Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22: You Can(not) Advance

It's interesting to write about Rebuild of Evangelion as an American viewer since, what I'd consider one of the biggest film events of the year happens in a weird sort of vacuum. There's no hype for the film coming out, it just shows up online and you roll from there. Normally with a big franchise film, you have that collective rush of anticipation, but not for this one!

As longtime blog readers know, the Evangelion series and its subsequent film followup, End of Evangelion, were personal favorites of mine. However, the notion of 'rebuilding' the series to make a more coherent version seems to run against every strength of the series proper. The first Rebuild mostly revisited territory from the series in a slightly more focused way, this one branches out into new stuff, and generally succeeds. It rambles a bit along the way, but ends with a transcendent scene that makes up for most of the problems along the way and opens the door to something radically different in the final two films.

The first Rebuild film expertly focused on Shinji's internal struggle to deal with the duty thrust upon him, his father's expectations and his duty to the world. This one branches out a bit more, into an ensemble piece focusing on a loose love triangle between Shinji, Rei and Asuka, as they each struggle to reach out beyond their own issues and form connections with others. That's the emotional core of the film and it works really well.

However, it takes a little while to get into that. The opening introduces new character Mari, who doesn't do that much to distinguish herself in the film. She feels like a somewhat unnecessary plot device, though I'm hoping her larger purpose will become clear in the next films. She's a much more competent, seemingly untroubled pilot, and there's potentially interesting material in there, contrasting her carefree devotion to duty with the other kids' trouble adjusting to their role. But, without underlying emotional traumas to define her, she's out of place in the show's solitary universe, and her flitting in and out of the narrative means that she remains just a surface cool, not a fully developed character.

Once we get back to the main character, there's some strong material introducing Asuka, but it takes a while to really get going. One of the problems with watching the film version of the story as opposed to the TV series is that digressions feel much more out of place. A scene like the trip to the aquarium works better in a TV format, where you expect new stuff to happen every episode. Here, it didn't feel like the best way to forward the character relationships. I liked elements of the scene, but in general, it felt like there were a few too many goofy elements in the early going and not enough substantive character interaction.

Asuka was always my favorite character during the series, and I think she fairs pretty well in the film translation. The essence of the character is transferred, and you still get a sense of her relationship with Shinji. However, it was frustrating to lose some of the intense personal examination we got during the series. One of my favorite moments in the show is when Asuka is sleeping with Shinji and says “Mama,” the first moment when her tough exterior breaks and Shinji can see her vulnerability. The scene where they sleep together here works, but not as strongly as the original.

That raises the question of the artistic intention behind this project. Is it better to have something different than the series, even if it's not as good, just because the series already exists and we don't need to see it again? The moments that are taken directly from the series often don't play as well because they don't have the context of the series.

It's also frustrating to see the continued focus on exploitative angles and frequent random nudity for no apparent reason. It always felt awkward during the show to have fourteen year old characters depicted naked, and that continues here. It can work, as in the moment near the end of the show where Asuka sits in a bath tub depressed, but that's a moment that's about her character, not the audience being given an invitation to leer, and there's too many of those moments in this film.

The story picks up quite a bit once we get to the middle section of the film where Shinji and Asuka become a 'married couple,' and he plays the woman to all the women in his life. It's an interesting flip of typical gender roles, and I like the way that the simple act of cooking makes Misato, Asuka and Rei reconsidering their own cold attitudes towards the world. Asuka's jealousy is well played, she thinks that she's special when he makes food for her, but when she sees him serving Rei, she gets angry. I like that plot beat because it resonates with the way that small routine things can build up a close relationship, and a kind of possessiveness.

The Asuka/Shinji relationship in the series was an absolute favorite of mine, and we see hints of it here. It's very sweet when she is cooking, trying to reach out to Shinji in the same way he reached out to her. Shinji himself seems more uncertain. In the series he was always torn between women who represented various things to him, usually riffing on the desire he feels for his absent mother. Here, he seems more interested in his father than any female relationship. It feels like he's too damaged to open himself up to that kind of relationship with someone.

Rei's arc here is particularly interesting. After being saved by Shinji, she makes a conscious effort to open herself up and bring people together. She's the only person who can see how damaged both Shinji and Gendo are, and decides that she can use food to bridge the gap between them. Her decision to cook, rather than take the pills she'd typically taken, is an attempt to become more than just an Eva pilot, to become a person. The scene where she has dinner with Gendo is one of my favorite in the film, particularly the way Rei is juxtaposed with Yui.

The whole cooking plotline is a great example of the film bringing something new to the mythos. In the series, most of the characters wallowed in their own troubles, and made no effort to reach out. Here, they all make an effort, and for most of the film, things are actually fairly sunny. People are trying to define themselves beyond just their role within NERV, and to claim actual personal lives.

Of course, it all comes crashing down in the film's final act. The sequence with Asuka trapped in the malfunctioning Eva kind of worked, but didn't play anywhere near as visceral as the similar sequence in the series. Part of the reason is that in that moment, Asuka's story became subservient to Shinji's. I wanted to feel what she felt, and perhaps reprise one of the series' greatest sequence, the attack on her mind from Episode 22. Some of that subjective stuff with her may be dealt with in the next films, but I wanted to feel it here.

Instead it becomes another ploy in the battle of wills between Shinji and his father. The food based reunion is off, and instead their relationship totally breaks down. I loved the visual of Unit 01 standing on top of the pyramid, raging at NERV below, but the moment as a whole didn't totally work.

What did work beyond all measure was the final action sequence, in which Shinji reaches into the heart of an angel to try to save Rei. The reason this sequence worked so well was that it was one of the first times that the film abandoned literalism and moved into psychological subjectivity. The premise of the series never made much sense on a literal level, but as a Freudian psychological excavation, it's riveting. But, my biggest problem with the films prior to this, was that they never reached that transcendent place of pure subconscious, at least not until this final scene.

Shinji tears through the complex, then, as music echoing “Komm Susser Tod” from End of Evangelion starts to play, Shinji plunges into the angel, and the film becomes pure psychological vision. I love the visual of Shinji going through the tunnel of light, trying to reach Rei, who's alone in the darkness. At the same time, outside debri swirls and the sky opens to the Third Impact. It's a moment of pure visual poetry, like the best of End of Evangelion, and Shinji's dive into the abyss is the rawest emotional moment in the films to date, the first sequence that comes close to matching the series at its best.

If the last scene wasn't so strong, I'd classify the film as something of a disappointment. But, with that last scene, it opens up a whole new array of storytelling possibilities, and is evidence that Anno can still do the kind of intense subjectivity that made End of Eva such a great success. Hopefully that will be used more in the next two films.

What's particularly interesting is the final coda scene with Kaworu, which continues the idea from the end of the first Rebuild that this set of films isn't so much a restart as it is a continuation of what started in the first Evangelion. I'm thinking it could be a loop set to repeat until the characters finally become happy and resolves their issues. The first run through ended in an apocalypse and Shinji's personal transcendence (the series), the second ended in apocalypse, but hope that the Eva would still be out there. Perhaps this time the characters will integrate themselves and truly succeed. At least they are trying.

I'm not sure that interpretation will ever become more than subtext, but I love it, and when Misato said this is happening, just like fifteen years ago, I immediately jumped to the release date of the series. This film doesn't prove or disprove the sequel theory, and I'm still believing it.

I'll have to give the film another look before passing final judgment, but right now I'd call it mostly successful with an absolute stunner of an ending. But, it still can't match up to the best of the series or End of Eva. I want to see the more experimental Anno back in the next film. Let's hope he's still got something at End of Eva level in him.

Rewatch of Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone

To complete my rewatch of Evangelion, I took another look at Rebuild. Watching it again, knowing what it is and what it isn’t, it was a more satisfying experience, and I think I have a better understanding of why the project was made in the first place.

In his statement about the project, Anno said that he wanted to make the story more accessible for people, to tell a story that everyone could enjoy. I initially reacted to that negatively, fearing that it would mean the loss of the crazy abstractions that I loved so much in the series. But, I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to take away, rather I think his intention is to shape the narrative into something more linear, and to clear up a lot of the things that aren’t really explained in the original. The original exists in a genre universe, where we just take for granted that Shinji can go to school one day and pilot Eva the next. That caused problems for me on the first viewing, I was asking these questions and wasn’t sure if the series would ever answer them. This film spends more time setting things up for the viewer, making it clear that Shinji is piloting this thing because he is the only one who will be able to do so. I know that’s because the Eva was his mother, but the new viewer would at least know that there’s some reason for it.

Similarly, a lot of little character things are made clearer. Characters question Gendo’s behavior more, wondering why he shows so little affection for his son. No one in the original series really wonders why he’s so absurdly distant. And, watching it now, the scene from End of Eva where he says he kept Shinji distant not to hurt him sticks in my head. He’s so cruel because he thinks it’s what Shinji needs, but that’s so utterly wrong. In my initial review of the film, I said it would have been interesting to look at the whole thing from the adults’ perspective, and I’d stand by that. I’d love to see more exploration of what’s driving Gendo, and to get more insight into his relationship with Ritsuko.

We do see the two of them together more here, and the groundwork for their relationship is laid in a way it wasn’t in the series proper. The revelation that she was sleeping with Gendo came out of nowhere for me on the initial viewing, clearly it’s being placed in earlier here. This also allows them to reframe the motivation on certain events early in the series. Here, we see Gendo and Fuyutski discuss a plan to bring Shinji and Rei closer together. This was likely to ensure that Shinji remains on as a pilot, committed to the project. So, Ritsuko’s decision to have Shinji deliver Rei’s ID card to her is motivated by that. But, it also is motivated by Ritsuko’s desire to bring Shinji and Rei closer together, so that she will have Gendo all to herself. That could also explain Ritusko’s uneasiness with Misato potentially having a sexual relationship with Shinji, though that uneasiness could also be common sense.

