Neon Genesis Evangelion came to life on October 4th, 1995, as a twenty-minute anime series broadcast on Japanese TV. In 2015 and almost fifteen years after the unseen apocalypse known as The Second Impact, Shinji Ikari -a 14-year-old boy- is sent to the megalopolis of Tokyo-3, by his own father. Gendo Ikari -Shinji’s father and commander of the NERV- orders his son to pilot a giant robot named The Evangelion Unit-01 against an Angel -an enemy robot-. However, Shinji is deeply conflicted about the order. For the first time in this anime, we can notice that Shinji is mentally unstable. During the anime, the conflicts between Shinji and himself are countless. They are also the result of Shinji’s relationship with females present in his life which always lead to awkward situations. Let’s introduce those girls or women : Katsuragi Misato -Shinji’s guardian and the operations director at NERV-, Asuka Langley and Anami Rei -two other pilots at NERV with totally different personalities-
“I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion — myself, a broken man who could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead. Then one thought. ‘You can’t run away,’ came to me, and I restarted this production. It is a production where my only thought was to burn my feelings into film.”
Evangelion’s anime has, as we said earlier a complex ending. Indeed, the two last episodes (25 & 26) were remastered into a movie released in 1997 known as The End of Evangelion. Some people think that there are two different endings, but in fact there is only one ending. The only difference between the anime’s ending and the film is the different perspectives or point of views.
Let’s start with anime’s ending first. In the two last episodes of the show, Shinji confronts his subconscious and the people in his life, such as Asuka, Misato and Rei with a deep and philosophical dialogue. Hideaki Anno succeeded perfectly to torture the audience with texts in the screen that you can almost hear, and desperate cry for help as if everything was happening in your head. The Human Instrumentality Project of NERV objective was to make humans overcome their loneliness with making them live in their perfect world, an upgraded version of themselves. A reality in which Shinji and his friends aren’t exploited monster pilots emerges then. They were just kids in high school. Facing up his cowardice and low self-esteem, Shinji finally succeed to accept himself and his friends’ love. At the very end of the show, Shinji is standing and surrounded by people he knows. All of them are applauding him. A very controversial ending which was qualified as childish by a part of the audience.
“Episodes 25 and 26 as broadcast on TV accurately reflect my mood at the time. I am very satisfied, I regret nothing” – Hideaki Anno, in his first interview after the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
After the end of his project, Hideaki Anno had to deal with a deep depression, which made him go through a state of existential crisis. According to his own autobiography, Evangelion’s author also contemplated suicide. Almost a year later, Anno started working on his ultimate project : The End Of Evangelion. This movie served as a parallel ending to the Neon Genesis Evangelion television series. If the series’ ending was kind of happy as the yang, we can then consider the film as the yin. To be clearer, the first scene of the film is Shinji masturbating over Asuka’s unconscious body in a hospital.
From Misato who was shot, to Asuka who was strangled by Shinji after telling him harsh truths and facts, almost every single character died in this dark version of Evangelion. In contrast to the series ending, Shinji didn’t find any answer to his existence value. While he was helped by Misato and Asuka to understand his pain in the original version, Shinji refused to accept their actions, considering any of them as attacks in the movie.
In the end of the film, Shinji found himself alone with Asuka who was lying next to him. Despite his speech saying that he wanted to be more open to others, Shinji’s first reflex after seeing Asuka was to strangle her again just like he already did earlier in the movie. Shinji stopped his act, when Asuka tried to touch him. He was completely paralyzed.
“You need to understand that Japanese animation is an industry that is, for the most part, male, and as is quite evident, everything is made for their gratification… Animation is on certain points, very close to the pornography industry. All your physical needs are met. You can watch different animations and find anything you desire”
The End of Evangelion was indeed a chocking experience for the audience. Besides the spectacular animation, and different references like religion -Angels, Lilith, Adam, Eva…- the message of the project is more than complicated, and everybody can have his own perceptions of things. Personally, I can say that Evangelion moved me. In fact, while watching Evangelion I felt anxious and related to Shinji’s questions, as if I was starring the character.
“Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we’re offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the ‘all-about Eva’ manuals, but there is no such thing. Don’t expect to get answers by someone. Don’t expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers”
