An important part of being a social commentator is engaging with good-faith arguments that challenge your positions on the topics you cover. That goes double for writers, since it’s storytellers who are the new priesthood of our narrative-driven society.
That is also why literary critics play a vital if often unsung role. If they want to master their craft and make as big an impact as possible, writers must strive to understand which aspects of craft work and why.
A short bug intriguing video that manages both tasks was brought to my attention recently. It comes to us from a YouTuber calling himself Pilgrims Pass, whose knowledge of Aristotle and Aquinas – along with his avi – suggest familiarity with the classic Christian view of art.
The video in question examines a series that’s become a favorite whipping boy in dissident artist quarters. The series is Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the opinion held by many in the new counterculture is that it is a superficial deconstruction of mecha anime – a bit of nihilistic sound and fury that deformed all its successors in the genre.
Pilgrims Pass forwards a carefully constructed argument that Eva’s reputation as a self-indulgent, postmodernist mess is undeserved – at least for the most part. That’s a tough sell in certain circles, but at minimum his presentation is internally consistent. And it deserves a fair hearing.
To summarize the argument put forth in the video, I will present the charges lodged against NGE and the corresponding verdicts in the form of a trial.
Charge 1: Eva is deconstructionist
The show’s critics often claim that NGE deconstructs the mecha genre by taking its tropes and subverting them. They point out that we’ve seen the unlikely teen hero chosen to save the world using a giant robot his super-scientist father built before. Except those previous times, the teen hero showed real heroism and saved the world. But NGE’s protagonist Shinji Ikari succumbs to his personal weakness and fails.
Verdict: Guilty (TV Ending), Not Guilty (Movie Ending)
This is the main thrust of the video, and it hits home.
Deconstruction is a linguistic approach that starts from the premise that a work either has no inherent meaning, or even if it does, the intrinsic limitations of language keep us from ever accessing it.
What Eva’s detractors overlook is that a hero trying and failing to achieve his goal isn’t a de facto deconstruction.
It’s a tragedy.
As the video points out, Achilles and Macbeth are two other characters who strive for greatness, only to let their vices get the better of them.
That doesn’t make the Iliad and Macbeth deconstructive. It just makes them tragedies.
The reason everybody missed this about NGE is that we’ve all been trained to think of tragedy as a storytelling form exclusive to ancient Greek plays – or maybe art house movies.
When we hear “tragic hero”, we’re conditioned to think of larger-than-life characters like Achilles or Oedipus. Because for multiple generations, the point of schooling has been to keep students from making connections based on their observations.
Yes, Achilles faced brutal tribal warfare, and Macbeth had to contend with cutthroat dynastic intrigue. Those were problems guys of their station had to deal with for real in their respective ages.
The fact that Shinji has to navigate the dissociated and transactive relationships of atomized post-Cold War society doesn’t mean he’s not a tragic hero. It means he’s a hero facing the tragedies of this age.
Are they less overt and rather less spectacular than the Trojan War or the Scottish succession? Yes, they are. And the fact that NGE director Hideaki Anno makes those small, personal tragedies so gripping is a testament to his masterwork’s quality.
… with one important caveat: As Aristotle teaches, a necessary ingredient for a tragic story is catharsis. We have to see the hero get a deserved and satisfactory comeuppance for his failure. Oedipus’ hubris leaves him blind. Macbeth’s unchecked ambition costs him everything. And at the end, both of them realize just how they got there and why.
Eva’s TV ending does not satisfy that condition. Shinji escapes the just consequences of his weakness without learning anything. Instead he gets the other characters’ unearned acceptance.
However, the TV ending was a rushed affair necessitated by funding cuts. And the balance of the evidence shows it’s not the ending that was intended.
The Death and Rebirth and End of Evangelion movies show the whole story. And they do meet Aristotle’s criteria for a satisfying tragedy. Shinji’s inability to overcome his weakness causes him to fail, he suffers the consequences of his failure, and he’s brought face-to-face with the reason why in an inescapable manner.
It’s worth noting that Shinji’s challenges and vices are those particular to Generation Y. He’s from a broken home, was raised to have a strict transactional view of relationships, suspects what’s going on but is tractable to a fault, and is incompetent, but only to the degree that his self-pity lulls him into learned helplessness.
And it’s his failure to conquer those vices that costs him his shot at greatness. Pure, black tar Gen Y haplessness.
Honorable mention to Asuka, who decides she’d rather stay home and play Sega Saturn than try to save the world. Because she’s not guaranteed she can win, so why try?
