About a year ago, I wrote a review of "Air" . After preparing for a long time, I finally plan to start writing this article about "Sincerely for you". Before writing, I was also a little concerned that I wanted to put too much into this review that didn't belong to the movie.
However, when I looked back at the "Air" film review I wrote last year, I got some new insights. In fact, that film review wasn't just talking about "Air", it was the result of all the other experiences I had over the last year coming together. So I don't think it would be a bad thing to include my latest thoughts in the review. What's more, the series "EVA" can also be regarded as a work that Hideaki Anno was born under the influence of society and the surrounding.
Farewell, some antecedents
3:9 The LORD God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?
3:10 He said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. I hid.
3:11 Who told you to be naked, saith the LORD, that you have eaten of the fruit of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?
...
3:16 And he said to the woman, I will greatly increase your suffering in childbirth, and you will suffer greatly in childbirth. You will desire your husband, and your husband will rule over you.
3:17 And he said to Adam, If you have obeyed your wife and eaten of the fruit of the tree, which I commanded you not to eat, the earth will be cursed for your sake. You will toil all your life so that you can eat from the ground.
3:18 The ground will bring you thorns and thistles, and you will eat the vegetables of the field.
3:19 You shall eat bread with the sweat of your face, until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust, and you will return to dust.
...
3:22 The LORD God said, The man has become like us, knowing good and evil. Now lest he stretch out his hand and eat the fruit of the tree of life, and live forever.
3:23 So the LORD God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he came.
3:24 So he drove him out. And on the east side of the Garden of Eden he placed cherubim, and a flaming sword that turned every way, to guard the way of the tree of life.
Ikari Shinji, born in 2000, was only 14 years old in 2014. Before the story of "EVA" happened, he lived with his teacher. He could play the cello and liked to listen to the Walkman left by his father. Although we don't know, but he may be an ordinary boy. One day, his father wrote him a letter that said "Come here".
On the first day of arriving in the third new Tokyo city, he was still carrying his luggage and contacted the water angel. Immediately afterwards, he was asked by his father to drive the first EVA to fight against the water angel. "If you want to sit, go up quickly, or get out of my way." My father gently threw a word. In one day, with earth-shaking changes, Ikari Shinji changed from an ordinary middle school student to an EVA pilot.
Are we the same? When school starts, when we graduate, when we go out to work for the first time, our identities are transformed in one day. When the child was sent to kindergarten for the first time, he cried and made trouble, but the parents could only comfort him and leave.
Do we have the power to stop these changes? It may be difficult to do, at least in the Old Testament stories thousands of years ago, Adam and Eve did not escape God's punishment. In "EVA", Adam and Eva are still at the mercy of SEELE and NEVR. Perhaps when Adam heard that "you have to eat the vegetables in the field, you must sweat your face to make a living", he was as surprised as Shinji when he heard "the first plane to fight" and said "how can this happen".
Do not want to drive EVA, driving EVA will only bring sadness, but the first machine can not help Shinji, grab him directly and stuff it into the cockpit. I don't want to grow up, I don't want to study, I don't want to go to work, but my parents comfort us and send us to school and society. For at this time, the promised parting time has come, and you will be drawn from the Garden of Eden. On the ground is the dismembered corpse of No. 2 machine, while the mass-produced machine is waiting for you with a malicious smile while gnawing on the intestines and arms of No. 2 machine. Shinji, who was brought to the ground by the first machine, was just like the child who was brought into the kindergarten by his mother, but he had no choice but to do so.
The final chapter of Evangelion begins.
P.S. I think one of the themes of "Sincerely for You" is the pain and growth of people when they grow up and move into society. Regarding the ritual of growth, I tried to interpret it in the film review of "Air". The traditional ceremony is to relieve people. It is set up in the face of the fear of the unknown, but the fear can only be alleviated by the ritual, not eliminated. And "Sincerely for You" is more concerned with how to deal with the incompatibility between the individual and the society after growing up, and how to correctly view the relationship between the individual and the society.
Emotions by social norms, goals replaced by desires
One of the problems people face in society is: how to achieve their own goals on the premise of conforming to social norms?
