I saw the first Rebuild when it was new, and was impressed how they managed to translate so much of it to a higher-quality level of feature animation. I thought it was a neat way to refresh the series. Then Rebuild 2 came out and I heard some things were different, but I had this thought of "I think I'll wait till the whole trilogy is out and marathon them." At the time I was under the impression there were gonna be three, not four, not sure why I thought that but either way.
So lessee, that means I saw Rebuild 1 in... probably 2008 or 2009. Because it was relatively fresh when I saw it. And then I followed the news that there were gonna be four, not three, and that 3 was being delayed past the two-year span that there was from 1 to 2. Okay, no big. It eventually came out and I was like "definitely sticking to my guns about marathoning them when the series is complete" and... no word on 4.
For like, uh.. eight years. At which point the news was that it was in production, but delayed. And then delayed again the next year.
So it ended up being probably thirteen years between me seeing Rebuild 1 and me finally making good on my promise to marathon the series when it was done. And by that time it wasn't just about the content of the film series to me, it was the
intent. I had by this time read all the stuff about how Eva was influenced by Anno's emotional states, which is why the series ends one way then he wanted to redo it and EoE ends another way, and so on. Even Rebuild 3 was apparently made while he was in a major depressive episode, and Rebuild 4 was made after he had come out of it and healed,
which makes sense when you see the films. And how it recontextualizes certain things in the lore, pops little half-second shots in there that suggest
maybe this isn't a reboot and it's actually all the same canon in a way and the way Anno's film inspirations pop up in wacky ways that still work because
Eva is already a little wacky, and especially,
especially the fact that where the other Evas basically ended at the "end of the world," with maybe only a hint or a glimpse of the aftermath, the Rebuild series pulls a fuckin
FFVI and has the end of the world occur
halfway through and then proceeds to follow the characters living through it and surviving it and making the goddamn best of it that they can, all the way up to the point where Rebuild 4 becomes actually uplifting and inspirational and fuckin beautiful. The surface-level theme of Eva can be easily seen as "lookit the cool robot fights" but then there's no escaping the theme of Rebuild is "the end of the world is not the end of all things, people persevere through their connections to each other." Which was definitely in the original series but buried. It took two decades before I even realized what the infamous applause scene probably even
actually meant in canon. But Rebuild's themes are worn proudly and clearly. It's gorgeous. I loved it so much.
Eva the series was an impressive piece of animation for the 90s. Rebuild of Eva is a magnum opus. It's the definitive version of Eva for me, and I'm truly glad Anno got to see it through. Fantastic piece of art.