Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End Of Evangelion Movie Review

Posted at March 17th, 2023 | Categorised in Top Movies

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Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End Of Evangelion Movie Review – So, you just finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion on Netflix and you’re a little confused. That’s totally normal and totally expected given, well, the whole ending. But don’t worry, we are here to explain everything to you.

Neon Genesis Evangelion essentially has two endings, both of which are currently available on Netflix: the TV series ending (specifically episodes 25 and 26), which aired in early 1996; and the 1997 film The End of Evangelion. Worry about it: it’s basically a recap of the TV series with a few minutes of new footage, which basically bridged the gap between the end of the TV series and the release of the movie.) If you’ve seen one or both of them, you’ve probably noticed the big pivot toward the story’s conclusion. , but may not be familiar with the acclaimed anime’s troubled production history. Here’s everything you need to know about Evangelion’s notoriously complicated ending.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End Of Evangelion Movie Review

Full spoilers for Neon Genesis Evangelion and End of Evangelion, plus a few for Evangelion’s remake! For more on Evangelion, here’s why fans are upset with the changes at Netflix:

Evangelion June 22, 2015 — Heather Anne Campbell

Let’s start with the end of the Evangelion’s Apocalypse Explained anime series. At the end of episode 24, Shinji is forced to kill Kaworu, who happens to be the last angel. Despite being reunited with Lilith, thereby wiping out humanity and making the Angels the new dominant life form, Kawaru is motivated to give his life so that humanity – or rather, Shinji – can move on. With all the Angels gone, both SEELE and Shinji’s father Gendo Ikari set into motion a project known as “Human Instrumentality”: a process that would fuse all humans into one common consciousness.

It is very different. SEELE’s goal is to make Meld a permanent state, blending everyone together and losing all sense of humanity. They are a kind of death cult, believing that humanity is not fit to live as it is and must undergo assimilation to become a new being. Essentially, life is so hard, it’s beyond fixing, so let’s hit the reset button and start over.

Zendo, however, is at least accidentally carrying out his late wife Yui’s plan. He intended to use EVA Unit 01 as an “arc” where everyone would experience the benefits of understanding each other and healing their own traumas, but would later be able to resume individual form. To that end, Yui sacrificed her life so that her spirit would reside in Shinji’s Eva. Unlike SEELE’s plan, Yui will allow people to understand each other and then build a better future while maintaining individuality. It’s all kind of accidental for Gendo, whose driving desire is to see Yui again.

Gendo, clearly in the series and clearly at the end of Evangelion, is the person Shinji is in danger of becoming if he doesn’t find a way to change. Namely, the real worst human being and father. All of this is set up before the finale begins, though the often cryptic dialogue is masked by references to Christian iconography.

The End Of Evangelion By Whitherlaws On Deviantart

Much of what we’re about to describe obviously takes place in the TV series, and visually the show begins to look dramatically different from the first 24 episodes. Instead, episode 25 begins with Shinji already undergoing the process of instrumentality. However, due to the select images shown, Misato’s body suffering from the same gunshot wound and Asuka being moved from the hospital to her EVA, it’s safe to assume that what apparently happens onscreen in the movie is also likely happening offscreen. End of episode 24 and beginning of episode 25. The TV series is overall less interested in the “how” of the apocalypse than the emotional stakes it represents for the cast. Still, let’s break down what Evangelion’s ending portends.

In order to gain access to Unit 01, SEELE sends a military strike force to NERV headquarters and kills most of its employees. Misato, before she is mortally wounded, tells Shinji that angels and humans are all children of Lilith: each angel is a different version of humanity that could evolve. This means that like the Angels, humanity is also trying to reunite with the terrifying mask-Lilith in the basement and trying to ascend in a new form – that is the tool. Misato begs Shinji to stop this from happening, but EVA 01 is unable to move. Asuka is horribly knocked out by a series of artificial EVAs powered by Kaworu’s DNA (similar to Rei’s “dummy plug”).

Meanwhile, down in the basement, Rei absorbs Adam’s embryo—a creature created by the first ancestral race that SEELE extracted from Antarctica—but rejects Gendo as the leader of the apocalypse. Instead, because she is a clone of Yui’s DNA and Lilith, she is able to fuse with Horror-Mask-Lilith and transform into the giant Rei. After doing this, she searches for Shinji, who has managed to get to the awakened EVA 01.

Horrified by Asuka’s shattered EVA, her breakdown accelerates, and she is powerless to stop the fusion of EVA (the symbol of humanity’s wisdom) and Lilith (the giant terrifying ray). Lilith-Rei appears to everyone as their most beloved person – for Shinji it’s Kawaru, for the Hyuga it’s Misato, for Maya it’s Ritsuko, and so on. The only exception is Gendo. When he sees Yui’s vision, he (along with Kawaru and Rei) berates Shinji for abandoning and abusing him in front of Yui, whose spirit still resides in EVA Unit 01, beheading him. All over the world, humanity melts together in a sea of LCL (that stuff pilots float on when they pilot EVAs). This takes us about halfway through the movie and, theoretically, to the point where episode 25 of the TV series begins.

Evangelion Ending By Ichi1985 On Deviantart

Confused, right? All of them tell us the “how” and “what” of Evangelion’s apocalyptic conclusion, but the mechanics are secondary to the metaphor: it is the “end” of the world in emotional terms, as a result of debilitating mental illness (especially anxiety and worry). depression). To that end, many fans prefer to think of the different endings of the TV series and the ending of Evangelion as two different universes, when it comes to the consequences of instrumentality, each of the possible paths that Shinji could have taken. Although never confirmed as canon, the multiverse theory is popular because it provides a possible explanation for how these two very different findings could coexist in the same continuum.

Differences Between the End of the Evangelion TV Series and the End of the Evangelion Movie At the end of the TV series, Shinji is able to successfully deal with his self-loathing—like Asuka, Misato, and possibly the rest of humanity. However, you may be confused by how abstractly Shinji’s journey is presented, with line animation and sometimes plain colored marker drawings. There are conflicting reports as to why this happened: anonymous sources allege that the show had difficulties finding (or rather, keeping) sponsors, which required outsourcing production work and that the budget was running thin in the last third of the show; Director Hideaki Anno reportedly put it down to scheduling problems caused by television networks, which would have left the crew with insufficient time to finish the episode; The sexual content and violence late in Evangelion’s run led to strict broadcast censorship standards, and founding studio president Toshio Okada claimed that Eno couldn’t make up his mind in time.

However, a very different animation style can be seen as a practical storytelling tool. As Shinji sheds his defenses and goes further inside himself, the visuals also descend through the stages of making an anime. Shinji looks into the hearts of those around him and realizes that they are suffering, just like him, and that it is not right for him to rely on them to solve his problems. In a half-conversation, half-lecture simulating a therapy session, Shinji realizes that his own self-loathing has damaged his relationships with others.

Part of this journey involves traveling to a literal blank page, symbolizing complete and utter freedom of self-definition. But this is too much for the human mind, especially a teenager, to comprehend. And so, slowly, it becomes a brief glimpse of an alternate reality where Shinji and his friends are as happy as normal high school students. Think of it as a “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” sort of thing, except more optimistic; Instead of showing the catastrophic outcome if Shinji continues on his current path (that’s the end of Evangelion, more on that in a minute), it presents a version of him that manages to be happy. This single scene is important to the franchise at large because it implies a canonical multiverse that later allows the cast to be placed.