone with a soul. That's it! You now know everything there is to know, in the entire series, about every one of those characters.
The only others in the show are the third and final Eva pilot - a German girl with the very German-sounding name of Asuka Soryu - and NERV's head scientist - a woman I neither know the name of nor care enough to find out. These two are unusual in that they almost have character arcs - but really they are just as paper-thin as the others; it only looks like an arc because they hide their one-note personalities behind a mask of cocky overconfidence and scientific detachment respectively. In Asuka's case (it's pronounced "Oscar") this psychological armour falls away slowly over the series, revealing a little girl who is, if anything, even more terrified of life than Shinji. The scientist just seems to be a bit cold until, near the end, it's suddenly revealed out of nowhere that she's (a) sleeping with and possibly in love with Gendo and (b) stressed, depressed, violent, suicidal and crazy. These two are still shallow, unchanging characters - they just pretend to be different shallow, unchanging characters for a while.

It's been proven already this year that you don't need particularly deep or complex characters to make an awesome giant robot story. Pacific Rim doesn't really have much in the way of character arcs either - the archetypal characters simply do their thing - but it differs from Evangelion in two major respects.
Firstly, the characters are relatable. It's important to realise that isn't the same as "likable" - it just means that we can understand their mindset and why they act the way they do. Shinji, at first, is a highly relatable character. He has issues with his parents (don't we all?) and he's flung into a terrifying situation that he doesn't understand and is told he must do something he doesn't know how to do. For the first few episodes, we are very much on Shinji's side, because we understand exactly how he feels, and we’re interested in watching him rise to the challenge and seeing what kind of character he will become. But he never rises. He just wallows in self-pity and stagnates. He passively goes along with whatever he's told, and then cries about it later. We don't understand what he wants or feels anymore - he never rises to the challenge, but he never rebels against it either. He doesn't act like we would or like anyone we have ever met would. We can't relate to this guy at all beyond those first few episodes and, after that, he mainly just frustrates us as viewers. I was shouting at the screen more than a few times as I was forced to watch Shinji struggle again and again with not making any choices.
I hated him, by the end. I really really hated the main character and his total lack of agency. I didn't understand him or anything he did or (more frequently) didn't do. It's awful. All of the characters are awful, in fact. I couldn't stand any of them, because their motivations are never relatable at all - I couldn’t understand why anyone did what they did or made the choices they made. Looking back at the list above, the only ones that resemble real people are Misato and maybe Asuka - and Asuka frustrates us anyway because she just slowly turns into Shinji.

The second difference here is that Pacific Rim knows that its characters, while relatable, are shallow and silly. It doesn't dwell on them beyond a few basic flashback scenes. It tells us who they are, then it gets on with the story. Evangelion, on the other hand, seems to think its characters are incredibly deep and worthy of extra exploration. We spend what feels like forever psychoanalysing Shinji - literally, with him sat talking about himself to unseen observers - even though his psyche is about as deep as a puddle.
Shinji is scared of rejection, so he closes himself off from people, which makes people reject him, which makes him even more scared, which drives him even further into himself until he is insufferably insular and passive. That's it - that's all there is to Shinji Ikari - and every single viewer has worked that out by this point. It's not hard. We worked it out, funnily enough, by observing his decisions and interactions with the people around him - which is traditionally how you're supposed to explore character in narrative fiction. If you have to spend an entire episode inside a character's head, monologuing about their own personality, then you are doing it wrong. If you have to spend four or five episodes doing that, with a character that can be decisively summed-up in one sentence, then you probably shouldn't be writing stories in the first place. Shinji just repeats that single motivation (or demotivation, since it drives him to indifference and inaction) over and over again. There's an episode somewhere near the midpoint where he synchronises so perfectly with his mech that he physically becomes one with it - melting into a liquid in his pilot-seat (don't worry, he gets better). While he's dissolved into his Eva, his consciousness (soul?) goes on a voyage of self-discovery - which means we get to see how many different ways the writers could come up with to keep repeating the same thing. One way they found to keep it interesting is to have him talk over erotic dream images of the female cast, including the infantile clone of his own mother - so we do learn that he objectifies women, which I suppose is something we didn't know before. But that's about it.
When this godawful introspection is over, he seems to maybe have learned something from it. His body reforms itself when his soul comes to some kind of conclusion, so it looks almost like character growth. But in the next episode we're straight back to the same, inexplicably hopeless Shinji - and we're straight back to wanting to cave in his head with a brick. For me, this was the final nail in the coffin of the show's credibility. Which is probably for the best, because it meant I wasn't expecting much in the way of an ending.

