>>3927105>emphasis on messy>it's deeply disconnected with 90sworu. The more Anno explored Kaworu, the more he lost the original him.I think that's true of the whole thing really.
I think my biggest problem with Evangelion as a whole, is you have the show, specifically the original TV broadcast version, which has all these interesting characters and psychological subtext, and they're all interesting and stand on their own. They're all interesting character studies, and the story is messy but it's complex enough to be thought provoking.
Then with pretty much every re-release you have Anno re-interpreting the characters in this self-referential and reductive way, that reduces your need to think about it.
This starts with the directors cut of the show, which blends Gendo and Adam, and I think implies Yui and Lilith to be the same character? Idk. At some point I know Shinji's mom is also the Eva itself, Rei, and possibly Lilith, all at once. Meaning these characters all get blended into one concept. Kaworu eventually gets conceptually blended with Gendo and Adam. If I remember there's some comparison to be drawn between Kaji and Kaworu in both Rebuild 2 and 4, Asuka in the rebuilds is apparently a clone of the Asuka in the original show (making her comparable to Rei). I think Misato gets compared with Shinji's mom, or makes some comment about sort of being his surrogate mom iirc. That might have even been in the original show, but at least it makes sense there in context given she's his caretaker.
Point is, the original show was fascinating, but every subsequent version of it reduces its complexity until it seems like it's all just about how Shinji sees every person in his life as some kind of embodiment of his mother or father (or how they literally are in some more than psychological way).
I don't think I'm articulating this idea in the best way, it's hard to put into words, and maybe I'm not interpreting it correctly, but that's how I felt after 4.0
