Shin Evangelion the Movie: ||" - Prologue to the End of the Postwar Anime Adolescence that Was Too Long (Part 1) [Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World Part 8

As the time period is changing from the Heisei Era to the 2021 Era, the serial series "Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World" aims to capture the contemporary landscape through time reviews of notable anime.

This year's theme was finally released in March 2021, after two postponements! Shin Evangelion The Movie: ||" has brought the curtain down on a quarter of a century of history.

Critic Daichi Nakagawa will give his verdict on the conclusion of this historical blockbuster representing the Heisei era in two installments, one before and one after the film.

(There are many spoilers, so please be aware of them before reading the article.)

Introduction──A marathon runner's record and the end of a race that lasted too long

March 8, 2021. As is typical of the old-school otaku of the real-time generation, I saw "Shin Evangelion the Movie: ||" on its opening day.

The scene shared on social networking sites was like a scene that had happened a quarter of a century ago, when no one had ever seen "Shin Evangelion the Movie: ||" before. It was reminiscent, albeit very locally and momentarily, of the social phenomenon boom that occurred a quarter of a century ago, when everyone was forced to talk about their love, hatred, emotions, and opinions regarding "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (1995-96). I, too, sank into the impatient seats of the 4DX version at the Ikebukuro Grand Cinema Sunshine, which I was able to secure by chance (or rather, I was shaken impatiently) and witnessed its demise.

After watching the 2 hours and 35 minutes of the film, I was reminded of a legend about an athlete that was recently reminded amidst the momentum for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Shizo Kanaguri, who competed in the marathon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Japan's first modern Olympics, lost consciousness during the race and was declared missing, but was invited to the 55th anniversary celebration of the 1967 Olympics held on March 21, 1967, more than half a century later, and cut the finish line tape again. The goal of the race was to cut the tape. The announced record was 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 20 seconds.3 This was the year Hideaki Anno turned 7 years old.

This episode in Olympic history became well known when it was depicted as an epilogue in the final episode of Kudo Kankuro's NHK historical drama "Idaten: Tokyo Olimpic Banashi" (2019), in which Kanaguri was the main character. Although less than halfway through its run, many of us who witnessed the end of "Shin Eva" may have been seized by similar sentiments.

Just as Shizo Kanaguri's great first steps as a pioneer laid the foundation for the rise of Japanese sports in which subsequent generations played an active role, there is no doubt that "Eva" was an achiever of its own time that triggered the third anime boom that has continued to the present day. However, just as Kanaguri's first stage as an athlete was disappointing and disgraceful, and thus left behind a legend, "Eva" as a work of art paradoxically became a social phenomenon precipitated by the sense of insufficiency of its "ending. The "Eva" was a work that paradoxically accelerated the social phenomenon.

And while Kanaguri himself, who was wracked with remorse for not living up to the expectations of all of Japan, was unable to find an opportunity to clear his name as an Olympian, the way in which Japanese sports as a whole moved to a different stage, using his attempt as a springboard, is a clear example of how the post-Eva genre of works has taken on different expressions and themes, and how they have become a sharp and sharply focused form of art. The way in which Japanese sports as a whole moved to a different stage, using his attempts as a springboard, is reminiscent of the situation in which the works of various post-Eva genres, while sharpening the expressions and themes they inherited, successively rewrote the problematic setting of "Eva" that was too closely connected to the 1990s, the era of the end of the century.

So, like the marathon race at the Stockholm Games, "Was that race still going on? ......?" was my frank surprise when I first saw this film. And the fact that the director Anno, who had been persisting with an issue that everyone thought was overdue for a long time, had managed to settle the original theme with an extremely honest sense of responsibility, made me feel, as did many other long-time anime fans, that I had been shown what "Narufutsu" means.

Honestly, that's all I can say about my personal impression.

Just as hunger is the best source of taste, the experience that the passage of time in reality has irreplaceable value for the reception of fiction (even though I am naturally skeptical that it is necessary to do so in "Eva"), the fact that the audience was able to experience it as a series of titles is what makes this film so special. The most unique aspect of this film was that it allowed the audience to experience the experience of the value that is hard to replace in the future.

