For a blog that started off as a general media blog, where most of my articles used to be about movies and TV shows, a lot of people noticed that all my recent articles seemed to be about video games, and asked me why that was.

Was I disillusioned with the state of franchise cinema? (Yes, but there's plenty of other movies.)

Did I think video games were somehow better at accomplishing their artistic goals than movies? (God no, they're basically the same but I'm not the kind to go on screeds about Gaming As Art.)

Was I mentally burnt out because of the pandemic and my personal life and general loneliness and anhedonia, undergoing a general film and show and book slump as a result? (Uh... Yeah, that's basically it, but could you not be this specific in this article?)

Anyway, I was part of a chat group with people who choose and watch movies from Mubi™️ (the streaming service, not sponsoring this article) and discussing them at the end of the week. It had been a while since I joined, and it took some time before I actually started watching movies along with them. Once I did, though, I actually ended up enjoying the experience - Mubi™️ has a lot of movies from around the world, and many movies from other states in India as well, most of whose film canon I had no idea about.

So basically, I went from watching two movies in the span of eleven months (August 2020 - May 2021) to twenty-six movies (not all of them from Mubi™️) in the span of the next seven months (June-December 2021). And now that 2021 is coming to a close, I've got a lot of movies I watched that I want to write about, even if I don't think I can write a full fledged article on any of them.

So, here's a list of all the movies I watched on Mubi™️ this year.
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In 1995, Neon Genesis Evangelion, a Japanese animated show based on an original script and running for 26 episodes, represented a seismic shift in the form and format of storytelling not just in anime, but in multiple forms of media all over the world, to the extent that even modern US animated shows have multiple references to its imagery.

In 2021, the final Evangelion movie, Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time, was released theatrically as the final piece of Evangelion storytelling. While it's possible that the studio might make spinoffs of varying quality and scope in the future, this is the final end of Evangelion (funnily enough) as a story told by a singular vision.

In 2010, I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time and felt five emotions all at once upon finishing it - disappointment, wonder, catharsis, anger and confusion - and all those intensified upon watching its followup theatrical movie, The End Of Evangelion. Since then, Eva has had a tight grip on my psyche and tastes, being the one piece of media I've always called my eternal obsession.
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Over twenty-two years later, I've watched the final Eva movie and I have a lot of thoughts, and I'm struggling to put all of them into words. But let's try anyway.

(Heavy spoilers for all of Evangelion follow here)

Welcome to State of Media Consumption: January + February edition! I missed out on writing the January edition last month because there were a lot of things going on and I had other articles I had wanted to write, and February was mostly spent playing a single game. 

Just in case you're new to this series, I generally write an article every month recording the new (and old) stuff I’m watching, playing or listening to, and I’m doing it in a series of monthly articles. I’ll write some quick notes about the old stuff I went back to in the first section (Repeat Value), before getting into the new stuff (...The New Stuff).

Because a lot of it ends up being games, I think I'll split the article by medium from now on, to avoid direct comparisons through ranking.
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