Director:Chris Williams Writers: Chris Williams, Nell Banjamin
Studio: Netflix Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks
Watched on: 22/01/2023
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for The Sea Beast
Ratings:
OVERALL
NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)
Plot
Storytelling
Animation
Characters
6
6
6
7
5
A pretty predictable family film that adjusts the formula just enough in terms of looking at society correctly but doesn't really deliver much in terms of story. It's cute and has some pretty impressive animation but overall, wouldn't say this is one anyone needs to rush to watch, nor do I imagine anyone considers it a classic. It's calm.
For me, the best thing about the story is its concept. It encourages us to question why we we wage wars, reflect on the harm we cause to animals and overall focus more on living a great life than dying a great death, as glorious and noble as it sounds. So it's a win on that front. But otherwise, the story is pretty boring and doesn't bring a lot of new stuff with it. I'd even say that its themes and settings are way too close to How to Train Your Dragon for it to even really be considered novel. I will say it starts off strong but kinda falls off from the fight with the Bluster onwards.
The story is a good one in principal but feels like it's missing its own story beats. Even for key parts of the story. Like Jacob and Maisie become the typical unlikely family but there aren't any moments when they really bond; you basically just get familiar with seeing them together because of sheer screentime. Practically nothing happens to convince Sarah Sharpe to act any differently to how she has for the last (presumably) 40+ years. Same thing for all the people in the fancy shmancy royal town. Why did they suddenly believe the word of this completely random kid instead of a lifetime's worth of propaganda? It would have been way more convincing if the beast had done something really extraordinary (and no, simply not attacking Captain Crow isn't extraordinary enough - not in nature and not even by significance on screen). With all of these significant events missing, it seems even stranger to have included the weird blood oath with the shaman lady, which had absolutely no impact on the story. Not the price to pay, not even the poison, really. Could have cut that out and actually shown all the other stuff.
The characters are pretty meh. Even the main characters seem to switch up with no real life-changing events. The side cast seems pretty cool but doesn't have much depth to it. Although I will give the film props for making the King and Queen look as ridiculous and pompous as they possibly could. Otherwise, even character designs are pretty standard. Nothing super distinctive or revolutionary going on and even the design for Red itself looked like it was a draft design yet to get the last touches. Legitly even made it hard to connect with the beast at times. Although the other beasts were pretty cool looking.
Animation was definitely very high quality in this film. The odd shot here or there seemed a bit uncanny but otherwise, from start to finish it's impressive. The ocean, complete with waves and foam, was so skillfully done! It even had the perfect level of transparency for you to be able to see the beasts beneath the surface or for them to do an over- and under-water shot in the same scene. Plus they had loads of different hair textures on all the human characters (Maisie's coils especially must have taken a lot of time and attention, because they had multiple shots of it dry and wet) and the various moving body parts of a handful of beasts. They even occasionally threw in a fight scene, which was nice and they were perfectly weighty and believable.
Storytelling is another one that was pretty good throughout. Nice clear shots with solid framing, sharp angles to emphasize size or force and lots of clear articulation of the many massive ocean encounters. Can't say they did anything revolutionary either but it was definitely good.
So yeah, happy to see Netflix pumping out animated features and not shying away from encouraging its audience to question those in power. But truthfully, not an amazing film by any means.
This film was a pleasant surprise. Not only did I have low expectations of it, I also paused it at about 10 minutes in (to go and do something) and was actually happy to just leave it at that. I was off for Christmas that week, so had plenty of time on my hands, so I did go back to it the next day and within the next 10 minutes, I was genuinely hooked back in. The rest of the film was then a bit underwhelming but all-in-all, a pretty solid family film.
The very first thing I noticed when I put this on was how the film achieved the effect of making the setting (in Havana) really feel like it was alive. It's something I noticed when I watched Coco and conversely, something I felt was lacking when I watched Glen Keane's 'Over the Moon' recently. The backgrounds and background characters moved and behaved in a way that felt settlingly real, as opposed to the kind of stagnant movement that reminds you that you're watching something that had to be animated piece by piece. Overall, the animation was fun and expressive and I'd say Sony did a really good job on the details and textures - I can't imagine generating kinkajou fur was an easy feat!
