if you just keep looking, surely you’ll find happiness
and after a while, it starts to become noise. static, blocking out anything anyone has to say. and behind that static you’re left with your own thoughts.
there isn’t anyone for me
i’m going to be alone, forever
there has to be something wrong with me
days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years… but the reality is, what everyone else is telling you? that’s true.
a rare marriage: how to grill our love, by hanatsuka shiori, is a manga about fukuyama kenta and yamaguchi chihiro, two socially awkward singles who meet via a dating app. despite the initial awkwardness, they eventually hit it off. disaster strikes in the form of kenta’s job requesting he transfer to another location.
normally, that would be the end. “thank you for your consideration”, and the next stage begins. but what makes how to grill our love so engaging is that it wastes no time presenting you with its hook: faced with kenta’s imminent departure, chihiro suggests that they get married to maintain the connection and then they build their relationship out from there.
how to grill our love is not a painful love story. there are moments of awkwardness and at times you wouldn’t be crazy to question what is going on. but there is truth in each panel if you’re willing to look for it. i’m not just talking about the food, which is an integral part of kenta and chihiro’s developing relationship. the expressions, soft moments, held hands and questions about the future are something anyone who has been in (or tried to be in) a relationship can relate to.
until the last couple of years, i mostly read shonen and seinen manga. fun, bright, bouncy, sometimes dark, sometimes mean. i still do. but when this manga started getting scanlated i realized that there was so much more out there. the feelings might be the same at the end of the day, but the emotional journey is different. sometimes it’s a different pain and sometimes it’s a different joy and sometimes it’s both interspersed with one another.
they coalesce into something new that you haven’t felt before. sometimes it takes time to work out exactly what that feeling is. and when you do, you hold onto it for dear life.
if you want to read a rare marriage: how to grill our love, you can find it on mangadex
The beginning of the movie starts out as a regression. Asuka is isolated and angry at the world, Rei an empty doll unable to imagine her own agency, Shinji is shut off due to trauma and fear. Their most iconic selves and their worst selves. Children who are never allowed to age, characters who are never allowed to change. The question of the movie is will these characters manage to finally grow and self-actualize, or are they doomed to repeat this cycle forever?
Rei is the first one who tries to progress and works the hardest at it. We spend almost an hour watching her slowly become her own person, not defined by being Rei Ayanami. However, it ends in tragedy. In the end, she wasn’t able to exist outside of the confines of Eva, symbolized by her suit changing to Rei’s iconic colours, her name remaining Ayanami. It’s a gross, unfair fate and shows why the series needs to end.
For Shinji, well that’s the core. How do you move on from the ending of 3.0? Can Shinji and Anno resolve those feelings of depression, pain, and fear that lead to the creation of the original Evangelion? 3.0 famously took a lot emotionally out of Anno to the point where he wasn’t sure if he could finish the series. If so, what answer has Anno found that he didn’t find back in 1997?
The solution is simple. Shinji is able to keep going because he has connections, a support network. Contrast to the previous endings where he spends the end of the series alone. Despite Shinji’s fuckups people still care for him, despite his lack of self-worth people see worth in him. Instead of a sterile room with an unfamiliar ceiling, every time he wakes up he sees friends and loved ones. It’s in recognizing that other people like him and will suffer if he hurts himself, that he finds the strength to continue on. Taking responsibility for the suffering he caused, trying his best to understand and connect with others. By trusting people who believe he deserves support Shinji begins to grow. So do the rest of the cast.
There is so much catharsis to the series that we’re only getting now from every character, a journey that started with the first episode in 1995. Even something as simple as Ritsuko being closer with Maya and finally shooting the bastard. Evangelion is a story that repeats, a story of moving forward, if only just a little.
Misato is more complicated. Not all of her choices are positive. But she finally gets to connect with Shinji as an unambiguous parental figure, one whose children have grown old enough and strong enough to leave the nest. Her last moments are one of support and she is very much, like many of the characters, at her best in this movie.
