English Dub Review: Evangelion 3.0 + 1.01 – Thrice Upon A Time

This is going to be a tough one. And if you know this franchise, I think you know why. As I’ve made clear with some previous posts, I have a history with Evangelion going back over a decade, before this Rebuild series began. And that history began, oddly enough, with watching the final episode of the original television series. That might seem odd, as that ending is almost legendary for how confusing it can be, but to me, it was such a specific and unique emotional journey that it inspired me to watch the rest of that series, multiple times at that, peeling over any possible theory or explanation for the seemingly inexplicable choices made by both the characters and writers. And that’s without mentioning the “End of Evangelion” film that more concretely concluded that story and only made it all both infuriatingly confounding but exponentially more fascinating. It’s been quite rare to find this specific level of insanity in animation since then, and I almost thought that they just didn’t make them like that anymore.

Until now, that is.

The conclusion of the Rebuild of Evangelion series picks up just about where 3.33 left off, with Asuka leading the catatonic Shinji and the bewildered clone of Rei through the crimson landscape ravaged by the near apocalypse caused between the second and third films. She eventually takes them to a small commune of people, among them some familiar faces, who slowly but surely rebuild (haha) Shinji’s will to live, and eventually to rejoin the final battle against his father Gendo, who plans to finally finish the job of recreating the world to his own ends. And that’s probably the most vacuum packed spoiler-free synopsis I can give this movie, because one step too far and we will be falling head first into an endless labyrinth of mental overheating that is actually quite on brand for Evangelion. I’ve distilled it down to this basic summary because I want to make clear that I do understand, to the best of my ability, what this film is trying to say through its plot and characters. That being a story about being brought to one’s lowest point after numerous terrible experiences, but despite all of that, striving to communicate and understand others while hoping for a better future.

This is actually not a new idea for Evangelion. As this is the ending of this iteration of the series, there will be easy comparisons made to both the TV Series ending and the End of Evangelion movie, which actually ended quite similarly. Without getting too much into that, both endings revolved around Shinji, fresh from suffering the greatest despair he had ever been through, looking back on everything he had gotten past and how many times he had refused to run away, and choosing to embrace an uncertain future filled with potential over one that claims to remove the pain and misery he once felt. I have no way of confirming this, but you could easily say that this whole franchise has been Hideaki Anno’s therapy session. And because he’s gone through quite a bit himself in the time between the TV series AND even individual installments of these films, we’ve actually gotten to know him in a sense at different stages in his mental and emotional development.

 

But I would be pretty remiss if I did not acknowledge just how perplexing this movie is, to say the least. It took me several years and many forum theories to pin down what I THINK the original series and End of Evangelion all ended up meaning in the end. The first three movies of this series were all confusing and interesting in their own right, but 3.0 + 1.01 is its own beast of maddening that will be analyzed and picked apart for years to come. This is due in no small part to the runtime, over two and a half hours, which is the longest film in the series yet. You will for certain be checking the clock at least a few times, especially with its deliberately slow first part. To put in bluntly, much of the start of the film gave me the reaction of “Oh…okay…”, in the sense that there is a lot of new information that I felt I just needed to accept and move on. Only then, as the film reached its climax, I ended up screaming cries of “What?! WHAT?! WHAT?!?!” at the screen at least a dozen times.

In the end, Evangelion is, was, and always will be an utterly insane trip that you will probably get the gist of by the end, but it will be a pretty arduous journey to get there. That trip is most definitely not for everyone, but I think for those who take it, I believe it will be worth it. The conclusion of this story heavily indicates that this will be the last major installment of this franchise, but honestly who knows? Evangelion will always be a very influential work on my writing, my tastes in media, and even my outlook on life, and if this is where it leaves me, then I can accept that (though partially because it’s taken so long for this movie to come out that frankly I’m just burnt out). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to start making a Charlie from Always Sunny conspiracy board to try and understand this crazy movie.