Rebuild of Evangelion Review/Seething
(Note: I watched Rebuild several years ago, and I am absolutely not rewatching it just for this. So apologies for anything I misremember.)
Here is my collection of disordered thoughts on the Rebuilds:
1) The Rebuilds somehow look worse than Neon Genesis Evangelion. This despite NGE having infamously bad budget/production issues and the Rebuilds having infinite time and money. Almost every scene with direct analogues, which is most of the first two movies, looks better in NGE. Downstream of bad CGI, which does not age anywhere near as well as good 2D animation. The only exception is the Ramiel-equivalent, which is also the one part of the Rebuilds that surpasses the original.
2) One good thing about the Rebuilds is it made me appreciate the structure of the original more. The middle segment of NGE (from roughly Ramiel to Leliel, non-inclusive) is usually considered the worst or at least most forgettable part, compared to the eldritch psychodrama of the first six episodes or from Leliel through End of Evangelion. During these 9 episodes (7-15), NGE is pretty close to a paint-by-numbers monster of the week generic mecha anime, albeit an unusually high quality one, and my opinion on this segment was pretty much "neat" until I saw the Rebuilds.
What the Rebuilds made me realize is that NGE is structured like a parabola; at the start of the story Shinji is miserable and alone, NERV is a dysfunctional mess (NERV's plan for dealing with Sachiel comes very close to failing for an easily-fixable reason: Shinji is not physically present until the last moment), and the Evangelions are not so much mechs as eldritch monstrosities (remember Unit-01's eye or Unit-00 going berserk in the tests?).
Over the course of the story, he makes friends with Toji, Kensuke, Rei, and Asuka, and grows closer to Misato and even (apparently) Gendo. Shinji becomes more confident and happy, and NERV gets better at operating. The Evangelions cease to be mysterious monstrosities that go berserk on a whim and instead are simply giant robots, while the Angels are generic monster-of-the-week Kaiju. This peaks in roughly the Sahaquiel episode, where NERV is able to beat a seemingly unstoppable Angel without Gendo's presence, Gendo congratulates Shinji personally, and Asuka even picks the ramen shop out of consideration for Misato and Rei (both of whom she dislikes, Misato over jealousy wrt Kaji and Rei for being "a doll"). By Episode 12, Shinji, NERV, and the cast are clearly better off than they are at the start, though there are constant hints that things are not what they appear in the background.
Then, beginning with Leliel, things get worse. Shinji's newfound confidence is turned against him, his relationships with Asuka (failed kiss, jealousy over his superior piloting), Misato (Kaji's death), Rei (Rei II's death), Gendo (dummy plug), Toji (crippling him in the Bardiel fight), and even Kensuke (jealousy over him and Toji being able to pilot, leaving town) all fall part. The Evas are once again revealed to be horrifying bio-divine-monstrosities with their own will and agenda rather than simple robots. NERV itself falls apart, with conflicts between Misato, Ritsuko, and Gendo, the three most important leaders. By the end of the TV series, Shinji is actually worse off than he was at the start (and this is key to the story's themes of the Hedgehog's dilemma and the pain of being). All of this culminates in End of Evangelion and Third Impact.
Anyways, the point of all this is that the Rebuilds, specifically Movie II, skip almost the entire middle part, abbreviating it to just Sahaquiel. In order for the downfall of Shinji and NERV to be satisfying, they have to be built up. It's hard to care about Shinji's mental breakdown or NERV falling apart when they were only in good shape for like ten minutes. Everything just randomly collapses. Removing this segment also kills Asuka, Misato, and Kaji's character arcs, and badly hurts Shinji's.
3) In NGE, the Evangelions are a Big Deal. All three of the main ones are incredibly important (both to the plot and to the characters and themes), borderline invincible eldritch superweapons with their own wills and enormous resources and supporting infrastructure dedicated to them. Which they should be; they are clones of a god implanted with the souls of the pilot's mothers (which is a phenomenally cool premise).
In the Rebuilds, they're just giant robots. Mari self-destructs her own Eva casually just to defeat a random angel (of no plot or character significance) in her introduction, and has no issue getting another one. Asuka does something similar with Unit-02 later (impossible to imagine for NGE Asuka). This is turned up to a comical degree in movies 3 and 4, where the post-apocalyptic remnants of NERV can literally field thousands of Evangelions… who are disposable CGI mooks gunned down like chumps by the quipping heroes in completely weightless action scenes.
4) Mari Makinami Illustrious is an egregiously bad fanfic Mary Sue, who exists purely for merchandising and pointless fanservice. Zero reason to exist, extremely generic personality and design. I was not even a little bit surprised to learn she was based on Anno's wife and got together with Anno's self-insert, Shinji.