Asuka got shafted a bit in this movie like the other ones. It’s partially understandable, you have to focus with limited time. But I wish she didn’t get damseled in the end. I liked the scenes where Shinji and Asuka finally connect and understand each other. Having honest conversations, being vulnerable with their emotions. Reunited on the beach in End of Evangelion, resolving their feelings and moving on with their lives.
And of course, we get the most catharsis from Shinji. It is almost too perfect, from a series as messy as Evangelion, that Shinji finally gets to confront his father. Something he never managed to do in the previous two endings. Shinji manages to understand him, not as an imposing figure that he both fears and admires, but as a flawed vulnerable human being. Gendo and Shinji connect, Gendo acknowledging his own fears and realizing where he could’ve found Yui this entire time.
An old Foldable Human video on End of Eva describes that ending as Shinji rejecting unity, love and understanding. Thrice Upon a Time is the exact opposite in that regard.
The battle with Gendo is full of artifice, purposefully unfinished CGI, hitting the edge of the city revealing that it’s a set. Anno shows the limits of the story, there’s only so much he can do with it before it stops being Evangelion. Here are the strings, here are the iconic moments, they can be as choking as they can be nostalgic. This great big legendary franchise is a smaller pond than you think it is, if you want to grow you should move beyond it.
As a consequence of this movie being the most emotional, the fanservice is also the most jarring. Did we need a cheesecake scene as Asuka and Shinji have their final honest conversation in the series, in a scene that homages End of Eva no less? Does Mari’s romance with Shinji need to be represented by a wet t-shirt scene? The fanservice is so perfunctory and blase even the characters act like it doesn’t exist at times. I guess this is another limitation of Evangelion, fanservice is a requirement whether it’s suitable or not.
Some of the repeated imagery and homages, the lances, the Giant Naked Rei, Misato reverting back to her old look, Ayanami not getting a new name was also eh… The series was always one in conflict with itself, when to indulge it’s fans, when to challenge them. Yelling at fans for objectifying the characters, while at the same time making a profit off the figures and pillow-cases. Screaming that obsessing over this series is a trap that will stunt your growth while rebooting the franchise over and over again. The film is a struggle against its own limitations, trying to figure out a way to finally end the damn thing for good despite capitalism and fandom refusing to let it die for over two decades.
Mari being the “final girl” so to speak, also feels like Anno shutting the book on Evangelion. The characters were teenagers in the original series, Anno was in his thirties, he’s moved on and met new people, made new relationships. These emotions and relationships from twenty-five years ago are memories to be cherished but not something that’s meant to define you forever. Even Kaworu and Rei have moved on.
It’s like saying goodbye to old friends but knowing they’re in better places in their lives now. They’ve grown from these emotions and pitfalls from decades ago. Now that Evangelion has ended, its curse has also ended, they can grow up.
Other side notes:
I imagine the pink-hair lady’s role as some zoomer who does not give a crap about Evangelion’s lore or history. Staring at the End of Eva imagery, the crazy Nerv plans, the drama with Shinji getting in the robot and going “Y’all are fucking crazy”.
It’s hard not to imagine Wille as a stand-in for Khara. No longer part of the corrupt Gainax, a group of old guards and newbies hoping to make a miracle together.
Mary Iscariot is a hilarious name. Evangelion is back on its bullshit. The only reason why Mari’s backstory wasn’t more jarring was that there was an explanation manga made by Sadamoto back when 3.0 came out.
There are going to be memes about Toji’s sister being yandere, and it will annoy the shit out of me.
To be honest I wasn’t expecting the last movie to close all of its plot points that well. The decision on what to do about Kaji was masterful. Both closing his story and adding to Misato’s own.
I wouldn’t mind a side-story of buddy-pilots Asuka and Mari.
I like how the headless Evas reveal where the giant skulls in 3.0 came from.
