We’re Comrades, Not Friends (Eizouken Analysis)

There’s one particular quirk that comes up whenever a character ask if the members of the Eizouken are friends in Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! 

When someone ask that, both Asakusa and Kanamori answered by saying that they are actually comrades, rather than friends. The reason for this particular quirk was only revealed during the flashback that explores the origin of Asakusa and Kanamori’s ‘partnership’.

Upon learning about their backstory, and after thinking about it for a while, it really confirmed something to me.

We have a very sentimental attachment toward the notion of friendship.

Fiction, Reality, and Escapism (Or How I Disagree with Evangelion)

There is often an underlying thought where consumption of fiction, be it in the form of watching TV, reading books, or playing video games, is thought of as something that distract us from reality or that they are an escape from reality.

Taking this further, there are also those who believe that fiction consumption can even be detrimental to a person’s wellbeing or become a crutch for them to really grow up. This idea is, perhaps best, exemplified during the end of Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (SPOILER ALERT: SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT) in which the protagonist Shinji decided to remake the world free of Evangelions. After which, he ended up in more or less the real world with all of the teenage pilot characters in an adult form. The message is clear: Break free from fiction and you can finally become an adult.

I always find myself disagreeing with that notion, but could not quite articulate why at least until now (somewhat). It is not just because there are works of fiction that can have real social impact or the fact that people generally emotionally displace themselves using whatever indulgence that they prefer, not just fiction, to get away from what it is that troubles them about life (food, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.).

It’s probably because I’ve always seen consumption of fiction as a part of experiencing reality itself, rather than something that deviates from it.

Evangelion: 3.0 +1.0 Thrice Upon a Time Review: A Worthy Conclusion to a Saga

Somehow my editor allowed me to review anime film at my work website, but life’s weird that way I guess.

You can read it here. But I’ll give you a couple of paragraphs review. Enjoy!

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So, the end of the line.

Evangelion: 3.0 +1.0 Thrice Upon a Time is the final film in the Rebuild of Evangelion Tetralogy, a series of films that remake the classic Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The movie was initially released in Japan in March 8, 2021. International audience finally manages to get a chance to watch movie through Amazon Prime Video in August 13, 2021.

With the tetralogy that spans over 14 years finally coming to a close, has the creator of the franchise, Hideaki Anno, delivered a satisfying finale?

The Horror of Change (Evangelion 3.33 Analysis)

They say that changes is a form of death.

In a way they are. After all, changes is letting go everything that you know, not just about the world, but about yourself. Breaking free from all of that, to unburden yourself of something that you have intrinsically tied into your sense of self, can be a form of death.

The horrifying reality of change, however, do not just stem from the metaphorical death that comes with it. But also in the way it can affect others.

Changes doesn’t come in isolation. Wanting happiness for ourselves, for instance, may entail curbing the happiness of others. An unfortunate effect of living a scarcity-governed world populated by myriad of individuals with intersecting and contradicting wants as well as needs.

In the case of Shinji in Rebuild of Evangelion, the changes that he did brought literal apocalypse.

Why do We Love Giant Robot? (Food for Thoughts)

I was watching the episode 5 of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken the other day and it got me really thinking: Why do we love giant robot?

As the episode demonstrate, large humanoid robot, while it can be realistic (give humanity enough time and we can basically invent anything), it is not exactly practical. In a scenario in which humanity is confronted with massive-scale monsters, it is more likely that our real-life military will simply deploy a more advance tanks instead of large robots. Concrete Revolutio is also another anime that pointed out the unpracticality of a giant robot for the purpose of engaging the enemy.

The boring answer to that, of course, is because it is cool, something that the robot club president in the Eizouken episode essentially admit to himself near the end. But I find that answer unsatisfying.

Yes it can be cool. But why it can be cool?