More than two months have already passed since the screening of the film, and NHK's "Professional Work Style: Hideaki Anno Special," which followed the production of the film, and the 100-minute extended version of "Sayonara All About Evangelion: Hideaki Anno's 1214 Days," on BS-1, were broadcast in two stages in relation to the previous spring and summer films. The documentary program on Hideaki Anno, who is the general director of the film, was aired over two phases, just like the relationship between the old spring film and the summer film, and the release of new special bulletins and production announcements of "Shin Ultraman" and "Shin Kamen Rider", which were made one after the other, all of which helped this film to gain momentum from last year's "Demon Slayer Slayer: The Infinity Train Arc" last year, this film was said to be on track to gross 10 billion yen at the box office. Unfortunately, however, the film was declared in a state of emergency for the third time during its run, and it remains to be seen whether it will be able to surpass the pinnacle of classic "mecha and bishojo" otaku anime and reach the level of a "national work" as a stand-alone film.

Despite such a sense of a lull in the situation, this film, which is equivalent to the end of the spirit of the Heisei era itself, cannot be overlooked for the purpose of this series, which is to read and look at the state of the world "after the Heisei era" from the perspective of Japanese anime (albeit with extremely infrequent frequency).

Although it may be too late to publish it as a subtext on the Internet, I would like to shed some light on it from several perspectives.

Eva" as a Terminal in Postwar Japanese Anime History

To discuss this work is to count how the concept of "Evangelion," which embodies the end of the "fictional era" at the end of the 20th century, has been overtaken by reality in the course of the past quarter century.

The first Eva boom, from the first TV series to the conclusion of the old movie version, occurred at a time when the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the unprecedented chemical weapons attack of sarin gas on the subway caused by the cult group Aum Shinrikyo had a profound impact on Japanese society. In the longer term, the effects of the compound recession that followed the collapse of the bubble economy spread, and, in any case, the content appeared (or at least, the discourse that perceived it as such prevailed) as being supremely synchronized with the very face of Japanese society in the 1990s, when the prosperity that had existed until the 1980s ceased and the future of Japanese society became uncertain. (Or at least, the discourse that perceived it as such was widespread).

Eva" is a compilation of the genealogy of postwar Japanese subcultures that developed up to the 1980s, such as science fiction robot animation that developed in the 1970s and 1980s and character dramas centered on psychological depiction that developed mainly in shōjo manga, based on the format of monster and special effects heroes such as "Ultraman" and derived from them. The work demonstrated a high degree of perfection as a compilation of the genealogy of postwar Japanese subcultures that had developed by the 1980s, including science fiction robot anime that developed in the 1970s and 1980s and character dramas based on psychological depiction that developed mainly in shōjo manga.

Post-Eva Japanese anime, which had undergone such a comprehensive review, was a work that demonstrated a high degree of perfection in terms of content, such as stylish visual sense, character modeling filled with sexual symbolism, and the "Sekaikei" psychological drama trend, as well as in the form of production committees formed by multiple copyright holders to produce late-night anime and other works for core fans and to produce works for packaged software and related products. In addition, the business model of multiple copyright holders forming a production committee and producing late-night anime for core fans and aiming for recoupment through sales of packaged software and related goods was also at the forefront of the era and greatly changed the reality of anime production.

Eva" put an end to the continuity of the "big story" of postwar subcultural history formed in the Showa period, and by the time the Heisei period passed its 10th year, the 2000s and '10s had arrived as the "era of late-night anime" with an inflationary proliferation of small-scale content that met the fragmented desires of users.

In other words, with "Eva," the essential innovation of the image of Japanese animation, which had been developed through the dynamism of the postwar Showa period, came to an end, and there was a break in historical time. Thereafter, the sequential combination of images in the repertoire submitted up to the time of "Eva" created an environment in which various content in line with the mood of the times, market trends, and technological development became popular and proliferated.

The unique position of "Eva" is evident, for example, in the September 2017 issue of Geijutsu Shincho, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Japanese animation and featured a poll of the 10 best Japanese animation works by experts, in which Eva was ranked first.

The difficulties of the new theatrical versions of ":Ō" and ":ō" left behind from the 00s.

Therefore, the fact that the "Evangelion" series, which should have stopped the Showa era, started in the late 2000s as the "Evangelion" series, seemed very unreasonable in light of the situation of anime of the same era. Why?

