I was tempted to use the “(Not)” title scheme today. But I imagine you’ve had more than your fill of those by now.
I recently got my hands on Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance. It’s every bit as gorgeous as I remember, and a little more. Aside from how great Mari is (have I mentioned that yet?), I find myself quite impressed by the facelift Gainax has done on the Angels. They’re dynamic, they display a sense of tactics and memory, they’re visually breathtaking… And they’re very, very alien.
Fifteen years after Neon Genesis Evangelion first aired, I think critics have gotten over the show’s religious iconography, especially after the production crew admitted using Christian accoutrements with no higher purpose than to enhance the exoticism for Japanese viewers. Now we see Evangelion as all sorts of other things: A psychoanalytical journey, a cry for help by a depressed artist, a crazed love-suicide letter to giant robot fandom. Legitimate takes, all of them.
But now, with the Rebuild project, I’d like to add one more: A dark first contact story.
Note the use of CG. Beautiful, but it clearly doesn’t belong in a cel-based universe. Clever touch.
You might be familiar with the Fermi Paradox, which goes something like this: If there is a decent statistical probability of other intelligent life existing in the universe (via the Drake Equation, for example) then why is there absolutely no evidence of said life in our journeys through the cosmos? Why haven’t we encountered even as much as the smallest sign that we’re not alone?
Some—probably crazy, admittedly—people say that we already have a long history with aliens that has simply been suppressed and disbelieved. Some say that we really are alone in the universe, for better or worse. And there’s another, more fearful thread running through our culture (through Mars Attacks! trading cards, Ridley Scott movies and Will Smith, among other things) which asks: Even if there are intelligent alien beings, do we really want to meet them? When we say we want to know what’s “out there,” are we really prepared for what we might get?
Reason #10 of 17 why SETI might be a bad idea.
In their old ads for the Evangelion TV series, Funimation used to use a line that went something like, “in a world where mankind is at war with the angels…” I used to think it was cheesy and slightly misleading, but it’s grown on me lately. I just think of this:
“I’m an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls. And from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.”
- Gabriel, The Prophecy
The Angels in Evangelion are alien in every sense, completely and utterly beyond our ken. While almost all of the revisions in the Rebuild series are good, with this one in particular, I think Gainax got it right on the nose.
June 11, 2010 at 9:41 am
As somebody who got punched in the stomach by his twin brother over End of Evangelion – I have to say watching the Rebuild saga might be a better way to experience the whole Evangelion thing without alienating non-anime fan siblings.
Seriously – that punch in the stomach was so worth it to get him to watch Eva with me – but I am saddened to think he doesn’t like anime merely because I’m into it.
Maybe I’ll have better luck getting him into Gurren Lagaan.
By the way, I have a post coming up about Akira – which later ties into how Toy Story explains how human beings relate to their toys/anime figures. Possibly Toy Story could be the most Westernised version of the living object Shinto legend ever created – but I’ll leave that for my post.
June 11, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Despite rumors of the Rebuild series being a continuation of the original, I think it’s a perfect entry point for new viewers. You definitely should watch these movies.
I’m not quite sure what Akira and Toy Story have to do with aliens. But it sounds like an intriguing idea for an entry! I’m looking forward to reading it.
June 11, 2010 at 9:48 am
The alien debate will not stop any time soon but your mentioning it reminds me of a quote from the movie ‘Contact’ that goes something like this; If are are alone, it’d be a waste of all the spaces in this universe.
June 11, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Yes, I personally hope we’re not alone, and that one day we get to contact alien species. But a lifetime of “aliens come and kick our butts until we kick theirs” stories has me a little anxious at the thought.
June 11, 2010 at 9:51 am
If aliens are anything like humans…no I don’t want to meet them. I’ve read other theories along those cynical lines. That no species has lasted long enough to establish interstellar travel. That inevitably they destroy themselves before they do. Have you read Hawking’s theory? That they do exist and we probably wouldn’t want to meet them because they’d just raid our resources and move on. Though personally I should hope a species that has that kind of technology to have a developed moral compass from hopefully many more years experience at being decent than we have. Would humans act the way Hawking predicts alien cultures would act? Maybe, as a species but I should think the more developed cultures would have more sense.