The majority of that pleasant surprise I mentioned earlier was in the directing. Lots of simple frames with basic symmetry etc. made the film pleasant to watch but the film also had a few really visually powerful moments, e.g. the fountain representing Vivo's tears at Andrés's death, the Florida swamps being used to make us feel lost and uncertain (any viewer with access to Netflix is likely far more comfortable in a City) and the music and background going completely silent and only Vivo's footsteps (not visual but still great directing). There were also some really great little visual comedy moments, like the bridge jump with the bike and also the set-up and let-down of them making the leap to the boat, which they brilliantly diffused by just making Gabi laugh about it. Also loved the little King Kong reference!
The story and characters were generally very surface-level, it has to be said. The plot (after those first 20 minutes) is literally just "need to do this thing", "have now done thing", with some pretty frivolous tasks in between. Like what was the point of the birds (spoonbills, Platalea ajaja) and the snake? If you took them out of the story, it still would have gone exactly the same. Ultimately, the end goal didn't move or change based on the events of the story. Maybe Gabi got closer to her mum a bit but even she didn't grow or change at all throughout the film, really. And again with Vivo himself, most his growth was done up front. And the whole lyrics vs. melody thing was pretttttty weak for me. I liked the last scene, which showed how they all live now and what they get up to after the move (which is all I ask from a lot of other movies). I did really like that Vivo got to carry on what he did with Andrés with his kin.
One thing I really really noticed, was along with my usual dislike of Lin-Manuel Miranda's approach to hip hop (which is blatantly that of an outsider to the genre in my opinion), I also noticed the guy really can't sing that well. I'd say he didn't even sing well enough for his part in this; at certain points you could hear he was out of his range. The songs were mostly not great but I think there were 1 or 2 I did like. The big song around which the entire story hinges was thoroughly underwhelming. I do also have to say, Coco did the whole song for a final memory thing and of course did it infinitely better.
All in all, a pleasant surprise but not much better than that. Animation was very nice though.
Writers: Jared Bush, Byron Howard,Charise Castro Smith, Jason Hand, Nancy Kruse, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures Walt Disney Animation Studios
First watch: 15/01/2022
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Encanto
Ratings:
OVERALL
NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)
Plot
Storytelling
Animation
Characters
7
6
7
8
6
Such a great film with so many great messages and magical moments. I had so much fun (and cried a whole lot) watching it and it was visually incredible but it still has areas it could imporove in.
So yeah, visually it was so amazing. Walt Disney animation studios is never going to struggle in this department but like I always seem to notice in these 3D animated features, all the environments felt so alive, with extras and animals who all seemed to have truth in their movements and seemed to live and breathe completely independently of this story taking place. And of course, the magic, the decoration and the scenery in the settings made it feel super vibrant and made the whole film an incredibly pleasant experience. Colour does a lot. Also that super high Disney quality was there, to the point that you could see the baby hairs on Luisa's back when she flexed; those animators must have worked their arses off! One of my favourite bits to get completely lost in was the discovery of Antonio's room; what an absolute dream.
The visual storytelling also adds to the visual impact of the film. They did so many amazing things on screen to get points and feelings across. I really enjoyed moment's like the engagement dinner, where they did the Dwarves Thing: they had Camilo react to the news by shapeshifting into Mirabel then Bruno, then Félix (who has no powers) finds out and spits out his drink, then Pepa finds out and her expression drops as a thundercloud forms above her head. They also used a lot of that Golde Age super imagery for the songs (think 'I Just Can't Wait to Be King', with the cutaways to crazy scenes that are just for show). There was also a lot of visual metaphors, like cracks appearing and cacti amongst flowers.
The message of the film, I think, is probably more important than the story itself (although the story was authentically driven at all points - a big plus!). The message is what shapes the story and as the film progresses, that message becomes more and more obvious. The story does have a very solid foundation for delivering that message but I think some of the details, some of which might fall more under storytelling, could have been changed to improve the impact of that message (suggestions below). They put too much focus on some bits, not enough on others etc. Even another song or two could have helped shape the story and relationships between the characters a bit better. There were also lots of smaller messages in the film, which I think they executed brilliantly.
