Metal Monday

Want to start of by warning of HEAVY spoilers for Neon Genesis Evangelion.

YouTube Obsession

Captain Shack of the channel TheXPGamers is always producing great live play throughs of various RTS games like XCOM, Dawn of War and Homeworld. What’s really great about his channel is that he showcases mods that keep older games fresh.

He is currently doing a play through of Awakening of the Rebellion, a total conversion mod of the 2006 game Star Wars: Empire at War.

Watching

There’s a story in the bible where Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent. His son, Ham, sees Noah in the nude before his brothers cover him up. When Noah finds out, he curses Ham and his ancestors. Why? What is Ham’s crime that he deserves such a fate? After all, it was Noah who got drunk and passed out.

He had perceived his origins: Ham knew now that his father, favored by god, was all too human.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is the last kaiju anime. It is the last sentai anime. It is the last anime. It takes every trope from those anime before it and strips them down to their origins. Why is the shy boy so shy around women? Why is the mean, mature girl so mean? And is she really any more mature than her peers? How does a main character appear in every episode even though they get critically wounded every week? The answers are terrifying and their implications disgusting.

My partner has never seen Evangelion so it has been fun to watch with them as they experience it for the first time. Their delight as the show starts fairly formulaic to anime standards and their shock as it atrophies into a bombardment psychological pain and wasteful human suffering.

Even the kaiju in Evangelion are made by weak men. If the original Kaiju is Godzilla, itself a metaphor for the A-bomb, then Evangelion brings the metaphor full circle by making the kaiju humans.

No conversation about Evangelion is complete until the ending of the original series is discussed. The ending is unsatisfying, vague and perfect. Dan Olson, in a video essay about Annihilation, said something that I like to remember when consuming difficult media: “The purpose of ambiguity is to frustrate the audience, and thusly force engagement with the metaphorical.”

I have not seen any additional Evangelion media, movies, shows, extended or director’s cuts¹. If any of my points are countered or confirmed in those productions, I do not care. Evangelion exists as an elegy to the anime of it’s era.

Ultimately, Ham was cursed because he had complete knowledge of himself: The nakedness, the mundane part of his father is within him as Noah’s father was within Noah. Within each is all. That is what Evangelion is telling us about the medium of anime. Each prolific anime trope used in Evangelion is a symptom of weak human behavior. And we are cursed for perceiving.

Listening

On Thursday it will officially be “The Holiday Season.” So, unofficially, I have been been listening to Christmas music and I wanted to share a few of my faves to help get you into the season!

The Muppet Christmas Carol OST

Every song is an absolute banger.

Bit of a warning if you watch this on Disney+, they full-on remove a sad song that was in the original movie. The song does stop the movie in it’s tracks (It’s still great) but it’s even more awkward without it; There’s a cut and suddenly Michael Caine is crying?, there is a musical call back to the song that makes no sense and loses it’s emotional weight. Just a really shitty thing to do a great movie.

Christmas in LA -Vulfpeck

Not only is this a great Christmas song it’s one of the funkiest songs ever made.

O Come Emmanuel 

I was raised stereotypically and aggressively backwoods Catholic (no private schooling thank god) small house, big family and mass every Sunday.

I am definitely not a practicing Catholic today but I still get nostalgic for the haunting tones of this song (BTW, every great Catholic hymn is equal parts sad and scary). Takes me back to that tiny old church in the dead of winter singing scary songs about the son of god being born.

GAMES

If Geometry Wars and Vampire Survivors had a child they would call it Time Wasters.

It’s fun, light and it is a perfect way to blow a few minutes between emails at work.

_________________________________

¹ I have seen End of Evangelion but it only supports my assertion that the original series ending is the only ending and as I said, I do not care. There’s definitely cool imagery in EoE but it absolutely hates its audience’s dissatisfaction with the original ending by taking the trajectory of the characters to its most extreme and brutal conclusions. Hideaki did not want to make it and you can tell.