One of the reasons is that the start of "Evangelion: Introduction" in 2007, only 10 years after the conclusion of the old movie "Neon Genesis Evangelion: Air/Magokoro wo Kimini ni" (1997), which reworked the final two episodes of the TV series, was just in time for director Yoshiyuki Tomino's "Mobile Suit Z Gun The timing of the start of ":Introduction" in 2007, only 10 years after the completion of "Mobile Suit Z Gundam" (1997), coincided with the year following the self-made trilogy of "Mobile Suit Z Gundam: A New Translation" (2005-06), a 20th anniversary project of "Mobile Suit Z Gundam" (1985-86) by Yoshiyuki Tomino. In other words, the film was one of the originals of "Eva" in the sense that it was an auteuristic depiction of the failure of a story of a boy's growth due to his adolescent self-consciousness run amok, and it was right after an attempt was made to rewrite its ending in a positive manner.

At the bottom of it all, in Tomino's case, there was clearly a sense of historical responsibility (or perhaps a sense of reflexive rivalry) for the appearance of a follower like "Eva".

However, it is clear that Hideaki Anno's own motivation was to face his own limitation of "becoming a self-parody of 'Eva'" no matter what he did, and his desire for revenge for the fact that he could not reach a satisfactory conclusion even with the completion of the old theatrical version in 1997. This has been mentioned in various places since the start of the new version of the film.

Therefore, in contrast to Tomino's work, which can be said to have been made out of a sense of responsibility for the situation, Eva was planned out of the necessity of internal self-therapy (or at least branded in such a broad way), and the two remakes have the same tendency toward cleanup, but there is a sense of planning contrast. The two remakes had the same post-apocalyptic feel, but they were planned in contrasting ways.

In any case, the concepts of "O:" and "B:", which were self-made in the direction of making the old works "wholesome" in half the time of "O:" and "B:", seemed to be underripe and retrogressive in comparison with their predecessors, in almost the same trend as the response (whether successful or not) of Tomino's predecessors 20 years apart. The "Introduction" and "Rupture" concepts, which were self-made in the direction of making the old works "healthy" over a period of time, appeared to be underripe and backward-looking to their predecessors.

Then, as the storm of neo-liberalism triggered by the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the structural reforms by Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet blew in, and as people's reality was repainted by the ongoing IT revolution, the mood of the old turn of the century, which was clearly etched in "Eva," became clearly old, at least in the trend of popular content for the young generation. It can be said that it had clearly become old-fashioned in the stream of contents.

For example, the "Heisei Masked Rider" series moved from the psycho-suspense mood of the 1990s toward a battle royale and death game in which multiple justice fights to the bitter end, while the final episode of the "Eva" series, in its unrelenting pursuit of dreamlike fantasy, opened up a movement to visit sacred places in reality, etc. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" (2006) and later, the euphoric daily character dramas, "Death Note" (2003-06), which made an impact in Weekly Shonen Jump, and "Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion" (2006-08), which became a smash hit under the influence of "Death Note" (2003-06). (2006-2008), or "Kisarazu Cat's Eye" (2002) and "Nobuta. Produce" (2005), which critically accept the increasingly bleak mood of the times and attempt to find a modern image of maturity by reorganizing the community of Jimoto and aiming outside of the school caste. (2005), and "Shinkoku no Kyojin" (2009-21), which set a new standard for battle manga in the 2010s, were all sublimating post-Eva motifs and changing the mood of the times.

In particular, just before the Corona disaster, while thoroughly summarizing the history of monster tokusatsu and giant robot anime, it was game works such as "13th Airborne Defense Circle" (2019) that provided the most exemplary answers to the post-Eva problems of the late 2010s from outside of anime, as discussed in the fifth through seventh articles in this series. In short, "Eva" is a game that is not a battlefield, but rather a battleground.

In short, "Eva's" problematic setting, which was inherited from postwar Japanese spectacle expression, is a type of "Eva" that depicts the difficulties of social recognition and maturity at the individual level, while focusing on the fetish of setting up the situation and tooling with a metaphor about the difficulties of independence as a nation, with the trauma of defeat and the colonization by the United States. The "I am a Japanese" type of problem-setting has to a large extent been nullified by the response from above and below from a generation forced into otaku-like prostration, such as Anno's.

