200 words about Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time
What is Neon Genesis Evangelion about? Ask a dozen people, and you’ll get half a dozen answers. Giant robots fighting gorgeous monsters? Depression’s dissolution of the soul? Gawking at naked teenagers? It’s all there, subsumed within a Jungian network of symbolism that adds a mystical aura to the visceral strife. So popular was the initial show that its creators have, notoriously, struggled to finish it in a satisfactory way. End of Evangelion, anime’s very own Fire Walk With Me, took the commendable approach of dumping on its own fandom before blessing them with a psychedelic transmogrification whose outcome is still ambiguous today. Almost 25 years later, here we are with an entirely new film series — the so-called Rebuild of Evangelion, which launched in 2007 and has now culminated with the worldwide release of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. As unnecessary as it might seem, however, it is fantastic. While the finale of the film delivers the requisite dimension-crunching multipocalypse, what’s more memorable — and surprising — is that most of the film focuses on the mundanities of rural living, reminding us with the small miracles of daily existence why the world needed to be saved to begin with.