End of Evangelion

The End of Evangelion (Japanese: 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン 劇場版, Shin seiki Evangelion Gekijô-ban) is an animated movie by Hideaki Anno. The movie presents an alternate ending to the popular anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. Many Japanese viewers felt unsatisfied by the series' two episode resolution, episodes 25 and 26, which take place completely in Shinji's mind. Only a few brief scenes hint at what happens outside of Shinji's mind, and viewers wanted a more satisfying explanation of these events. Therefore, End of Evangelion was created as an alternative to these episodes. The movie is divided into two parts, Episode 25': Air, and Episode 26': A Pure Heart for You (まごころを、君に, Magokoro o, kimi ni). It premiered on July 19, 1997, and runs for approximately 87 minutes. The USA version is published by Manga Entertainment.

Among American fans who recall the days of VHS fansubbing, EoE was one of those infamously memorable titles, often cited as the most popular yet disturbing program they recall as newbies.

Plot summary

This movie begins as SEELE sent their armies, and later the mass-production Evangelion units, to destroy NERV, due to Gendo Ikari's having an agenda of his own. Asuka, after realizing her mother's soul has always been with her in Unit 02, awakens from her coma and defends NERV HQ.

Gendou Ikari secretly intends to perform Instrumentality in a different way proposed by SEELE that will allow him to reunite with his wife. Instrumentality does, indeed, start in End of Evangelion, where Gendou fails to be in control of it, and is begun on Shinji Ikari's decision. Instrumentality is not fully accomplished before Shinji decides to reject it. This causes the merging of humanity with the absence of Shinji, allowing the individuals to each decide whether they want to re-emerge as humans, again, or remain in their current state.

In contrast to the series happier ending, the movie shows the apocalyptic completion of the Human Instrumentality Project, where individual identity is destroyed to create a single existence for all living things – that is, people's AT-Fields are destroyed and are turned to LCL. In the movie it is clear that Shinji rejects the Human Instrumentality Project, whereas in the show it was left more ambiguous.

The movie also contains some highly postmodern sequences, including a scene showing a young Shinji playing in the Geofront, with film lights around him (indicating he's on a film set) and some live action sequences including scenes of the voice actresses of Misato, Rei and Asuka (supposedly posing as their characters) and some footage of a movie theater. In addition much of the artwork can be considered superflat (Japanese form of postmodern pop art) for its depiction of perverse distorted sexuality of the film's main sex symbol Rei and its general criticisms of otaku sexuality such as an infamous scene towards the beginning of the film that depicts Shinji masturbating over a comatose Asuka.

In addition there are letters from fans including a few death threats via the internet along with grafitti on Gainax's headquarters shown in the film. These scenes are difficult to spot, but can be seen after the line "this is the end of your dream" and before a giant rei bleeds from her neck, as a quick succession of flashes.

The closing scene is vague and highly interpretive, where Shinji manages to separate himself from the collective human existence, with Asuka following. Some fans have speculated that she may be the amalgamation of Asuka, Rei, and Misato because of the apparent red eye-color in Asuka's eye (the color of Rei's eye), and the fact that she is wearing similar bandages to Rei when she is injured. The eyes could be due to the surrounding red ambience of the environment. (Note, also, the absence of the color blue on the planet Earth.) The bandages correspond to actual physical damage suffered during her last fight in Unit-02 (pierced left eye, injured right arm) and are, in fact, an exact mirror image of Rei's, which gives support to the notion that Asuka and Rei are two, contrasting, alternate possibilities for Shinji to choose between rather than that the woman in question is, in part, Rei. Their interaction shows a wide range of positive and negative human emotions, proving their individual existence from the collective. The closing line by Asuka was translated on the Manga DVD as "How disgusting", which would have caused much misunderstanding and confusion among English fans, as the original line was kimochi warui which can be translated as "I feel unwell", "what a disgusting feeling", "feels bad", etc. Many still believe that "How disgusting" is directed at Shinji as a result. The world remains irreversibly changed, however, and what happens from there is only hinted at.

A recient episode of a Japanese show dedicated to animation described this final line and its original meaning. In it one of the main seiyuu Miyamura Yuuki (Asuka) describes what Anno told her he was going for with this scene. Since Anno didn't have a final line finalized he needed to work with the actress to come up with an ending:

Concerning the final line we adopted, I'm not sure whether I should say about it in fact. At last Anno asked me " Miyamura, just imagine you are sleeping in your bed and a stranger sneaks into your room. He can rape you anytime as you are asleep but he doesn't. Instead, he masturbates looking at you, when you wake up and know what he did to you. What do you think you would say?" I had been thinking he was a strange man, but at that moment I felt disgusting. So I told him that I thought "Disgusting". And then he sighed and said "... thought as much." He said. " I thought as much."(1)

Although the movie appears somewhat more straightforward in plot, many fans are displeased with its violence and shock value relative to the television series and many harbor a dislike of Hideaki Anno's work. It is rumoured that Hideaki Anno created the movie as revenge on the ex-fans of the TV show, who sent numerous hate-mail and death threats after their disappointment in the ending of the last two episodes. Some of these letters were briefly flashed in the movie, towards the ending of End of Evangelion.

The first part, "Episode 25': Air", is based on the previous movie, Rebirth. Rebirth is roughly equivalent to 2/3 of Air.

End of Evangelion later becomes the second half of Revival of Evangelion, a concatenation of DEATH(TRUE)² and End of Evangelion. It is named "REVIVAL OF EVANGELION 02: Air/Magokoro o, kimi ni (Air/まごころを、君に).