5) The magic reset button. The core message of NGE is "live in reality." It is inherently painful, but it is still better than the alternative. Shinji chooses, of his own volition, to return to the ruined post-Third Impact world he chose to create and abandon his fantasies. The conclusion of Rebuild of Evangelion is the exact opposite; Shinji gets to press the magic universe reset button to create a world in which his choices, failures, and problems never existed in the first place, and is rewarded for it. This is awful, especially because I don't think it's even intentional (I think the intended message of the Rebuilds is something like "touch grass/boobs, nerd!", which is also stupid but doesn't completely destroy the original and is actually actionable advice), and alone would suffice to damn the Rebuilds.
6) Logistics. Related to (3). In NGE, NERV is basically the Manhattan Project, a secretive government program (for the UN, which is a world government post-Second Impact) concentrating a significant fraction of humanity's talent and resources on a cutting-edge scientific/industrial project. It is important to making the setting and story feel real that repairing damage to Evangelions costs "the budget of a small country" (as SEELE complains) and that manpower, money, and time are constant constraints. Each Evangelion is a superweapon and a huge deal, and there is an enormous, mostly-off-screen-but-present, NERV support staff devoted to building them, maintaining them, and keeping them operational, even with futuristic automation (MAGI system).
In movies 3 and 4 of the Rebuilds, on the other hand, not only are Evangelions not very important, but the post-apocalyptic remnants of NERV, which are basically two people in a cave with none of the massive infrastructure and staff NERV had, can build, construct, and program LITERALLY THOUSANDS of Evangelions, launch space missions, and build giant flying battleships.
This doesn't just apply to post-3rd impact NERV, it also applies to WILL-E, which is also composed of NERV remnants with none of the UN's resources and supporting infrastructure, and yet can also field more Evangelions, more firepower, and giant flying battleships that pre-3rd impact NERV never could. Pre-3rd impact Japan is a modern industrial society and can therefore provide support for NERV, post-3rd impact humanity is literally farming rice by hand, and NERV and WILL-E are pulling vastly greater resources than OG NERV ever had straight out of their asses. All of this kills suspension of disbelief.
7) NGE is not a very action-dense series; most of the fights are short, brutal, and to the point. Every single one of them, even the silly ones like the Israfel fight, is important to the characters and themes of the story. Many of these fights are iconic and some of the best action sequences in anime (Shinji vs Zeruel and Asuka vs Mass Production Evangelions come to mind). The Rebuilds are like six times as action-dense, with several scenes (like the Zeruel fight) with NGE analogous expanded and many, many original long fights in the second, third and fourth movies, and yet there is not a single good original fight. The action scenes lack weight or seriousness; characters stand around posing and quipping like they're in the MCU (notably, the two times anyone tries this in NGE, Asuka with Israfel and Shinji with Leliel, they are immediately punished). In NGE, this action is good, intentional and serves the story; in the Rebuilds the action is bad and just kind of tossed everywhere like a monkey throwing shit.
8) Painfully, painfully obvious merchandising. Mari is the most egregious example, but "BEAST MODE" Evangelions, which serve zero plot, character, or thematic purpose and don't even look good, are another example. Took me straight out of the story when it first showed up.
9) Every character except for Shinji is flattened into 2D caricatures. Asuka and Misato, who are the deuteragonists of NGE and End of Evangelion, are replaced with generic cardboard cutout versions, as are characters like Kaji, Ritsuko, Rei, even Toji and Kensuke. Now, there's no rule saying the Rebuild versions of characters have to be as important or developed as their NGE equivalents… but the Rebuilds constantly lean on the reputations and relationships built up by the original versions for emotional payoff. Can't have it both ways; either Misato and Asuka are important, and so need to be developed like in the original, or they are two-bit extras, in which case they can't be the center of major emotional moments.
10) The soundtrack is actually pretty good, but it's nowhere near as great as the original, and has no songs to equal Cruel Angel's Thesis or even KOMM, SUSSER TODD.
11) There's nothing wrong with fanservice, and NGE is full of it, but there is a time and a place. NGE fanservice is either in comedy scenes or scenes where it important to the characters. Rebuild is full of unintentionally hilariously bad fanservice, like ass shots of medical officers in supposedly serious scenes.
12) Many of the problems I mentioned, especially (2) and (9), could be blamed on lack of screentime… except we spend a huge fraction of the Rebuilds on pointless action scenes and literally an entire movie where nothing of consequence happens (Movie 3, which starts and ends in exactly the same place). Rebuild's character problems are not like, IDK, the Heaven's Feel movies, of trying to compress a much larger work into less time and thus being extremely fast-paced, Rebuild just wastes enormous amounts of time.