Having seen the series twice, and having a better understanding of the whole Lilith/Adam mythology, there’s a few changes that really jump out here. One is the decision to accelerate the revelation of Lilth, and the purpose of the Evas. In the original series, we never really knew what the angels were until near the end of the series. I don’t think we knew why the Angels were attacking until Episode 20 or so. Here, it’s made clear that the goal of the angels is to penetrate Nerv and instigate the Third Impact. Making the motivations clearer earlier is a perfect example of making the story more accessible without sacrificing the mystique. The original series had ambiguity that served a purpose and ambiguity that was simply not telling us what we needed to know. Here, most of that latter stuff, the ambiguity that had no purpose is gone, and it’s a lot easier to follow the narrative.

If anything, removing ambiguity surrounding the instrumentality project and SEELE’s agenda will allow them to focus more on the psychological makeup of the character, and use the overall narrative as a mirror of the characters’ own emotions. This film doesn’t feature as much subjective stuff as the latter days of the show, but it does delve into Shinji’s psyche earlier than the series did. Notably, the entire focus of the film is to tell a single story, so the psychological interludes are less wide reaching, they’re more focused on Shinji’s uncertainty about piloting Eva. We see him on the train and there’s also some weird transitions when he’s in the Eva. Perhaps the most interesting new addition is quoting Gendo and Yui’s conversation about “If he’s a boy we’ll call him Shinji. If it’s a girl, Rei” right after the first battle with the angel. It makes it clear that there’s something up with Shinji and Rei right from the start, and raises questions about her relationship with Gendo.

We know the answers to those questions that were provided by the original Eva. But, things are a little different here, and this viewing made me wonder what exactly is the nature of the ‘rebuild.’ In the final moments of the film, Kaworu appears and says that Shinji is the third again, evidencing a range of knowledge that goes beyond what he should have in the story at this point. Shinji being the third again implies that all of this has happened before, say, in the original run of the series. So, does that mean that Rebuild is not a remake, rather than it exists on some kind of parallel continuity to the original series, that it is an in continuity extension of that narrative.

Notably, the film does open with the red seas that are featured so prominently at both the opening and closing of the End of Eva. It creates a kind of looping effect, where you can move seamlessly from Shinji on the beach choking Asuka to this film. What Kaworu’s comment indicates is that he’s aware of the other timelines. Kaworu here reminds me of John a Dreams from The Invisibles, someone who exists outside of the timeline, and moves into time at specific moments in the narrative when he is needed to achieve specific goals. If Kaworu is moving into the ‘game’ earlier, that would lead to a massive restructuring of the narrative as a whole, he would change the world.

In End of Eva, we see Kaworu as one of the Lilith, the incarnation of Human Instrumentality, a being who exists beyond time and serves the purpose of uniting all of humanity into complementation. So, his knowledge of things beyond this timeline would be logical. He has seen Shinji move through different worlds, move through the live action world, he knows that such travel is possible. One could easily argue that this entire film, hell the series as a whole, exists during the process of instrumentality, it’s Shinji reliving a different series of realities until he gets it right.

It reminds me a bit of the ending of The Dark Tower (SPOILERS AHEAD). There, Roland reaches the Dark Tower, the end of his story and is flung back to the beginning, it seems like the story is on an endless loop. However, this time he’s got the Horn of Eld, and this one change in the universe will produce more, and help bring him closer to his goal. The Rebuild could be a similar experience, Shinji went through Instrumentality and wound up in a world that was all wrong. So, he’s gone back in and decided to start things over again. On the surface, it all looks similar, and events don’t deviate wildly. However, there are subtle changes, and the intrusion of Kaworu into the next film will alter everything. (END DARK TOWER SPOILERS)

Right now, that would be my interpretation of the film. This is one of those other worlds Shinji saw during End of Eva, and as the films go forward, they will shift more and more. Certainly the preview for Eva 2.0 seems to be radically altered from the series itself. There’s many different Evas, a new female character and Kaworu apparently comes down from the moon in his own Eva. It would seem that that’s where this project spins off into something different from the original, and, much as I enjoyed this film, that will be more exciting to see. Perhaps this film was so similar to the original simply to make it clear where the continuity diverges, and to demonstrate how malleable reality itself really is.

But, back to the film itself, and one of the central differences between the film and the series, the portrayal of Unit 01. In the series, we see Unit 01 reach out and save Shinji, the first evidence that it had some will of its own, the spirit of his mother. Here, we don’t see that, the Eva does have clearly humanoid qualities, but it’s not as emphasized. Instead, there’s a greater emphasis on Shinji’s relationship with Rei. I’m left wondering if she is still a clone of his mother, because Gendo seems to be actively pushing the two of them together. Perhaps that’s just the way he is, he assumes that what Shinji would want would be the same kind of woman he’d want, so he gives Shinji this clone of his mother to be with.

Alternatively, in End of Eva, we saw that Gendo’s entire quest during the series was to get back to Yui, a woman he adores and places above all things. Much like Shinji, he hates himself, so wouldn’t it make sense that he’d want to avoid Shinji and instead let Shinji spend time with his ‘mother,’ in this case with Rei and Unit 01. It’s twisted, but it feels like the kind of logic he would use.

So, the Shinji/Rei relationship gets emphasized more, played out as an Oedipal conflict with Rei in the middle. The only flashback scene in the entire film is Unit 00 going beserker, and Gendo going down to rescue Rei. There, we see the extent of his feeling for her, which is made physical in the cracked glasses. It’s only with Gendo that we see Rei happy, and Shinji spends the entire film trying to simultaneously please his father and Rei.

It all comes to a head in the final battle sequence, which is masterfully executed. I still have some issues with the film’s pacing, the way the more leisurely patterns of life from the series are compressed into a tight film narrative, but that final half hour or so is just brilliant, both from a story point of view and from an aesthetic one. The powerless city, illuminated only by a giant moon, and the colored flashing lights of the vehicles around. It’s pretty astounding.

Anyway, the battle sequence itself is the first moment where Shinji sees someone sacrifice themselves for him. It’s where Rei steps in and nearly kills herself so that he can live. In the devastating final moments, Shinji tears open the capsule, and asks her for nothing but a smile. The raw emotion of that scene undercuts all the possible triumph of saving the city. And, in that moment, he ‘wins’ Rei from his father, he proves his own manhood and makes the connection he’s been seeking the entire film. Connecting with Rei is given priority over his relationship with the Eva, a development that will alter the way the future films play.

The first time I saw this film I felt like there was a lot missing. Watching it again, after seeing the series, I realized that the original series expanded in my mind after watching it. There’s not too much from the first five episodes that isn’t here. That said, in shaping it into a film, the more everday flavor of the series is gone. You don’t really know how much time Shinji spends at Misato’s, or get a full picture of his school life. That stuff was more fully explored in the later episodes, once Asuka showed up, but it was there early too.

When the show was first made, I doubt they knew a lot of the ways the story would go. As such, the earlier integration of the Adam/Lilith mythology, and Shinji’s psychological stuff makes this fit better with what comes later. Regardless of whether it’s actually in the same narrative universe, this film is clearly a post End of Eva production, and much of my reading is informed by what I saw there. I’m not sure how a new viewer would respond, I’d imagine they’d like this more than the first six episodes of the series, but I think watching the series makes the story more epic in some ways. It lets you fill in the gaps between episodes with imagined stories, here, it’s all sealed up as a neat little package. It’s more satisfying on a lot of levels, but it doesn’t replace the series.

The big question for me now is what exactly will the nature of future stories be. The second film may cover anywhere from Episode 12 to Episode 19. The rest of the series’ first half is a generally lighter period, focusing largely on the rivalry between Shinji and Asuka and building up the relationships between the characters. It’s a generally happy period, that sees everyone’s synch ratings rise, and Shinji gain more self confidence. That tone would fit with what we see in the trailer, an emphasis on many Evas and all kinds of action.

But, the big question mark for me is the last couple of films. The end of the series is so devastating and artistically ambitious. Will Anno return to those same techniques, or will he stay closer to traditional narrative storytelling? I think it would be near impossible to top End of Eva in terms of emotional artistic filmmaking, but if anyone can do it, he can. I’d be interested to see an ending that does deal with what’s come before, and spins through a series of realities, through the series, through End of Eva, and explores the reason that this story, this mythos endures. I want to see Shinji tripping through instrumentality and finding himself led by Kaworu to look at himself choking Asuka at the beach. If any image encapsulates what I’d like to see with the end of the film, it’s that, an integration of the previous mythology within its own new work.

I guess my big question is the philosophy of the work. When Anno says he wants to make the new films clearer, does that preclude the sort of exploration that End of Eva did, or is it more about precluding the convoluted mythology surrounding the narrative proper? I’d certainly like to see a clearer view of Seele vs. Gendo, the role of the angels and what have you. I hope that’s what he means to clear up, and to keep the psychological stuff on top of that. For me, it’s the psychological material that makes Eva what it is. This film does a fantastic job of getting inside Shinji’s head, but I hope that the later films go as far stylistically as the end of the series and End of Eva did.

Of course, if Kaworu enters the timeline and alters it, this could be an entirely different storyline. The beauty of the many worlds concept introduced in End of Eva is that it would allow them to deviate into something different and still keep it thematically similar. A person is simultaneously their intrinsic core and the product of the world around them, the product of the version of them that exists in other peoples’ heads. So, it can all change and still all be true. This is a new film, but it’s also the same film, the same story seen from a different moment in time.

