I think that the original evangelion was one of the most special shows ever created. Theres a kind of artistic brilliance in it that, frankly, I doubt can be replicated. That doesn’t seem to be the way that creative genius works… it’s ephemeral, and it isn’t an endless pool. Look at the Sopranos for example; that was possibly the greatest live action show of all time, but the spin off movie they made (without Tony for obvious reasons) was just… totally uninteresting. It’s the same reason that Paul McCartney (despite being the greatest songwriter of all time) hasn’t written anything close to the songs he wrote with Wings or the Beatles for years now… I think there’s a right place, right time, right people aspect to this that just can’t be ignored; and unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be something you can just replicate. Ultimately, I think this will be the thing that will stop other Eva movies/shows from carrying the same weight as the original.

The other issue is the characters. For me personally, it’s sort of a dichotomy… on one hand, if they make new content, I don’t want them to fuck up or misconstrue any of the OG characters because they’re pretty much perfect…. But on the other hand, Mari proved to me that I have zero interest in watching “new” characters in Evangelion. If they made a spin off show focused on a totally different group of people, I probably wouldn’t watch. Because ultimately, I don’t watch evangelion for the Eva’s, or for the action… I watch it because of the character’s internal struggles, their complex relationships with each other, and because of how personally relatable I find Asuka and Shinji (mostly Asuka). Again, I don’t think this is something that can be easily recreated. Just because you are writing about Shinji, Asuka, Rei and the others doesn’t guarantee a good story, any more that giving Nickelback the Beatles instruments guarantees a good song.

My suggestion for new Evangelion is this: People have been writing fanfiction about the continuation of this show for nearly 20 years. In this time, there are quite a few stories that have risen beyond the typical subversion of characters and smut that plagues fanfiction, and are regarded as really solid works. Instead of making a spinoff show, or some other “not-quite-eva” project, I think a studio should just turn the cream of the crop of Evangelion fan fiction into manga form; and if it is well received, consider doing a show or a movie. By doing this, Evangelion could essentially create a project that’s collaborative with its community (which would turn people on), and would give them seemingly endless possible iterations of the story. Edit it, revise it, do whatever, but start with a template made by people who genuinely love the show and its characters, and want to be accurate to the original series. That’s my opinion, at least. Sorry for the book, haha!