The End of Evangelion

Though the final­i­ty of its title would even­tu­al­ly become a mis­nomer, due to the new tril­o­gy of ​‘Rebuild of Evan­ge­lion’ films, The End of Evan­ge­lion is a mighty con­clu­sion. Designed to replace the con­tro­ver­sial final two episodes of Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion, The End of Evan­ge­lion expands the series finale’s con­tem­pla­tion of emo­tion­al crutch­es and human con­nec­tion to an apoc­a­lyp­tic scale.

A com­bi­na­tion of sched­ul­ing and bud­get issues as well as Anno’s inde­ci­sion around the end­ing lead to the show’s infa­mous finale, a pair of episodes that threw out the cen­tral con­flict, instead opt­ing for a meta­phys­i­cal group ther­a­py ses­sion tak­ing place with­in its character’s minds, made with sim­pli­fied draw­ings and var­i­ous oth­er rough mate­ri­als. It was bizarre and abstract – almost pho­to-col­lage – and drew a lot of ire for that strange­ness. While its pro­duc­tion con­text is too com­pli­cat­ed to sum­marise in brief here, the fea­ture film The End of Evan­ge­lion was lat­er made as a new end­ing for the show.

The show itself cen­tres around Shin­ji Ikari, a teenag­er recruit­ed by his absen­tee father Gen­do in order to pilot a sky­scraper-sized mech called an Evan­ge­lion (col­lo­qui­al­ly called an ​‘Eva’) and fight the Angels, Eldtrich alien mon­sters that are attack­ing the city of Tokyo‑3. Trau­ma­tised after being forced to kill a friend, Shin­ji is despondent.

It’s a finale that reduces its would-be hero to his low­est point with­in the first few min­utes, and only keeps descend­ing from there as his defeatist atti­tude final­ly screws things up beyond com­plete repair; it’s the harsh­est the series has ever been towards its pro­tag­o­nist, a sort of self-loathing present in Anno’s cri­tique of otaku-dom as an emo­tion­al crutch.

The End of Evan­ge­lion is reput­ed as a depress­ing and fatal­is­tic film – but it’s far from it. Its emo­tion­al break­through is giv­en vivid, thrilling form, told with more opti­mism than is often cred­it­ed, even as the imagery becomes more and more hell­ish and macabre. It’s also sim­ply incred­i­ble to look at, with bold splash­es of colour in every frame, with nuanced move­ments from the humans and humanoid robots alike, with weight and detail in both its action and its qui­eter moments of drama.

That being said, this is still a film filled with plen­ty of action, and is among the finest Anno has ever direct­ed. The final stand of Asu­ka, Shinji’s fel­low Eva pilot, is par­tic­u­lar­ly awe­some – for all this writer’s talk about the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­mas of Evan­ge­lion, this is still a film in which a giant red robot round­house kicks a helicopter.

Yet some of the most aston­ish­ing moments in the film come from Anno reveal­ing the artists’ hand behind the imagery, with a use of ani­mat­ics and rough sketch­es mixed in its onslaught of mon­tage. It even breaks the line between film and audi­ence as it switch­es to live action, reflect­ing a cin­e­ma audi­ence back at its view­er. The End of Evan­ge­lion draws atten­tion to its own con­struc­tion, ​“destroys itself” to reveal the emo­tion­al truths of its cast.

That extends to every ele­ment of the fea­ture. Both Yoshiyu­ki Sadamoto’s char­ac­ter design and Iku­to Yamashita’s mechan­i­cal design are focused on human frailty; the mechs bleed and suf­fer in par­al­lel to their pilots. That anni­hi­la­tion of the body in the film’s first half even­tu­al­ly moves onto the anni­hi­la­tion of the ego in the sec­ond, and then the afore­men­tioned bound­aries of ani­ma­tion itself.

Var­i­ous onslaughts of mon­tage grad­u­al­ly col­lapse each respec­tive bar­ri­er in the film, until only the one between world Anno resides in and the world his char­ac­ters reside in remains – and then that breaks too, in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion. It’s the prod­uct of a mar­riage between Anno’s pre­vi­ous work in ani­ma­tion and his var­i­ous genre influ­ences, as well as the exper­i­men­tal sen­si­bil­i­ties that he would fur­ther devel­op with his live-action work, find­ing pecu­liar angles through his use of dig­i­tal handheld.

Still, even with its faster pac­ing, there’s no tra­di­tion­al third act throw down or grand reveal; just a boy being taught to believe that he might have a shot at being hap­py. Even as the Evan­ge­lion fran­chise has con­tin­ued into remakes, the core of it has always been about what is rather poet­i­cal­ly stat­ed at its con­clu­sion: chang­ing your­self into some­one bet­ter. The End of Evan­ge­lion is per­haps only vague­ly hope­ful, plen­ty has still been lost, per­haps per­ma­nent­ly. But its char­ac­ters have changed them­selves, and progress is progress.