The End of Evangelion (

1997

)

It's rather difficult to sum up Evangelion in a brief synopsis because the show has a way of changing before your eyes and that transformation is an important part of the story. At first glance, it gives the impression of being a mix of mecha action and cliché teenage wish-fulfillment. Our protagonist, Shinji Ikari, is every inch the weak anime hero common in the 1990s, and downright abundant in the modern age (Sword Art Online, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Among others). He's emotionally immature, hopeless when it comes to women (in spite of having multiple love interests throughout the course of the show), and prone to emotional breakdowns. Despite all that, he's the only one (along with his fellow Evangelion pilots, Asuka, and Rei) who can save the world from the Angels attacking Tokyo 3 and trying to bring about the “3rd impact” which will eradicate all human life. Yet, the show undermines this premise almost immediately, as the audience is made to realize this is less heroic fantasy and more story of child soldiers being forced by necessity and desperation to battle monsters. The battles with the strange monsters, dubbed angels, take a psychic toll on all the pilots, leaving Shinji a wreak of emotional trauma before long. Nor is he alone in his suffering, before the end of the series, Asuka suffers an emotional breakdown and attempts suicide. Only the seemingly emotionless Rei is left relatively untouched by the horrors of war, the other pilots are crushed by the burden placed on their young shoulders.

This factor alone would only make Evangelion a darker, more realistic twist on the traditional mecha shows and show the audience a taste of the ugly truth underlying the myths of heroic violence. This would be a worthwhile artistic goal, and one which Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team would capitalize on fantastically a few years later, but the Evangelion series sought to probe darker and more bizarre areas than the mundane horrors of war. As the plot progresses, the shape of the world starts to slowly unfold along the sidelines, and gradually the audience starts to realize just how twisted it is. At first, viewers may be willing to accept that NERV, the organization that built the Evangelions and organizes them, is only interested in preventing the 3rd impact and the disaster it will likely bring. Saving mankind from total annihilation is not a goal that requires further interrogation. Yet that assumption flies out the window when we see them sabotage a competitor that is producing Evangelion scale robots powered by atomic energy that could effectively combat the angels. Why is it so damn important that NERV and NERV alone defends humanity? Surely, they could use all the help they could get. At the very least the competitor robots could provide a useful speed-bump or distraction.

The presence of Shinji's estranged father, Gendo Ikari at the head of NERV only serves to make us even less sure of the organization's intentions and methods. It's obvious that he was up to something when he sent his only son away at a young age, and only recalled him when he needed his services as a child soldier. His motivations are not clear, and he's far from forthcoming about what his intentions and goals are. Add to that Gendo's regular meetings with SELEE a council of, at first shadowy figures, and then later on imposing obelisks, only shows us that there are forces and powers at work in this world beyond our understanding. Their main focus is a mysterious program they call “Human Instrumentality” a project so important that defeating the aliens and preventing the destruction of mankind is merely a means to an end. Again, just what they mean by this phrase is far from self-evident, especially at the start of the series. That SELEE and Gendo speak of prophecies from the Dead Sea Scrolls, shows that the mystery is even stranger than our original suspicions. Gradually, new truths and horrors are unveiled to the viewer, like the massive abomination sitting crucified in the basement far below NERV's command center, with an Evangelion-sized spear jutting out of its side in a fashion that should be immediately familiar to all the Catholics in the audience. This was when I watched the show as a teenager, the moment where I realized something really strange was going on. Yet there are plenty of other instances sprinkled throughout Evangelion's second half where one might begin to suspect that something more is going on. Like the scene where Evangelion Unit 01's armor ruptures, and one of the NERV scientists remarks, it's breaking free of it's controlling (not protective as you might assume) armor. You could have been forgiven for thinking up to this point that the Evangelion's were just robots, being used by humanity to fight the monsters encroaching upon our civilization, rather than monsters themselves shackled with human machinery. Hell, perceptive viewers may start to wonder if the third impact is what will happen if the angles destroy NERV, and the second impact was the cataclysmic event that happened fourteen years ago, then what the hell was the first impact?