13) Kaworu deserves his own bullet point, because his ~10 minutes of NGE screentime are incredibly impactful and enough to make him a fan favorite. His death is both necessary and voluntary. He gets an entire movie (Movie 3) in the Rebuilds, and he is far less impactful, developed, and important. His death is literally pointless (he did not have to put the explosive collar on!). Turned from a real character into pure fujoshi fanservice. Exhibit A in "Rebuild's character issues are not from lack of screentime."
14) Rei II is also turned into more of a generic waifu in the Rebuilds. NGE's characters are so good that they are still wildly popular decades later and defined anime archetypes that are still in common use (and almost never as good as the original). Even the characters that get screentime and development in Rebuild, like Rei, are mediocre rehashes of Standard Anime Tropes.
15) Shinji himself is also flattened, into more of a generic shonen protagonist who causes Third Impact at the end of Movie II by getting really angry and going Super Saiyan. It is never even remotely hinted that this is possible until it happens, and he also doesn't choose to do it (unlike when he causes Third Impact in End of Evangelion) which makes other characters, who are clearly supposed to have a point, trying to guilt him about it (Misato, Asuka, and Kaworu all do this) in later movies seem ridiculously petty and unfair.
16) Another (I believe completely unintentional, because most of the changes to Shinji are supposed to make him more confident and heroic) change to Shinji comes from the fact that he learns that an Angel reaching NERV's basement will cause Third Impact almost immediately, in Movie I. This completely recontextualizes Shinji's actions in Movies I and II (which are almost beat-for-beat taken from NGE).
In NGE, Shinji does not know the stakes. As far as he knows, the Angels are just walking natural disasters who attack a hardened military base designed specifically to fight them, not threats to all humanity, and if he doesn't fight the worst that will happen is equivalent to, like, an earthquake or hurricane (and we don't think poorly of people who don't choose to become first responders; risking your life to deal with natural disasters is an exceptional, heroic thing, not expected). He pilots the Evangelion first to try to connect with people (initially his dad, later Toji, Kensuke, Rei, Asuka, and Misato). This makes his general reluctance to be in horrible pain fighting them and him immediately quitting after being forced to cripple Toji extremely sympathetic and reasonable. He only discovers they are a threat to all humanity when Kaji tells him in the fight against Zeruel, at which point he immediately returns to the fight despite everything and continues to be willing to deploy against the remaining Angels (Arael, Armisael, and Tabris), even the one person who unconditionally loves him, Kaworu.
NGE Shinji is not a conventionally heroic character (Anno described him as someone who only avoided suicide because he was too afraid to kill himself)… but he is still an altruistic and even heroic figure when the chips are down. He pilots against Sachiel to spare Rei, who he doesn't know, he jumps in a volcano without protective equipment to save Asuka (remember, the way synchronization works, that must have hurt like hell), and as soon as he learns that the Angels are not just random monsters but actually threatening all of mankind he rejoins the fight despite having already lost his main intrinsic motivation.
In Rebuilds I and II, on the other hand, when Shinji goes through the exact same character beats as his NGE counterpart, he does so knowing for a fact that he is the last thing standing against the apocalypse. This makes his general reluctance to pilot, and abandoning the fight after Bardiel, far less sympathetic, making him closer to the worthless coward people mistakenly project onto NGE Shinji, despite being more confident and assertive. It also makes his decision to rejoin the fight against Zeruel much less impactful; in NGE it's Kaji's (amazing) speech that does it; in Rebuilds it's a generic pep-talk from Mari.
17) In NGE, the worldbuilding is not exactly all that well-explained or straightforward, but it's understandable; you don't need to know the precise logistics of Third Impact to watch End of Evangelion. The many random terms and images, mostly borrowed from Christian and Jewish mysticism, don't actually matter, they're just an aesthetic for the character/themes/plot. In the Rebuilds, however, the worldbuilding is genuinely incomprehensible, with completely unexplained shit like "anti-Evangelion," which can reset the universe, and "The Key of Nebuchadnezzar," which can turn normal human Gendo into something that can fist-fight an Angel, popping out of nowhere and being absolutely critical to the plot. Rebuilds adds a ton of random crap to the world, and all of it is either irrelevant, terrible, or both. It's like Anno forgot that the aesthetic wasn't the important part.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a masterpiece, and the Rebuilds of Evangelion are a combination of remake and sequel, so they have to both connect to and surpass the original, while also working as a standalone story. They do neither. They are basically Neon Genesis Evangelion if NGE were a Marvel movie, and not even one of the good ones. In conclusion: The Rebuilds are absolute steaming dogshit. Make Anno Depressed Again.