Every week I’m convinced some new thing is the ultimate revelation, the final content that makes life worth living. I’d sell all my furniture, probably my body, just to sit in a cardboard box on the street and do nothing but that one thing until I died of a heart attack. A happy death.
For a while it was League of Legends—thought I needed to be unbeatable, feared, haunting some kid’s nightmares. Then I was in the bathtub one day thinking I should become an activist, fight copyright abuse or something equally noble, dedicate myself to some righteous cause. And I’d also, separately, like to fuck Sasha Grey.
For the past few days it’s this anime. Just me, a cheap bottle of red wine, some sushi in bed, watching the original series with subtitles. Not the HD remake that inverts the whole story—the version that makes me want to hit Hideaki Anno.
Everyone with any claim to pop culture taste knows what this is about: kids with psychological damage forced into giant robots to fight things called Angels and save the world from apocalypse. Secret organizations with names like NERV, religious imagery, daddy issues, suicide, dreadnoughts, teenage breasts, betrayal, ceilings, friendship, and intelligent penguins. It’s a lot.
For me it’s the definitive anime. It reminds me why I fell in love with this medium, forgot about it, then fell in love again. I’m riveted to the screen. The cicadas are screaming, the sirens are wailing, the ground is exploding. I have tears in my eyes when Asuka’s in the bathtub covered in blood. There’s this moment when Misato cracks open a beer and that specific piece of music hits—infinite happiness. I sit in the dark afterward thinking about the lies and secrets, about Shinji’s choices, about Rei, the relationships, the ending, everything that comes after.
I can barely bring myself to understand the riddles forming in front of me. I don’t want to hear the confessions. I want to run back to a 24-hour convenience store, sit in the subway, stare out the window at all those lights. This show keeps breaking me. And it keeps putting me back together.
What Anno made is more than merchandise in arcade cabinets and instant noodle packages. It’s a revelation that could only hit this hard if you drop all your defenses and let it consume you completely. Once you do that, there’s no going back.