The answers are going to be left up to the audience's interpretation, but we are fed enough information throughout the series to come to some basic understanding of the events and world. In the age of the dinosaurs, two strange extraterrestrial beings landed on earth, each with the power to evolve life al la the obelisks from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). However, the nature with which they evolved life was radically different. Lilith, the being that landed in what is modern-day Japan, would create life that was numerous, mortal, and able to manipulate the world through science and technology; basically modern-day humanity. Adam, the being that landed in the Antarctic, would create life that was immortal, incredibly powerful but was driven by brutish instinct, The Angels. For thousands of years, Adam lay dormant until mankind, in the year 2000, dug it up and started to experiment on him. The goal was to eventually merge the children of Lilith with the children of Adam, and create a new race that would have all the advantages of both. Something went wrong though (or to plan, it's hard to tell as a worldwide cataclysm is exactly the sort of thing SELEE would deem acceptable losses if it got them closer to instrumentality), and the result was a catastrophe that was nearly enough to destroy human life as we know it. The research there though allowed NERV to create the first prototype human-angel hybrids, in the form of a series of shackled angle-like monsters called the Evangelions. The robots can only work if they are imbued with the soul of a human being (Yui Ikari, Shinji's missing mother for Unit 01 and a fragment of Askuka's mother in unit 02). NERV and SELEE have spent the intervening 14 years preparing to have another crack at merging humanity with the angels, they just need to survive all the attacks on NERV HQ made by all of Adam's surviving children first.

It suffices to say that I love Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hell, I even loved the slap-dash ending that the studio threw together when the series ran out of money in the last two episodes. That said, there's something deeply wrong about ending a series that is as dark as this one with a happy message of Congratulations. I didn't wade through 25 episodes of despair, emotional trauma, and horrific imagery just to have all the characters standing around in a circle applauding themselves for making it through to the other side. An ending where the character overcome their depression and despair would be great, but given the state of the rest of the series, such an ending just doesn't feel earned by these characters. We've seen them torn down for the last twenty-three episodes, to show them instantly built back up in the last two just seems like a cop-out. Fortunately, it seems that series creator, Hideaki Anno, agreed with my assessment, and unhappy with the way that his most famous series ended, he opted to remake the last two episodes as a feature-length movie, which is, of course, the subject of today's review.

The film pulls absolutely no punches, giving us a cold opening of Shinji visiting Asuka in the hospital following her suicide attempt. He's plainly distraught, seeing the formerly haughty girl laid so low, and he pleads with her to come back and make fun of him like she used to, only to see Asuka lay catatonic, unmoved by his pleas. The film teeters on the brink of melodrama, but then Asuka turns over and exposes her breasts to both Shinji and the audience. Shinji then masturbates over her unconscious body. I've seen some unheroic introductions of a protagonist before, but this one has got to take the cake! The scene hits doubly hard because, no doubt, a great number of people in the audience have closely identified with the character of Shinji. He is practically an everyman for the young, socially inept boys that make up the majority of the Evangelion audience. We're made to witness his shameful behavior and feelings of disgust after the action and through the empathy we feel for Shinji we're forced to confront less savory aspects of our own personality and behavior. Sure, few people in the audience have every jacked off over their friend while she lay unconscious in the hospital (I hope) but everyone has some secrets or cringe-inducing memories that they'd rather forget and this sequence tends to bring them right to the surface. I can understand why Shinji spends most of the rest of the film effectively paralyzed with shame at his actions.

At first glance, this would be a fine time for the pilot of your last line of defense to go AWOL, as the last angel has already been defeated in the previous episode. Theoretically, things should be peaceful now, but in short order, NERV HQ is attacked and besieged by the combined forces of the UN under the direction of SELEE. The facility is designed to stand up to attacks from eldritch monsters, but it proves quite vulnerable to commando raids and infantry infiltration. The NERV personnel also have no experience fighting their fellow human beings and fold quickly before the trained killers that SELEE has sent. Asuka is taken from the hospital while still catatonic and placed in her Evangelion where at least she won't be vulnerable to enemy attacks. Shinji is nowhere to be found, so Misato goes looking for him in hopes of tracking him down before the UN forces can put a bullet in his brain. Fortunately for everyone, Asuka wakes up and recovers from her emotional trauma thanks to the realization that the maternal instincts of her dead mother are imbued inside her Evangelion. The ensuing battle between the UN forces using conventional military hardware, and the full might of Evangelion Unit 02 is about as one-sided as you would imagine. Indeed, the violence only starts to get interesting when SELEE dispatches all 8 of the Evangelions at its disposal. Even then, Asuka does better than she has any right to until her Evangelion runs out of power and is torn to shreds by SELEE's evas.