The End of Evangelion: In Depth

I just finished my second viewing of The End of Evangelion this week. While rewatching the series, I was most looking forward to seeing End of Eva again, and trying to piece together exactly what it was saying. My first viewing of the film left me pretty baffled. I loved what I had seen, but I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on at times. The emotional core stuck, but the narrative side of things was a bit hazy.

Watching the film again, I saw a work that does pretty much everything I want a film to do. It’s astounding in its simultaneous global scope and individual focus. The film makes it clear that in the grand scheme of things, our individual struggles are just as important as global wars and conflicts, that perhaps they’re actually the same thing. Shinji’s personal trauma makes him a standin for all of humanity, when he’s forced to choose whether to continue instrumentality or return to the way things are.

Watching it a second time, I felt like the film and the series’ ending were diametrically opposed. But, much of that is the tone. The literal breakthrough, followed by applause and a smile to end the series leaves you with this feeling of such happiness. Shinji is aware of the love the others have for him, and is, for once, at peace. The film ends in a radically different way, Shinji crying over Asuka in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But, the brutality of that scene obscures the fact that both endings reach the same basic conclusion. In each case, Shinji actualizes himself, gains agency and is no longer bound by the rules of those above him. Throughout the series, we’ve seen him serve others, pilot the EVA to make them happy, so he won’t be abandoned again. He’s constantly wanted to run away, but when he’s given the opportunity for the ultimate run, the ultimate easy happiness, he passes and embraces the world in all its painful and beautiful reality.

But, let me track back a bit and discuss the film all the way through. One thing that really struck me on both viewings is just how fast the film goes by. Because the series took care of all the exposition, this movie is essentially a 90 minute climax, and as such, it just flies by. I was shocked to see that we were already halfway through the movie when Shinji got into Unit 01, it felt like 25 minutes at most, not 45. And, the backhalf of the film flows incredibly well. It just zips by, this may be the quickest 90 minute film to watch even.

The first half of the film has a few particularly notable elements. In my first review of the film, I discussed the boldness of the opening scene. Watching it again, it still makes me think. The goal of the first half is to reduce Shinji to his absolute lowest point. He has feelings for Asuka, but no way to express them, and winds up doing one of the sleaziest things possible. She is lying there helpless, utterly broken, and he sees her only as a sex object. It adds to the feeling of guilt he’s got for the rest of the film, and is one of the touchstones for trying to understand the oh so ambiguous final scene.

One thing that this viewing of the series and film clarified for me was the Ritsuko/Gendo Ikari relationship. The first time through, I got the impression that Ritsuko was supposed to have feelings for Misato, which is supported by a loose reading of the narrative, but knowing that she was meant to be in love with Gendo, everything makes more sense. So much of the series is about cycles, children unwittingly becoming their parents, and the relationship makes sense in that context. It felt like an out of left field development the first time I saw the show, but it’s clear that Ritsuko is trying to match up to her mother. She’s chosen the same job, and the same man. Much like Misato, she has followed her parent’s path, despite hating her mother on some level.

The turning point for Ritsuko is when Gendo chooses to send her before SEELE instead of Rei. It’s an echo of Gendo choosing Yui, and the cloned Rei, over Naoko. When that happens, Ritsuko realizes how much she’s messed things up with her life, and decies to turn on Gendo. However, in the end she’s betrayed by the ‘woman’ part of her mother, Casper in the Magi, at which point Gendo shoots her. It’s a pretty horrible series of events that happen to her over the course of the series. She poured her whole life into this project, and winds up betrayed by the person she loved most.

Why would she commence this relationship with Gendo? At least Naoko had the excuse that he was a different person before Yui died. The obvious, and most notable, reason is her attempt to emulate her mother, as well as a general self loathing. Perhaps she sought love from Gendo to replace the parental love she didn’t get from her mother. It seems that she was always a loner, Misato was her only real friend, and she oft lost Misato to Kaji. Perhaps Gendo initiated things, she does make reference to wanting him to take her like an animal in Episode 24. He uses her when he likes, and she doesn’t mind, because her self esteem is just that low. She masks it with sarcasm, but she doubts whether anyone could ever love her. Like all the characters on the show, she’s so alone, seeking comfort from anyone.

If I have one complaint about the film, it’s that too much time is spent with the three tech characters. They were there throughout the series, but weren’t particularly central. I think it works as a way to humanize the invasion of NERV. We get the sense that shit really is going down, people are dying and nothing can be done. It makes the impending apocalypse believable, but those scenes are less emotionally charged than the rest of the film. And, it pays off during the ‘Come, Sweet Death’ sequence later in the movie.

Misato dies relatively early in the film, but not before some strong action sequences. I love the shaky cam shot of her rushing down the hall, spraying bullets at the soldiers accosting Shinji. Her relationship with Shinji compounds a lot of the issues from the series into something a little heavier. In some ways, you could view the entire film as the process of disconnection from parents, moving beyond mother love to a larger world. In that context, it makes sense that Shinji wind up with Asuka, the only woman he interacts with in the series who isn’t either his mother or playing mother for him.

It’s a very confusing world for Shinji, and Misato doesn’t make it any easier with her mixed signals. She forms a family unit with him and Asuka, where she is placed in the role of mother. But, particularly early in the series, she is the irresponsible one. It’s Shinji who cooks and cleans up the house, she just drinks and makes a mess. Ritsuko questions Misato on this, her motives in housing Shinji. I think it’s primarily that Misato doesn’t want to be alone. This is a girl who was abandoned by her father and wouldn’t speak for two years. There’s deep, deep damage, and she tries to protect herself by not being alone again, by living with others and being outgoing and personable. In a lot of ways, it’s the opposite of Asuka. Asuka was abandoned and chose to become independent, to reject others. Misato embraces them as a way of keeping herself sane, but it’s a somewhat selfish process.

She has her own Elektra complex to deal with. She wants to get back to her father, and a large part of her attraction to Kaji is because he reminds her of her father. So, she probably just assumes that Shinji would want to blur the role of mother and lover. She doesn’t really understand parent/child relationships, not that any of these characters do, and that’s why she constantly walks the boundary between sexual object and mother. I think she really proves herself in the film, when she drags Shinji along and helps him to get back in the Eva. But, she also confuses things more with the ‘adult’ kiss.



It’s understandable that she’d try that, since nothing else is getting through to Shinji. Does it cross a boundary? Probably, for one, he is still underage. But, I think it’s also an example of her trying to give Shinji what she would have wanted at that age. She sees so much of herself in Shinji, she knows what it was like to be alone, and she thinks that it’s that kind of kiss that would get him going. It makes Shinji cry even more, but at least it gets him standing up on his own.

Speaking of bizarre mother relationships, the material with Asuka is easily the highlight of the first half. Asuka is my favorite character from the series. I find powerful female characters interesting for a number of reasons, partially because you don’t see that many. Typically the arrogance and striving of a character like Asuka would be male characteristics, while the uncertainty and timidity of Shinji would be female. But, in real life, I’ve seen more women like Asuka, who are powerful and totally committed to being the best. In romantic comedies, we often see this kind of woman cut down, told that she should really prioritize love over her career. Asuka’s arc goes in a more interesting direction, her purpose cut out when she is no longer the best.

It’s deeply tragic to watch her pushed so low by the end of the series, until she’s huddled in the Eva, bombs going off around her, totally comatose. Never before in the series has the connection between Eva and mother made clearer. She’s in the fetal position, floating in this womb like liquid, not wanting to face the world. She is scared that she’s been abandoned by her mother, that to go out in the world means going out alone and dying. This culminates in the fantastic moment where she repeats “I don’t want to die,” gradually growing from whisper to shout, and at the moment her incantation reaches its peak, she meets her mother in a hazy dreamworld.

Much like Shinji’s encounter with his mother in the series, the scene remains rather vague. The narrative explanation is that the Evas have embodied with the souls of humans, the pilots’ mothers. I don’t think that makes much sense on a narrative or logical level, but on a metaphorical emotional one, it’s brilliant. In the Eva, Asuka realizes that she is not alone, her mother has been with her, will always been with her. The knowledge that that love is there empowers to go back out and shed the umbilical cable. It empowers her to fight again. The synch ratio discussed during the series is actually the fusion of mother and child within the Eva. After the Angel attack on her mind, Asuka lost touch with her mother, her mind was clouded. Now, it’s back and she can go on a rampage.

The Asuka fight scene here is easily the best Eva fight scene of the entire series. Particularly later in the series, the fights became little more than place fillers, or excuses to engage in psychological interrogation. Only a few from the series stand out as exciting, but nothing matches this, the kineticism and raw emotional power at play. I love the way Asuka smiles as she soars through the sky, tearing the other Evas apart. It’s nicely presented as the opposite of her ‘defiling’ experience. Here, she shoots up a huge cross instead of being penetrated by a beam of light, and is united with her mother rather than divided.

And, the scene plays as a preview of what Shinji will go through at the end of the film. After her triumphant resurgence to reality, she comes down quickly. The power on the Eva runs out and the Evas brutally tear her apart. Few things are sadder than watching her pump away at the Eva controls, getting no response. She is once again abandoned, and left to die. But, the shots of her soaring through the sky, and whipping the Eva around still linger.



Then, after the movie is nearly half over, our ‘hero’ finally gets in the Eva and does something. I love that this movie was a huge release in Japan because it violates virtually ever rule of traditional film storytelling. The main character is an utter failure at almost every turn, most of the characters are dead by the halfway point, and linear narrative is totally abandoned in the second half for something much more interesting. When I make films, I frequently take a similar approach as Eva, using the trappings of genre to tell a story about a character’s psychological makeup. The combination of action and subjective psychological abstraction is very appealing for me. I’d like to see more films that got this into their characters’ heads, and stopped worrying about having everything make sense. Of course, there’s few people who can do this as well as Anno, he just makes it look easy.