June 11, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I haven’t read anything Hawking’s had to say about aliens, actually. But it sounds fascinating, so I’ll look into it.
Cheers.
What I like so much about the Angels is that they have some guiding principles (AT Field, life core), but they’re otherwise like nothing we have on earth. Even Starcraft’s Zerg are just a nightmare version of the same old insect hiveminds we know.
June 11, 2010 at 10:13 am
I remember Christopher Walken deliver that line (and Viggo Mortensen did a delightful turn as Lucifer as well) in that film, released as ‘God’s Army’ for some unkown reason.
The Angels of importance in NGE are Adam and Lilith. Both are life seeders sent out by some Macrossian Protoculture master/primary race. The trouble was that two such seeders landed on Earth, making them compete:
Lilith evolved humans, and Adam evolved the angels that the Evangelions both fight and are made of/from.
To me this is rich stuff and add to the excitement of the battles. Humans aren’t fighting aliens in some kind of takeover battle. It’s simply survival of the fittest; using guns, S2 Engines, and AT Fields.
June 11, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Oh, I know. It’s a twist to rival Lovecraft’s “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family.” But somehow the movie does a better job at conveying just how different the offspring of Adam and Lilith are from each other. Zentradi they are not.
EDIT: To take it in a different direction, I think the alien horror imagined through the Second Impact is like the unveiling of the Martian machines in the recent War of the Worlds film. It’s fear stemming from violation and unseen infection, because those machines were under the earth for thousands of years, and so too was Adam waiting for the humans to waken him in 2000. Which is to say that your excitement and my excitement are perfectly cohabitable!
June 11, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I wonder what humans as a whole would do if we really met aliens. We don’t seem to respond very well to change or foreign things.
I’d say the aliens might be better off avoiding a visit to our planet.
June 11, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Well, if it were a situation where they encountered us rather than the other way around, I suspect they’d do just fine.
Besides, having so little faith in humanity is itself a kind of anthrocentrism. Compared to our alien visitors, we might be a bastion of peace and goodwill.
June 13, 2010 at 4:45 am
Perhaps so. But we never know!
I like to think that there is another species even more advanced than us. It’s just more fun that way.
June 11, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Good blog post as always and as eva fan going years back this was very nice read. I have one nitpick though:
“I find myself quite impressed by the facelift Gainax has done on the Angels.”
Gainax really don’t have much to do with Rebuild. All is done by Khara and all essential/core people shifted over to Khara from Gainax for this project.
2.0 was fantastic film though; Anno still is pretty much unparalleled from purely cinematic point of view. Scene compositions, editing etc. are once again on their own level.
If we get more philosophical/pretentious it’s also worth noting that angels represent kind of absolute Other – for ultimately they too were “humans”.
But that’s story for other time, I guess
June 11, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Hmm, that’s true. I guess I just mean Hideaki Anno himself when I refer to the creative powers responsible for Rebuild.
I think you’re spot on about the “Other.” After all, the main line of defense for the Angels is the “Absolute Terror Field,” which I could swear was a reference to psychology and autistic social barriers. But now I’m trying to look it up and all I get is Eva. Go figure.
Thanks for reading!
June 11, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Unable to comment on the EVA remakes but there is a distinct possibilty that we might encounter life on Europa if there is indeed an ocean covered in ice. Lifeforms we may encounter might not be sapient or multicellular, but I think we are more interested in aliens roughly our size.
Absence of first contact might simply be the result of vast interstellar distances and there is no proven method of FTL or a hyperspace equivalent. It was difficult to get to the moon so onle can only ponder the immense challenge it would be to cross star systems.
June 11, 2010 at 11:41 pm
“All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.”
On a more serious note, alien lifeforms may take the same stance of humans. Why don’t they come to us?
June 12, 2010 at 12:15 am
I can only imagine that they’re a little put off by all these movies where they visit, and we end up exterminating them and throwing a party afterwards.
June 12, 2010 at 12:05 am
This is very true. If we wanted first contact at the state we’re in now, they’d pretty much have to do all the hard work for us.
And then, if they could, what’s to stop them from being classic invaders?