One would be forgiven for assuming that mecha combat, like what we see in Evangelion, would be if not totally free from all bloodshed, at least displaying a minimal amount of gore. After all, the pilots of the eva's are about one one-hundredth the size of their mechs. However, Evangelion both in the original series and here is no slouch in the gore and body horror department. Since the evas are living things, only shackled with metal armor, the fight scenes are filled with gore and blood. Add into that the fact that the pilots feel every injury their mecha suffers and you have a recipe for some disturbing body horror as well. So when Shinji finally sacks up and hops in Evangelion unit 01, the site awaiting him is horrific, not only for him but for the audience as well. Seriously, before my rewatch of this film I had forgotten just how horrific the imagery was, it has to be among the most disturbing instances of robotic violence in the whole genre.

Meanwhile, Gendo takes Rei down to the sub-basement where they are keeping the crucified Lilith and prepares to trigger his own form of human instrumentality using her, the colossal monster crucified before them, and the fragment of Adam that he has smuggled away in his hand. It's a bit unclear how this form of instrumentality differs from the scenario SELEE expects to carry out, though he seems to be focused mainly on reuniting with his wife whose soul is currently locked inside Eva unit 01 and whose body is currently being used by Rei. Unfortunately for him, Rei has other ideas so she cuts off his hand, takes the seed of Adam for herself and then merges with the crucified Lilith, leaving Gendo helpless and alone, his decade long plan in ruins. The resulting combination of Rei, Adam and Lilith grows to colossal size and heads for the surface.

Then things really start to get weird.

The animation is peerless in its beauty and complexity. People frustrated with the later episode of the series (when the budget was running out and the animators had to resort to several labor and cost-saving measures) will be happy to see the spectacularly detailed imagery and fluid animation. On a technical level alone, The end of Evangelion holds up to all but the most lavish Disney of Studio Ghibli production. More interesting though is the absolutely wild imagery present throughout. At first, the film restrains itself, depicting just conventional arms, and conventional people assaulting and defending NERV HQ. It looks like the TV show, though obviously boasting the spit and polish that a cinematic budget can afford. There are some odd sci-fi contrivances, like the gelatin that NERV floods key floors with to prevent infiltration, and of course the lurking horror of the Evangelions themselves but it's nothing out of place for the show up to this point. Things go off the deep-end when Instrumentality starts and humanity begins to collapse into either a higher life-form or complete non-existence.

More than mere spectacle though, The End of Evangelion succeeds as a fitting conclusion to the Evangelion story. Unlike the series' actual ending, the final moments here are quite dark and depressing as we see Asuka and Shinji alone in a ruined post-apocalyptic landscape, possibly the last two humans left alive. And without getting too far into spoilers territory, it's safe to say that all is not well for our ersatz Adam and Eve. Mankind reached the test of instrumentality, and all the burden fell on Shinji's shoulders. Long story short, he wasn't up to the task, but neither is he up to the task of killing Asuka and wiping out the last remnant of humanity. Normally movies and TV shows allow us to feel heroic by relating to heroic characters but the End of Evangelion very pointedly denies us this typical storytelling pleasure. Shinji is no hero. He's a coward, a fool, a pawn of forces he barely even begins to comprehend, and cringey teenage boy on top of all that. Yet he's so engagingly written and preformed that few viewers will fail to recognize some aspect of themselves within the show's hero, and root for him in spite of his obvious flaws. When the full extent of his failure is laid bare in the film, it feels not so much like we're watching a weak character fail to accomplish his goals, but that we are being directly accused of all our own shortcomings and failures. Asuka's final utterance, “Disgusting”, feels as if it could be addressed at the audience as much as it could be aimed at Shinji.