The second half begins with the instigation of The Third Impact. For whatever reason, Shinji is chosen as the representative of all humanity, the one who will choose between instrumentality and the world as it was. He is given this mission because he is the pilot of Unit 01. The Evas always had a role in the instigation of Third Impact, and since Unit 01 is the only one left, it stands to reason that it would be the central figure in this drama.

Either way, everything kicks off when Rei turns on Gendo and merges with Lilith. Rei herself remains something of a mystery to me. What exactly is her motivation in the series? She wants to know who she is, she wonders what it is to feel human even as she becomes more and more emotionally connected to the world. A major turning point is her ‘death’ in Episode 23, and subsequent rebirth. She’d been in the Rei II persona for so long, she became more imprinted with humanity, more attached to Shinji. That’s why she sacrifices herself, and it’s also the reason she gives for abandoning Gendo.

Her meeting with Kaworu also plays a part in awakening her to her true destiny. She is derived from Lilith, she is the same as him, and here, she finally returns to what she was and awakens her true destiny. She is a fusion of Yui and Lilith, and in the end, she chooses her son over her husband. That’s an interpretation that fits with what we see, but her arc at this point transcends simple narrative logic. It works on visual and emotional logic, was Rei always designed to merge with Lilith? Perhaps, it doesn’t really follow up on what we saw from her earlier in the series. It may simply be that, as a cloned being, she’s the first and easiest to merge with the oneness of all things. She serves as a face for Lilith, the angel of death who appears to everyone as they pass into instrumentality.

I think the whole Giant Rei thing was motivated more by a visual intuition than a specific narrative reason. It works wonderfully as a way to visually represent the process of instrumentality. I liked the abstract psychology of the TV ending, but it can’t match the visual spectacle of the Evas forming the Tree of Life and Shinji confronting the giant Rei.

The structure of the second half is genius for me because it’s basically everything I like smashed up against each other. The arrival of Third Impact and Instrumentality is essentially a filmic depiction of humanity’s passage into the supercontext as described in The Invisibles. It’s a piece of cosmic experience, with visuals rendered wonderfully by Anno’s team. This is mashed up against intense character development, some of the finest work by Anno in the entire series. It’s pop avant garde. I want to make a movie this good one day.

There’s a series of confounding scenes with Shinji over the course of the second half. The sandbox scene that opens Instrumentality has a lot of notable elements. Again, we see a mother just out of reach, leaving young Shinji to prove himself by erecting the NERV pyramid in sand. The surrealism of the scene is enhanced by the pendulum like swing and the presence of film lights just outside of frame.



This bleeds into one of my favorite scenes in the entire film, the confrontation between Asuka and Shinji in Misato’s apartment. It’s a mashup of two previous scenes, the Shinji/Asuka kiss in Episode 15 and the scene where Shinji tells Asuka that Kaji has died in Episode 24. The kiss scene, along with the “Mama” sleep scene earlier is where we first start to really understand Asuka. She likes Shinji, but isn’t sure how to express it. What was subtextual there is made explicit here, as they argue about how cruel she was to him, and how unsupportive he was for her. Much of the psychological sequences in the film are about making what is typically kept inside and making it external. This is what Shinji could never tell the real Asuka, and it’s also the Asuka in his head preying on his worst fears.

A particularly notable line is when Asuka says that he’s asking her for help because he’s scared of Misato and the First Child. On one level, this is true, but they’re also each mother figures. Asuka is the only character who’s not a mother to him, and it represents growth that he’d seek help from her rather than retreat into the arms of someone who will always accept him.

I’ve often wondered about the true nature of Shinji and Asuka’s relationship. Does he really love her, does she love him? This scene, and the ending would lead us to believe that they do love each other, and are ‘meant for each other.’ But, both of them have so much internal damage, it’s virtually impossible to connect with each other. I love the intercutting of Asuka approaching for the kiss with their argument, a mishmash of memories and subconscious hallucinations all colliding against each other.

The scene builds to Shinji lashing out at her and himself in a display of rage unlike anything else we’ve seen from him. And then, in a shocking moment, he grabs her by the neck and chokes her. What follows is one of the most audacious music cues of all time, as the camera spirals around him crushing the life out of her, a soft rock piano starts up and we segue into one of the greatest cinematic sequences of all time. It might be hyperbole, still holding the high of experiencing the film, but right now I could make a strong argument that the “Come Sweet Death” sequence of this film is the single greatest sequence in any film of all time. The fusion of music, visual, emotion, character, everything is going at full blast, the world collapsing into Instrumentality.



The sequence begins by breaking down the image itself, much as the TV ending did. There’s children’s drawings, which segue for some reason into a quick flash of all the TV episode title screens. Notably, you can see the titles for TV Episodes 25 and 26, implying that they can co-exist with this film. It’s all part of the same story.

This leads into various characters’ experience of the passage into instrumentality. This stuff hits me on a subconscious level, it’s exactly the kind of thing I want to see in film. There’s something so beautiful about the Reis floating in and giving everyone exactly what they want to see before leaving this world, in a sudden bursting head explosion. It’s so sudden, the death, but it feels right. I love Yui floating in to Fuyutski, and Ritsuko appearing to Maya.

But, the best scene here is undoubtedly the Gendo Ikari confession. After all this awful, awful shit he’s put Shinji through, he reflects on the fact that he felt it was better to stay out of his life, that he’d only hurt Shinji if he was with him. As Asuka would say, “Are you stupid?!” Ikari thought he was doing what was best for Shinji by keeping him at a distance, but in reality, that’s where all his problems came from. If Ikari had been a more attentive father, and actually shown Shinji some affection, perhaps Shinji wouldn’t have been so messed up. And, perhaps Gendo would not have spent his whole life on a quest to be reunited with his dead wife. Maybe he’d realize that there was something to appreciate in the world that we live in now. I love the scene so much because it puts everything in perspective. We’ve seen Gendo as this unassailable villain for the whole series, but he thought he was doing what was best for Shinji.

Things continue with the various Evas impaling themselves with lances, in a way that turns the whole thing into something like a Busby Berkley musical. Concurrently, Rei is instigating the spread of instrumentality across the world, in a beautiful rise of green crosses.

The combination of these images and the music is sublime. The song starts off as a Carpenters like soft rock song, then segues into something that reminded me of ‘Hey Jude.’ Particularly with the review of episode titles, the sequence has the feeling of summation, of everything wrapping up and looking back with nostalgia on what’s come before. It’s ironic that this should immediately follow perhaps the cruelest act in the series, but it just works. At this point, the film is running on pure subconscious energy, and you’ve just got to roll with it. The song ends over a succession of increasingly frantic cuts, compounding moments of the series on top of each other. It’s hard to describe, but the whole thing is astonishing. It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.



From there, we continue the journey into abstraction, via the cryptic live action sequence. It was made a bit less cryptic when I found the original, deleted sequence online. On first impression, it’s just a bunch of random images of reality cobbled together, juxtaposed with a voiceover from Shinji interrogating the nature of dreams and reality. To be honest, even after seeing the film three times, I find it hard to concentrate and really investigate the meaning of the dialogue that runs over the end of the film. I get the essence of it, but it works more as just another layer, like music, than anything that has essential meaning for the series as a whole.

My takeaway on the live action sequence is that it’s meant to parallel the sequence in the last episode of the TV series, where Shinji imagines an alternate world where he’s not an Eva pilot, where he’s actually just a regular kid and everyone from the series is in his dream. As they say there, there are many worlds, many possibilities. He may be an Eva pilot in this world, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There can be a world where he doesn’t even exist.

Watching the deleted scene, the substance of this becomes clearer. In the live action world, all the characters are still there, but they play different roles. Asuka and Misato are neighbors, somewhat antagonistic. Asuka’s relationship with Toji prompts Misato to speak with Ritsuko about the trouble of forming connections between men and women. Like in Episode 26, pieces of the characters survive in the alternate world, but they are also radically different. Here, Misato is jealous of Asuka’s love, so she knocks it, saying it’s fleeting physical pleasure, nothing really meaningful. As in the series, she and Ritsuko are both lonely, and cynical as a result.

Much of their discussion centers on the way that what men really want is a mother they can have sex with, and women are happy to be this role because it gives them security. It’s a cynical, Freudian interpretation of things, and somewhat ironic coming from two women who sleep with the closest thing they can find to a father figure in the series. But, it definitely ties into the themes we see at the end of the film, when Shinji finally leaves his mother behind and embraces the harsh new world of adulthood.

I think the deleted live action sequence is interesting, and I think with some trimming, it could have worked well as a supplement to what’s already in the film. The wonderful use of classical music in both cases would have worked nicely to bridge the gap between the abstract shots and the more character based stuff.

As is, the live action sequence is notable primarily for adding another layer of trippy craziness on top of what’s come before. What could top the visual splendor of Giant Rei remaking the world, well how about going from animation to live action? The ‘real’ world feels so alien seen from the characters’ perspective. I’d have to watch it again and pay closer attention to what’s said, but there’s a lot of discussion about the interplay of dream and reality. Our world seems to represent a colder, harsher reality than the more malleable world than Shinji lives in. There’s a meta comment inherent, Shinji exists as an idea in our world, he is not real, he is closer to a dream. Dreams live in reality, where does reality exist? That’s asked at one point in the film, and the best answer is it exists all around us. Dreams exist all around us, this is just one of many possible worlds.

