Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time

Begun as a way to reconfigure the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series, freed from budgetary and technological constraints, Hideaki Anno and Studio Khara's much delayed Rebuild films betray a perspective unwilling to simply repeat their greatest hits, twisting and turning the story of Shinji Ikari far beyond the terrifying apotheosis that concluded TV Tokyo's serial a quarter of a century ago. Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo examined Ikari in terms of redundancy, a spectre haunting shattered barracks, shunned by the two parties battling over the scraps left of Earth. A few throwaway exchanges within the film queried if the little boy rescued from an orbital prison was even the real Shinji - a pressing concern, given that the manufacture of disposable teenagers is standard operating procedure in this universe. 

Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time initially puts Ikari to one side, the child experiencing a catatonic depressive episode in which he struggles to come to terms with a world he believes he has destroyed. Surprisingly, several of his school friends have also survived the apocalypse and the tumultuous years since, growing to adulthood - an emotional, as well as biological, state denied to the plug suit children. These survivors live on a partitioned scrap of Japan, an agricultural village, protected by fantastical fencing technology, that works in concert with Miss Misato's massive war machine. Unlike the crew of the battleship Wunder, Shinji's Tokyo-3 High School classmates are welcoming, allowing the young man the time and space needed to reach some sort of emotional equilibrium. While Asuka withdraws - convinced that she no longer has a place amongst non-mutated humans - Rei flourishes. 

This Ayanami, a clone birthed from the depths of a death cult laboratory, isn't the same Rei that Shinji tried to rescue in Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance. She's newer to human interaction, exhibiting a robotic baseline tuned to expect, then follow, orders. Freed of NERV's withering expectations, this Rei is able to potter about and enjoy a life of her own - attending school lessons or mucking in with the middle-aged settlers to plant seasonal crops. She's curious too, firing off questions about basic human interaction or oblique interpersonal shorthand. This Rei also gravitates to the infant daughter of Shinji's schoolfriends Toji Suzuhara and Hikari Horaki, shadowing and standing guard over the baby like a faithful family retainer. Miss Lookalike - as the villagers dub her in deference to the fact that this isn't the Rei they knew, no matter how much she looks like her - is allowed some measure of a happy ending; a self-determined teenager, no longer forced to be a sexualised prop in the machinations of a middle-aged man. 

Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo

Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo leaps forward 15 years to explore interpersonal disappointments after yet another apocalyptic event. Shinji's rabid need to rescue Rei from the guts of Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance's Tenth Angel has resulted in a cataclysm known as Third Impact, an accidental apotheosis that has fossilised unbelievers and plunged what remains of mankind into destitution. The survivors of this revelation have split into two competing factions. The Evangelion support staff, led by Misato, have formed WILLE, a floating paramilitary convoy dedicated to destroying their rival group, NERV, and the mouldering ambitions of Shinji's father Gendo.

Shinji, freshly sprung from an orbiting cruciform prison, is immediately positioned as loathsome, a compromised object to be seized spectacularly then filed away from the unfolding action. Misato, previously Shinji's most stable and reliable ally, cannot bring herself to look at him. Shinji then has lost his anchor. His protests and questions are met with a pointed, conspiratorial silence. No-one is willing to tell Shinji what he's done or why they hate him. Although WILLE's mission is clearly one of atonement, there is little desire to include, or forgive, the child they all coerced into action. There's a repeated insinuation that WILLE has cause to believe that this being might not actually be their Shinji. Could he be an Angel facsimile or an artificial recreation birthed from the bowels of NERV?

You Can (Not) Redo talks about its male hero in terms of redundancy, too powerful to be left on the board but uncontrollable enough that no-one (human) dares trust him with responsibility. The predominantly female WILLE already has two ace EVA pilots anyway. Asuka and Mari may bicker constantly but they are also a fluid, complimentary attack force, able to act and react without the hesitation or dangerous introspection of the Third Child. Although more of a sketch than a binding contract, the next episode preview that follows 3.33's credits goes as far as depicting the pair united in one harlequin Evangelion, vanquishing wave after wave of generic imitations. You Can (Not) Redo then leaves Shinji to his own devices, pursuing two faint ideas of friendship in the carcass of his old headquarters. Vulnerable and desperate for connection, Shinji, the despised spare, pursues resolution and responsibility, attempting to expunge the horror he has blundered into.

Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance

Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance is writer-co-director Hideaki Anno patiently explaining to his audience why their demands for tidiness cannot succeed within the universe he has created. After a first instalment that lightly reorganised Neon Genesis Evangelion's opening salvo, this Rebuild hurries ahead, chopping and changing events and ideas from the latter half of the original television series, massaging them towards what initially seems like an emotionally and romantically healthier outcome for Shinji Ikari. You Can (Not) Advance finds our assailed, milquetoast hero teetering on the verge of a breakthrough with his indifferent father while also serving as an insipid Tenchi Muyo!-esque rallying point for the wider female cast.

This potential swerve into harem anime jangles along with a B-plot detailing Rei and a deflated Asuka's attempts to impress Shinji with their cooking. This idea of wilful subordination is then underlined by the pointedly flirty arrival of new girl Mari Makinami Illustrious, a third-party EVA pilot who actually enjoys the sensory overload of fighting fallen Gods while suspended in blood red primordial soup. After literally parachuting in on Shinji during a private moment, Mari cannot help herself. She climbs all over the frozen Third Child, sniffing him like a curious animal. Elsewhere, Gendo Ikari works a complimentary strand, attempting to bring his son and Rei closer together in pursuit of some new, unknowable objective. A jealous Asuka pouts at this plot's apparent success and, still smarting from her failure to vanquish every attacking Angel alone, ends up skipping Rei's dinner party to test an unstable American Evangelion Unit.

Naturally, since there's a chance for emotional stability in play, everything goes to hell, eventually resulting in a situation in which Rei and her Evangelion are consumed by a particularly dangerous Angel. Shinji, for once, actually wants to fight, to take back his ingested friend. Unfortunately his desires, as interpreted by the Unit-01, are so powerful that they end up warping reality. We are reminded that Shinji is positioned as a hero character purely because he is the biological element required to drive a useful monster. He has no finer human qualities or restraints because he has never had a healthy example to base his identity on. Shinji's interiority is that of a shuffling, invisible maid, predisposed to silently tiding up after other, messier people. He is, essentially, Mr Stevens from The Remains of the Day, a passive, stunted observer, unequipped to seize on his longings because he's never been taught they could matter. And so it follows that when Shinji does fight for his latent, underexplored wants they are amplified into something dangerous and insane.

Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone

Like the television series it reconfigures, Evangelion: 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is a giant robot story stripped of the superficial heroics and pat wish-fulfilment you typically find in a battling titan show. Earth is under siege, invaded by a race of heavenly aliens who view humanity as vermin. Mankind's only hope are child pilots driving massive, heavy armoured artificial humans who are able to meet these Angels in single-combat. Unfortunately for the selected children, climbing inside these towering monsters is a sacrificial act. Their strength and agility may be amplified to celestial levels but so too are their worries and neuroses. To reflect this contextual shift, You Are (Not) Alone is assembled with a brisk, bullet-point distress that unfolds like an anxiety dream.

Shinji Ikari, a Milhousian dud perpetually dressed for school, appears in an abandoned city currently functioning as an arena for a futuristic-but-overwhelmed military and an invincible, skeletal alien. Before he's had a chance to fully take in his irrelevance, Shinji is scooped up by Misato Katsuragi, a confident, attractive (so doubly intimidating) Lieutenant Colonel who works with Ikari's emotionally remote Dad. Before long the boy finds himself in a high-intensity data room staffed by scientists and military personnel. Shinji surrounded by dozens of  professional adults, all united in thought, working towards one withering expectation. He has been selected to do the impossible. Shinji is to undress, climb inside a building-sized battle clone then attack the rampaging monster - one a sub-nuclear land mine couldn't phase - and save the city.

Like Anno's other feature-length truncation Gunbuster: The Movie, the accelerated logic of three-act film compounds this re-telling's dreamier qualities. Transforming city Tokyo-3 resets and recovers thanks to unseen collective action and, since seasons never change on this off-kilter world, it's difficult to get a sense of how much time is passing between sorties. Shinji is stuck in a purgatorial prison, ignored by a disinterested father and struggling to connect with his closest contemporary, a robotic teenage girl named Rei. Rather than deconstruct the conceits underpinning his film, writer Hideaki Anno (co-directing alongside Masayuki and Kazuya Tsurumaki) embraces, even accentuates, the absurdities built into the super robot sub-genre. The sheer horror of Shinji's task, presented to him before he's had any possible chance to prepare, is played terrifyingly straight. Shinji, a spare child called in when the preferred pilot is too injured to continue, exemplifies a kind of anti-heroic inactivity. This informs his place within the wider piece. He hasn't pursued this life. He has, God help him, been chosen for it.