June 11, 2010 at 2:26 pm
One of my favorite “solutions” to the Fermi Paradox is that, as soon as a civilization reaches a technological level enough to travel to or communicate with outside systems, the civilization will undoubtedly use its technology to wipe itself out.
Very cynical, but looking at our world now, it doesn’t necessarily seem like a poor theory.
June 12, 2010 at 12:14 am
I’ve heard this before. Very depressing. But as I said to mefloraine, it’s also a little too informed by the fact that humanity is all we know. Maybe every other race just happens to be perfectly peaceful and content to be on its planet, not broadcasting its presence.
June 11, 2010 at 4:19 pm
“Some—probably crazy, admittedly—people say that we already have a long history with aliens that has simply been suppressed and disbelieved.”
If you are referring to “intelligent” (in quotation marks since “intelligence” is a very much subjective and man-made concept) life your probably right, I do however want to point out that earth being home to at least a few alien species is neither the delusion of a few madman nor wishful thinking of a couple of sci-fi maniacs but an accepted (though not necessarily universally agreed to) scientific theory.
Take the example of the Tardigrade:
I’m a second year biology student and a few month ago a had a 3 week practical (hope that’s the right word, not a native speaker) at the University of Munich where I got to work on a project researching a small animal (0.1 mm -1.5 mm depending on the species) called Tardigrade or Water Bear which lives pretty much everywhere (and I mean *everywhere*, they can be found in the deepest parts of the sea, the highest parts of the Himalayas and in the moss growing on your average university balcony) and feeds of whatever it can find in his respective environment (bacteria, algae cells etc.), and ever since the advent of molecular biology they have had scientists go at each others throats for two simple reasons:
1) They can survive under pretty much any living conditions, they are in fact the only animal which has been proven to be able to live in space (though, technically they aren’t exactly alive but in cryptobiosis, a state somewhere between mummy and egg from which they awake when you make them wet). All of you have probably heard that cockroaches would be able to survive a nuclear war, basically Tardigrades hardly be inconvenienced by the kind of catastrophe that would extinct cockroaches ten times over.
2) They don’t really fit into any of the known biological bloodlines. And this is what the discussion among scientist is all about: Fact is in the last ~50 years the Tardigrade has been moved around between different bloodlines at least 3 or 4 times, currently they are believed to be distant relatives of the roundworms though there are a couple of difficulties with that classification as well.
This has lead a couple of respected biologist (including the ones I was working with) to support the theory that they actually arrived on earth during a meteor impact at least 1 – 2 billions years ago, they could have survived both the impact and billions of years of travel through outer space, obviously this doesn’t mean they actually *did*, but as long as nobody proves that they are part of normal, terrestrial evolution it’s a valid theory.
Sorry, if a bored you, I get somewhat to enthusiastic at times, and great blog (just found it thanks to the aniblog tournament).
June 12, 2010 at 12:03 am
Don’t be sorry. That was possibly the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, if the theory’s true… How glorious! What an amazing universe!
But I was referring more to people who believe aliens built the Pyramids of Giza and things like that.
Thank you for this comment. Made my day, really. Welcome!
June 11, 2010 at 4:27 pm
I noticed the new look of the Angels too. They were definitely more creepy this time around. In the TV series they looked more like monsters, while in this movie they look like aliens. Like in the screencaps you have here, the less they look like humans (no appendages, lack of standard facial features, etc) the more alien they become.
I believe there’s something out there in space, but I agree with the “do we really want to meet them?” idea. Instead of spending all this funding for space exploration to satisfy our curiosity, we should use it to fix the severe problems on our own planet before we go poking around uninvited on someone else’s. But I guess that’s just me.
June 12, 2010 at 12:17 am
Well, there’s still a little part of me that wishes we were living in orbital moon colonies by now.
But you’re right, especially with that giant black stain in the Gulf of Mexico only getting bigger by the day.
Thanks for reading.
June 11, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I have a completely Lovecraftian stance on the nature of the universe:
“…all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.”
