Different Evangelion fans have different positions about what's really so great about the series. Some will tell you it's the cinematic techniques it uses. Some will tell you it's the pastiche of older anime and other Japanese TV series. Or it's the metatextual discussion of how and why Hideaki Anno made the show, or its relatable and realistic portrayal of mental illness. And so on. They'll often say so with a hint of contempt for other fans who don't know what the best thing about Evangelion is. It would be nice to get past this, but after 25 years, I'm not holding by breath.
Nevertheless, these are good points, especially the first two. I say this even though I don't know or care to know much about Hideaki Anno's life and how it relates to the show. On the other hand, I have very little patience for people who insist Evangelion is a subversion and critique of other mecha anime or anime in general, and people who insist that it's an expression of Anno's hatred for fanboys. If I believed that was all Evangelion was, I wouldn't appreciate it as much as I do.
I especially value the show's art design and the overall Sisyphean trajectory, more than the specifics, of its story. You have Shinji, who spends a great portion of the show turned inward. As things proceed, he opens up a little more to the people around him. But then you reach a point where everything slides downhill. In my view, one of the defining moments of Evangelion is the scene in which Shinji attacks NERV headquarters after Gendo seizes control of Unit-01 to attack Tohji. He's changed: he's angry over the well-being of someone it initially never seemed he could be friends with, and he acts on that anger of his own initiative.
But this isn't a high point for Shinji. While turning outward makes him stronger at some times, in some respects, it also makes him vulnerable. He must share the pain of people he forms relationships with. He faces the possibility that those people will deeply disappoint him. The changes in his life are like the Evangelion itself, a machine that makes the pilot bigger and stronger but also exposes them to amplified pain and bodily destruction. This all takes place within an incoherent melange of religious and Freudian imagery, plus a great deal of pseudoscientific dialogue. The characters are surrounded by things that feel like they should be meaningful, but aren't.
Something similar happens in the Rebuild film series between the end of Evangelion 2.0 and the beginning of 3.0. At the climax of 2.0, the films diverge from the plot of the TV series. Shinji takes a bold, self-directed action in the battle against the Tenth Angel. (It's worth noting that some people who hate the TV series like 2.0 because of this climax.) Then what happens? The world ends. Shinji falls unconscious for 14 years and awakens to the world of 3.0, in which no one he knows trusts him.
Some viewers hated this, seeing it as a backslide that occurs for no reason except to make Shinji miserable. Others hate 3.0's treatment of other characters, like Misato: in 3.0, she looks and acts like Gendo, which people see either as unsubtle, offensive, or both. I don't necessarily disagree with either of these points, but other parts of the film stood out to me.
But it's natural that the backslide should happen for what feels like no reason. However self-active Shinji becomes, however powerful, he'll always be vulnerable. Because he was misled, because he didn't know something important, because that's just the way the world works. This becomes clearer in 3.0+1.0: that film depicts Village-3, a seemingly self-sufficient community, but we later see a shot of it from above. It's small green circle surrounded by a red hellscape. The village, like Shinji in 2.0, evolved within a limited context, and the potential was always there for something from outside to intervene and send it back to the Stone Age. Sometimes you're unlucky, and that's worth putting to the screen.
As for 3.0's treatment of individual characters, it's something I kind of glossed over. What stood out more was Wille, the organization they're a part of. They wear devices called DSS Chokers, which can kill them at the flip of a switch. Shinji is forced to wear one early on, and Misato tells him it's a symbol of their distrust for him. But we learn that everyone wears them. Shinji's not getting special treatment. It's not just another blow to Shinji's psyche, but a very crude way of mediating trust in a certain community.
The internal dynamics of the village in 3.0+1.0 differ completely from Wille and the DSS Chokers, with trust mediated by having lived in reciprocity for a long time. 3.0+1.0 tries to illustrate this with an extended sequence of a character who's essentially a blank slate learning how to live in Village-3. The film eventually uses a montage to convey the patterns of her life that develop there, but really, it might have served the film better to stretch it all out.
To see different groups manage relationships in such different ways gives us a new angle from which to view the show. The looming threat of extreme disappointment has always been central. 3.0+1.0 suggests that the personal ability to come to terms with it is a matter of social evolution. The way Shinji lives with people depends on how whole communities have evolved as organisms in their own right. Of course, this is tricky when you recall that the films also suggest that evolution is always contextual, susceptible to disruption from outside, and doesn't go in only one direction. We only get an inkling of this.
This is where I can no longer avoid the metatextual discussion, as much as I might want to, because 3.0+1.0 leans into it. Evangelions fight in an imaginary film set. Layers peel away until all we see are the storyboards. Live-action images mix with animated ones. Gendo explains this imagery, stating that it's a way of depicting the battle of wills between him and Shinji in a comprehensible way. It treats filmmaking as an aid to the imagination, for good and for ill. I actually think this is something that almost all Gainax shows deal with, albeit not as explicitly as Evangelion, so I was somewhat underwhelmed by this part of the film.
If you're an Evangelion fan, you'll expect most of 3.0+1.0. You've seen it before in The End of Evangelion. This hasn't stopped many from wholeheartedly embracing the movie. What sets it apart is the hint of a connection between personal lives and social evolution. This is also the first time Shinji properly confronts Gendo. That should set this film apart, but doesn't. That's because when the time comes, the film is more interested in metatextual commentary on the fact that the confrontation happens than it is in how Gendo treated Shinji. It also explains why Gendo did what he did, but we already knew that.
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