Oct 28, 2018
An overt and expensive attempt to sway the audience towards the directors favorite characters.
With 3.0 You can (not) Redo, you're introduced into a world of plot holes, lacking characterization and an ultimately purely superficial presentation of marketable characters.
The good first:
The sound is top notch - it turns out that with the huge budget it has combined with the competence of Sagisu Shiro, it delivers the same operatic and chorus-heavy soundtrack as it's predecessors.
The animation is also on par with previous entries, although you'd expect less 3DCG or at least better hidden 3DCG for a movie of this budget - compare Steam Boy or Metropolis from
...
nearly a decade earlier, both relying heavily on 3DCG but hiding it extremely well.
As for the best, the remainder is irredeemably bad. For a story that is known for it's deep and meaningful character relationships, it's especially sad to see Evangelion be reduced to a bare-bones theme-park ride where we move inorganically from one location to the next.
The 14-year long timeskip means a lot has changed, but relating it to the previous entry - nothing makes sense. For one, they're all extremely angry with Shinji and treats him like dirt. Rei is just incomprehensibly gone.
Misato conveniently forgets her support for Shinji in the previous movie, and WILLE (the new organization) seems to have forgotten that Shinji saved them in the last movie. Not only that, they seem to have forgotten that they, NERV were the ones responsible for invoking the end of the world, as well as producing it's means through the EVA-project.
It's revealed that Shinji's emotional state is key to creating world-ending events known as impacts. This is something WILLE is sworn to avoid and prevent. So even if we assume they had any reason to be angry, they still would only be shooting themselves in the foot. Rei is still nowhere to be seen.
One time mistake? Nope. When Shinji finds himself in an Evangelion later in the movie, they still attack him and psyche him out, causing the inevitable impact WILLE warned and explained would happen.
This is only one thing about the many things that is wrong with this flick. The truth is this movie does not, and will not ever make sense when interpreted in a traditional light. There are too many contradictions and plot holes for that. So how can we understand it?
We can look at what the movie establishes, and accept that the directors intended to establish these things. So what does it establish?
It establishes that:
- Shinji is shamed and blamed for having shown interest in Rei, attempting to save her in the last movie
- Rei is retconned into a clone of Yui Ikari, whose maiden name is also retconned to Ayanami. Further more, Rei herself isn't in the movie.
- Asuka is retconned into a super-strong warrior girl without any psychological problems.
- Kaworu is retconned into being an all-seeing figure with a special connection with Shinj transcending time
How and why this happened in the story is never touched upon. But it happend - and for very obvious reasons. Because Hideaki Anno and the acting director of these movies have one thing in common: they're die-hard Asuka fans who do not like Rei.
Hence the rewriting of the story and characters to simply benefit their favorite characters serves as the sole reason for the movie to exist. In that light, there isn't a single thing about the movie that goes unexplained. The narrative has shifted towards punishing Shinji for engaging even on friendly terms with Rei, and to condemn Rei as thoughtless and doll-like.
This movie is quite possibly the most petty entry into any franchise in all of anime history. It's sole saving grace is it's production quality.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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