At the end of the series, after NERV beat the final Angel - a white-haired anime girly-man with whom Shinji has a homoerotic friendship (obviously) - the studio ran out of either time, money, or both. There was no way they could patch together a satisfying ending (or any other kind of ending) so they didn't even try. The last two episodes, instead, are a bunch of floaty images on white backgrounds while Shinji talks about his issues. Or, rather, his one issue. Again. And again. And again.
This is actually painful at this point. We can't take any more - so two whole episodes of it feels like torture. Or maybe punishment for our sins - the show is certainly big on that Wrath of God stuff! There's a weird bit where we see the characters in some kind of school-comedy version of the show, where Shinji sees what his life would be like without the Evas, but I don't even remember what we learned from it and I certainly didn't care. I just wanted this stupid nonsense to be over.

The abstract weirdness of these two episodes isn't actually as out of place as it sounds, since the programme has been getting weirder and weirder for quite some time. It's implied (though I don't remember exactly how) that what we are watching is the Human Instrumentality Project in action - that, after the last Angel, SEELE caused Third Impact, and this is Shinji's introduction to their brave new world. Eventually, when the end finally, mercifully comes, Shinji meets up with everyone he's ever known - alive or dead - on a blue asteroid floating in the whiteness. They applaud and welcome him with open arms - Gendo even smiles. It's all very lovely and symbolic. And, because Second Impact, Third Impact, and Human Instrumentality were never properly explained or defined, none of it means a damn thing.

Brightly-Coloured Genesis Evangelion is, more than anything else, a hellishly frustrating experience. It has such obvious and wonderful potential which it never even comes close to paying off. It begins so strong - with characters we think we understand and relate to, interesting themes and symbolism, intriguing concepts and mysteries, and hints of a deep, complex mythology - and then it squanders every single one of those things by never advancing them further than those initial ideas. The characters don't progress, the themes don't lead anywhere, the mysteries don't get solved, and the mythology never makes any sense at all. At the start I really thought it was going to work; at the end I don't think it worked on any level.

It’s also not done me any good in terms of opening up to Japanese animation. I watched this show at university because people kept saying it might change my mind, but it actually just reinforced every half-baked prejudice I had. This is a giant robot show where the main characters go to a sailor-suited school together and the hapless male character is surrounded by a harem of fetishised women. Much as I love giant robots, that's three eye-rolling anime clichés right there in the concept.
On top of that, the production values and animation fluctuate wildly, which is another thing that always annoys me about anime. It has great, dynamic fights - but these become fewer and shorter as time goes on, and they're punctuated by standing and talking scenes where no-one moves for minutes at a time. Gendo almost always sits with his fingers arched in front of his face, which means they couldn't even be bothered to animate his mouth. Whenever he talks we're basically looking at one static image! That's not even mentioning the cheap slideshow that passes for a conclusion.
It has those jarring anime swerves in tone, acting morbidly serious all the time, except when it's the complete opposite - look, Misato is drunk and she has an adorable pet penguin called Pen-Pen, haha! And, of course, it has the other kind of "humour" where Shinji goes to Rei's flat and somehow ends up in her underwear drawer and then she comes out of the shower practically naked and then he ends up on top of her somehow and why the hell is this scene happening? And why is there a beach episode - why is there always a sodding beach episode?
Unfairly, I even dismissed the storytelling as being "too anime". When I talked about Cowboy Bebop, I said the storytelling felt more western, in that it was familiar and comfortable. The storytelling in Evangelion is the complete opposite - alien and strange. It’s obscure and unhelpful and confusing, and it refuses to give the viewer anything on which to build a coherent picture of the plot. The character work is equally alien, apparently assuming we’ll be interested in these characters just because they are the characters and not because we understand or feel any empathy for them.
Oh, and there’s that skinny white-haired ponce.