Charge 2: Eva is nihilistic
This charge often goes hand-in-hand with the prior accusation of deconstructionism. And indeed, sharper readers will discern right away that deconstruction is grounded in nihilism – either soft or hard, depending on whether texts have meaning we just can’t get to, or they have no meaning at all.
The criticism here goes that Shinji fails to make meaningful connections with his family, friends, classmates, and co-workers while also failing to stop Instrumentality. So the whole business turns out to be pointless in the end.
Verdict: Not Guilty
Because they proceed from the same foundational premise, acquitting Eva on charge 1 dictates acquittal on charge 2.
And the exoneration sticks even if we consider the TV run only. Because a nihilistic world is a place without truth. But the series’ clear critique of Shinji’s – and the other characters’ – faults presupposes a moral standard they’re not living up to.
Think about it. NGE would be altogether incoherent if Shinji was justified in despairing of ever being loved. Or if Gendo was right to neglect his son. Or if Asuka, Misato, and Ritsuko were vindicated for being careerist strivers.
“Shinji’s failure has a bad outcome” does not equal “Shinji’s efforts had no point.” Quite the contrary. The fact that his conflict had moral stakes disqualifies Eva as nihilistic.
Instead, Eva portrays an implicit but necessary standard of positive good, which presupposes truth.
And beauty.
Which brings us to …
Charge 3: Eva’s Christian symbolism is just superficial with no deeper significance
NGE’s critics allege that it’s no different than other anime which use crosses, angels, and halos as shorthand for “weird gaijin stuff” with no spiritual overtones. Think of dullards who get Chinee characters tattooed on their calves despite having no idea what they mean. That’s tantamount to how Anno depicted Christian imagery in Eva.
Verdict: Guilty (Sentence Satisfied by Time Served)
Yeah, it’s a matter of record that Anno didn’t read too deeply into Christian theology when directing Eva.
But he did study psychology, with its Oedipus and Elektra complexes and narcissism. Understanding those disorders requires at least some knowledge of Greek storytelling.
And as classical theists will point out, the Greek myths helped pave the way for the fulness of Christian revelation. Think of them as fragmentary jigsaw puzzles that Christianity provided the missing pieces to complete.
Even St. Paul suggested as much.
We must also consider the nature of symbolism. Late Moderns are conditioned to dismiss symbols as superficial signs. But by doing that, some of the same folks who accuse NGE of being deconstructionist use deconstructionism to discount its symbolism as just skin deep.
Christian theology holds that symbols are more than mere signs. A symbol does more than point to the higher reality it’s associated with. In some mysterious way, it makes that reality manifest.
That might sound like a stretch, but if you’ve been following my posts on diabolical influence and Satanism in the modern world, you know that the enemy puts stock in the power of symbols. Enough to liberally salt their narratives with Luciferian symbols.
Now consider how much more powerful Christian symbols that manifest Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are.
Sure, Anno may have adorned Eva with Christian symbols as an aesthetic choice. It’s likely that he did.
But his intent – at least to the extent it wasn’t to reject those symbols’ meaning – didn’t obscure or thwart that meaning.
Pilgrims Pass cites Eva’s accidental Christian influence as one reason for its enduring popularity. And I think he’s onto something.
If we, as writers, think the Cross can turn vampires in fiction – not due to the faith of the one holding it, but due to its inherent symbolic power – we should believe it can turn hearts in real life.
In hoc signo vinces …
Its superficial but honest embrace of Christian symbolism is one reason Eva has stood the test of time while so many of its imitators lie forgotten.
Addendum: Discernment of Nihilism
Here’s the surefire way to tell nihilism from tragedy: closed character arcs.
- Unhappy ending, but the character completes his arc? Tragedy
- Unhappy ending, but the character’s arc is left unclosed? Nihilism
The above is why stories like A Game of Thrones, Lost, and Attack on Titan are so unsatisfying. They open a character arc, tease you with the promise of closure, then kill off the character in question or just stop his story without cathartic resolution. And like trashy soap operas, they switch to another open character arc which will itself never be fulfilled. Wash, rinse, repeat.
For a thrilling mech saga built on Christian morality with relatable characters who get complete arcs, read my hit military thriller.
I was thoroughly in the deconstructionism camp until the last movie came out and had a happy ending that resolved everything, essentially giving it an ending that, ironically, would have suited mecha from before it was made more than what came in its wake.