The best example of these mini-messages is Luisa basing her value as a person on her ability to provide a service to people. This was a really good way of reframing masculinity and a quite common trait in men; that said, it was maybe lost a litte because Luisa is a woman but on balance, Disney made the best decision they could with her character. With that message, the character needs gift of super strength and it would be all too in line with the current state of damaging gender roles to assign that to a man character. So Disney pretty much got the message across as best it could whilst also swimming against the current; I think they nailed it. Also, I'm glad they made Luisa visually very pretty and 'feminine'. That's another reason I think they nailed the decision of making her a woman, because they also showed that women can be feminine and also be buff. It was great. Other messages like not overextending yourself, understanding each other and not having to fit anyone else's mould were great too.
Characters were cool. I would have loved to have seen more of Luisa and Isabela but their whole character stories were great. More emphasis on their journies would have driven home the respective messages better, because it seemed as though they were of eqal importance to the cousins when story-wise, they weren't. Abuela is a little bit off-the-shelf and I regret to say that Mirabel wasn't exactly groundbreaking. But they all did their part and were relatable in the moments they needed to be. Antonio was a little King! I absolutely fucking loved him and he of course had the coolest gift. His little outfit on his gift day was also adorable. Character design, however, is top drawer. Everyone looks exactly like what their character embodies. Just looking at their character sheets would tell you everything you need to know about them. I think this can be seen the most clearly with hair textures. I don't know how the hell they did it but Isabela's hair literally looked like it was fresh out of a fancy salon, Mirabel's was a little messy and although I'd maybe withold the design=character comment with regards to Félix and his kids, they did a fantastic jobs with the afro hair textures! Also, well done to them for placing Félix into that family to give the film some solid afro latino representation. I'm not an expert on that but I was glad to see it.
Regarding the animation, there isn't much to say. It's Disney, it's the gold standard. Of course it was expressive, weighty and perfectly stylised.
Highly recommend this film to anyone at all but especially people looking for a family film to please a crowd with mixed ages.
Now, things they could have added to make the film even better:
-More moments between the sisters before they sing their songs. Their songs are where we only first get to meet them properly in my opinion, but their songs are where they start to develop. Essentially they get development with not enough exposition. Of course we get told about them and shown them using their gifts briefly but that's more just an idea of them, rather than actually who they are. Maybe a song between the 3 sistsers, maybe even some backstory about how close they used to be! That would also clarify that the 3 of them are the drivers of the story. It felt completely random when Bruno's new vision was for Mirabel and Isabela to hug. Because Isabela was just not in the story.
-Spending a just a tiny bit longer (literally like 45 seconds) emphasising how the sisters use their gifts now and that the true gifts are each other and themselves. They did do this but it was only about 5 seconds each, which just wasn't enough for me. I wouldn't even have minded if they did a bit of telling here.
-Similarly, we could have had Abuela really clearly showing (or telling) that the real gift is each other. She could have literally put the candle out herself to show it (and there could have been some kind of plot device, like a candle snuffer that we saw but didn't know the purpose of).
-They could also have had the Casita and the Candle be gone forever to really drive home the message. As I always say, if outcomes can just be undone, then all the actions that led to them become inconsequential. But it's a family movie, so it's for kids too - I get why they didn't do that.
-GIVE MIRABEL A ROOM!! So Brutal we didn't even see that lol. She doesn't get a 'gift', which was really good of them to stick to, but she so could have been given a door. Is she just going to spend the rest of her life in the nursery watching a revolving door of toddlers go by?
-That said, I'd have liked to see what Mirabel's life looks like after the movie. Luisa and Isabela have this renewed outlook on life and now provide for people without compromising on themselves, but what does Mirabel do? Does she just pure chill out?
-Some of the gender roles could have been improved. Like if Mirabel's mum were her dad instead, it would have been nice to see a man who heals people with food and a lovely wife who's super sweet.
-Lastly, the whole way through the film, I though Mirabel's parents didn't back her enough. To the point it felt unsettling. In the context of the film, it really would have made sense for her parents to back her up and believe her and believe in her constantly. Felt wrong to watch and also in my opinion, would have sent Mirabel over the edge actually.
I watched FLCL because I thought it was regarded as a classic (although looking it up now, it's currently ranked #502 on MyAnimeList, so not too sure about that) but after watching it, I'd probably call it a very niche cult classic. It definitely isn't like most things you'll watch but probably isn't what most people would actually want to watch. It's not to my liking but there's tons of very obvious quality in it and with regard to the main thing I don't like about it, the incredibly vague and nonsensical story, you could probably spend all day picking and trying to decode, which is probably what people like about it (and I will probably read other people doing that once I've written this).