In a world where Moon Yagami had planned, Bussan had passed away "normally," Haruhi Suzumiya had danced, Shuji and Akira had produced, Lelouch Vie Britannia had ordered, and Eren Jaeger had begun to destroy, Shinji Ikari had now found a route to salvation and maturity, taking Camille Bidan as his model. By the way, what kind of critical power does this have?

It is only a personal decision by Hideaki Anno to start a new theatrical version of "Eva" as the new Studio Color, which became independent by pulling the copyright of "Eva" from Gainax as the original author, based on the profit from pachinko, which is another characteristic of the content industry since the 2000's. It was extremely difficult to find any cultural significance in the decision to start a new theatrical version of "Eva" as the new Studio Color, which became independent by pulling the copyright of "Eva" from Gainax.

While following the story framework of the old work, the film was refined with a large budget only in terms of drawing, and while hinting at the possibility of a "loop" as one of the popular post-Eva dramas, the growth of Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami, and (Soryu) Asuka Langley was more carefully depicted, including their relationships with the adults around them. The flow from ": Introduction" to ": Break" was not a thematic advance, but rather a pandering to an era that had overtaken itself by rounding off the edges of expression, and could only be received critically as a palatable well-made version of what many consumers "wanted to see" in a desire-fulfilling manner. (And yet, the circumstances that led to such a situation are not the same as those that led to it.

(As an insight into the circumstances that led to this, it is particularly interesting to note the scenes of the production process in Studio Color that were included in the 100-minute documentary broadcast on May 1. In the documentary, a young staff member explains that this is a process unique to Color. (This is a glimpse of the production system that led to the new film having less of an edge than the old film and becoming a more open entertainment film with a more rounded look.)

Q": A Return to the Mood of the Old Movie with a New Development and Its Cost

What about ":Q" released in 2012?

The story of Shinji, who was captured by the first model in the previous film, wakes up 14 years later in a world after the collapse caused by the third impact, and is left alone in a state of Urashima Taro. The storyline of Shinji waking up in a world after the collapse of Evangelion 14 years after the Third Impact was experienced as a "super-development" in the series of "Evangelion" films.

Shinji is confronted with the overly rejecting attitudes of Misato Katsuragi, Ritsuko Akagi, and others who have become leaders of the anti-Nerf organization "Ville," the adults who once guided him, and Asuka, who has become one-eyed, and with others with whom he once seemed to have a rapport. The drama progresses within the narrow confines of the setting and human relationships of the AAA Wunder, the airborne battleship launched in the US operation at the beginning of the film, and the altered Nerf headquarters, where the clone (another Rei) of Ayanami Rei, who risked her life to save her in "::F", returns with Evangelion Mark.09, which is controlled by another Rei, and the drama is also set in the same environment. The drama in ":Q" is a complete turnaround from the straightforward growth of Shinji's character in the previous two films, as it depicts a psychological drama in which Shinji is driven into a mental corner in the midst of a tight, confining atmosphere.

Although the details of the situation are different, Shinji's despair over relationships with others (especially the opposite sex) and his loneliness are redeemed by a sweet BL relationship with Kaworu Nagisa, which offers a glimmer of hope. In other words, Kawo is actually an apostle. In other words, Shinji's emotional drama, in which Kaworu, who was actually an apostle, is slaughtered in front of his eyes, drives him to the point of a definite breakdown, is led to a process almost similar to the situation just before the final two episodes of the previous TV series.

In this sense, ":Q" was intended to return the mood of the story, which had become milder in ":I" and ":B", to the atmosphere of the last half of the old series.

However, in the late 1990s, when the old film was made, the depiction of a sense of absurdity, which the audience could naturally accept as resonating with the mood of the real era itself through a mysterious and tricky direction that eliminated explanations without any major narrative setting, was not the case in ":Q." The occurrence of the near-third impact and its syndication were not the same in ":Q." The film's depiction of a sense of absurdity was not the case in the old film, but it was the case in ":Q. Q", it was no longer possible to reproduce the same absurdity (both in terms of Anno's mentality and the transition of the audience and society) without rationalizing the situation by attributing it to Shinji and the occurrence of the near third impact. (This change in depiction style between the old and new films corresponds to Anno's own comment in an NHK documentary that "audiences today do not follow things that are enigmatic.)