Indeed, there is no reason to believe that aliens exist in any way that the human mind can comprehend. There is no reason to believe that they have any kind of thoughts or physical forms that relate to anything we’ve ever encountered or understand. For all we know, life forms that were not born on Earth are walking down the street right beside us, invisible to us because they are traversing in an interstice of dimensions and not tangibly a part of our own reality, though nonetheless present. Maybe the alien life forms really do have physical shape, but what’s stopping them from literally being the size of our entire planet, having come from a solar system with a much, much larger sun and planets? To me, it’s pointless to try and make theories and statements about alien life when it’s existence can go so far beyond our comprehension.
June 11, 2010 at 6:23 pm
One of my favorite things about Gunbuster is its out-there alien design. OK, they mostly look like bugs, but I loved the concept of them breeding in supernovae – just a completely foreign environment and reproductive behavior than the models we have on Earth.
And in Diebuster, they start using black holes, or rather, surpassing them.
June 12, 2010 at 12:21 am
I never did get past a certain point in Gunbuster, sadly. But this does sound very interesting!
June 12, 2010 at 12:20 am
I remember, in the earlier days of Eva fandom, there was a lot of mixing and matching going on with Lovecraft and the Eva universe. I think it’s because of the qualities you mention here.
And after End of Evangelion, there’s also that icky alien interbreeding/heritage that Lovecraft loved so much.
June 11, 2010 at 7:08 pm
If you ask me, Fermi’s Paradox assumes an advanced development of extraterrestrial life, and as far as we know, alien life can take a multitude of shapes. How do we even know that aliens have the resources to construct advanced civilization?
But anyway, the Angels in Evangelion are a really interesting take on extraterrestrial life. While they do look extremely alien, they have some human features, especially their faces. They aren’t separate from humans entirely. In fact, they’re more human than we would believe.
June 12, 2010 at 12:22 am
This is true. The best chance we have is on Europa, and even then, we only expect microbes.
There are reasons for the “human” aspects of the Angels. But they’re spoilers from the original series, so I won’t say exactly what’s what… Though if you read my discussion with GL above, it’s a moot point.
Thanks for reading!
June 12, 2010 at 2:15 am
Yeah I’ve seen the original series and I know why they’re human ^^. But I was mostly referring to how humans and aliens aren’t all that different. Evangelion proscribes to the theory that we’re the strange life forms on Earth, and that we’re the unnatural ones that are defiling earth.
Which I think is an interesting theory in and of itself.
June 11, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I believe that there is other life out there in the universe; after all, while the chances are low, I think that quite simply it’s utterly unlikely that nothing else in this universe breathes and eats and defecates.
My last line actually leads into a larger thing – what we consider to be the necessary environment for life. Scientists will state that Earth was the perfect temperature and had the right chemical make-up for its atmosphere and everything, but who’s to say that these ARE all the exact things needed?
I’d also point out that we already know that there are other living things out there in our very own solar system; bacteria has been found on some of the moons of Saturn. The only thing we’re unsure about right now is ‘intelligent’ life.
Anyway, we’ve never got terribly far in the universe, so the lack of evidence is a very weak argument against the existence of intelligent alien life. I do wonder if it is such a wise idea to go looking for them, though, because with our current technology, if we do find something, chances are that something’s technology is a bit further along than our own.
I’ve never actually watched the entirety of Evangelion; the characters drove me insane. I think I’m willing to give it all another chance in these movies, though.
June 12, 2010 at 12:27 am
I think the belief in life in the oceans of Europa (EDIT: And Titan– sorry, I mixed up what you were referring to) is a matter of extrapolation, rather than hard fact. It’s the same process we used to theorize that there used to be microbes on Mars, based on what might be fossil evidence. But you’re right; the search for “intelligent” life is the key.
You definitely should watch the Rebuild series! I think the characters’ nobler qualities come through in this version.
June 12, 2010 at 1:12 am
From the bottom of my heart I thank you for eschewing the use of parentheses. I am relieved that an English educator such as yourself knows better than to engage in such crude attempts at punnery.
I’m more a subscriber to the whole “death of the author” movement – I don’t really put much stock in the statements that the Christian motifs have no bearing on the story. Stories tend to take on a life and telling of your own once you start, no matter your original intention.
It’s very interesting in particular how the symbology of religion and mythology are co-opted in an attempt to categorize the unexplainable. We call them Angels precisely because they cannot be understood, in the same way that divinity cannot be understood. There’s that commonality between them – both are intrinsically outside the sum of human experience.