But Evangelion’s biggest sin is not anime-specific; it’s that it just comes off as pretentious. It seems to think it’s being oh so clever, when in fact it’s saying nothing at all. We spend multiple episodes just exploring Shinji’s personality, to no real end other than to force some psychology in there and not gain anything from it. The same goes for the Christian stuff - or even the non-denominational spiritual stuff like "souls" - in that it seems to be incorporating huge universal ideas of religion and meaning, then doing nothing with them. It doesn’t draw any conclusions about anything, and it seems almost proud of that fact. Like Lost or (you guessed it) Prometheus. Sure, you can find meaning in it - if something is vague enough then you can find pretty much any meaning you want. "Open to interpretation" can be intentional and thought-provoking, but it can just as easily be a crutch. I know which it feels like here.

So, at last, we come to the end of this monstrous post. It ended up a lot longer than I intended, but I hope you stuck with it and made it to the end. I also hope you enjoyed it because, if not, I have some bad news: I’m not done with Evangelion just yet. There’s more. After the phenomenally poor ending of the series, enough money was made to create an alternative version which, if nothing else, wouldn’t just be a whiteout with floating images. Then, after that, they rebooted the whole series.
I had hoped I could squeeze all this into one post, but (as I’m sure you’ll agree) this has already gone on for way too long. Instead, the next episode of Mangaphobia will take a look at all this stuff, and I think you might be surprised. Hopefully that post will be up some time next week, and hopefully it will be a lot shorter than this one.

Until then, to sum everything up, I will leave you with the same question that I posed over three-thousand words ago: what the hell are the goddamn Evangelions, anyway?
To begin with, we think they’re partly-organic machines, but it becomes quickly apparent they’re mostly, or maybe entirely organic. They're basically giant humans with metal plates on the outside to make them look like robots. They are humanity brought to its full potential, we're told. Except we’re also told they’re clones of Adam; or possibly Lilith (or possibly Shinji’s mother). We do know that it's your soul that synchs to the Eva, not your body or mind. But if you synch too well the thing goes feral, meaning that... the Eva is in control of the relationship, not the human? Except that they also go feral under their clone autopilots, which don't have a soul at all. They definitely seem to be alive at all times (they need to be restrained by mechanical implants, both when in use and in the hangar) but it's never clear if they’re merely alive like an animal, or alive like people and Angels, with souls of their own. Would having a soul mean they’re sentient, or just dully conscious? Are these things slaves, or just tools?
The first episode sets up the Evas as being more than they appear. It was this mystery that most grabbed my attention and drove me to keep watching. Yet I still have no idea what an Evangelion is. And I have no idea if or why that even matters.

The World's End Review

I left The World's End slightly disappointed. But, mainly, I was disappointed in myself - for feeling disappointed.
This is a very good, very funny, very clever film that trounces most other films on all three of those levels. There is nothing to be disappointed about, at all, but I still felt it. Which is disappointing.

The World's End is the final part of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's loose trilogy, rounding out Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The trilogy, which has gone by many names but finally seems to have settled on "The Cornetto Trilogy", are all entirely separate films sharing only their director (Wright), their actors (Pegg and Frost), a recurring theme of individuality vs. conformity, the appearance of at least one Wall's Cornetto (hence the name), and a deep sense of Britishness. One thing that exemplifies that Britishness is that they all heavily involve pubs. Not "bars", as The World's End's US trailers painfully called them; definitely pubs.
The World's End actually has twelve of them - six times as many as the other two films combined - as a group of five friends attempt to recreate (and maybe this time even finish) the epic pub-crawl they started as teenagers. Dragged back together by perpetual man-child Gary, the disparate group slowly discover, one pub at a time, that their hometown is not what it once was, and that something sinister and unearthly is afoot. This would pose a challenge in itself, of course, but by this point they're already four pints in and Gary's still determined to drink the other eight.

