Is The End Of Evangelion an undeniable masterpiece or nonsense for nonsense's sake?

This month, for no real reason other than the fact that it was a cool idea, anime distribution company GKIDS announced a North American theatrical run for Hideaki Anno’s groundbreaking film The End Of Evangelion—originally released in Japanese theaters in 1997 as both a tie-in with Anno’s iconic TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion and an attempt to gently redo the original anime’s ending in a way that would be a little more palatable. Whether or not he succeeded at that is up for debate, because End Of Evangelion is undeniably bizarre and thrillingly audacious in the narrative and aesthetic turns it takes (which says a lot about the anime’s original ending), but pretty much everyone agrees that it is a masterpiece of animation.

In fact, the film is held in such high esteem that the argument has been made that it is so visually and narratively striking that you could go in totally fresh, without having seen a single episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and still get something out of it. So, here at The A.V. Club, we decided to put that theory to the test by sending Evangelion newcomers Drew Gillis and Matt Schimkowitz to see The End Of Evangelion in theaters and then asking them to try to work through their reactions with resident anime nerd Sam Barsanti.

So what’s the verdict? Is Shinji Ikari a pain in the ass even to people who haven’t spent dozens of hours with him? How does the film’s surprise live-action sequence play in an actual movie theater? And what are the odds a total Evangelion newbie can explain the film’s metaphysical ending, wherein almost all of humanity is seemingly wiped out? Let’s find out!

[Note: For those who missed out on the theatrical screenings, both Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End Of Evangelion are available on Netflix. Also, The End Of Evangelion is not to be confused with Death & Rebirth, which is a recap of the anime leading up to the movie. It’s also on Netflix.]

Welcome to the end of the world

Sam Barsanti, anime nerd: To summarize The End Of Evangelion would largely be a fool’s errand, because so much of the movie is meant to be left up to interpretation, but the basic plot is that an organization called NERV is trying to trigger an extinction event that will merge all of humanity into a single consciousness. The governments of the world don’t trust NERV boss Gendo Ikari with the capability to do that, so they attack NERV HQ, prompting NERV to send out one of its Evangelion units to fight off the military. The pilot, Shinji Ikari (who was introduced masturbating over the comatose body of Asuka, the other pilot) is missing and catatonically depressed. By the time he gets in his Eva, he believes that it’s too late and all of his friends are dead, causing a psychotic break that triggers humanity’s “evolution.” The rest of the film largely takes place in Shinji’s head as he struggles to determine whether or not he should surrender to the pain of existence and give up or continue to be and live on.

But before I say anything else, I wanted to get your general thoughts on the movie.

Drew Gillis, Evangelion newcomer 01: So I went into this not really expecting it to make much sense to me—I know it’s the ending to a series that I had never watched. The first half I kind of got the gist of, which was a big final battle between two opposing forces. Then the second half was a total acid trip—and I kinda enjoyed watching that even more, honestly, because I don’t know how much context would have helped me in the first place.

Matt Schimkowitz, Evangelion newcomer 02: For the most part, I enjoyed the movie. The animation was cool, the imagery was unique and intense, often throwing out horrific images that I found truly disturbing. I don’t know how it functions as a finale to the series, but as far as a movie goes, I understood who the characters were, what they wanted, and how they felt.

It made me interested in watching the whole series, which I consider a high compliment.

DG: I agree, I definitely am pretty interested in watching the whole thing. And it was a lot more violent and disturbing than I expected—which isn’t a bad thing, just a surprise.

SB: I was going to ask if this made either of you interested in watching the show, because it is generally more… straightforward than the movie (though not entirely). It also has one of the all-time great theme songs, which is one of the marks of a good anime. I am a little surprised that you both followed the basics of the plot, because the movie does throw a lot of concepts out there that the show at least has time to ease you into, but in the end I guess it doesn’t really matter what the hell an NT Field is or what NERV does or what the Evangelions actually are. (They’re not big robots! Isn’t that fun?)

Get in the Eva, Shinji

SB: Here’s the big question I’m always curious about when people watch Evangelion: How do you feel about Shinji, the main character? Because the whole series is about putting him in the headspace that he’s in at the beginning of the movie, so you see more of what drives him to behave this way, but he is also just a little shit from the start.

MS: I thought he was a total creep. First, he’s crying over Asuka’s comatose body, rips open her shirt, and then his hand is covered in splooge? I’m glad they filled in the backstory a bit—even if they introduce and completely ignore a very fun-looking penguin guy! But Shinji doesn’t say much in the movie. He’s mostly just crying and screaming.

From the onset, I just assumed everyone is in this heightened state that’s causing a total shutdown.

DG: Yeah, Shinji was the hardest part of the movie for me to follow or even really evaluate honestly. Part of it is personal taste but I was so much more invested in what Asuka was doing with the giant non-robot.

MS: Yes, Asuka was so sick.