June 12, 2010 at 3:47 am
Oh, I love punnery. I just figured you guys might be getting tired of the same one.
I see the point of reader-based criticism, but I still can’t bring myself to detach completely from authorial intent when looking at things. For Evangelion, especially, I wonder how much exposure the creators have gotten to the religion-based analyses, and how much those have influenced Rebuild.
Thanks for reading!
June 12, 2010 at 3:58 am
They Live!
And the pyramids at Giza were built by aliens.
It was a cool movie, but I don’t think aliens are anywhere near our capitalism and Americanism. It’s a blow entirely dealt by man.
Warhammer 40k is to me the most interesting extension of the future. I mean, the year 40,000 CE! Blows my mind. Granted, the alien races are still a little too human, but they got interesting ideas rolling; what with the galaxy sized genestealing swarms, and a race of skeletal machinery born near the conception of the universe and bent on eradicating all life in it, because life leads to conflict and greed and self destruction and thus the universe can’t have good things. Sort of corresponds to those theories where if ‘intelligent’ life did exist elsewhere, they’re busy destroying themselves too, even if the Necrons are still really-fetched.
I’m no expert in the matter, but I’m a believer of life out there; with our notion of life a vast interaction of chemicals, I can see another such complex interaction existing in another part of the vast universe, probably totally different from our own, but still pertaining to ‘intelligence’.
I’m absolutely certain western civilization will crumble before we meet them, though. And before the next civilizations can deal with aliens it’ll first need to deal with all the problems we left behind, if possible at all.
June 12, 2010 at 10:51 pm
I know of Warhammer 40K– enough to know that we probably shouldn’t base any future forecasts on it, anyway.
Most alien invasion stories also double as “humans are special” stories, in that these interstellar travellers MUST find us interesting somehow to want to enslave/eat us. What I like about the Angels is that they likely don’t even see us as individuals, but as pieces in the war against their cosmic counterpart.
June 12, 2010 at 7:59 am
>Even if there are intelligent alien beings, do we really want to meet them?
I remember Stephen Hawkings said something like this as well, saying that we just need to look at ourselves and our history to know that we wouldn’t want extraterrestrials to visit us. Of course, we can always find a way to get to them first, before they get to us.
June 12, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Didn’t you know? All we have to do is infect their mothership with a computer virus.
(Oh god, I hope you’ve seen Independence Day and I didn’t just carbon-date myself…)
June 15, 2010 at 3:41 am
I don’t think I’ve seen a person who hasn’t watched that movie at least 5 times yet.
June 12, 2010 at 10:50 pm
I think Super Robot Wars has a pretty good idea with regards to how to deal with aliens. They predict that they’ll get invaded, so they use this as justification to spend billions of dollars building Gundams.
Problem solved.
June 12, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Lovely.
One intriguing element of Evangelion is that they had lots and lots of time for an invasion that they knew was coming. By the time Sachiel arrives in Tokyo-3, everything’s all good to go, and even then there are a bunch of finicky problems. I wonder if we would have that kind of time in the event of a for-really-real first contact.
Welcome! Thanks for reading!
June 13, 2010 at 7:19 am
I enjoyed the way the Uplift Wars novels (by David Brin) handled the existence of multitudes of life forms without humanity being noticed.
There is all sorts of life spread around the universe, but there ias a massive set of organizations that manages things. Their public intent is to prevent destruction of sustainable environments (and therefore the evolution of new species) on a planet by planet basis and to avoid conflict between disparate forms of life. In this system, that has existed for a few billion years, Earth has been declared fallow (off limits) for millions of years. Just about long enough for humanity to develop and learn basic long-distance spaceflight.
In a universe where every other species is raised into sapience by a patron species, humans are poor little orphans and really looked down on. Most of their technology is so low level compared to that stored in the multi-billion old galactic libraries, that it’s totally discarded. This explains why our current communication attempts has been failures. Too primitive!
Of course, once humans stick their nose out of the their own cradle, they piss off all sorts of aliens. But what’s some poor orphans to do?