This leads us back to animation, and the question of instrumentality. Shinji has fused wth Rei, quite literally, and now has to choose whether humanity should remain in instrumentality or whether things should return to how they were. In the context of the series, the AT Fields have been broken down, Shinji has to design whether he wants to rebuild them. The AT Field is a beautiful metaphor because it taps into something very real. We all put up walls around our emotions, it’s the only way to guard yourself from the hurt out there in the world. You have to steel yourself to survive in a world where people aren’t always nice, and don’t always care what you feel.

When you’re put in an emotionally raw situation, the AT Field is worn down, and seems to break. Think of Asuka in the Eva, being defiled by the light beam. There, her AT Field is penetrated and she can no longer look away the bad things all around her. The AT Field is what lets us go about, but it’s also what locks us away emotionally from others. It’s the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, discussed earlier in the series. The more you let down your AT Field, the more you can get hurt, but the more others can get in. The characters in this series generally err on the side of keeping their AT Fields up, and being lonely as a result.

So, you’d think instrumentality would be what they all want. But, in the film, it’s equated with the running away dilemma Shinji’s been dealing with for the whole run. Twice, we saw him walk away from his responsibilities with the Eva and choose to go out on his own. He abandoned his responsibility, and people were hurt as a result. What he’s realized is that his burdens exist for a reason, he sometimes has to suffer himself so that others can be helped. To embrace instrumentality would be an easy way out, but it would also be running away. To exist in a world blissfully free of problems means never being able to grow or change, it means never getting better. It’s a static existence.

My initial interpretation was heavily colored by The Invisibles and John From Cincinnati. Both of those series viewed the fusion of all humanity into a single organism as the ultimate evolutionary goal, the endgame of the species. The end of the series offered that as a possible interpretation, and I jumped on it. Part of what frustrated me about the film was that it rejected that option and instead condemned Shinji to a world outside of the singular existence, it put everybody in the supercontext, then tore them out again.

But, in the context of the film, it seems that instrumentality is not necessarily a good thing. It was engineered by SEELE and Gendo to accelerate human evolution, but it was an artificial acceleration, perhaps not what should have been done. The film implies that to escape all your problems in this reality is just another fantasy, it’s running away. So much of the series is about Shinji struggling with whether he wants to be alone, struggling to deal with others, so in a lot of ways, it’s an incredibly optimistic ending when he says, yes, I want to feel the pain, I want to live in the world and be with others, no matter the cost. That’s what he reaffirms to Kaworu, a massive shift in perspective from the way he was feeling earlier in the film, being dragged along by Misato, unable to move.

It’s notable that his experience of instrumentality is quite literally being inside his mother. Rei has the body of Yui, and in instrumentality, we see him fused with her, having sex with her. So much of his experience in the series is about trying to get to his mother, to rediscover her. In the Eva, he feels at home because it is her womb, he spends 30 days in there at one point, not wanting to face the world outside. It’s easier to escape back into the womb and shut everyone else out, to float in this endless sea of connection. In the womb, you’re never alone, your mother is always there and you’re safe. The instrumentality that Shinji finds himself in resembles that, the red liquid all around, it is an in uterine state.

Shinji’s decision at the end isn’t so much about leaving instrumentality, it’s about leaving his mother behind and being born into the world again. This is made clear when Shinji literally says “Goodbye mother” at one point near the end of the film. This all instigates another spectacular visual sequence, as an orchestral score swells, Unit 01 crawls out of Rei’s vaginal looking eye, and she starts to fall apart.

This leads to a flashback to Yui and Fuyutski talking about how the Eva will live on forever in space. That speech raised some questions for me, how does Shinji get from Unit 01 back to Earth, etc. But, that doesn’t really matter. Shinji has left his mother, and his role as savior of the Earth, behind. His work there is done, and now he can be born again.

Episode 26 proper ends on a pretty up note. There’s not that much of a difference between this sequence and the TV series ending. My initial impression of the TV was that Shinji had chosen to become part of instrumentality and merge with everyone, but you could just as easily read it as Shinji breaking through his self hatred and embracing the world around him. He moves out of the psychological world of the stage and into the larger world, where everyone around congratulates him. This conflicts with the titles, which claim that the episode chronicles one person’s experience of instrumentality, but perhaps the experience humanity has of instrumentality is to reject it. Of course, the notion of Shinji’s story as just one story among many conflicts with what we see in the film, where Shinji is making the choice about whether to proceed with instrumentality or not for the whole of humanity.

How can one reconcicle these conflicts? I think it’s hard to do so on a narrative level without a lot of fan wank. But, on an emotional level. Shinji’s climb out of Rei’s eye could be equated with the shattering of the stage and his emergence onto the globe. In the episode, Ritsuko says that “Pleasant things happen on rainy days,” the kind of logic that would be playing in his mind when he decides that the bad stuff is worth it. After all, in an instrumental world, there would be no rainy days, so why would Shinji have to worry about them at all. The way I see it right now, both the TV series and the film ending chronicle not Shinji’s embrace of instrumentality, rather they show his embrace of the world he lives in, flaws and all. He will not run from problems and pain, he will accept them as part of the human condition.

This is a beautiful moment, and it’s echoed in a beautiful narration about the Eva staying in space as a record of human achievement look after the sun, moon and stars have burned up. Everyone’s happy, the world is good, humanity will return and anything’s possible. But wait, there’s one more thing, and that’s where a lot of my difficulty interpreting the finale comes in. The film does a lot of juxtaposing of joy and pain, be it in the dour lyrics and happy music of ‘Come Sweet Death,’ or most notably in the emotion of the Episode 26 ending and the pervading mood of ‘One More Final,’ a closing scene that rivals Tony Soprano’s onion ring dinner for endless debatability.

Here’s one reading, what I’m feeling now. Shinji emerges from his rebirth experience in a lake of red water. Next, we see him on the postapocalyptic beach, lying next to a seemingly comatose Asuka. He’s made a monument for Misato, Rei’s giant head lies in the distance. The implication is that everything we saw in the film happened, things are still horribly messed up, and the people who died are, for all we know, still dead. So, why is Asuka back? It may tie into the fact that she experienced a similar enlightenment as Shinji earlier in the film. She met her mother, like Shinji did, and was subsequently empowered to go out and attack the Eva series. She does not need instrumentality because she knows that her mother was there all along.

So, maybe the end of the show was right, everyone did have their own instrumentality experience, they all were faced with the question of merging with the singular being or returning to the world. They say that Shinji is the only one who can make the choice, but if everyone else is inside Rei, perhaps they all have their own psychological trials, like we see in the series. Having piloted Eva, Shinji and Asuka are used to living an instrumental style existence, and are also aware of the false security and purpose it provides. They each want to get out of the ‘womb’ they existed in and return to the world as a whole.

But, why would Asuka want to do this? She’s been through so much awful stuff in the series, what is her motivation for returning to reality? Perhaps it’s simply the fire that’s driven her before. She doesn’t want to give up, she wouldn’t want Shinji to return to reality and show her up. So, she chooses to return to the beach, she knows that her mother’s spirit is out there, but she has broken the umbilical cord and doesn’t need to return.

This leaves me with a couple of major questions. One is why does Asuka have those bandages? Why are they like the ones that Rei wore during her first appearance on the series? One reading could be that this Asuka is a ‘clone’ in the same way that the new Reis were, that the original Asuka died, but a new body emerged, from the Lilith matter. You could also read it as Shinji bandaged her up when he found her, and he’s been sitting there waiting a long time for her to come back to life. He had time to make that monument to Misato and has been sitting in the world alone.

That interpretation would also make it a bit clearer why he chokes her. Their relationship has always been based on violence. It was usually Asuka’s verbal assaults on him, but as we saw in his mind, he fantasized about choking her, about really asserting his masculinity and showing her that he wasn’t the stupid coward she ridiculed him as. And, in the world he’s chosen, violence as dialogue remains a sad necessity. He can’t cut through the AT Field, he’s got to deal with it.

And, because they’ve probably been there a while, he’s finally worked up the courage to do what he fantasized about doing for a while. Perhaps he still feels guilty about masturbating over her earlier. In choking her, he’s trying to get out some of his guilt. And, maybe it’s playing into the mess of sexual fantasies in his head, the Asuka in his mind says she knows about his jerkoff fantasies and would be happy to watch him if that’s what he wants. Rather than do that, he gives into his fantasy about choking her, and showing her he’s a man through violence. Maybe that’s the only way he can get through to her.

Of course, when he does go to do this, she reaches out and caresses his face. This is the moment when he moves out of the fantasy world he’s spent most of the film in. There, he’s hard enough to choke her and she doesn’t respond. In reality, he is not that strong, not that mean. She just laughs at his attempt to be tough. This breaks Shinji, all the guilt and feeling that went away during Instrumentality comes flooding back and he’s left with the reality of the choice he’s made. He’s still the same Shinji, and she’s still the same Asuka. This is the world he’s chosen, it’s full of pain, but it’s also real. Asuka and Shinji may communicate in unconventional ways, but him crying and her saying “Disgusting” is about as close as they’ll ever get to “I love you.” In the end, this is the way things are, the world continues, and though Shinji would be the first to acknowledge how messed up he is, he’d rather be messed up in a real world, an adult world, than live forever in a regressive womb existence.

That’s what the film is ultimately about, Shinji’s choice to grow up and leave his mother behind. Things are tougher with Asuka than they are with any of the mother figures he encounters, but that’s the way it is in the world. He chokes her, she makes fun of him, that is our world, that is adult reality. Shinji has grown up, he’s not scared of his father anymore, he’s not subject to the whims of NERV. For the first time, he hasn’t just done what people told him to do, he’s made his own choice. He may be crying about it, but at least he’s crying because of what he wanted to do. The entire series is about growing up, and in the final scene, we see the conflicted feelings that come when one actually does grow up. It’s hard to reach out to people, it’s hard to live on your own, but we have to do it. It’s the cycle of life. As one world ends, another beigns.

