The End of Evangelion

Warning: Strong language and spoilers ahead

The most obvious comment I can make about The End of Evangelion is that its title is immensely ironic. With Rebuild of Evangelion, a series which appears to be an attempt to make the most ground-breaking and fascinating anime of all time into a cookie-cutter, paint-by-numbers mecha series, often playing to tropes which the original Eva itself spawned (I imagine a grotesque ouroboros with Rei Ayanami's face as a visual metaphor for the whole enterprise), Evangelion is not over. But my goodness do I wish it was. For those utterly confused by the existence of End of Evangelion-- that is to say, those asking why this movie directly contradicts the timeline and events of the rest of the series-- I have no good answer, other than that diehard Evangelion fans were extremely disappointed in Episodes 25 and 26 and Gainax decided to make a movie to provide an alternate ending to the series, drawn by the irresistible smell of profitability from fan hate-boners. After all, the opposite of love/commercial viability isn't hate, it's indifference. I should add that before I continue, I wish to do away with any trace of critical seriousness or "professionalism," seeing as this movie did away with any trace of the basic requirements of writing, pacing, plot and tonal consistency. So, on that note, let me summarize my feelings on the film right here: fuck this fucking piece of shit movie I hate it so fucking much.

So what's left to say after that, really? Well, my feelings towards the film as an actual cinematic experience are recorded above, but if taken in the proper context, I believe the film makes a fairly well-articulated statement about knowing when enough is enough, and that some things are better left unsaid and unexplored. There's a classic phrase in writing: "Kill your Darlings". Roughly translated, this means "don't be a pretentious douchebag". It's valuable advice to writers at any level. With End of Evangelion, I get the sense that Hideaki Anno dug up every single darling, as well as some fan "what if" scenarios, and put them onto the screen in the most overindulgent, unsubtle way humanly possible. And you know what? Some people actually like this movie as a film experience. I would say good for them, but I wouldn't mean it. Good for Gainax, who profited from condescending to their audience and using the logic that a movie with lots of shiny things, explosions and gratuitous nudity will inevitably be well-received.

With a movie like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or End of Evangelion, in which a beloved series' progenitor appears to systematically destroy his own franchise (either intentionally or unintentionally), it is difficult to point out what is wrong with each film because the simple answer is everything. Each film not only bears no similarity to a good movie, at times neither is recognizable as being part of the form of cinema; they are groundbreaking in their ineptitude. End of Evangelion is bafflingly incapable of telling a coherent series of events, writing characters with any discernible logical motivation, understanding space and time as concepts, or using basic point-A-to-point-B plot development, as exposition and climax are constantly jammed together in the same sequence. The film gets to the point where every 5 minutes a new object, invariably named the "pseudo-religious noun of pseudo-religious noun" is introduced as a plot device and then immediately used to no knowable effect. The jerkoff characters in the control room are given a weirdly huge amount of screen time, as they continue yelling out the plot while SEELE invades their headquarters and the entire surface of the earth appears to be decimated (I understand that they're an underground operation, but how exactly is their equipment still working after all that?). The main characters all bear little resemblance to the complex, well-developed people in the series and instead become drooling caricatures or the complete opposite of their pre-established personalities. Shinji is set up to be not a traumatized and cowardly but ultimately empathic boy-- he's a catatonically depressed, useless, perverted wet blanket. He doesn't seem tormented over killing Kaworu so much as "sad because reasons." Asuka is suddenly and inexplicably brought out of her depression (along with the staggeringly stupid reveal that her mother's consciousness is in Eva-02, speaking of which, wasn't it more or less rendered useless in Episode 24?) only to be killed off almost immediately. Misato turns into a bizarre fusion between an action hero and a pedophile.

But these are all symptoms of a much greater disease in End of Evangelion: subtlety is done away with entirely. Every ambiguity is replaced with bombast. Misato doesn't touch Shinji's hand for him to shrink away, she gives him a full lip-lock and a terrifying promise of sex at some point in the future, before promptly dying (despite seeming perfectly fine moments before). Gendo doesn't stay in the shadows as Rei's rapist, he shoves his hand into her crotch. The religious imagery used sparingly beforehand turns into a major plot device, while Kabbalah symbols and crucifixion imagery are thrown about willy-nilly. And Shinji turns out to be TOTALLY GAY because he's now a creepy pervert who hates women, or something. Yet I believe this is all evidence of what was ultimately Anno's project with this movie; on the one hand, he was poking fun at the fandom, showing just how terrible it would be if all of the major ambiguities and questions were answered. At the same time, I believe there are a few moments in here which Anno might have actually liked but decided to cut out because he knew they wouldn't work.

