With the release of "EVA Final", the series of works of "EVA" was officially announced.
The sea of LCL at the end of the old TV, the final "world without EVA" of the new theatrical version, compared with the old TV, the ending of the new theater version can be said to be much gentler.
Perhaps, Hideaki Anno is also learning to reconcile with himself, so that The new theatrical version of Masayoshi Tsurugi can reconcile with his father.
However, whether it is "EOE" that "squeezes orange juice" for all mankind, or "EVA Finale" that runs into the real world together, there is a common emotion running through it.
And this emotion is the "Oedipus complex".
Today, I would like to start with the old and new "EVA" and take you into this "maternal dystopia" that is widely present in the ACGN.
In both the old TV and the new theatrical version, there are three "mother" figures around Shinji.
Misato Katsugi, who first met Shinji, is one of the "mothers", and in terms of age, she is almost the mother and son of Shinji, and in terms of function, she also plays the role of Shinji's predecessor.
In the old TV, Miri Katsugi and Shinji are even more ambiguous, giving him a "kiss from an adult";
In the new theatrical version, Misato Katsuragi has been playing the role of an adult who is "ultimately responsible for Shinji's actions".
The second, of course, is Shinji's first love, Ayabori, who is a replicant of his mother, a "mother" of the same age as Shinji.
Once he lost his mother's love, he naturally empathized with this mysterious girl who was similar to his mother.
At first, he chose to take the first plane just because the seriously injured Ayapolis did not go to the battlefield.
In the new theatrical version, Ayapolis' response to Shinji is much more obvious, and Bai Li, in order to make Shinji no longer need to sit on the EVA, joins the Zero machine to meet the angel with the old wound.
The two reunite in the first machine in "The End", and Bai Li also clarifies her intentions: she does not want Shinji to sit on the EVA, because it will make him miserable.
As for the replicant Black Li, it gave Shinji infinite tenderness and tolerance.
The third "mother" is the first machine that hosts the soul of The Only One. I believe that the vast majority of viewers will never associate this body with their mother when they first see it.
However, as the plot deepens, the first machine is the one that most resembles the "mother".
In the old TV, every time Shinji was in danger, the first machine would exert the traditional art of protecting the cubs, directly running away and tearing the apostles by hand.
In the ending of "EOE", Shinji crouched in front of the first machine and closed himself, and the first machine could not see it anymore, took the initiative to break free of the shackles, held out his hand to him, and invited him to sit in the cockpit.
Unfortunately, the mother-in-law still did not have time to save her daughter-in-law (laughs), and by the time Shinji piloted the Shinto first machine, the second machine had already been dismembered.
In the new theatrical version, EVA's binding to the image of the mother is weakened.
After completing the patchwork, Shinji was ready to sacrifice himself, at this time, Only then came out and blocked the holy spear that stabbed him in the throat.
In general, the first trumpet symbolizes the unconditional protection and acceptance of the child by the mother.
In Takeuma's interview with Hideaki Anno, Takema mentions a novel, Fascism of Love and Fantasy, from which Hideaki Anno directly quotes people by personal names such as Kensuke Aida and Tomoji Suzuhara.
Hideaki Anno is even more blunt in admitting that the old TV is essentially the same work as this novel, that is, the story of Shinji "killing" his father and NTR mother.
However, the real heir in the old TV did not grow up until the end.
Even with Miri Katsugi's "adult kiss" and the initiative of the first trumpet machine, he completely lost his will to fight because of Asuka's tragic death.
Finally, under the leadership of "Great White Li", the completion was completed passively.
In the new theatrical version, the grown-up Shinji is no longer the confused teenager in the old TV, and the image of the commander who was exposed by Laodice quickly collapsed.
At this time, Shinji no longer wanted to "kill" his father, he was already stronger than his father, and there was no need to "kill" to overcome this obstacle, so they reconciled.
This is also the meaning of Miri Katsugi's words in "The End"——
"The only thing a son can do for his father is either pat him on the shoulder or kill him."
The shinji of the old TV is weak and immature, so he can only prove himself strong by killing his father, and the shinji in the new theater version does not need to do this, so he pats his father on the shoulder.
Judging from the commander's confession, the commander himself is also a complete mother, and the reason why he relies so much on wei is because he can accept all of him.
Like Shinji, he needs someone to rush to the battlefield for him as he escapes from battle , and someone who accompanies him silently when he's autistic (Hei li).
Instead of the person who comes to him and spurs him on whenever he escapes and becomes autistic, he will come and spur him on.
"That idiot doesn't need a girlfriend, he needs a mother!"
Asuka's evaluation of Shinji applies not only to Shinji, but also to Shinji's father, and can only be said to have a father and a son.
Comparing the old TV with the new theatrical version, we will find a very interesting thing.
Until the end, Shinji of the old TV was a child who longed for maternal love and had always tried to "kill his father and marry his mother", but in the old TV, it was Asuka who interacted with Shinji with high intensity.
The last person to be with him at LCL's Seashore was Also Asuka.
In the new theatrical version, Shinji can eventually take responsibility for himself and even for the actions of others, and one person bears all of it.
Logically, he had grown into a more powerful adult than his father.
But the last thing that came to make up for him was his mother's generation of Zhen Xibo, and after maturity, he still needed a role similar to his mother to take his hand and run to the world without EVA.
My understanding of Hideaki Anno's treatment of this is this: Shinji in the old TV is not only escaping responsibility and fighting, but also escaping his Oedipus complex.