What's interesting here is that Pegg is the one playing Gary - a character that the others pretty much can't stand, but tag along with out of pity and a sense of obligation. Nick Frost's Andy, in particular, has a longstanding grudge against Gary which keeps the two at odds for much of the movie. It's an unusual change from the easy friendship we're used to seeing from the pair, but this new dynamic supplies a lot of the film's heart and provides both actors with challenging roles we've not really seen from them before.
The rest of the performances are impressive across the board. Eddie Marsan, Paddy Constantine and Martin Freeman are hilariously great as the rest of the childhood gang, and Rosamund Pike stands out as the one remaining voice of sobriety.

While Frost and Pegg push their acting, Wright is also pushing his craft. His direction and editing are, if anything, even tighter than they were on the first two films. The sharp, hyperactive style of Scott Pilgrim, his last film, seems to inform this one in more ways than one - not least in the choreographed fight scenes. Where Shaun had blunt-force-trauma, and Hot Fuzz had gunplay, this one (naturally) has pub-brawls. They're intense, well planned and brilliantly shot - and they're even injected with a helping of decent slapstick.
Sadly, where the other films were pretty gory, the violence here is essentially bloodless. My favourite name for this series - the "Blood and Ice Cream" trilogy - no longer fits. Nothing is really lost by this; the fights are as visceral and personal as ever. It just seems a bit of a shame. What it loses in this department, though, it makes up for with clever laughs.

The humour in all Wright's projects - the drama and emotion too in some cases - is built upon self-reference and repetition, with the same lines and events reappearing in different contexts with very different meanings. This film continues that tradition but takes it even further. The World's End is not only constantly referencing earlier events from this film, but also from the other two Cornetto movies and, on top of that, the events also reference the names of the pubs where they happen, and the entire plot mirrors the events of the prologue!
All these references are clever and funny and they all land exactly as they should (as with Shaun and Fuzz, they will almost certainly get funnier on repeat viewing too) but there's so much of it here that it almost feels like it's trying too hard. Worse, it's drawing attention to itself in a way that the other two didn't. Take the Cornetto moment. The first two films didn't have Cornetto moments - there were just scenes that happened to contain a Cornetto at some point - but this time there's a big, knowing, winking moment dedicated purely to the Cornetto. This is the last one so I suppose they've earnt it, and it certainly plays to the fans (it got a pretty big cheer in our cinema), but it's worrying that the whole movie feels a bit like that. The trilogy was always meta - but this is the first time it's been so obvious about it.
This carries on right to the end - at the titular World's End pub - where the finale isn't exactly anticlimactic, but seems to subvert our expectations just because that's what it knows we're expecting. To be fair, it's likely a perfect portrayal of how a bunch of drunks would cope with this situation, but it still feels off. If feels small.

Weirdly, considering that it has the biggest budget by far, that's a feeling that persists. The World's End often feels like the smallest film of the trilogy. It's also the only one of the three that I'm not sure would work without the jokes. Shaun could be played as straight horror, and Fuzz as straight action, and the stories are still strong enough to hold the films together. I'm not sure that's true of this one - there's honestly not much to it beyond the enormous web of interrelated references holding it together.
But, here's the thing, those references are all shockingly clever and incredibly funny. It's a great film - it really is! It has complicated characters played by actors doing their best work, fantastic filmmaking, excellent and surprising set-pieces, and the same mischievous tone that we love about the other two. There is, as I said at the start, nothing to be disappointed about. And yet...

I would absolutely recommend seeing The World's End. I'm truly annoyed at myself for not enjoying it as much as I know it deserved. Frankly, I think this is one that'll really come alive with a rewatch.

Mangaphobia 01: Cowboy Bebop

Hello and welcome! This is the first episode of Mangaphobia, my new series chronicling the adventures of me, a seasoned anime-sceptic, as I dip my toes into the slightly frightening world of Japanese animation. Read the introduction to get up to speed, then join me as I try desperately to better myself.
First up is the cartoon that inspired me to begin this quest in the first place:


There's something decidedly western about Cowboy Bebop.
I mean, obviously, the word "cowboy" is right there in the title, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's hard to pin down, but I think it's a structural thing - something about the way the stories are built and told. Maybe it's a more recognisable three-act structure, or more pronounced character-building (anime often seems to just assume you'll accept blank characters). Whatever the reason, it just feels familiar, somehow, where a lot of anime seems detached and alien.
That's obviously my prejudice talking. Not a negative prejudice - not xenophobia or racism or anything - just that, culturally, I'm not equipped to understand the conventions of Japanese storytelling. That's probably one reason anime usually leaves me cold, and why Bebop makes such a good entry-point.