The main thing about FLCL for me is its overall feel, which is noisy, messy, and erratic. Through the entire show, there is constant, heavy rock music playing. That includes during dialogue, which just creates this horrible, muddy sensation in my brain - especially when the rock music includes vocals! It also just doesn't have the normal rhythm and flow of most TV/movies you'll watch; no exposition and development, things happen, people pop up, you're in different locations, it's all hapening, no real explanation. This isn't helped by the absolutely rapid dialogue, which is difficult enough to follow audibly but becomes genuinely impossible to keep up with when reading subs. I had to pause and rewind it multiple times in each episode. This was made even worse by all the footnotes to explain the constant cultural references. It'd be incredibly unfair to hold those two points against the show but I just accept that I am not the show's target audience, don't speak its language natively and am unfamiliar with the culture it's set in and as such, I didn't have a great experience watching it.
That said, it was nice to see nods of appreciation to the things I was able to recognise, like Evangelion, Lupin III, and, for some reason, South Park. It really paid its respects to animation that came before it.
The chaos and craziness does, however, translate very well into the visuals. You're still left with the same sense of absolute confusion and disbelief as to what is happeneing but it's so visually pleasing, that it becomes a happy confusion. So for example, a huge, inoccuous bump growing out of someone's head doesn't make much sense but the embarassment and discomfort of the character are incredibly clear, as is the sheer ridiculous size of the bump. I'm tempted to use a word like 'imagery' to describe some scenes, despite this being a literally visual medium, because what you see on screen is somewhat abstract but does its job of communicating feelings, sensations and situations perfectly, like the poems in those GCSE anthologies supposedly did. So that's a win for storytelling but as mentioned, there isn't much story to tell.
Through the very short 6 episodes, events and characters appear with no real explanation. To an extent, I'm happy with no explanation of how these things happen, e.g. how a robot appears out of a bump on someone's head, but what I'm not content with is a lack of explanation or even basic reasoning for the events of the series even happening. For example, why does this housekeeper appear? What is this supposed to mean for the main characters? Are these events real or are they a metaphor? And hy itroduce this space patrol organisation? Are they serious or not? It's generally, just quite incoherent.
Something that's more of a positive (not a huge one, mind) is the characters. The characters are somewhat complex and the series does a job of capturing the pseudo-complexity of teenaged angst. A few of them are slight cop-outs, like the Dad, but others do things that don't make sense but do make you want to understand them, like Mamimi - I thought she was really interesting the whole way through.
A positive that is definitely much stronger is the animation. It was phenomenal throughout. It's all done at quite a low framerate (guessing it's on 2s) and they showcase absolutely perfectly just how to make the most of that. The movement is fluid, because the really understand which kinds of movements can be reflected well and at eactly the right speed. If you broke it down, it would probably be a great example of why animation should be considered as a whole and no single frame can be good or ba in isolation. There are also some cuts where the view pans a full 360 degrees around the characters and they legitimately all jaw-dropping and it's almost unbelieavable that it's all done by hand. Lastly, I'll say that I really enjoyed how FLCL was allowed to just flitter in between genres whenever it fanced, meaning they could show off lots of different art styles and types of actions. All instances had really great, very strong poses too, which were distict but never broke the overall style/design.
Easily the pick of the bunch for those rotating shots. Unbelievably well executed.
Not sure if FLCL was a manga before it was an anime (although I strongly doubt it) but I did like how the early animation also incorporated comic panels and really played around with them as a storytelling mechanism. To be completely fair, with all the quirky things like this (which I still think made it hard to follow), they got their full use out of them nice and quickly, then moved on. They definitely didn't rinse anything until it became stale.
I don't really know what I epected when I sat down to watch FLCL but it isn't what I expected in the slightest. It might be worth watching if you're really interested in alternative styles in animation or maybe if you really do love broody, edgy exporations of unexplained feelings. But for me, it was only just about worth the time it took to watch its 6 episodes. Also I didn't like the music, which a lot of people seem keen on. 5/10.
Probably not the right thing to do to write a review of Evangelion (NGE + EoE) in 2021, given the time since its release and all the (very well documented) follow-ups, alternate versions and general discussion around it. I have however just done a quite full-bodied rewatch a few years after my first and just want to record some thoughts.
