The first part of my personal 2019 year in review where I detail my favorite video games and podcasts can be found here.
Movies and Television:
Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) and End of Evangelion (1997)
I mentioned in my companion piece that 2019 was the year I rediscovered anime. This was in no small part because I rediscovered Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I do not remember where I first watched Neon Genesis Evangelion. Was it my run-down dorm room? Or the small apartment I rented during my gap year after college? While the particulars of my first viewing have faded, my reaction to Neon Genesis Evangelion remained vivid in my memory: I hated it. For most of my life, Evangelion was representative of everything I thought was wrong with anime: science fiction consisting of half-baked, pseudoscientific metaphysical mumbo-jumbo; an ending that was incomprehensible and fucked-up for the sake of being fucked-up; characters so exaggerated that they lost whatever resemblance to actual humans they ever had. Because I was told that Neon Genesis Evangelion was THE definitive anime, the one true classic that the medium had offered to the unworthy masses, my frustration with it began to infect my experience of other anime. While I never completely stopped watching anime, from then on I deliberately sought out anime that was as un-Evangelion as possible: anime that was measured, well-paced, and had a coherent ending. The sins of Neon Genesis Evangelion in my mind became coterminous with the sins of anime writ large.
When Neon Genesis Evangelion arrived on Netflix this year, I took the opportunity to revisit the series. This time I loved it. What changed? First, I have grown more accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of anime. Or, in other words, I have become more literate in Japanese pop culture storytelling. Many of the quirks I once identified as flaws I recognize now as things that make anime unique. Furthermore, an initial viewing had inured me to Evangelion’s messiness. I was more ready to look past the moments it falters towards the show’s strengths.
Second, I have been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion all this time — I just didn’t realize it. Evangelion’s fingerprints are all over the Japanese media landscape, and, unknown to me, I was watching it as I played Bayonetta or even Dark Souls. The concepts and ideas seemed less foreign the second time around because these other works had acclimated me to them.
Third, the world has changed. In a post-2016 world, as our own climate apocalypse seems more and more hopelessly inevitable, I am more responsive to visions of world destruction. Neon Genesis Evangelion’s iconic psychosexual and psychosomatic apocalypse resonates with me more than it did in my youth. In many ways Evangelion’s end of the world seems rosy in comparison with the genocide in slow motion we will likely experience in the coming years.
So what’s my reassessment of Neon Genesis Evangelion? It still has plenty of flaws. The show suffers from its legendary production problems in its second half. Sometimes Shinji seems to grow as a character, only to immediately regress (with no clear reason) in the next episode. The lore and world-building are needlessly cryptic and obscure. And let us admit the hard truth about the original episodes 25 and 26: they are really fucking terrible. The beginning of Human Instrumentality, a concept that is barely touched upon in previous episodes, is simply announced via onscreen text. In the last episode, the show apologizes (once again by text) and claims there is not enough time to go through everyone’s experiences of Instrumentality, so it will just narrate Shinji’s. It’s comically bad writing and storytelling.
So Neon Genesis Evangelion has more than its share of flaws. But when this show works, holy fuck does it work. In its experimental editing style the show has an arthouse feel. Anno uses low budget tricks like an anime Godard. Because of the rocky writing and production, characters do not always stay consistent between episodes, but within each episode they are richly realized. And there is one thing Neon Genesis Evangelion does better than most other works of pop culture: it gives its characters nuanced and competing motivations for their actions that do not cancel each other out. The case study for this is Misato, whose sincere concern for Shinji as a person comes into conflict with her job as his supervising officer. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a story about how she (imperfectly) negotiates these tensions, and to its credit, the show does not portray one motivation as negating the other. Misato often acts from both motives simultaneously. Movies and television tend to reduce its characters’ motivation to one driving factor, a tendency that Neon Genesis Evangelion mostly resists.
To be fair to my younger self, Neon Genesis Evangelion was and still is a trainwreck of epic proportions. But my older self now loves it precisely for its messiness. It’s a reminder that great art does not have to be tidy, and can be wildly uneven mess whose high points only partially justify its low points. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a disaster, and God I love it.
O Maidens in Your Savage Season (2019)
My favorite anime of 2019, O Maidens in Your Savage Season, is a revelatory story about how confused puberty is. More than most stories about puberty, the television show captures the sense of loss that comes with burgeoning sexuality. Multiple characters resist the onset of puberty and actively mourn their loss of innocence. When they finally realize that sexual attraction is inevitable, they clumsily begin to embrace its complications.
Like puberty, the show is fraught, messy. Not everybody’s story ends satisfactorily. O Maidens in Your Savage Season doesn’t entirely stick its landing — its loud ending seems at odd with its focus on the awkwardness of teenage sexuality. But damn, there was no better anime show I watched in 2019.
John Wick (2014)
In the middle of an intense gunfight, John Wick stops and reloads his gun since he was not paying attention to his ammo.
Never have I felt more seen by a movie.
