Pacific Rim is nothing at all like Evangelion.

"Anon" (tjsielsistneb) 11/17/2013 at 04:04 • Filed to: None

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I mean it's not like they both have...

A main male pilot with emotional trauma.

A demure female pilot with blue hair who is subservient to the commanding officer and forms an emotional attachment with the male pilot.

An outspoken, hotheaded foreign pilot who has a dead mum and dies fighting insurmountable odds.

Giant robots which violate the square cube law.

And fight on the Pacific Coast.

And are controlled by a mental link to it's pilots.

Who feel every injury the Jaeger sustains.

And neurally connect using an orange fluid.

And the eldritch monstrosities that won't fucking die.

GhostZ > Anon 11/17/2013 at 04:25

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In my opinion, the difference is all in the style.

The male pilot's emotional trauma is VERY different from Eva, the mental link plays a very different plot point, the characters personalities (while similar) are subject to very different stimuli.

It's like someone took a summary of Eva that didn't mention any of the ambiance, religious references, or the direction the plot would go, added a local source for the angels instead of appearing from seemingly nowhere, and then had it directed and acted very differently. Same backbone, very different stories that say very different things about the world.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Anon 11/17/2013 at 04:26

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The difference is Pacific Rim isn't filled with whiny, over-emotional teenagers and everyone has balls instead of angst. Plus evangelion was way too long and never knew WTF it wanted to do while PR just said "the plot sucks but we want an excuse to have big robots kick the shit out of big monsters for your amusement"

More counterpoints

1) The PR bots take two people to work togehter to pilot
2) Take #1 into consideration when Gypsy Danger is nearly destroyed in the first fight. Does the remaining pilot curl into a ball and cry? No. He avenges his brother on the spot and makes it to safety on his own. Shinji would just whine and cry and hope for everyone else to save his pathetic ass.
3) The "female lead" of PR is capable from force of will and training. The waif girl from evangelion is a blank slate people project "attributes" onto despite her being described in the show as absolutely nothing. Seriously, she is a terrible character as SHE HAS NO CHARACTER! She is nothing more than a toy to be used by everyone, including the fans, but it was a cop-out excuse to include her.
4) Pacific Rim didn't quite cross the threshold into complete and utter nonsense at the end of it. Evangelion's writing went so far downhill in a hurry I am amazed how many people defend it to this day. Meanwhile, I seem to be the only person praising 08th MS team which is an infinitely better series by all standards except for colors as it is a war-time series so everything is camo-brown and army-green for a reason.

GhostZ > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 11/17/2013 at 04:30

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I agree with most of your points on principle, you're not wrong, but I do not think that they make Eva a bad series or are grounds to make that judgement call on the series as a whole (example a: Rei having no personality does not make her a bad character, it makes her a clever writing tool and plot device).

For the record, I love Evangelion and 08th MS team (it seriously is very underrated) but I love them both for entirely different and non comparable reasons.

Milky > Anon 11/17/2013 at 04:31

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I've never seen evangelion ..... but my problem with pacific rim is that they didn't just call it Power Rangers.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > GhostZ 11/17/2013 at 04:39

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I am over critical of the series to counter-act how way over-hyped NGE is. It isn't a terrible show, but I never got behind the concept of rei as a character (I forgot her name despite remembering everyone else's she is THAT vapid) and overall the show was just a mess in my eyes. It worked on occasion but I recall a few interviews where some of the staff said they threw in christian imagery and references to let viewers make conclusions about the symbolism themselves. In that regard, it's a genius move and can make discussions from the show pretty deep. This does not make the show itself good. The technical side of the show definitely fell apart by the end and I can see why they did a remake/relaunch or whatever they did for it. The original art was very pretty and fluid. The bright colors of the EVAs was an odd choice at first but it always made them easy to watch and helped bring attention to certain objects or movements on screen. But the plot was a hot mess after the first few episodes and the characters didnt really evolve like I expected them too. I knew they would do the whole "shit has hit ALL THE FANS and normal human beings will crumble like drywall when thrown into this hell so yeah.....hope you don't get too attached to anyone" and I was looking forward to it. But the payoff was weak. Nothing too spectacular, just average.

All in all, 3/5, an okay rainy day watch. Nowhere near "best anime or animated show ever". Best anime ever belongs to Cowboy Bebop. Best animated show ever is either Freakazoid or "The Critic". Full stop.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Milky 11/17/2013 at 04:44

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I hope the sequel apes Voltron and we get super-ultra-mega combining Jagers.

Squid > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 11/17/2013 at 04:44

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I tried watching NGE but couldn't bother to finish it. But that was a while ago and I may try watching it again. I just wanted to comment that you are pretty correct on Cowboy Bebop being awesome. Same with Freakazoid! but I must disagree with you on The Critic. That is all. Carry on.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Squid 11/17/2013 at 04:46

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Your disagreement has been noted and documented. When I become ruler of the world you shall be slated for execution and your death shall be slower than the norm.

Squid > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 11/17/2013 at 04:56

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Well you can shove it up. . .