SB: I’ve seen this movie probably five or six times, and god damn, Asuka’s fight scene is one of the coolest things ever put to film. She kicks so much ass.

But as for Shinji, I agree that he’s a total creep and the stuff with him is obviously the emotional center of the story, but he’s just so damn frustrating. Which I guess is part of the point, both for the movie and for the characters in the movie, because they’re purposefully pushing him to his psychological limits as part of the trigger for all the crazy shit that happens.

Shinji, to me, has always just been a stand-in for the plucky kid hero in the kind of robot anime that Evangelion is deconstructing (Amuro Ray, the kid who fills that role in Mobile Suit Gundam, spends a significant chunk of that anime refusing to pilot the Gundam). He’s not fun to spend time with, which is fine, but then Asuka is tons of fun to spend time with.

Evangelion and the real world

SB: The other thing I wanted to ask about is what I would consider one of the best moments in the film, when Shinji imagines a world where he doesn’t exist and the movie briefly switches to live-action. How did that land for you? Was it mind-blowing when it suddenly shows people in a theater, since you were also in a theater?

DG: I don’t necessarily know that I got that’s why it was happening, but it was pretty mind-blowing aesthetically to see it happen. Not to sound too uncultured, but it reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons (I think it’s a “Treehouse Of Horror”) where Homer becomes real and goes to the real world. But at that point in the film, I was kind of done trying to figure out what was going on, and was just watching it generally. So aesthetically I loved it.

MS: I am a hardcore gasper in just about any movie context, and when Shinji first grabbed Asuka, I let out a terrified yelp in the theater. But the biggest surprise was that these were two episodes, and that credits started rolling in the middle of the movie. I wasn’t expecting that and wondered if that was truly the end.

To be honest, I didn’t know or understand that was what was happening during that big narrative collapse. But the cuts to live-action thrilled me. It was so daring and weird and discombobulating, adding to my enjoyment of the sequence. It really had the sense that they were looking at us, which is easier said than done. I saw this as a type of 2001 “Star Gate” finale, where these characters’ consciousness is being totally ripped apart. Whether I understand that entirely is beside the point for me because that character probably isn’t understanding it either. It is 100% my thing.

DG: Yeah I agree Matt. I think the term “Lynchian” is thrown around too often as a synonym for “weird,” but it did kind of remind me of the breakdown at the end of Mulholland Drive. I love stuff like that even if I do fully know why it’s going on.

MS: It was more about the vibes as people say. As long as I have a hint of the plot, I’m more or less fine. Never been particularly great at following a plot anyway.

Why are there credits in the middle of the movie anyway?

SB: Here’s a fun reveal for you: They make a point to say the first half is episode 25 and the second half is episode 26, which is why there are credits in the middle, but the anime already had an episode 25 and episode 26 that are different from what happens in the movie. There is even less “real” stuff to latch onto in those episodes, and they mostly take place in Shinji’s head during his catatonic depression, and the ending is (I think) consciously designed to be more off-putting than this one.

MS: Okay, now you lost me.

DG: Oh wow. I was warned that credits were going to run in the middle so I knew not to get up, but I was more surprised by an “Episode 25" title card halfway through the first episode.

This wasn’t on TV? Or was it? Like I said I truly went in blind.

SB: It was actually released in theaters in Japan. Structuring it as two TV episodes is there to indicate that it’s happening differently than the TV show, I think, but I dig how it also just makes everything a little more disconcerting.

Neon Genesis Evangelizing?

SB: By the way, the penguin’s name is Pen Pen and he’s awesome. In the anime, everyone lives with Misato and he’s her pet. (Misato is the woman in the red jacket who kisses Shinji.)

MS: I was really weirded out by Misato kissing Shinji.

SB: It is weird, I think it’s supposed to be, but also I love Shinji’s realization that her blood is on his lips. A great gut-punch.

DG: Okay was Misato sort of like Lilith and Shinji was Adam? Or am I reaching?

SB: Hey, now that you’ve made a biblical reference, can we talk about that? Because obviously this is loaded with religious imagery. How did you two feel about that? I’d say there are any number of religious comparisons you could make, like Shinji and Asuka being a new Adam and Eve after all of humanity is sort of wiped out.

DG: I do enjoy Catholic imagery and I was told by a friend that it was going to be pretty Catholic, which I wouldn’t have anticipated. When I realized, Oh it’s a rapture, I thought it was cool.

MS: It didn’t really register with me as religious, but I guess they kept referring to the big guys as Angels. I thought that was just like military jargon or something. I remember there was like a cross shooting out of someone’s chest, which reminded me of The Matrix, but I think I was just allowing that to wash over me because I knew I wasn’t going to totally get it without more context.

SB: I would say Shinji is a very Catholic-coded protagonist. Lots of unending guilt for various things. He kills one of his friends, who he may or may not have been in love with, right before the events of the movie, and then you all saw what he gets up to right in the beginning.