Another reason Bebop works for me is that it puts spaceships together with country music which, for some unknown reason, just feels right.
In fact, the whole show has a deep fascination with music. The episodes (which are even referred to as "sessions") have titles like Heavy Metal Queen and Black Dog Serenade, and the brilliantly integrated soundtrack is full of jazz, rock, blues, country and (of course) bebop. The show's musical leanings also result in, without a doubt, the single coolest intro-sequence of any programme ever. Oh yeah.

The "cowboy" of the title doesn't actually refer to the Western influences (though they are certainly there), rather it's a term this world uses for bounty-hunters. Our heroes are a ragtag band of such cowboys who live and travel on a rusty old ship called Bebop.
Spike Spiegal is the scrawny, sharp-suited scoundrel with big hair, massive clown feet, and a penchant for martial-arts. Jet Black (yes, really) is the rough, tough, gruff mechanic with a robotic arm and a heart of gold. Faye Valentine is the charming thief, who can weasel her way into anything but can't always weasel back out. Radical Edward (yes, really) is the prepubescent master-hacker who is probably crazy and, despite the name, definitely a girl. And Ein is the ship's pet corgi, who may or may not secretly be a super-genius.

Wow, that seems really silly written down. And it is silly, of course - when Edward's involved it often gets outright surreal - but it's weaved throughout the serious stuff in a way that makes it work. The moment that I officially fell in love with Bebop, in fact, was when I realised that the creepy, atmospheric episode I was watching had actually been an absurdist Alien homage all along.
A lot of anime seems oppressively over-serious; either with no humour at all, or with sudden, jarring shifts from crushing darkness to, "Look, a funny animal!" or, more often, "Look, he tripped and groped her boobs!" Cowboy Bebop is much more even and level - it sprinkles light humour throughout, but never really strays into stupid, obvious, or boob-centric jokes. Conversely it handles even its most serious episodes and moments with a gentle touch and a streak of fun (see: the last shot of the entire series). This is, again, something that feels unusually western to my prejudiced eyes.

You wouldn't know any of this from the beginning, though. The first episode, Asteroid Blues, had me groaning with disappointment and dreading watching the rest. It was exactly what I was afraid it would be, with an overly dour "edgy" plot about drugs and violence, endless slow pans and still-frames to save money, and several pervy boob closeups; the only levity was three random old blokes that seemed painfully out of place, and a lot of the voice-acting was terrible. It's probably my least favourite episode - it's a bloody awful place to start.

The second episode, Stray Dog Strut, is much less serious. There's a case of mistaken identity, a long slapstick dog chase, and a character who has a tortoise on their head. But, coming off the back of the po-faced Asteroid Blues, I had no idea how I was meant to process this. Going back to it, it's actually quite a fun episode but, at the time, I didn't realise it was trying to be fun, so I wrote it off as some bizarre misfire.

Episode three is where it finally clicked. Honky Tonk Woman opens with Spike and Jet kicking back in a casino - the music, the lights, Jet’s outfit, and the fact that they're bickering like an old married couple all make it feel like an Ocean’s Eleven-type caper. Then everyone’s plans go wrong - both theirs and the bad-guys’ - there’s double-crosses and ransoms and exchanges, and it ends in an inventive and spectacular shootout on the outside of the ship. It’s great and exciting and fun, and I suddenly understood what this cartoon was.

From there the show quickly finds better footing, and settles into a comfortable rhythm (fitting for a show so obsessed with music). At every scale and every level it is balancing itself - every serious beat is offset by a moment of levity, and every heavily serious episode is followed by a slightly offbeat one. It’s so well-calculated that you don’t even blink when Ed finally turns up, nine episodes in, and things start getting really whacky. Bebop is surprisingly versatile.
As a general rule, the lighter episodes tend to be standalone affairs, where the crew face a new challenge in a new location with new characters, and it all wraps up by the end of the session (like the aforementioned Alien homage, the magic mushrooms, or the time they meet an actual cowboy). That’s not to say that standalones never get serious and deep - there’s a couple that are absolutely horrifying (Pierrot Le Fou springs to mind) - but the more consistently serious ones are episodes that deal with our characters’ pasts.