For instance, Rei rejecting Gendo and asserting her own personhood is an interesting idea for a scene and could work well, but there's no reason why Rei III would want to do that because she hasn't learned everything Rei II did. Further, Rei apparently decides not to use Lilith for Instrumentality but instead starts the Third Impact, but given Shinji's internal breakdown, it becomes difficult to tell the difference between the two, especially because at the end it seems like only Shinji and Asuka (wasn't she dead...?) are around, having chosen individualism over being part of a vast cosmic soup. The idea of Shinji's choice being more about the ability to live as an individual than whether to go on living or not is a decent one as well, although now his mental breakdown seems to be almost entirely about how much he's afraid of all women (an idea that comes seemingly out of nowhere) and due to this fear/hatred is drawn towards Kaworu. I was already rolling my eyes pretty hard before the "is this better, Shinji?" line in which giant-Rei shifts into giant-Kaworu, but that one made me look like I was in the throes of demonic possession. I think this is largely a response to a trend which continues to be a problem in the otaku community, which is the sexualization of all female characters in a series. This comes despite the fact that the show already addresses the sexuality of all three of its female leads at least in brief, and often shows the negative effects of the culture's expectations of female sexuality. Misato wants to be desired but to also have no desires herself, Asuka views sex as a means of gaining self-worth, Rei has been convinced that as a girl, her sexuality is not her own, and Gendo's molestation is simply something she must accept. What more does the show really have to say? Well, nothing. But that's the point. The fans wanted the show to be sexier. This is what happens when you try to make Evangelion sexy.

The film also looks nothing like Neon Genesis Evangelion; once again, some of these visual ideas seem kind of neat, but Anno probably cut them out of the series because he figured out they didn't belong in the show. In the movie, I think he directed the art team to go apeshit after handing in whatever kind of incomprehensible mess the script was (I imagine it on 200 pages of a legal pad, written in blood). Here are a few examples of how the art direction went completely off the rails in this movie:

While I do appreciate that Shinji's reactions to the events taking place approximately mirror my feelings while watching the movie (lots of tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth and screaming "make it stop!"), the characters are drawn with extremely exaggerated features and expressions sometimes, which never happened in the anime. Nor did Rei have enormous breasts (oh, excuse me, she's Lilith now? Well of course, now everything make sense!). Nor did hardly any of this fantasy bullshit ever happen in the show, and the movie simply introduces these elements with essentially no explanation. By the way, what the hell does "the pilot's ego can't take this much longer" even mean? Like Shinji's going to go more and more insane the longer the events of this terrible movie keep going on? Can't say I blame him, then. 

There is a certain bitterness to the message of End of Evangelion. Late in the series' running, Anno became extremely disenchanted with otaku culture: fans who wanted the wrong things from anime, didn't understand the series they were fans of, and expected the authors of the show to cater to their desires. Further, after the series finale, Anno received a slew of nasty, angry letters and even death threats from former fans who claimed he had ruined the series for them. Some of these letters are even flashed up on the screen in End of Evangelion, making the point clearer to the audience: you don't write the fucking show, leave me alone. Indeed, the central metaphor to the story is Shinji masturbating over Asuka's catatonic body. It's as if Anno is telling you right from the beginning: I am completely jerking off here, and you won't even know it. End of Evangelion is a cautionary tale about both self-indulgence and the effects of an avid audience on the artistic process. While I do appreciate the message, it seems to have been lost on most, and the movie is painful to watch. I truly wish the fandom had accepted the original ending, and I definitely wish that no-one threatened to kill Hideaki Anno. Because if one or both of those things had never happened, maybe this film would never have existed. For me, the true end of Evangelion is Episode 26, no questions asked. If this movie is actually supposed to replace it and be part of the cannon, I honestly don't care.

Because fuck this movie. Fuck, fuck, fuck this goddamn movie. Oh, and also:

Does anyone want to make the argument that this movie isn't stupid?