Thus, with the moody return of ":Q", the new theatrical version does not become a historical revisionist drama that overwrites the tragedy and thematic setbacks of the old work, as in the new translation of "Z", but rather, as a result, it becomes an alternative version of the negativity that was synchronized with the reality of the times that made "Eva" what it was. In the end, it can be said that the film barely returned to the starting point for taking on and confronting the negativity that was synchronized with the reality of the times that made "Eva" "Eva".

However, the cost of doing so was great, and in addition to the huge backlash from those who had hoped for a more wish-fulfillment approach up to "Eva," Anno's own mental state collapsed, as if to trace the mental state of the previous TV series when he was unable to finish the final two episodes of the same storyline. It was later reported that he fell into a state of depression and lost all motivation to produce anime, forcing him to halt production of the concluding episode, "Shin Eva," in 2013.

via the Great East Japan Earthquake and "Shin Godzilla" as a renewal of special effects expression.

What made this suspension of production so significant beyond Anno's personal circumstances was the fact that it coincided with a period of major change in the realities of Japanese society and culture in the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.

Just four months prior to the release of ":Q", Anno also held the "Director Hideaki Anno Special Effects Museum: Showa and Heisei Techniques in Miniature", which coincided with the start of Anno's activities as a Showa special effects archivist at the core of his own identity as a creator. In other words, unlike anime, where two-dimensional images are created purely as a world of ideas that are 100% fictional, Anno was once again deepening his commitment to the expressive characteristics of live-action special effects, where three-dimensional miniatures, stuffed animals, and costumes are deployed in front of the camera to construct a fiction while reflecting the noise and coincidences of reality. It was also a time of deepening commitment to the expressive characteristics of live-action special effects, in which noise and coincidence of reality are reflected while building fiction.

In other words, it is nothing but a visual genre that imaginatively brings postwar Japan back to the ruins of the war, repeating the trauma of the war and nuclear exposure, as represented by monster special effects after "Godzilla" (1954), which had its roots in Toho's production of war films as propaganda to heighten the war spirit. The Great East Japan Earthquake, which was accompanied by the meltdown of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, has been called "the second defeat of the war," and it became an opportunity to renew the expression of catastrophe nurtured by kaiju tokusatsu in a realistic way.

The fact that the renewal of imagination after the earthquake coincided with Anno's rehabilitation process after being stuck on the "Eva" remake is a process that cannot be ignored in understanding the nature of "Shin Eva".

First, he was selected as the lead voice actor for Hayao Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises," which was released in 2013 immediately after ":Q". Inspired by the situation in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, including the animated images of the land rippling in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, this film depicts Hayao Miyazaki's self-portrait as a creator through the figure of Jiro Horikoshi, an aviation engineer who indulges in his own demonic pursuits while utilizing Japan's wartime national mobilization system. The selection for the role of Jiro was a great honor for Hayao Miyazaki.

Toshio Suzuki and others have suggested that Anno, who was about to drop out of the animation business, had a therapeutic intention in selecting Miyazaki to play Jiro, and Anno himself recalls that the role functioned as an act of clinging to animation production. Miyazaki entrusted Anno with embodying this self-portrait of the protagonist, and the film became not only an inheritance ceremony for both "national anime artists" but also a work that inadvertently strengthened the continuity between prewar mentality and postwar otaku culture, and by extension, the disturbing social situation in Japan after 3/11, with all its talk of "kizuna" (bonds of friendship).

Needless to say, the turning point in the extension of such post-disaster rehabilitation mode was 2016's "Shin Godzilla," with Anno as general director and Shinji Higuchi as director and special effects director. With "reality (Nippon) vs. fiction (Godzilla)" as its catchphrase, the film was based on the actual crisis management measures taken by the Japanese government at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, and was intended to be a panic simulation film that would be a realistic portrayal of "if a giant monster appeared in modern Japan" and "if a massive nuclear disaster occurred in the capital, Tokyo. The film, which uses special effects and VFX to pursue the authenticity of a panic simulation film, is in the same league as Makoto Shinkai's "Kimi no na wa. and Sunao Katabuchi's "In This Corner of the World," as well as the global boom of the augmented reality game "Pokémon GO," another successor to the monster tokusatsu genre, had a historic impact on Japanese culture in 2016. As we have repeatedly mentioned.