What is widely circulated is Freud's explanation: the id of human inner desire will have various conflicts with the superego of social norms, and in order to adjust the contradiction between the two, the ego is born. For the various desires of the id, the ego will find a way to achieve it in line with the values of the superego. For example, when you see the newly released mobile phone, you really want (the id), but do not choose to grab it (the superego), but finally buy it (the ego) by saving money step by step.
Anno Hideaki, or the creators of "EVA", directly excluded Freud's ego and superego according to their wishes in the movie, allowing Shinji and other characters to be in the completed stream of consciousness. Unlimited pouring out of your inner irritable thoughts and true feelings of your id.
After finishing the first scene at the beginning, Shinji and two dolls build a castle on the sand. Why did Shinji build a castle? Because the dummy said, "Shinji-kun will do it too, let's try to build the castle." Because of the needs of others, Shinji was very happy to build the castle. Here we might as well regard the dummy as a "person" in the social sense. Because of the distance, we cannot explore the inner thoughts of others. In a sense, everyone other than ourselves is a "dummy" that we cannot see through.
Then the dummy left because "it's mom and I have to go back", leaving Shinji alone to build the castle. The dummy followed the laughter and laughter of his mother away, and Shinji's loneliness and fear were separated by an invisible distance.
What would a mature person do if faced with this situation? The mature person might smile slightly, say "everyone is home then I'll go home too" and walk away nonchalantly. But Shinji didn't hide his inner emotions, because he was not needed by the dummy, and the value of Shinji building a castle was gone. He began to cry aloud and violently destroyed the newly built castle. (The Shinji in this scene is Shinji in the image of a child. The child really doesn't know how to cover up his emotions, so it is reasonable to express Shinji's anxiety and pain in this way)
Is it important to cover up your emotions? Very important, this is a very important skill for a person and one of the functions of the ego. By disguising, we can transform our "self-goals" into "society's means", and sum up "society's goals" under "self-means", which is not as rambling as it seems, in "I'm Sorry" I failed to save the world - "Miracle boy" Anno Hideaki [Master's Road]" 19 minutes and 20 seconds of this video, the former president of GAINAX Toshio Okada commented on Anno Hideaki:
As long as there is an excuse to prevent the other side from using nuclear weapons
I can be allowed to destroy the city
The excuse to become Ultraman by getting a transformation
I can destroy cities and fight monsters
Because I was given the task of falling in love, I was able to fall in love
very incredible
From this, you can feel the thoughtfulness of Anno Hideaki
Do we care about how we perform at work and socially? From some perspectives, we don’t care, what we care about is the safety and satisfaction brought to the id through these behaviors that conform to the norms of the superego, while work and socializing are just self-fulfilling goals, venting under the conditions allowed by the superego. The means of id emotion.
Here can be a little extension of EVA's self-reflection. How many people came to see EVA to protect human beings from SEELE and NEVR? Watching EVA is nothing more than like the cool scenes of EVA fighting with the apostles and destroying the city. Yes, if you want to be the elite among human beings, want to destroy cities with impunity and kill apostles, then become the pilot of EVA.
And when it comes to the final "truly for you", a bigger excuse—human completion, comes as an unconditional means of venting negative emotions inside.
This kind of catharsis is in a sense a radical video attempt. In the past, genre films always had all kinds of grandiose excuses, let the incarnation of justice destroy the city, and let the prince and princess fall in love. Therefore, "Sincerely for you" came up with a more false excuse. For the completion and evolution of all human beings, the protagonist can do whatever he wants, decide the life and death of everyone, and pour more direct emotions to the audience without modification.
And it is precisely because of this undisguised emotional catharsis that "Sincerely for you" has more freedom to discuss the next issues.
Individual value in a huge collective
What is the value of man? Needed by a dummy to pile up sand? In the negative emotions that the creators deliberately poured out because of the completion, how to affirm their own value?
Is human value driving an EVA? So that it doesn't live up to the expectations of others and simply escapes the fear of being killed by the enemy if you don't fight? Or study and work? Wouldn't it be possible to live up to the expectations of others and escape the fear of losing all kinds of material things?