Spike, Jet and Faye all have emotional damage and secrets that get slowly explored throughout the series. We do get a glance into Ed’s history, too, but since her experiences have left her either totally unphased or completely broken (it’s hard to tell which) we never really learn much.
The main arc of the series is Spike’s and, for me at least, it’s the least interesting and least engaging thing about the whole cartoon. His story is, at the risk of appearing even more biased, very very anime. It’s about his lost love, and his dark past with the triads, and the betrayal of the man he once viewed as a brother. That betrayer, a man called Vicious (bit of a giveaway, guys), is one of those patented tall, white-haired girly-men with a billowing coat and an improbably deep voice - I can picture some of my friends swooning even as I type that - and I just couldn’t take him seriously at all. I was rolling my eyes whenever he stalked effeminately onto the screen. This might have been ok if the show retained its sense of humour, but Spike’s past is treated with even more severity than the opening episode - his episodes are unrelentingly heavy and grim. Spike’s much more interesting in the episodes that aren’t about him, when he’s kicking arse and cracking wise and isn’t tied down by this rote, overplayed anime story.

I’m willing to overlook Spike and Vicious, though, because the other main stories are so much more interesting. Jet’s an ex-cop, and his episodes play out as gritty noir thrillers as we learn why he had to leave that life behind, and how he lost his arm. True to its noir stylings, while there is action, his stories burn slow and mostly deal with moral greys and difficult choices. Where Spike’s out for simple revenge and is otherwise a free spirit, Jet’s conflicts are more complex and difficult; his life and past rubbing up against his beliefs and ideologies. It paints a wonderful portrait of a man left behind by a changing world.
Faye’s story is the slowest to be revealed - with hints early on and then nothing for almost half the series - and it becomes a haunting tragedy. She’s actually suffering from amnesia, which sounds clichéd but works well when we learn that she was cryogenically frozen for fifty-four years after an accident. With not only no memory of her life, but also no way of returning to it even if she could remember, her journey is heartfelt and bittersweet.
Much fun as it is to watch the crew bounty-hunting, dealing with big, scary sci-fi concepts, and hunting for Betamax players (don’t ask), it’s the depth of the character exploration that really makes Cowboy Bebop stick. Thankfully, in most cases, it’s a damn sight more effective and affecting than anything we learn about Spike.

Bebop is the first anime series I can unreservedly say that I liked. In fact I kinda loved it. It still suffers from many of the juvenile and exploitative things that anime always seems to suffer from - as well as Spike’s self-serious melodrama there’s the ever-present fact that Faye dresses like a prostitute, the first episode’s boob-cam, a sequence involving suncream and, um, this guy - but it manages to tell stories that are interesting with characters who are engaging and themes that it actually sees through to the end. I called the storytelling "western" before, but I’m pretty sure that’s unfair - wherever you’re from, this is just good storytelling.
My main complaint, weirdly, is about the Bebop herself. If you ask me to draw the Starship Enterprise, I can. If you ask me to draw a Firefly, I can. If you name any ship from Star Wars, I can tell you what it looks like. Even the Planet Express ship! There are three smaller ships inside Bebop that are all iconic and memorable, but the actual Bebop? I have no idea what Bebop looks like and, considering how much time we spend with her, that’s a damned shame. But, when that’s the strongest complaint I can really muster - about an anime, of all things - then that just shows how much Cowboy Bebop gets right.


Thanks for reading, anime peoples!
I got loads of great comments and suggestions last week about where I should take Mangaphobia going forwards. Death Note and one of the Full Metals (Alchemist, I think?) seem the most popular choices, but I’d still appreciate any other suggestions you may have. Before I dive headlong into a time-eating TV series, for instance, what movies do people suggest? Ghibli, I’m guessing, but which ones?
I’m hopefully seeing The World’s End tonight (finally), so reviewing that will be my next mission, but after that I hope to return with the second episode of Mangaphobia: a retrospective on the various different versions of Evangelion. See you then!