For clarity, I watched some version of Neon Genesis Evangelion (probably the platinum edition) and End of Evangelion (zx.end.of.evangelion.renewal.v3) about 5 years ago (2016) and felt very unsatisfied with it overall. A lot of unclear elements, lots of questions unanswered and a shitload of very vague actions and messages at the end. This actually made me write out my thoughts on a story (voluntarily) for the very first time [copied out below, for reference] and it's clear from that that I was frustrated. I tried to find an explanation for what (I thought) I had missed in the series/movie but all the videos and blog posts explaining the plot started with "In the beginning, the first ancestral race created moons and spears", which just pissed me off more because it was stuff that the series/movie either barely covered or didn't even mention - I wasn't missing anything, the answers were simply not presented.
So I then tried to find an explanation of how to understand Evangelion, rather than just an explanation of the plot, so I could at least have all the available pieces of the puzzle. I struggled to find that, which really put me off trying to understand it and I left it alone for ages. This all pretty much affirmed my requirements and preferences for what I like in a show (evidenced by the 'about' section of this blog).
Anyway, with the final rebuild movie being released this year, I decided it was time to finally just sort this out. So I posted on the evangelion subreddit, asking what exactly I needed watch/read/listen to etc. to finally understand this thing myself. The replies basically confirmed what I already suspected: this story does not all tie together in a neat little, easy-to-understand bow, so I should stop expecting it to. The main practical takeaways however were that evageeks will explain the 'how' and that this explanation would complicate things further, because it's debatable still what material should be considered canon. The most prominent bit of material, however, is the Classified Information. So I recapped NGE by watching Death (True)2, read all the Classified Information translations, then rewatched End of Evangelion. Here are my final thoughts on the lot:
Thoughts
So my overall thought is that this thing is not a masterpiece, in my very humble opinion. Everything up until Third Impact is actually quite well constructed. I say quite well, because it isn't perfect: even supplementing with knowledge from the Classified Information (CI), some mechanics of the story don't completely add up. For example, why would contact between Adam and Lilith result in Third Impact? Why did Seele and NERV need to wait until the last angel to implement the Human Instrumentality project? These might be as simple to solve as "it's in the Dead Sea Scrolls" but that's the annoying thing - they're easily resolved, yet the series doesn't easily resolve them. Anyway, like I said, stuff makes sense up until this point; the Human Instrumentality Project, Gendo's secret plan, why it has to be kids and what happened to everyone's mums. This mostly comes from reading the CI, which was very satisfying to read, but this stuff should be explained well enough on screen to not need the CI (which is my first very solid, very strong, unchanged criticism). It does makes basic sense, though. After Third Impact, however, it's just a mess of symbolic, metaphoric crap.
Having metaphors and meaning is cool but it has to coincide with a solid plot. The whole Third impact bases little parts in what you know but the rest is just completely random. What even happens? Does Shinji end up making decisions about humanity's entire existence? Like, his inner lack of faith (or just confusion) basically dooms humanity for all eternity. Is that divinity? Why is Shinji there at the end? Why is Asuka (who just died a normal death, pre-LCL-soup) there? Why he strangles her is a human story and I'm more than happy for that to be left a bit open but they literally wrote that that happens and animated it and recorded her response, so clearly there was a reason for it - so give us some explanation at least! Same goes for why Rei suddenly develops a personality and starts making her own decisions. And why make Gendo have an unspoken line? It's like they actually just wanted frustration and dissatisfaction. Also, what was the point of showing a theatre full of people? Made no sense. I thought all the internal stuff going on in Shinji's mind was interesting but didn't really do much for me. That would have been fine but then they have this weird, bizarre conversations like the one with Rei and Kaworu and it just leads to nothing but more vagueness and confusion.
Had to add this, because it's just so painfully ironic. Yes mate, we all hate things being left vague! Assuming this is an accurate translation on Netflix, yeah I feel you, Shinji.
One thing that I really notice now, that I would've maybe not even thought of 5 years ago is all the unnecessary sexualisation. Firstly, it's obviously mainly on female characters but more importantly, it's on a bunch of kids. As I'll do my best to never get tired of saying: sexulising something is a cheap, lazy storytelling mechanic that adds little to no substance to a situation or relationship. They need to stop doing it so damn much.