In other words, after sweeping away the old leadership, which was brought to its knees by the atomic bombings and still cannot stand on its own feet as a nation in the 21st century, with the socalled "Cabinet Resignation Beam," the Japanese people have come together in "Operation Yashiori," not "Operation Yashima," based on the frontline-oriented conscience that once brought the illusion of "Japan as number one. Shin Godzilla" is a brilliant caricature of the latest form of the postwar Japanese desire, which has been continuously portrayed in monster special effects, to make the country rise again from the ruins of the fire by continuing to cool Godzilla as a metaphor for the nuclear accident.

Shiro Sagisu, the eldest son of Ushio Soji (Tomio Sagisu), who once studied under Eiji Tsuburaya, was in charge of the film's musical accompaniment, and he drew on the legacy of Akira Ifukube while weaving together a musical homage to "Eva," thereby impressing Hideaki Anno as the legitimate heir to the postwar special effects culture in the music aspect of this film.

In this way, through the accumulation since "Tokusatsu Museum," Anno succeeded in establishing the "Shin" brand, which back-illuminates reality through an inventory of Showa and Heisei era tokusatsu know-how and imagination.

Two Great Earthquake Shocks and "Shin Evangelion

The "Shin Eva" film is therefore both the conclusion of the "Evangelion" series and the second installment of the "Shin" brand, which reboots the history of postwar otaku content for the 21st century.

Part A of the first half of the story, in particular, depicts life in the Third Village, where the survivors of the post-Third Impact world, including Suzuhara Toji and Aida Kensuke, who have grown up in an open space, live shoulder to shoulder in a temporary community that has barely escaped collapse, a complete change from the stagnant atmosphere of the previous ":Q" series. The first half of the story, Part A, is a sequence that particularly emphasizes the use of live-action imagery.

As highlighted in the NHK documentary, the production process was extremely similar to live-action filming, with the elimination of storyboarding in advance, the creation of miniatures of the third village, and Anno's relentless search for angles while using the performance of motion-capture actors in Touji's house as a guide. The film was made with a process that was very similar to that of live-action special effects. In doing so, the director's intention to incorporate the coincidence of reality into the 100% fictional nature of animation, and to achieve an unpredictable expression that "does not come from what I have imagined," is emphasized again and again.

In this way, the third village, which was constructed as a picturesque "disaster utopia" (Rebecca Solnit), was presented as the image of "what Japan should have been like after the Great East Japan Earthquake," which was presented as the theme of "Shin Godzilla.

The process of placing Shinji and another Rei in such a post-disaster community and depicting them as a place where they heal from their emotional wounds and deficiencies is, of course, a very naked dramatization of the process of mental relief and growth that Hideaki Anno himself has experienced since ":Q" and throughout the production history of "Eva".

And if we take this back to the level of a social critical theme, the process of this process is to take the 1995 ideas animated as an egoistic image attributed to the Sekaikei in the sense of stagnation from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake to the Aum Affair, and to bring them into a social reality after the Great East Japan Earthquake using a live action special effects approach. It can also be seen as an attempt to overcome itself through the desire for "kizuna" (bonds) in the year 2011.

In other words, the shock at the end of the century, when the collapse of the bubble economy decisively brought about the setback of postwar Japan's prosperity until the 1980s, and the frustration of the new century, when the decline of the country remained unstoppable despite various changes such as administrative and fiscal reforms, the IT revolution, and regime change, were both reset by the sense of crisis over the largest natural disaster in the postwar era. The first step was to reset the situation together. At the time, "Shin Eva" even brought about the dream of a social transformation, "we may be able to start over again from the ruins of the postwar period," and it can be said that the spiritual history of many Heisei Japanese who experienced two great earthquakes in the early and late stages of their lives is inadvertently inscribed in the "Shin Eva.

＜Continued in Part 2.

Author's Profile

Daichi Nakagawa

Critic and editor. Deputy editor-in-chief of the critical journal "PLANETS. Jury member of the Entertainment Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival (21st to 23rd). He has written various critiques that bridge reality and fiction, focusing on culture such as games, animation, and TV dramas, as well as contemporary thought, urban theory, anthropology, life science, and information technology. He is the author of "Tokyo Sky Tree Theory" and "The Complete History of Modern Games," and co-editor of "Amachan Memories," "Game-Suru Jinsei," and "The New Age of Game Studies.