June 13, 2010 at 8:03 am
One could say that this is precisely what happened in Evangelion, too. If Gendo Ikari and his crew hadn’t attempted to mess around with Adam, the whole mess with the Angels might have been completely avoided.
That series sounds pretty interesting. I think I’ll check it out.
Cheers.
June 15, 2010 at 1:13 am
Excellent. I would say it’s one of the classic sci-fi series. You can pretty much reach any of the first three books on their own. Be advised that the final trilogy is a sequel to Startide Rising and goes from fairly out there to waaaay out there crazy conspiracy-theorist speculative science-fiction.
I’m not sure if that’s going to be a plus or a minus for you, but I let myself be entertained once I realized it was kind of like the sci-fi novel version of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann…
June 13, 2010 at 12:19 pm
This reminds me of something I read as a kid. I used to be really into aliens, supernatural theories, and such. There is actually a large number of people who believe that the world’s first religions are indeed based on alien contacts, from Mayan Gods to Egyptian sunship, to even Christianity.
As a tangent and somewhat interesting, the Catholic Church’s official position is that believing in extraterrestrial beings is not in opposition with the Christian faith.
June 14, 2010 at 11:14 am
I’ve heard about the Church’s position on aliens. Just another reason why I’d go to them if I had to choose.
I mentioned this in another comment above, but I wonder to what extent there’s been cross-pollination between “Original Eva” and “Religious Criticism of Eva” to produce what we see in Rebuild.
June 13, 2010 at 9:23 pm
[...] Posted on 13/06/2010 by Gundam Jack This post was inspired by 2D-Teleidoscope’s post on the Angels of Evangelion and the subsequent comments. It contains spoilers for Super Robot Wars: [...]
June 15, 2010 at 8:16 am
I personally love contemplating about the existence of extra-terrestrials. It’s interesting to see what theories people will throw out, not to mention the plethora of movies and television series that dedicate themselves to the thought of alien life forms.
I personally consider myself very “scientific,” mostly oriented towards biology. Ironically, however, I dislike any inclusion of scientific theories or statistics or calculations when pondering the existence of such life forms. It simply seems to take away the magic of it all and spoil all the fun. (Admittedly, Fermi’s Paradox does fascinate me quite a bit, though solely because it’s very romantic–if one doesn’t boggle down on all the details and calculations, if that’s even possible. XD)
The approach of these “aliens” in Evangelion really doesn’t appeal to me. Sure, it’s got action–and who doesn’t love action coupled with excellent animation?–but everything just felt…predictable. Shinji’s characterization was okay, but I just wasn’t enthused by everything else. (Is something wrong with me? o.O) Moreover, as you say, the aliens are aliens, sentient beings unlike us in shape and form.
In contrast, one of my recent favorites concerning extraterrestial contact would be, well, the movie Contact. (I believe that it was based off of a book by Carl Sagan, but I’d rather watch the movie than read the book. XD) It’s the antithesis to Evangelion: there is no action whatsoever; we can, to a certain extent, and attempt to communicate with them; and it ends with the total rejection of their existence. (Interestingly enough, it seems to allude to religion, though the whole movie seems to be more of a parable on religious belief than Christian symbols.) What I like about the movie so much is that it keeps the viewer wondering even after the movie has ended. Why did they contact us? Will we ever meet them again? What can we learn from them if we do? Are they, in both the most basic and complex senses, “human”? It’s quite fascinating, and even though (or precisely because) it toggles my brain, I love it.
As for actual alien contact, well, I’ll leave it to SETI; I’ve got other concerns down here on the surface of the third rock from the sun.
June 16, 2010 at 8:52 am
When I watched Contact as a kid, I was supremely disappointed. All this buildup just so Jodie Foster could talk to her dad on a beach for ten minutes? What a ripoff!
To some extent, I enjoy the philosophical questions brought up by the Angels, especially if the original backstory behind Adam and Lilith holds true here. But first things first: They are stunning, and a bit frightening, more than they were in the original series. I had to think there was some purpose there.
August 15, 2010 at 12:03 am
[...] it’s Neon Genesis Evangelion. The animation in Rebuild can get bright colors, but the effect is weird and alien – and in keeping with its unnerving effect, as opposed to the rather cheerful fighting in Macross [...]