What should not go without saying is how phenomenally beautiful the art and animation of Evangelion are. Asuka's fights in EoE are weighty, substantial and just straight up aweseome. If you watched them in isolation with no other information, I reckon you'd have a great time. Same goes for almost everything in the series; it really does not feel like a single shortcut was taken in animation and the artwork and design of characters, machinery, backgrounds, effects etc. were just phenomenal. Not sure how much importance the symbolism and stuff in the art design had (and maybe I'll look into it one day) but it looked cool and I'll give it marks for that.
The series (obviously) also gets full marks for the way it subverts the tropes of the genre and explores the psyche of its characters. How has Shinji's life affected who he is today? How does that show up in the way he acts? Just seeing someone react in a different way to what you're expecting is always really interesting but to make the character somehow a complete extreme yet totally relatable is amazing. His self worth and cowardice overshadows what he thinks is right and that's annoying, even infuriating, to watch on screen but it's still understandable. That's one of the best things about Evangelion.
The overall conclusion has to be that for all its positives, in itself, Evangelion is not worth watching. If you just want entertatinment, there's no way it's worth your time watching 26 (or 24) episodes of a series and a 90-minute movie to not fully understand their story. There is no viewing order I can recommend that would give someone new to all this a full enough understanding to enjoy this work and keep them entertained the entire time. If you factor in the time spent snooping around the internet to get that full undserstanding, Evangelion just becomes less and less rewarding the further you go. For me personally, I'm glad I've seen it and tried to make sense of it for two reasons: 1. understanding a staple and classic of the medium and what made it so impactful, and 2. further refining my understanding of story and my own personal preference. That second point is very specific and personal to me, so the only reason I would recommend even dipping a toe into Evangelion is the first point - it's a very important work and anyone involved with creating stories for film and TV absolutely should watch it.
As I went through this rewatch, I considered re-writing a sort of skeleton of a story for Evangelion, so that it answers all of the original unanswered questions using the CI throughout the series. Thought that would be useful for me as a writing exercise, in case I ever want to write, as well as just helping me straighten out my undertanding of the whole thing. But I realised that that too is just more effort than it's worth. Evangelion isn't about a clear, straight story - it's literally about how much it changed from its original conception, it's about Hideaki Anno's depression, it's about the nature of humanity and how we relate to one another. Rewriting the story would be pointless because then all you would have is a timeline. Nothing entertaining at all. (Plus that already exists in various forms.) So I'm not going to try to force any more lessons out of this than it needs; the show is more stardust than substance and that's okay and it's an unquestionable masterpiece from a visual perspective but not a plot/storytelling perspective. So accept that and move on.
As I read the CI, I tried to lay out the important information in a clear way, just for my own benefit. The end result isn't really that clear but for future reference, here it is: CI Notes
Here, I've just copied and pasted my notes from the first time I completed NGE and EoE (dated 06/07/2016):
What I Think Happened in End of Evangelion
And its implications
So, second impact was instigated by humans – presumably by SEELE – following first impact, where they first discovered Adam and Lilith. They were somehow able to predict how many angels were coming, knowing that the human race was also one of the angels. They created the Evas from mothers of newborn children and only their children could pilot them and at age 14 for some reason. Rei is also born from Shinji’s mum somehow, but she’s also like the 150th attempt at making the perfect clone of whatever she is. The human instrumentality project was intended to merge all souls into one in order to find the next form of existence for human beings, because they are all too flawed and imperfect. As the host Eva for the third impact, Unit 01 and Shinji were left with deciding the fate of human beings based on Shinji’s will to live and keep the human race going, but he is a little bitch. He just about pulls through in the end, but realises humans will never be perfect and takes them to a new reality, in which everyone is one glob. He then learns that if he has the will to live, he can. He then chooses to live on (possibly to save the rest of humanity). He is left in this lonely pane of existence with his thoughts and he hates Asuka or that he never understood her but he definitely hates himself.
Shinji’s dad also wanted to somehow have Rei do some shit to him that would make him move on to the afterlife differently to everyone else, and I presume this was against the wishes of SEELE and alike, which is why Ritsuko wanted to stop him as well. Also, something to do with Ritsuko’s mum selling her out. Gendo seems to have slept with everybody’s mothers and could quite possibly be everyone’s dad himself. I presume he was tasked with this great responsibility by SEELE. Also, NERV is like his own company that works with SEELE, but they all hate him and want to cut him off or kill him at the first opportunity. T
