The year is 2015 in Evangelion, and it has been fifteen years since the global cataclysm known as the “Second Impact,” which drastically altered life on Earth. Storytelling that is prescient in its worries about climate change and harrowingly honest in its depiction of trauma, depression and the effects of war.
#NEON GENESIS EVANGELION EPISODE 4 ONLINE SERIES#
Netflix acquiring the streaming rights opens up the doors for new viewers to witness this audience disorienting series that constantly challenges conventional storytelling. When watching the series ten years ago it was available on a DVD box set, one that has long been out of print. A world-wide phenomenon and one of the most financially successful anime series ever created, it had strangely never been available to streaming services prior to Netflix acquiring the series from Viz Media. When it was announced that Hideaki Anno’s 1990s anime classic, Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996) was coming to Netflix, fans familiar with the show were excited. Artists create visions of the apocalypse, but usually in spectacular, thrilling fashion, rather than the reality of corpses lined up like dominos without stories. The artistic responsibility in times like these is uncertain, because these are uncertain times. Baby steps are better than nothing, but we all know the root-cause of the situation at hand, so all of these promises, despite being good ones, feel like a temporary solution for a bigger problem we need to consider. As a species we take baby steps, like promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in half by a certain date or cutting out disposable plastics as a good-faith effort on our part to take climate change seriously. We stare at cell-phones as the world dies slowly in the hopes that someone, somewhere will do something about the capitalistic grip that nations and businesses have on fossil fuels. But punching Nazis is easier than giving a head-lock to something as existential as a dying planet. The end goal of current mainstream cinema is to make money through the reassurance that we can be saved through the superheroics of characters like Captain America, who gave people hope during World War II. The sequel-heavy and reboot centric output of the North American studio system that has become common as Disney’s monopolization has taken hold largely does not grapple with these concerns in any significant way. Some of us grapple with this threat more severely than others, but with each new climate report being released from expert scientists our ability to stay optimistic about the future of our planet becomes more difficult. That’s the prediction at least, with explicit assurances of what will happen if we don’t do everything in our power to stop global warming.
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