It isn’t that all stories need a happy ending, but a story about seeking objective meaning and purpose in life at the end of the world needs to have some happiness in order for it to work. The TV series belly-flopped on that one hard and EoE felt incomplete.
Hopefully now that it is over the Japanese can stop living in fear of it and start creating again. That felt like one of the reasons Anno made it in the first place.
To clarify, the video, and my post on it, restrict their commentary to the original NGE TV run and 2 concluding films. I haven’t seen Rebuild and have no desire to.
Strong disagree on EoE being incomplete. It wraps up all the series’ themes and makes Shinji pay the due price for caving to his vices. And it’s not just grimdark with no glint of hope, either. Shinji and Asuka return from Instrumentality, showing that everyone else who so chooses can, too. The TV ending doesn’t expose Instrumentality as the nightmarish inversion of Heaven it is; nor is there shown to be a way out. EoE fixes those mortal story flaws.
Also, how in the world does giving NGE a happy ending improve it? The story demands a tragic ending for the underlying morals to be coherent.
Would you say that the Evangelion Rebuild movies have a different story/direction from the series?
Going by Brian’s response and what I’ve seen in videos, it sounds like the answer may be yes.
Which, if that is the case, works, since I can see the benefit in recontextualizing the TV series and End of Eva as a tragedy and the Rebuild movies as the burying of the negative after effects that came from people misinterpreting EVA/inserting slightly related negative meanings into the work that weren’t there.
I don’t think it’s for nothing that Anno keeps telling people to watch Gunbuster instead and that he looks happy doing his own spin on retelling the classics he grew up with.
I haven’t seen Eva.
However, I think a lot of the Eva hate comes from the idea that a lot of modern entertainment is meant to belittle and demoralize. Something like Eva just comes off as more of the same.
However, the video has convinced me that perhaps I should re-evaluate it.
The Pop Cult high priests who peddle nihilistic hate mail to their audience use “tragedy” as a fig leaf. And they’ve been doing it for so long that honest people can be forgiven for equating sad stories with nihilism.
Nonetheless, authentic tragedy serves a valuable, even noble, literary purpose. It’s fine to come away from a tragic morality tale well-told feeling uneasy. And it’s no detriment to entertainment. I could show you any number of Robert E. Howard stories as proof.
Interesting. How would this apply to something like Spec Ops: The Line, another deconstructionist favourite? Can a videogame be a true tragedy? The Line is famous for forcing you to bomb civilians with white phosphorus to proceed, and then chastising you for doing so. I brought this up to a reviewer once and was chastised for having the temerity to think that I “deserved” to be entertained by the works I purchased. Then again, said reviewer turned out to be a Communist, so…
A buddy and I subjected ourselves to that dismal slog on the recommendation of Extra Credits. It’s no surprise their team have since been outed as Death Cultists.
You said it yourself. Spec Ops: The Line is deconstructionist. Therefore it’s nihilist, therefore it’s not a tragedy.
On a related noe, have you ever read Dorothy Sayers’ introduction to her play cycle The Man Born To Be King? She briefly examines the Gospel as a tragedy with a fifth-act turn to comedy (similar to Tolkien’s eucatastrophe) and raises the question of whether explicitly Christian tragedy, in the full Classical sense, is even possible outside the endpoint of damnation.
Only saw a few episodes of Eva here and there so I can’t really comment on the series as a whole.
But I do know from hanging around mecha fansites that mecha fans often are pretty bad at catching the point of series and love commenting on stuff they haven’t seen.
Back when I was at such sites I remember every discussion of Newtypes resulted in someone saying “Gundam X proved that psychic powers can’t exist in Gundam!” which a.) has nothing to do with other series and b.) isn’t even close to what the finale of Gundam X said (and in fact the existence of psychic powers is essential to the plot.) While I had trouble getting into Eva on an episode by episode basis, I also never really took too much stock in the interpretations of it that I heard discussed.
This is something I’ve noticed too, having been in a lot of the forums of the 2000s.
There was a tendency toward group think with regards to different shows that wasn’t based on context or the material actually in the show (Said mecha fansites were the origins of the brain dead take that G Gundam and Gurren Lagann were light hearted parodies. Which is as far off the mark as I could think).
You see that sort of thought process these days in English speaking Tokusatsu fan pages/groups.
Well, I am persuaded to give Eva a go for the first time.
Good to hear. Do let us know what you think.