Evangelion: The Rewatch

I just finished rewatching Evangelion, the TV series. Watching those final few episodes again was, as before, a humbling experience. Nothing else I’ve seen so precisely sketches the realm of the mind, mashing up internal trauma with operatic robot action. The last six episodes of the series are arguably as strong a run as in any series ever.

But, how do the early days play knowing where it’s all going? The short answer is it all makes a lot more sense, and is generally easier to take. Watching the show the first time, I was baffled by a lot of logic questions. Why was it that they needed kids to pilot the Evas? Why did the Eva pilots go to school? Eventually, the show answered those questions, however, at the time there was no way of knowing if they ever would. So, it’s easier to skim over some of the more illogical things in the series. Even the goofy stuff that really bothered me on the first watching works fine now. It’s nice to see the characters at a time when they all haven’t been utterly torn apart.

But, there’s a clear divide between the first and second half of the series. Everything between the Rei poem is an entertaining, but fairly straightforward story. The Rei poem in ‘Weaving a Story’ is where everything changes. It’s the first of the hypnotic visual poem scenes that explore a characters’ psychological makeup, and become a signature as the show progresses.

Rather than comparing film to books, I think it’s most useful to compare it to music. Those are the only two arts where time is a dimension, where it’s up to the creator to control the pace at which the viewer experiences the art. Beyond that, I think they’re the most structurally similar. In music, I generally listen to songs with lyrics, but it’s rarely the content of the lyrics that interests me, it’s the sound of the music. As such, it’s usually the instrumental breakdown or guitar solo that’s my favorite part of a song. The lyrics exist to let us get to know the song, but it’s that moment where the music transcends the lyrics and exists on its own that’s most satisfying.

In film, it’s the same way. The narrative is the equivalent of the lyrics, if you have a film without a narrative, just like a song without lyrics, it’s hard to emotionally latch on to it. Abstract movies have merit, but it’s hard to ‘hook’ the viewer without any kind of throughline. Just like lyrics give you a quick way to remember the melody of a song, the narrative gives us the emotional inlet to characters, and a linear way to experience the various images. However, the narrative should actually exist to provide a spotlight for filmic experimentation that enhances our emotional experience. In the case of Evangelion, the narrative is frequently set aside for those improvisatory psychological subjectivity moments.

The brilliance of the series is that it’s able to use those psychological sequences, the ‘guitar solos,’ to tell us so much about the characters. Anno uses film in a way I haven’t really seen it used before, drawing on European art films, but going further. He uses the science fiction conceits of the narrative as a way to plunge us into the characters’ heads, and leave us there. Think of the amazing sequence in ‘Don’t Be,’ where Asuka is mentally assaulted by the angel. It’s a tour de force example of cutting to tell a story, but it’s the climax of her character arc.

The best moments in cinema are those where the emotional peak and the stylistic peak occur at the same time. Think of Magnolia’s “Wise Up” sequence, a directorial triumph that would be totally satisfying on its own, but also serves as the climax for the film’s second act. People often say that “style” can get in the way of the emotional content of the film, that’s the classical Hollywood aesthetic, doing everything you can to convince the audience that these events are just happening with no outside influence on their presentation.

In the case of Evangelion, the conceit of the characters’ psychological self exploration provides the opportunity for sequences that tear right through the fourth wall. Particularly in the last two episodes, you’re always aware that you’re watching something constructed, in some cases, barely even constructed, just the storyboards or unfinished drawings. But, that awareness only seems to enhance the experience of the narrative. The last episodes are about taking us on a psychological trip, and the breakdown of the diegetic reality is a major part of that.

There’s potential for a near endless intellectual analysis of those last few episodes, on a psychological level, a filmmaking level, a cultural level. I love the series for all those things, but what makes it so special for me is that it really hits me on an emotional level. I mentioned it when talking about the series earlier, but the psychological dilemmas faced by the characters remind me a lot of myself, in a way that very few film protagonists do. The reason for that is the focus on internal life as the source of problems.

The last episode is largely about the inevitable unhappiness that comes when our perceptions of our own lives bump up against the social ideal, and we find ourselves lacking. It is only when we measure our lives against what we should have that we feel bad about what we do have. All of the characters are trying to live lies, simultaneously deluding themselves to believe that they need other people to be happy, and that they are unhappy because of other people. I relate to Shinji the most, but it’s Asuka who just breaks me in the later episodes of the series. She’s so distraught after Episode 22, a single line, like her wondering why they sent out Shinji to save Rei, but not her, is devastating. Her perception of herself clashes against reality and she is destroyed.

Watching the show again, I tried to better follow the whole Angels/Adam/Seele/Lilith side of things. I was doing pretty well until ‘Rei III,’ when Ritsuko goes down into the chamber of Reis and tells Misato and Shinji what was up with her. My interpretation of things at this point is that in 2000, Misato’s father created a form of life, which produced the second impact. That creation was the crucified white creature they call Adam, who was in actuality Lilith. Was there a real Adam? I don’t know, but there is a difference between the Lilith creature and Adam.

It was from Lilith that they created the Evas, hence the human soul in the Evas. Each Eva seems to have been imbued with the soul of a woman, in the case of Unit 01, it’s Yui Ikari. So, that Eva is a fusion of Lilith and Shinji’s mother. But, so is Rei. She was built by Gendo Ikari to help bring about the fusion of human and higher level being, the transcendence of human loneliness on the road to godhood. There’s that mysterious shot where his hand has an eye growing in it. He is trying to become like Rei and Kaworu.

And yet, isn’t Kaworu different from Rei? He serves Seele, who have this master plan involving the angels. They want to use the angels to bring about the third impact. They decided it was inevitable, and fear that Ikari has his own agenda. They are loyal to the actual Adam DNA, not the human tainted substitute that is Ikari’s Lilith. In the end though, Kaworu realizes that life and death mean the same thing, and he chooses death.

Or something, I’ll perhaps have a more definitive view after watching End of Evangelion again. Either way, it doesn’t particularly matter. The whole convoluted mythology underlining everything is really just an excuse to get the characters to points of psychological crisis. The biggest takeaway from the Seele investigation of Rei’s ‘death’ isn’t any sort of mythology thing, it’s what it does to Ritsuko, the way her sacrifice echoes what Gendo Ikari did to her mother. Her pain is what’s interesting, but that betrayal converges with the narrative in the Rei clones revelation. So, the mythology and personal stories perfectly intersect, each enhancing the other. That’s the beauty of the series, and seen as a whole, it’s astonishing how perfectly all the character traits that are set up as fun quirks, or minor troubles become magnified with the passing of time and eventually become devastating tools of self destruction. More after End of Eva.

Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone

Thanks to the Japanese DVD release, I was finally able to find a decent torrent of Rebuild of Evangelion, and last night I watched the film. As a side note, normally I don’t like to torrent stuff, but I made an exception in this case because it will surely take many years for the film to be released over here. With a work like this, with a clear built in audience, would it really be that tough to get it released over here within six months of the Japanese release? Who benefits from the hold up? I’d much rather see the film in the theater as intended than check it out on a bootleg video file, but if I want to see the film now, that’s the price I must pay.

Anyway, onto the film itself. When I heard about the project, I wondered why it existed. It seems weird that Anno would want to revisit his masterwork and create a slightly different version of it. After watching it, I’m not really sold on the reasoning for this project. It’s clearer than the TV series, and features some better visuals, but I don’t know that it adds anything to the universe that wasn’t already in the series. But, I feel like my perspective on this film is really hazy because I’ve only seen the series once. I remember what happened in the first few episodes, but not so clearly that I can say exactly what’s different between this film and the series.

My impression of the film is that it’s much clearer than the series. When I watched the series, I didn’t really understand a lot of what was up with the angels, and why these kids were chosen to pilot the Evas. Shinji asks what he’s doing there, and I get a much better sense of him finding it odd that he’s chosen to pilot the ship. But, maybe that was there before and I just didn’t understand the answer. The end of the show insinuates that the Evas are actually elements of their pilot’s mothers, so Shinji is the only one who can pilot Unit 01. Once you know that, it’s a lot easier to understand why things happen the way they do.

What worked undeniably well in the film was the atmosphere. It took me a little bit to get into it, but by the time Shinji runs away, we’ve got that omnipresent mental darkness back. I found Shinji much more relatable as a protagonist here than in the series, and the film felt very focused on the conflict of him dealing with his loneliness. The subtitle of the film is “You Are (Not) Alone,” and it sums up the question Shinji faces. He believes that his only worth is in piloting Eva, he gets praise and reinforcement from Misato and the others, but it feels meaningless. Would they still love him if he didn’t pilot Eva?

And, the real brilliance and tragedy of the series, is they probably would not. So, maybe he’d be more alone if he didn’t pilot the Eva, he’d never have met back up with his father for starters. However, as the alternate world sequence in the series finale shows, maybe it’s piloting Eva that screwed him up in the first place, in another time and place, he could have had a normal childhood, a normal family. It is the Eva that gives him purpose, it is the Eva that destroys the life he could have had.

I think the show, and this film’s greatest strength, is its ability to depict its protagonist’s internal life. Most films have external conflicts, a hero vs. a villain, or a hero pursuing a relationship, external goals that are achieved by the end of the narrative and seem to solve all the characters’ problems. Complexity is added by giving the protagonist some kind of problem, alcoholism or something like that, but that kind of story doesn’t really deal with the issues I face, and I’m assuming most people face. In reality, most people don’t face enemies, they face ever shifting internal difficulties, like the kind that Shinji faces.