Starship Troopers (1997)
The actor Michael Ironside remembers asking Paul Verhoeven why he agreed to shoot a fascist film. Verhoeven, according to Ironside’s recollection, responded, “if I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work then no one will listen to me, so I’m going to make a perfect fascist world. Everyone is beautiful, everyone is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships but it’s only good for killing fucking bugs!”
More antifa materials should have dudes blowing up huge bugs.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
It’s hard to describe my feelings for Nausicaä; nebulous, overused words like “magical,” “beautiful,” “creative,” and “imaginative” immediately float to mind. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds provides such a complete and aesthetically pleasing world that language fails me. The movie is not without its flaws. It’s obvious that Miyazaki had trouble paring down the manga, which, according to some sources, was deliberately written to resist adaption into film. The plot is more complex than it needs to be; I felt lost a few times. But no matter — the momentum of this film made it obvious where it is heading, and its sheer beauty dispelled whatever confusion I felt. And the imperfections of this movie could be seen as forcing Miyazaki to revisit and perfect the story of conflict between technology and nature when he made Princess Mononoke.
The Irishman (2019)
I have never been a big fan of Goodfellas. In her review “Tumescence as Style,” Pauline Kael perfectly captured my thoughts on Goodfellas when she wrote, “Is it a great movie? I don’t think so. But it’s a triumphant piece of filmmaking…” Goodfellas has always struck me as an exuberant demonstration of a master at work, but I have never been convinced its parts come together as a whole. Sometimes I convince myself that Casino is the superior movie, as it is more tightly structured and its characters show some more development.
The Irishman is, at the very least, an equal to these two classic films, and perhaps superior to them. Time can only tell. Despite being a longer and shaggier work than either Goodfellas or Casino, the movie has a much more clearer arc and message than these two films. While it was possible to mistake for sympathy the fascination with the excesses of masculine violence and power the earlier movies had, The Irishman explicitly shows how empty and fruitless a life of crime is. It dramatizes the emotional cost that comes with criminality.
The Last Jedi (2017)
The Last Jedi is the best movie with the word “Jedi” in it, and the third-best Star Wars film ever made. That many fans prefer the regurgitated garbage called The Force Awakens is a stunning indictment of the limited imaginations of many nerds. The Last Jedi is a movie for those of us who love the Star Wars films, but realize how silly they are. For those of us who thought Darth Vader was way more interesting than his boss, and never understood why he just didn’t take over himself. For fans who are ready to be skeptical of the narratives of heroism the series peddles. For filmgoers who realized that the democratic ideals trumpeted by the Republic are at odds with the hereditary superpowers present in the movies. For connoisseurs of science fiction who are tired of the plucky upstarts always succeeding in their hare-brained plan. For viewers who realize that most “plot twists” are bullshit melodrama, and maybe the best possible plot twist is showing that there never was a plot twist.
Books:
Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, and Interesting by Sianne Ngai
I have a peculiar love for Frederic Jameson. While most postmodern critiques do not rise above the laughably pretentious language they use, Frederic Jameson has always managed to make this weighty language light and a medium for genuine insights. It is a high compliment, therefore, that Our Aesthetic Categories reminds me a lot of Jameson. It manages to have nuanced and rich discussions about several of the most (over)used words in the critical lexicon: “interesting” and “cute” (the third term,“zany,” seems to be the least-used term that Ngai analyzes). I especially like her discussion of the term “interesting,” where she argues that labeling something as “interesting” is actually the first step to making it interesting. There is always a hidden “more” when we talk about something as interesting. The interesting categorizes an object as more worthy of attention — more “interesting” — than a whole series of less differentiated, uninteresting works. There are plenty of problems with Our Aesthetic Categories: for all the talk of interrogating vernacular categories of aesthetic experience, the book is much more comfortable arguing with Kant and other hoary philosophers instead of situating the terms in pop culture or in actual registers of speech. But I guarantee you, after reading this book, you will never use the terms “interesting,” “cute,” or “zany” lightly ever again.
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
The Water Cure is a feminist sci-fi post-apocalyptic novel where it is far from obvious if the apocalypse actually happened. It’s a novel about how the patriarchy controls women, but also how women can form bonds of sisterhood under the patriarchy, and turn the system’s own weapons against it. It’s a beautifully written book, and I highly recommend it.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi
This manga presents the most compelling look at mental illness I have seen in a while. The book chronicles the author’s struggles with acute depression and social anxiety. It’s a story about coming to terms with one’s self, and overcoming the self-loathing that has kept you back. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness presents a very contemporary take on depression. Her breakthroughs take place not on the psychologist’s couch, but squinting at the light of her phone. And her personal revelations have unexpected sources. A key moment in her unraveling the the thorny knot of her anxiety and sexuality happens when she reads an article about wanting a plump woman to hug you. It’s both absurdly funny and completely realistic. As any person who has suffered crippling mental illness can attest, in the worst throes of anxiety or depression life-changing inspiration can come from the most arbitrary of sources.