This post reminds me how No Country for Old Men and other Cormac McCarthy’s work is perceived as nihilistic, but I never saw it that way. There is a concrete moral code in his stories, but the characters make bad decisions that go against truth. And they eventually suffer the consequences.
McCarthy’s work definitely isn’t so cut and dried. You have to look close at the winning behavior in each story.
No Country seems like a case of the author wanting to have his cake and eat it too. Chigurh has an ad hoc code, but whether he’s a nihilist or a fatalist depends on how you interpret his coin flip routine. He wins in the end but doesn’t get away unscathed. If nothing else, it’s a good depiction of how the Death Cult denies Christian morality while at the same time presupposing it.
The Road is not nihilistic.
But Blood Meridian is for sure. Judge Holden expounds on his bloody moral vision, which absolutizes war. And not in any noble, honorable way – in the sense of dog-eat-dog, kill or be killed brutality. And he not only wins, he’s portrayed as a tireless, nigh immortal superman. Who also murders kids.
Never read Blood Meridian (difficult for me to get through, prose-wise), but I totally agree with your takes of No Country and Road. Regarding No Country, everything Llewelyn does to try to correct his situation ultimately fails because he still held on to the stolen money. And I thought Chigurh’s ending was hopeful because it shows he’s capable of suffering the same consequences for his mistakes.
Chigurh doesn’t win, per se. Chigurh is forced to acknowledge the hypocrisy of his code by Llewelyn’s wife, which breaks his aura of invincibility. It’s no coincidence that after this is the car crash that severely injures him.
Chigurh tries to embody the world and its rules, and ultimately even that is not enough to save him. He is “defeated”, such as he is, through a random car crash after being forced to acknowledge that he isn’t a random force of nature: He’s a psychopathic murderer. And the world cares as much for him as it does for Llewelyn.
So what is the answer? It’s in what the sheriff says at the end. The world has always been a dark and cruel place. That doesn’t absolve the few good men of carrying the torch of righteousness from generation to generation, keeping alive the reality and memory of the true, good, and beautiful. That’s the message of “No Country for Old Men”.
I’m going to defend AoT ending, it was great but bungled. The entire point of AoT is the problem with hiding history from people, good and bad. Paradisian try to hide from their history and find themselves livestock to be preyed upon by people who don’t. Marleyans build their own history to justify why they are not like Eldians, but it is a figleaf to justify their power. They use the same titans to achieve this end, and their heroic founder was lesser a challenger to the previous regime and more a continuation under a new name. Eren essentially invents historiography, in which the member of the current owner of the Attack Titan gets to redetermine all of history itself, and how that tends be the most genocidal of all tool of all. The only solution is to challenge idea of historical continuity, the descendents of Ymir have distinct knowable lineage, the ability to turn into titans, once cut, they are just like the other people of the world.
Eren even completes both of his arcs, both destroying the titans, and becoming, through the exact by instead of repeating the actions from Ymir, and instead choosing a different option. Changing your past will not make you free, becoming the strongest person and wiping out all others will not make you free. Only choosing to do different actions will make you free. AoT does appear nihilistic, and hopeless, but it is not. I would definitely consider the Office to be a more nihilistic work.
Was this well explained, unfortunately not, but I found AoT easier to follow than Eva. I think the difference between Lost-GoT and AoT is Lost-GoT use meaningful topics, but don’t have a meaning in themselves. Who wins the Iron Throne is a question that has replay value of a lottery ticket. AoT has a lot of meaning, Grisham breakdown as he tries to resist the command to kill the Reiss family, is beautiful, haunting and very distrubing.
You are confusing the free for the good. Nihilism is a question of the latter, not the former.
AoT’s nihilism is borne out in the fact that no concrete, objective source of morality is ever shown. It’s a random horrors of war meat grinder of the kind written by traumatized Vietnam vets.
As for the historical revisionism/historiography, that is pure epistemic nihilism. Do I need to explain how that’s deconstructive?
I just finished this series and EoE yesterday thanks to this post bringing it to my attention. Still contemplating it but I found it very powerful – deeply unsettling and horrifying at points – but powerful all the same.
I plan to avoid the rewrites and subsequent releases like the plague as the very idea of those spell nothing but trouble.
Holy scheisse, I never really thought you to be an Eva fan, but not only are you an Eva fan, but also understand what Anno was trying to convey to the audience. My complements good sir. Only confirms why Evangelion is my favorite anime next to Ghost in the Shell and Armored Trooper VOTOMS.
Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex is not only my favorite anime series, it’s my favorite police procedural in any medium.