Shinji succeeds in saving the world and killing the angel, but he feels worse than ever because in this story, the internal conflict is not telegraphed one to one onto an external foe. The show has kind of a Trojan Horse narrative, we start out thinking it’s about battling angels, but there’s no real end in sight to these battles, the real foe is out own internal doubt and distance. Shinji wants other people to love him, but we won’t open himself up to them, that’s the essence of the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, the problem that nearly all the characters in the series face.

All around him, Shinji sees people who have shut themselves off from the world, and committed themselves to doing a job. That’s Rei, the perfect soldier. He wants her to react in some way, he wants someone to relate to, but she won’t give him anything. It’s the same with his father, those two are the ones he wants to recognize him, and it kills him when he sees Rei and Gendo speaking. His father will give her affection, but not him.

The whole thing is a mess of bizarre Oedipal issues when you view it in light of the fact that Rei is at least partially a clone of Shinji’s mother, but at the same time was raised by Gendo so she’s both Shinji’s mother/sister, and yet, he’s still attracted to her. Shinji watches Rei and Gendo from afar, jealous, he wants to kill his father and fuck Rei, quite literally he would be Oedipus. And, the craziest thing is he’s watching all this inside Unit 01, which is essentially his mother’s womb.

The film makes more of an issue of Misato’s feelings towards Shinji. We spend less time at their home, but Ritsuko questions Misato’s motivations in taking Shinji in more. The whole Ritsuko/Misato past is unclear to me. I felt that Ritsuko was attracted to Misato, and that’s why she seems to hate everyone Misato gets involved with, that’s why she would be so worried that Misato is attracted to Shinji. If that’s the case, why is Ritsuko having sex with Gendo? I’d argue it’s a kind of Elektra complex, she both hates and wants to be her mother, if her mother had an affair with Gendo, she will too.

That’s an element of the story I’d actually like to see explored more. I think Rebuild might have been more interesting if it focused primarily on the adults, and their complicated relationships, basically switching the perspective so this works better as an addition to the series, not a replacement. As it is, this feels like a musician covering their own song ten years later, there’s some interest in seeing the differences, but I’d rather see a completely new story.

That’s sort of the conundrum of the project. I’m happy it exists, it looks amazing, and in many ways is what I wanted Eva to be the first time I watched it. Much of the goofy stuff is excised, there’s fewer scenes at school and at Misato’s house and everything seems to hang together better as a singular narrative. However, once you see the whole series, the purpose of those goofy scenes becomes clear. Because we’re attached to Shinji, because we’ve seen him in a more normal situation, the awful things he goes through feel more awful. I still think they could have been handled better, but all those goofy school and home scenes are worth it for that five minute sequence in the finale when we see Shinji’s alternate world. Just hearing the wacky comedy theme come back after ten episodes of absolute horror hit me so hard.

And, I think the loss of those scenes, annoying though they were, takes away some of the scope of the story. It’s the difference between TV series storytelling and film storytelling. A film inherently has to be more focused, there has to be a beginning and ending, and everything must fit into some kind of structure. Even as the first of four films, this feels like a unified narrative in a way the series never did. On the series, new angels appeared every episode, stuff happened and we got the sense of time passing and life being lived. Here, I don’t get that same sense of time passing. If I had to guess, I’d say this whole movie takes place in about two weeks, while the series felt like it took place over the course of months.

The reason for that is, when you watch a movie, the characters don’t have time to go off and do their own thing. Episodic structure makes it easier for you to believe these characters have lives off screen. You watch an episode, go off and do some other stuff, then come back and watch another. So, it’s logical to think they’d be doing other stuff while you were gone. I think that’s why it sometimes feels weird when you have a show come back from a summer cliffhanger and all the characters are in the same place. If your life has changed, why shouldn’t theirs?

This feels much more like a filmic narrative, it’s got a tighter structure, and less room for standalone scenes with the characters other than Shinji. I’m hoping that as the films go on, we do get to spend more time with Rei, and when she’s introduced, Asuka. Asuka was by far my favorite character in the series, her internal complexity was just as exciting to watch as Shinji’s, and she functions as essentially his opposite, using a lot of external personality to mask what she’s feeling inside. I remember when I was first watching the show, her entrance coalesced the characters into a kind of family, and made it a lot easier to understand Shinji as a character.

Even though I do have issues with the film, it is pretty spectacular visually. Cutting down on the number of Angels in the story makes them feel more dangerous, and raised the stakes for the battles. It took me a while to get into the world of the story again, but by the second half of the film, it just flew by. I was really surprised the film was already over when the battle with the Diamond Angel ended, it didn’t feel like an hour and a half had passed. I did love that battle, the stakes were huge, and you could really feel how much rested on Shinji’s shoulders. That’s something that wasn’t really conveyed in the TV series. And, as I mentioned before, I love the way the triumph he should feel after destroying the Angel is undercut by the knowledge that he is still alone, and desperate for someone who can share his burden.

This film sticks pretty closely to the series until the very end, when we get the early appearance of Kaworu. Kaworu made a huge impact, despite only appearing in one episode of the series. I’m guessing his appearance will start a change of events that differentiate the films from the series. As much as I like the show, if Anno’s going to go to the trouble of remaking the whole thing, he might as well experiment and do things differently. In some sense, that’s going with the spirit of the work. I found the last two episodes of the show to be a perfectly satisfying, and thematically appropriate ending for the story, however End of Eva works in its own way too. I can’t really say which one is more ‘real,’ and whatever happens in this version of the story is just another way it could have gone.

What I’m really curious to see is the ending. Both original endings felt so raw and emotional, like they were torn directly from Anno’s subconscious and put on film. I’ve only seen End of Eva once, but that last half of the film was as close to pure subconscious experience as I’ve seen on film. The stuff with Asuka and Shinji, the fourth wall breaking live action scenes, it was almost too much to take on a single viewing. How will Anno end his story this time? What will it tell us about the world and the characters? I’m curious to see. This was a strong start, an undeniably powerful film that, for all my issues with it and the project in general, I’m very glad to see in the world. Evangelion is one of the most challenging and emotionally wrenching series I’ve ever seen, and I’m glad to get a chance to return to that world for another round of stories.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion

The End of Evangelion is a really srange, ambitious and powerful film. It’s not an easy film, even compared to the series at its most abstract, but it’s a truly great piece of art. I’m not sure it needed to exist, it adds a lot of material and takes away some of the power of the emotionally focused two part finale. But, at the same time it has so much amazing stuff, I’m glad it exists. I need another viewing before I can really delve into the film, but I’ll throw my first impressions out there, and start the process of unpacking the film.

The film begins with a strange live action sequence. I’m not sure what the deal was with this, if it was added for the DVD, or what it’s significance is. There are untranslated Japanese titles on screen, and I thought it might be an ad for another movie. But, the same visual style returns in the life action sequences later in the film, so it’s in there for a reason. I’m not sure quite what that reason is though.

From there we segue to a scene that announces pretty quickly this will be a different experience from the TV series, a guilt ridden Shinji yells at a comatose Asuka, then masturbates over her comatose body. The best moments of both the series and the film cut so deep into the characters’ minds that you feel kind of uncomfortable being there, in a place that’s usually secret. This scene is a great example of that, as viewers we shouldn’t be here, but we are, watching Shinji at his worst.

It’s a pretty bold way to open the film, I don’t think you’ll see too many American movies starting off like that. After watching the film, I was thinking how avant garde and crazy it was, how strange it is that this film would be hugely popular and successful in Japan. I think part of it is cultural differences, it’s very rare that you’d get something so psychologically raw in a big American blockbuster. The only big film I’ve seen that hits these same kind of beats is the first two Matrix movies, Reloaded in particular. Both verge on avant garde, while dealing with issues of human psychology and identity. But, they’re both safely ensconced in the world of sci-fi, while this movie exists on the bleed between genre narrative and real psychology. The focus is on universal emotions, not the robots.

The comatose masturbation scene is put there to set up the guilt and depression that’s plaguing Shinji. He is unable to really talk to Asuka, to tell her how he feels, so he sees this as a perfect opportunity to take advantage of her sexually. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me opened with a TV being smashed, a sign that this wasn’t the TV series, the wank over Asuka serves the same purpose.

I see a lot of similarities between this film and Fire Walk With Me. For one, End of Eva may supplant FWWM as the most difficult film to follow, what with an entire series piled on top of its already abstract narrative. And, in each case, the film takes a darker turn than the series that preceded it, creating a really dark vision that rips its characters to shreds. They are both brilliant, challenging films, films that are frequently hard to watch. In each case, the films shift seamlessly between abstract fantasy elements and very real psychological trauma.

The first half of this movie is devoted to showing what was going on out in the real world during episode 25 of the series. It shows the full versions of scenes we got glimpses of, like Asuka underwater in the EVA, as well as Misato and Ritsuko’s deaths. It’s closer to an early episode of EVA, with the focus back on giant robot action. I’ll admit I was a little worried that we wouldn’t get any of the psychological stuff in the film, but it was still very cool to watch NERV get invaded. The whole sequence has a powerfully apocalyptic quality, with everyone knowing they’re about to die, and struggling to find a way to do so with dignity.

Two scenes really stand out from the first half of the film. One is Misato dragging Shinji through the complex, trying to get him to the EVA. He’s so completely broken at this point, she lifts his arm and it just falls back down to the ground. He has no will left. Along their journey, we get some badass action moments for Misato. I particularly like the scene where she rushes down the hallway gunning down guards to save Shinji. These faceless guards are like a plague on the complex, they can resist, but it will fall eventually.