Or is it self-driven, to influence and inspire others? Is "being the best EVA driver" also a value? But if you are the one who fights for the future of mankind, why do you have to watch the twisted "invincible Shinji-sama" come to the rescue whenever you make a mistake? Why do you doubt yourself, and when you're not needed by others, you're slumped?
Or we don't think about this issue, simply obey the requirements of society, don't think about it, just be a puppet. Then why did you screw up Commander Ikari's research and leave at the critical moment when he needed your help the most, because "Shinji needs me", with such a frivolous remark?
Maybe we need to live in a smaller world and find our worth by using our bodies to comfort others. Then why did you feel deeply scared and run away after finding that Bhaji became more and more like your father? If it's boring to say that adults comforting each other with their bodies, then why did you suddenly say "kiss" when you were alone with Shinji?
What's the point of living in such a large group as a small individual? Different characters have different answers to this question in EVA TV, but they slapped their faces one after another, resulting in conflicts between behaviors and values. Even we finally found out that Commander Ikari didn't care about Rei's life or death at all, because one Rei died, and there were other spare Rei. What about us? If we were wiped out of society, would someone else come to replace us?
So Shinji has a fear of social relations. In society, we disguise ourselves as a fake with smiling faces and hypocrisy, but we are afraid of smiling faces and hypocrisy. You should do specific things on specific occasions to conform to social norms, but you will find that all kinds of things are ambiguous, and you cannot find social norms that can be accurately followed. Even, we cannot be sure when we will lose value. At the same time, the exposure of one's inner fear will also show a special side of oneself, which may make others fearful and keep a distance from oneself.
It is helpless to build social relationships. In fact, we can build social relationships with anyone, but acknowledging this may also acknowledge the meaninglessness and interchangeability of our own social relationships. The ambiguity of social relations and the ambiguity of social norms mentioned above make people doubt the authenticity of their inner feelings.
Hey, only Asuka can save me
Anyone can
You only came to me because you were afraid of Misato and the first qualified person
Because it's the easiest without hurting
you never liked anyone
And you didn't even like yourself
Destruction - the solution
It is impossible to rationally analyze the relationship between people, and it is impossible to sort out unified social rules. Losing the reconciliation of the ego and the restraint of the superego, the id, in order to solve the contradiction between people and the collective, has an infinite death instinct. Zoom in and find the solution at the end - destroy.
The destruction here is not only the physical death of human beings and the disintegration of the wall of the heart. At the beginning of the destruction, Hideaki Anno deliberately inserted a flashback scene, and went through the titles of chapters 1-24 like a marquee. Here, the audience is asked to recall the complete plot of EVA, and it is implied that this is Shinji's complete denial of his efforts to integrate into the group in the first 24 episodes, which also symbolizes the destruction of the plot and psychology.
Going back to the aforementioned interview with Toshio Okada:
Anno Hideaki's SF works are characterized by large-scale destruction during the climax scene
Although this kind of destruction has the pretext that it is caused by the actions of bad people
But it can be felt that he really wants to depict the destruction itself
After all, why describe destruction?
In terms of performance
The relationship with this world can only be constructed through explosion and destruction
This is a manifestation of his first characteristic
The second feature is
By destroying the city and destroying the world I can relate to the world
This is the basis of Anno's philosophy
In the matter of repairing my relationship with the world, I have been unable to restore it. I tried to use the collective and society to help me repair this relationship, but I failed. So I decided to skip the collective and the society and go directly to destroy the world. My unease and sadness determined the destruction of the world. Although it cannot be said that EVA is the originator of the world system, it is undeniable that EVA - or "sincerely for you", has left a strong mark in the development of this faction of the world system.
Step on the pyramid castle that symbolizes NERV, and strangle this woman who obviously needs me but pretends to be arrogant and refuses me. The joys and sorrows of human beings can’t be conveyed to me. I thought this was a world without hate and betrayal, but this world betrayed my feelings, so let’s all die.