But I would also say that I don’t know if this or the show have anything to say about religion. I think it’s literally, both in the text and in a meta-sense, about using religious imagery to make things seem important. Like, humanity is killing these big monsters with their own big monsters, so why not just decide that you’re killing god and rebuilding him in your own image?

What is the end of Evangelion anyway?

SB: As for what’s happening in the ending, all of humanity is being merged into one consciousness, and it’s sort of up to Shinji to decide what that looks like. He can’t conceive of a world in which he’s happy, only a world where he doesn’t exist, but by the end, he accepts that he can’t just live in a fantasy that caters to him because other people do exist. So he doesn’t join into the merged consciousness and neither does Asuka, because she also established her own identity as a real person when she refused to exist simply for his sake. You both said you were just kind of feeling the vibes and not worrying about the plot at that point, but did that track with you?

MS: For the most part, that did register with me, even if I didn’t understand the specifics. As I mentioned, it reminded me of the end of 2001. This world or consciousness is ending and a new one begins. However, I wasn’t emotionally hooked into the story that would give me a read on the ending. So from the jump, I assumed that whatever happened on the show happened years prior and we were seeing like the last two hours of the world. It was true post-apocalypse hours. NERV was trying to get its only weapons (these three kids) into their bio-suits and fight off these Angels, which I assumed were the bad guys from the show. However, that all went sideways when Asuka got wrecked by the Angels, sent Shinji deeper into his guilt, and Rei opted to take over. So what we’re seeing at the end is the world in Rei’s image.

DG: I believe everything you guys are saying, is about where I’m at with it. I don’t think I had much of a grasp of the Why—I was kind of just letting the experience wash over me.

MS: The why was just vague “these are the heroes, these are the villains, they’re fighting for earth” reasons for me.

SB: I do think one of the reasons that people believe you can go into this totally blind is that the imagery is so striking that you can tell something interesting is happening, even if you can’t really tell what it is. But did experiencing the movie like that work for you? People have spent decades interpreting this thing, but did you get something out of it, even just viewing it as an experience?

MS: I was entertained and challenged, which are things I’m generally looking for in all movies. Part of that is the experiment we’re doing, right? I knew there was something worth seeing in this movie because otherwise, we wouldn’t be bothering to discuss it. Also, though I had never seen a lick of Neon Genesis Evangelion before, I was well aware of its reputation and the reputation of the movie as a divisive conclusion that would be supplanted by another (I think).

In all regards, it lived up to my expectations. It was difficult to follow, horrifying to watch, and occasionally transcendentally beautiful. At no point, though, did I feel like I was being fucked with or that the imagery was simply bombast. I think that’s due to the sincere emotions of the interpersonal scenes. The film is taking this stuff deathly serious and it effectively communicates that we should too.

DG: Short answer: yes. And it does make me feel better that people are still interpreting it, and that there isn’t necessarily an “answer” that I didn’t get. A big part of why I volunteered for this is because I wanted to challenge myself and push myself to see something I hadn’t before. Full disclosure, I hadn’t really even engaged with anime at all before this. It’s a huge blindspot for me, so this was kind of me dipping my toe into it, and it encouraged me to, at the very least, check out the rest of this series. And like Matt said, I really appreciate the sincerity of the whole endeavor. There was no winking to the audience—which makes me feel valued and intelligent. It makes me feel like an audience, not a consumer.

MS: Totally agree with Drew. There was so much respect for and trust in the viewer in this movie. I’m also not a huge anime watcher and often feel lost in the plot, especially with some of the more surreal ones, like Akira, Perfect Blue, and Paprika. I know those are basic titles, but I’ve only seen the biggies.

So I was somewhat used to the experience of being bewildered in these movies.

SB: Hey, now you can add End Of Evangelion to that list, which I think is an appropriate place for it to be given the acclaim of those other movies. As for my own thoughts, I’m not the biggest Evangelion fan, as I think some of the stuff it’s trying to say is said more concisely elsewhere (cough Gundam cough), but the thing that struck me watching the movie this time is that this is one hell of a god damn picture. This is a completely different beast from anything you’d find anywhere, whether we’re talking anime or Western animation or any kind of live-action, and I think it says a lot that both of you recognized that there was something here and it wasn’t just nonsense for the sake of nonsense.

Was it too weird, or not weird enough?

SB: I want to hear any final thoughts if you have them, but also here’s another shocking reveal: Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno (director of Shin Godzilla!) also made a series of reboot movies that redo the ending again and pull back on some of the trippy metaphysical stuff. Would you have preferred watching that? I will say that version is less universally beloved.

MS: As much as I love Shin Godzilla, I don’t think an edited End Of Evangelion is for me. If anything, I want to see an even wilder director’s cut.

DG: I am almost always into the more trippy the better, so I probably would have preferred this one.

I don’t think I have anything else, but I’m glad I did it!

MS: I liked the movie and plan on watching the series. Can’t think of a better compliment than that!

SB: Well, there you have it! I would consider this experiment a success.