Unpopular Opinion Thread

[Voyager]

1. Evangelion would've worked better as a series of novels than in any visual medium.

Please explain this. Evangelion is one of the most visually stunning things I’ve ever seen, and without that, it wouldn’t have the same impact on culture.

[LegendZilla]

^Storytelling is about more than just conveying certain themes and ideas on a subtextual level. They need to be treated as a supplementary feature like dressing on a cake or silver lining on a cloud, otherwise they mean nothing if you're gonna sacrifice the quality of the actual story itself or that of character development. Bottom line is, themes and subtext need to serve a story, not the other way around.

BTW, I'm not sure how a Turok movie will bode in today's social and political climate.

[Legion1979]

^Storytelling is about more than just conveying certain themes and ideas on a subtextual level. They need to be treated as a supplementary feature like dressing on a cake or silver lining on a cloud, otherwise they mean nothing if you're gonna sacrifice the quality of the actual story itself or that of character development. Bottom line is, themes and subtext need to serve a story, not the other way around.

Interesting. What YouTube video did you get this opinion from?

[LegendZilla]

^Storytelling is about more than just conveying certain themes and ideas on a subtextual level. They need to be treated as a supplementary feature like dressing on a cake or silver lining on a cloud, otherwise they mean nothing if you're gonna sacrifice the quality of the actual story itself or that of character development. Bottom line is, themes and subtext need to serve a story, not the other way around.

Interesting. What YouTube video did you get this opinion from?

I assure you that this time, these are my own original words.

[Jomei]

I hate to feed this discussion, but just to be clear, what you're saying there about theme being subordinate to story and character is perfectly reasonable, but it does not lead to your initial conclusion that Eva should have been a novel series rather than an anime.

[Jetty_Jags]

Coming from someone who is a huge eva fan, the series is responsible for some of its own negative reception, particularly if we just focus on the original tv show. EOE resolves most of these issues although it's esotericism still negates a satisfying understanding of the world and its mechanisms (I'd consider this a positive due to the series' apocalyptic aesthetics, but not everyone will agree).

Just looking at the 26 episodes show, it kind of operates as a bait and switch, or at least ditches one of its initially endearing qualities. While setting up a fascinating world with a large central character study, the series keeps tensions rising with its lore and plot points, only to exclusively resolve Shinji's personal dilemma. From an Avant Garde perspective I absolutely love this ending (in the wider ecosystem of Eva endings) for it's commitment to what it considers important and what it considers superficial in the world of Eva. Note, this is not an instance of the themes dictating the story, rather the creators focusing on one story as opposed to others. It's clear that the 'real story' that the creators are interested in telling is about Shinji's journey to self acceptance. Obviously the frame story is important (although has a deep enough level of symbolism I can understand why some may consider it completely narratively superficial), but by the end of the show is more or less a vehicle for Shinji's personal development (which is still it's own complete story). Understandably, anyone who followed the show for enjoyment of both simultaneous stories, or just the frame story will find the ending anti-climactic, and I can't blame them. I am unsure of how true the popular narrative is that the last two episodes arose from budget restrictions at the end of development, but we still have to judge the work that exists.

With the existence of EOE, I think this complaint becomes functionally meaningless, as we finally get the synthesized conclusion to both stories. I know many people feel that it leaves more questions than it answers, but I hope those individuals can learn to appreciate a level of mystery in art and stop demanding that every story completely explain itself. Sometimes I think the true beauty of the sublime arises at the crossroads of perception and inarticulation.

[Jomei]

All reasonable thoughts, but to get back to the thing LZ said, shifting mediums to a novel form would almost by necessity exacerbate the imbalance of the ending that you're referring to.

What prose does best is present internality. It is far less efficient and effective at, say, conveying the impact of an Eva going beast mode or whatever.

This is one reason Godzilla is famous as a film series and didn't shoot to popularity as a series of novels.