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Squid 11/17/2013 at 04:59

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Oh don't be that way! Come on, let's say "Huggbees" together!

GhostZ > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 11/17/2013 at 05:12

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Hype doesn't make a series worse either.

The thing is, you can't watch Evangelion like an anime. Or at least, any anime I know of. It's not pretty, interesting, appealing, cute, exciting, or fun, nor does it try to be. What made Evangelion the 'greatest show' was that it made a lot of people stop and re-evaluate what they looked for in shows. It opened up a lot of people's eyes to different literary and visual techniques that were used constantly, all the time, by other shows but never in a way that was both new, but maybe made you realize that anime can tell a different type of story than a rehash of the "hero with a thousand faces".

Just to relay my experience, these are the questions that you should think of when you watch Eva, these aren't criticisms against you personally, but things I noticed and discovered about the show that give it serious depth that most people overlook:

1. Why is it so quiet most of the time? Why do we hear background noise instead of speeding up the dialogue and plot? Eva's pacing is all over the place. But its written as a person would experience it, stream-of-consciousness style.

2. Why do the Evas, if they are robots, act and move more human than the characters themselves? Calling Eva a robot VS monster anime completely misses the point. It's a Human VS Nature anime. Shinji is one part of a person's mind, and the Eva is a different one. The Angels are not monsters, they are the things that attack the mind. That's why the AT field, which is quite brilliant as a concept (and its explained better in End of Evangelion) is literately just self-confidence. The Eva's AT field is just a person's ability to see logic and reason despite fear and trouble, and to act accordingly. That's why it's impossible to penetrate and such as powerful weapon. It's one of the best metaphors I've ever seen in literature or video. The argument "well, they were making it up, that's not what it really meant" makes sense for a lot of things in Eva, except for the AT field, which was pretty clearly stated and explained several times near the end.

3. Why did the characters develop in such a strange way? A lot of this 'unusual' character development is actually rooted in Jungian and Freudian philosophy about the mind, and for a lot of viewers, it was the first time they had seen that sort of thing, so they (I believe) got really 'enlightened' and overhyped the show. For example, Gendo's character isn't the character of "the father", it's the character of the father as a scared child might see him . Instead of showing us characters that are common, predictable, and real, it used abstract characters that don't exist in real life, but do exist in the mind. These characters were lifted right out of greek tragedy and major historical works. It seems out of the blue because a lot of fictional characters nowadays are distanced from that type of psychology, because it makes the show less pleasant to watch and less easy to follow.

4. Am I supposed to enjoy this scene? What does it mean if I do? There are some scenes that are legitimately not supposed to be enjoyed, and some scenes that make something normally unenjoyable, fascinating. The gore and violence is not designed to be exiting robot violence. It's like watching a monkey tear apart another animal, it's disgusting and repulsive. That's because, in anime, Violence is so often overlooked and accepted as just the necessary part of the plot. In Eva, when there is violence, you're supposed to get that same sick feeling that people get when someone punches them, where you're not sure if you're going to retaliate or not. If you cringe and think the violence is disgustingly overdone, then the writers did their job.

Do all of these things make Eva better? No, but they do explain some of the craziness that a lot of people don't 'get' about the show. It's not a show designed to be enjoyed, and that much is true. Get past that, and you can look at it as a really good writing exercise.

It suffers from adaptation problems though, where due to its success copycats have made its once-unique ideas. I think half the reason I appreciated it was because I came to it from a classic literature background, wanting to know why it was so popular, as opposed to an Anime background.

Freakazoid is actually a lot like Eva, in that almost its entire basis was around a character that went against every known expectation of a super hero, and its driving point was to offer unique, contradicting views on pop culture and how it influences our decisions. That was the whole point of Freakazoid, and it did that wonderfully. Eva did the same thing for Anime, in a way.

08th MS unit? That anime is by the books . It has traditional characters. Traditional motivations. Traditional setting. Traditional plot. There are no hidden underlying messages, no metaphors, no clever writing or unique characters, no statements being made, it is just a purely enjoyable anime with good quality, designed to entertain and tell a certain story the way it can be most easily told. Again, it's a great anime too, but for an entirely different reason.

Squid > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 11/17/2013 at 05:14

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MOOSE!

rad_mike > Anon 11/17/2013 at 09:24

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Just watch PR on a plane. It was fun. Good plane movie. It reminded me most of Tranzor-Z, which pre-dates Voltron. I remember getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturdays to watch that cartoon when I was a kid. Yup, I'm that old.

Desu-San-Desu > Anon 11/17/2013 at 10:10

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The one truth is that Pacific Rim's ending made some level of sense without the audience needing to imbibe LSD in order to get on the same plane of existence as it.

Anon > Desu-San-Desu 11/17/2013 at 12:50

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I mean the ending to Eva, both aren't really all that complicated, I can explain them if you'd like.

aquila121 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 11/17/2013 at 13:43

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If you're looking for super-mega-ultra combining, watch Gurren Lagann—it's not without flaws, but nothing I've ever seen has more 'shit combining to make bigger shit.'

"Who the hell do you think I am?!"