He is reluctant to admit his attachment to his mother, so he forces himself to train for a "sync rate" with Asuka.
However, until the two reunite at LCL Sea, he still wants to strangle Asuka - he does not dislike Asuka, but thinks that Asuka cannot accept such a cowardly self.
In front of the strong and independent Asuka, Shinji inevitably developed inferiority and self-loathing, and just by feeling her gaze, he was ashamed and embarrassed.
However, at this time, Asuka had fully grown, and although she said "really disgusting" on her lips, she still accepted Makoto and gently touched his face with her hand, wiping away the tear marks in the corners of his eyes.
In the new theatrical version, Shinji not only assumes responsibility, but also his own Oedipus complex, and also generously admits it.
In the process of making up, the place where he and Asuka met was the same as the beach in the past.
But this time, he finally had the courage to say the words, and the two people who had loved each other and had no choice but to miss said goodbye and let go of each other's hands.
He also let go of Ayabori, and even though this mother of the same age as him was his first love, he didn't want her to live her life only for orders.
It is precisely because he can let go of the hands that should not be held, he can see the real mother, and there will be a person who accepts everything from him completely by his own will to hold his hand.
In this way, the new theatrical version is, in a sense, the reconciliation between Hideaki Anno and himself.
When he made the old TV, he was still a teenager who was resentful of society's resentment of reality, so he would create a shinhione who evaded responsibility and escaped from his own weakness.
In the new theatrical version, Shinji does not escape, so he gets his own happiness, does not experience the tragedy of "killing his father and marrying his mother", and is also with "a woman who can become his mother".
Although Hideaki Anno generously admitted to the "Oedipus complex" in the interview, whether in the old TV or the new theatrical version, Anno has made empathy for this forbidden complex.
In the old TV, he tied the real mother to the huge robot of the first number machine, and used the "most cute height difference" to completely cut off the path of The True Heir.
Moreover, the last person to stay with Shinji is Asuka, who is also the least "motherly".
In the new theatrical version, the first machine symbolizing mother Wei and the thirteenth machine symbolizing father Tsubondo finally hug together and watch Shinji, an grown child, leave.
Shinji returned his mother (the first machine) to his father, and his father and mother together bore the price of making up for him.
In the end, he found his own "mother" and "lover" by empathizing with his mother's girlfriend.
After talking about Hideaki Anno's Oedipus complex, let's go a little deeper, in fact, in japan's ACGN creation, there are many works contaminated with the Oedipus complex.
More and more ACGN works, the heroine shows a maternal temperament.
Their acceptance of the male protagonist is unconditional and clear, and from the typical girlfriend attribute of the arrogant petite gradually retreats from the environment, it can also be seen that the explicit and unconditional acceptance is becoming more and more popular.
The reason for the increasing number of roles such as "mother-type heroine" can be found from both the audience and the creator.
From the audience side, I would like to borrow the view from a classic article on Zhihu, "Sexual Anxiety: The Doomsday Clock of Two-Dimensional Culture".
ACGN's creation has gone through three eras under the screening of the audience: writing the story of beautiful girls, writing stories of developing relationships with beautiful girls, and writing stories with beautiful girls.
The audience's requirements are becoming more and more demanding, from the beginning of "seeing beautiful girls is very happy", to later "to be happy to have contact with beautiful girls", and finally "beautiful girls must be loyal to themselves to be happy".
In the final stage, the audience requires beautiful girls to be unconditionally loyal to the male protagonist (substitute themselves), and the favorability is either directly filled at the beginning or steadily improved.
Under such conditions, can the beautiful girl who writes out can only "unconditionally and clearly accept the male protagonist"?
And these images, of course, will become "young mothers" without exception.
From the perspective of the creator, the most thorough analysis is the paper "Imagination after the Earthquake: Japanese Otaku Culture in the 2010s" by Japanese subculture researcher Tokihiro Uno.
After a series of major events such as the defeat in World War II, the recruitment of nuclear weapons, and the great earthquake, Japan has still entered a modern society, and the daily life of wealth and annoyance is staged day by day.
This immutable routine dissolves the meaning of grand narratives, because even after the "final battle", the world is still not finished, and the daily life is not over.
The collapse of the grand narrative has caused modern people to lose interest in the cognition of the world system, after all, no matter how much they struggle and die, the existing world system will exist for a long time.
The patriarchy, which symbolizes public power and rules, also loses its power and becomes a mysterious symbol.
In the past, creators would shape the party that symbolized the system into a "big brother" of fatherhood and power, while the current creators are more inclined to shape it into a "great mother".
She controls the fate of the world and loves the male protagonist unconditionally. Through her acceptance of the male protagonist, the male protagonist can try to indirectly assume responsibility for the world.
As for the trust and responsibility for the world on the road to a mature subject, it has died out with "Big Brother".
In modern civilization, the system does not really accept the individual unconditionally like the "great mother", and there is still a confrontation between the system and the individual.
However, no matter what the outcome of the confrontation, the daily life will not change, so no one cares about the confrontation.
The creators trapped in their own acres and three points of land will, of course, only create such a "mother".
Although "EVA" has completely come to an end, this Oedipal complex that runs through "EVA" is expected to meet readers in various forms in various future ACGN works.
In the end, this forbidden complex appeared much earlier than EVA, and it has been with human society since the tragedy of King Oedipus.
This complex may never disappear, because the soil on which it depends is the desire of all people's hearts to be "accepted.".