The destruction here is also helping the audience to release their repressed emotions in a sense. As mentioned earlier, genre films achieve the goal of satisfying the audience's imagination by replacing personal goals with social means. "Sincerely for you" has finally achieved the goal of infinitely releasing his negative emotions after finding the direction of "using human beings as an excuse". Violence, sex, desire for control, all expressed through the lens of stream of consciousness. As I said before, this is the vanguard of "Sincerely For You". One of the purposes of the audience watching the movie is for self-satisfaction and emotional catharsis, and "Sincerely for You" has found an outlet to help the audience escape. Through the shackles of the ego and the superego, the fantasies of self-satisfaction are freely carried out, and they are immersed in their dark desires without psychological burden.
Reflection after destruction
If "sincerely for you" stops at mindless emotional catharsis and pleasure, it will definitely not have the status it has now. After reflection and further thinking after the carnival, it also tries to give an answer to the conflict between individuals and society.
After the uncontrolled stream of consciousness, "Sincerely For You" gave me the unforgettable footage to this day - the live-action footage, the sparkling lake surface, the warm sunshine, the slow-moving train, the lazy cat, and the quiet standing. The tower, the city in the distance. Compared with the turbulent waves of various uncontrolled desires under the individual's heart, the world is calm and peaceful.
I can't brag about the pioneering nature of "Sincerely For You" in combining animated pictures and live-action footage, but in my viewing history, the animations with live-action footage that I have watched can be counted in one palm—and Most of the live-action shots are for some funny contrast effects, and animations using live-action shots are used for other purposes. The only ones I remember are "Sincerely For You" and "SSSSGridman". After all, using live-action footage in animation is indeed a hassle.
As if opening Pandora's Box, after all the evils in the world were released, the bottom hope finally appeared (when Shinji asked Rei what was in his heart, Rei answered "hope"). And after the fragile Shinji vented all the negative emotions in the dream, he finally recalled the beautiful things in reality.
Can everyone combine a Lilith to eliminate the distance between people? Can it smooth out the obscure rules that bind others in society? Maybe, but the solution exists in dreams, not reality.
Even Shinji himself reflected:
Existing without me and nobody is the same
…
It's just wishful thinking
can't last forever
One day you will be abandoned and betrayed
But I want to see you again
'Cause I felt the mood at the time was real
Even if you return to a world where people will hurt each other, the "Rei" who represents the hope that people may understand each other, and the "Zhu Xun" who bravely loves others will still encourage you in your heart.
So what is the answer of "Sincerely for you" on how to deal with the incomprehension between people and the conflicts between people and the collective?
Perhaps it is to acknowledge the differences of everyone, to live in a happy moment with heart, not to hope to compensate for reality through dreams, but to escape from your dreams and find happiness in reality. As for the result...
Time Will Tell
Time will tell us the result.
Time may make people forget eachother, but the mood at that moment is still real.
When Shinji decided to disintegrate Lilith and restore the world to its original appearance, Kaoru Nagisa said (to the point):
Reality is a reflection of the heart
And the new reality will change the mind of the person
Both continue to work
Relying on time to develop our future
Li and Wei later added (to the effect):
Even if I lose my point of view without my own thoughts
Rely on your own actions to take these things back
Follow your heart to live your life
As long as you live, there is a chance to create happiness
Even if there is no answer, keep thinking about what it means to be alive, because it is a matter of course.
But is such a calming statement the ultimate answer to the distance between people and the relationship between people and society? "Sincerely for you" doesn't stop under this narcissism.
The sea was dyed bright red, still lapping the sand. Li is watching you secretly from a distance, as if you had just left home on your first day here. And you are desperate again, hoping to solve the contradiction between the two sides by destroying the other party.
Yes, time helps us shape ourselves, but it also doesn't give us peace. "Sincerely for you" is very calm here. Maybe no answer is the final answer to these questions, so this film review, and even this movie, can't actually answer your life, it's just to explore, the rest The next one can only be left to you to solve.
So everything is going around in circles and is still a farce of reincarnation? no.
At least this time, Asuka learned to be gentle with others, and Shinji learned to cry sincerely in front of others.
Yeah, it's really frustrating.
Finish.
In the end, the above are all over-interpretations.
View more about Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion reviews