For Misato, it all leads up to the moment where she has to convince Shinji to get back in the EVA. She’s always been a hybrid of mother and girlfriend for him, never moreso than in those last moments. After treating him like a child and carrying him along, she treats him like an adult and kisses him with “a grown-up kiss,” promising to do the rest when he gets back.

The scene raises the question of what Misato’s motivations are, and how Shinji feels about it. Earlier in the show, we saw her try to comfort Shinji with physical affection, to Shinji’s horror. Does she see herself as the hot older woman he’d be happy to sleep with? My reading of it is that Shinji is attracted to her, but he also sees some of his mother in her, and that freaks him out. The same applies to Rei, he’s caught in this weird place where everything seems to tie back to his mother. He can’t grow up quite yet since every time he goes back in the EVA, it’s like going back into the womb.

For Misato, I see the kiss as a last act of desperation. She just wants Shinji to go back into action and get out of his depression. So, she tries to do what she can, give him an incentive to return. She is able to stand until he leaves, then the door closes and she collapses to the ground, dead.

The other scene from the first half I loved was Asuka’s rebirth. The last time we saw her in the series, she was underwater in the EVA, apparently totally broken. So, it’s nice to see her surge back and get one last shining moment. The notion of the EVA as womb has been implicit in a lot of the series, Gendo apparently put a lot of Yui into Shinji’s EVA, and a part of Asuka’s mother found her way into Unit 02. I’m unclear whether this was meant to be taken literally, like her mother’s soul was always there, or if it was more of a metaphor, like Asuka found a piece of her mother’s soul in herself. Either way, I love the image of the EVA underwater, seemingly in a womb.

I wrote earlier that I admired the show for leaving the giant robot battles behind to focus on character psychology, but there is still something satisfying about watching robots beat the shit out of stuff, and Asuka’s battle with the other EVAs is as satisfying an action sequence as I’ve seen in the series. For a moment, she reclaims the fury and power she held at the beginning of the show, and in a glorious burst of blood and violence, she is alive.

I’ve been reading a bunch online about the show, and a lot of people seem to find Asuka an annoying character. I could see why, but she’s easily my favorite of the main gang. Shinji gains a lot of psychological depth over the course of the show, but I think Asuka is the best example of the divergent personalities between the internal, external and other peoples’ minds. She has this tough exterior, and it’s so painful to watch it get gradually worn down as the show goes on, to watch her get broken. So, seeing her reclaim her agency in this moment, and kick some serious ass is great, particularly because her only role in the rest of the film is to get wanked over or choked by Shinji.

But, I don’t consider that a flaw of the film. Asuka’s mind was thoroughly explored in “Don’t Be,” and this robot battle is a brief moment of light before her inevitable death. At least she finds a kind of peace by reuniting with her mother before she dies. She is not alone in dying, at some point in this film, every single character in the show dies.

The film really is an almost impenetrable wall of strange content, deaths and dreams collide into one to the point that the semi-coherent reality present at the film’s beginning is completely gone by the end. While I really enjoyed the first half of the film, I think it’s a bit too straight ahead next to the total insanity of the show’s last two episodes. Luckily, the final portion of the film returns to the intense psychological examination with a work that tops even the strangeness of those final episodes, a truly baffling, challenging and exhilarating piece of art.

I really need to see the film again before delving into the treatment of instrumentality and the Lilith/Adam mythology, so I’ll just go through some of the scenes that really stood out to me. I loved Rei appearing to people in the form they chose as they died. Again, I think back to entering the supercontext in The Invisibles, these moments could easily be concurrent with Jack Frost’s speech in the falling snow. Good and bad alike are given the world they want as they die.

If there’s one thing I always love in fiction, it’s works that fuse so called low culture with high art. This isn’t the sort of film that’s going to receive critical acclaim because no matter how much psychological depth it has, it’s still on the surface a work about a bunch of giant robots attacking each other. A lot of critics seem to think it’s impossible that a low genre work could reach psychological depth that goes beyond virtually anything I’ve seen in narrative cinema. Really, the only work I can compare this film and the last two episodes to is Inland Empire, and even that has something more of a traditional narrative. The show is so psychological, it becomes almost a Rorshach test for the viewer. It’s not going to work for everyone because a lot of people don’t necessarily want their view of themselves challenged by a work. They just want to enjoy a regular story, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but for me, this work is perfect, keeping the thrills of traditional genre storytelling, but adding this psychological interrogation on top of it.

I respect and love a show like The Wire, but Evangelion hits me on a deeper level. On the surface, The Wire is the more realistic show, but it’s real in a way that’s external to me. It’s real like the streets are real, like buildings are real. They exist external to me, and are visible to everyone. The streets and buildings are important, but do they really impact my life? Evangelion is in some ways more real to me than The Wire because I see more of myself in it. The various characters’ traumas, their loneliness and struggles feel full o the things that torment my own mind. I face the sort of issues that Shinji faces, in my own way, and watching the show feels like peeling back my own consciousness, and elements of the collective subconscious and staring at this messed up organism called humanity.

The moment in the film that felt the most like this for me was when Shinji confronts Asuka in the kitchen. It’s one of the most intense scenes in the film, and a perverse subversion of the dynamic between these two in the series. Asuka tells Shinji he wants her because he’s scared of Misato and Rei. She is the most accessible to him, so he tries to channel his affection towards her, but does he really care for her? It’s a question he can’t really answer, and all his uncertain feelings about women get wrapped up in this awful mess that leads him to choke Asuka. It’s intense and hard to watch. This is the ostensible hero of the piece and he’s caught in this psychological hell, choking the heroine to death.

This leads into the trippy reality bending sequence that brings the film towards its climax. We again return to the mixed media flashing image style of the last episodes for a series of complaints ostensibly against Shinji, but that really feel more about Anno himself channeling his issues into the film. We hear women telling him that “I don’t love you that way,” “Let’s just be friends,” that kind of stuff. On one hand, the sequence took me out of the narrative, is this really what Shinji’s facing? But, on the other hand, who cares if it takes you out of the narrative, it’s dealing with the same sort of messy psychological issues Shinji’s got, and at this point, the film has become as much about the viewer as it is about the characters within it.

This is elaborated on with the live action shots of an audience in a theater watching a film, staring back at us. I would love to see this movie in a theater, both because the visuals deserve a big screen spotlight, and because that moment would play so much better in an actual theater. The audience in the theater seems unengaged, like Anno knows that people will be angry at his high art exploration and is throwing their own critique back at them. I love that he has turned a film that was made to soothe sore feelings about the show’s finale into a work that’s even more avant garde than that finale.

The live action sequence raises some questions for me. I want to see more of it, to find out its purpose. The film is so grainy, deliberately meant as a contrast to the inherently artifical world of the animation. All the signifiers of filmic realism are used. But, what exactly are we seeing here? Is Shinji glimpsing our reality? I’m not sure what it means, but it was excellent nonetheless.

I think that’s how you have to view this film, everything won’t necessarily connect, but as a visual experience, it’s virtually unparalleled in the history of cinema. The images we get during the cosmic sequence, the EVA forming the head of the tree of the life, the giant Rei rising up and going to the stars, it’s all absolutely dazzling. I struggle to think of a work that feels so psychologically altered as this one, that’s working on a totally different level than normal humanity. I want to exist on the level that Anno is here, just letting the images flow.

I’ll do another post exploring the way the film fits together with the end of the show, and more in depth thoughts on the cosmology of the film. There’s so much in here, it’ll take more than one viewing to absorb it. So, let me close by discussing the final scene. A lot of people take issue with works that close on an ambiguous note, just look at the furor over The Sopranos earlier this year. But, I love works that leave you questioning, talking and debating after they’re over. That scene seems destined to provoke arguments for years, and I don’t know that there is a true answer. Is there a definitive reality to Evangelion? Is this film any more ‘true’ than the series end? The upcoming ‘Rebuild’ raises questions as well.

But, as we saw in the series finale, there are many worlds, many possible people that each individual person can be, and we choose and guide our lives towards different ends as time passes. I find it hard to reconcile the Shinji here, who dismisses Instrumentality, with the Shinji we saw in the series, who embraced it. One could argue that the series end occurred concurrently with the scene with Rei, and after it ended, he left the unified organism. Or, you could argue that the scene with Asuka takes place on his journey through realities and the whole story ends with his journey towards Instrumentality. It’s impossible to choose a definitive conclusion because it’s all real, it all exists and it all tells us something about the essential being that is Shinji Ikari.

Shinji chokes Asuka as they lie on a postapocalyptic beach. Why? I honestly don’t know for sure at this point. It’s likely wrapped up in his guilt, he feels he’s ‘used’ her, and is now left alone with her. She knows he was masturbating over her, and in the middle portion of the film, she says that she’ll even watch him do it. Maybe they’re both so fucked up that she’ll take any kind of acknowledgement she can, acknowledgement that she’s desirable even if it’s just Shinji using her to pleasure himself. The film begins with Shinji masturbating next to a comatose Asuka, it ends with him choking her. And, by that point they’re both so worn out, she barely seems to care.

Is this how the story ends? I need to see the film again. But, after one viewing I know that it’s a masterpiece, full of incredible images, bold stylistic experimentation and a lot of emotional impact. This is the way you end a show, using the world created in the early episodes as the base for an improvisational exploration and breakdown of the characters. It’s brilliant, undeniably brilliant. I’ve called Grant Morrison’s work Pop Avant Garde, using the tropes of action movies and superhero comics to explore deep psychological issues. This work does the same thing, Anno’s Evangelion is the closest thing I’ve seen to Grant Morrison on film, and I don’t think there’s a higher compliment I can give a work.