End of Evangelion: A Gospel of Hope
SPOILER ALERT: Plots details for End of Evangelion follow.
NOTE: This essay is an abridged combination of two previous ones I had written about End of Evangelion. My thoughts on the original anime can be found here.
“The film End of Evangelion was a dark, brutal, psychedelic orgy of sex and violence that culminated in the mass extinction of humanity set to an optimistic J-pop song with lyrics about suicide. The themes of the television show criticizing the audience for being spineless and lost in a fantasy world were cranked up to eleven, as the protagonist Shinji basically watches everybody die around him due to his refusal to make any effort whatsoever to engage with other people.”
End of Evangelion is probably a more polarizing work than the show it concluded. I can think of no other anime film which has been such a lightning rod for equal parts acclaim and derision. End of Evangelion is an ambiguous film that is up for open interpretation by all who see it. This is ending that Hideaki Anno and the team at Gainax originally intended for the series, but were initially unable to fulfill due to budget restrictions. The film is a theatrical reinterpretation of the final two episodes, and despite some major alterations, the central message remains consistent, that of a gospel of hope.
Tenebrae: “Love is Destructive”
There are three figures of Greco-Roman myth which I see as useful guides for the themes of this film. The first are the Tenebrae, vicious spirits who represented violent death from disease, murder, or war. The Tenebrae are ever-present in the first half of End of Evangelion, heralding the apocalypse through an outpouring of brutality and destruction. Like Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Space Runway Ideon, Anno kills off most the major characters, but beyond that, he also wants to wipe clean all that we have come to expect about the television show.
The films opens with Shinji hanging over Asuka’s comatose body in the hospital bed. Desperate for affection, he tries to wake her up by jerking her so hard that her hospital gown opens, revealing her breasts. He stares at her while his shadow stretches over her in a phallic way. He locks the door and masturbates to her, his right hand covered with semen. This scene is great because it encapsulates just how morally debased Shinji has become. Sex is a form connection between two people. Masturbation is a one-sided connection, with only an image of the other person to join with. This is the haphazard way in which Shinji is trying to ease his loneliness.
The military invasion of Nerv is still difficult to watch after multiple viewings. Partially because the members of Nerv are so ill-equipped to fighting with other humans, with some like Maya too afraid to shoot. The cold execution of life is reminiscent of the state murders in Jin-Roh. This stark kind of violence is exhibited by the heroes as much as it is by the villains. Misato guns down several soldiers in an attempt to rescue Shinji, Ristuko tries to blow up Nerv as an act of vengeance against Gendo, and Asuka unleashes gory attacks on the military and the Mass Production Evas. Shinji, as expected, opts out of this sort of violence, and spends most of the film depressed in the fetal position.
Shinji is so broken down by the trauma of being a pilot as well as the shame of his own mistakes, that he gives up on trying to do anything heroic. Misato tries to encourage him, relating her experiences with self-loathing, but telling him that learning from your mistakes is a natural part of being human. She even kisses him suggestively to communicate her (motherly) love for him. Misato’s words are probably meant more for the audience, as she is unsuccessful to inspire him. I am moved by the scene where Shinji is left alone in the elevator, notices Misato’s lipstick on his fingers and breaks down into sobs. The reality of her death has settled in.
Asuka’s behavior in the film is the opposite of Shinji’s. Thinking that she hears the soul of her mother inside of the Eva, she awakens and rises up against SEELE’s military. Beneath all of her past posturing, Asuka admits that she always wanted her mother’s love and could not live without it. Thanks to the budget of a film, Unit-03 lumbers around in ways more realistic than anything in the show, its gargantuan limbs laying waste to everything in sight. Her fight is a reversal of the first encounter with the Angel, Sachiel. Asuka is now the enemy of the military.
SEELE eventually defeats Asuka with their new Eva series. They glide in on black stealth planes, before releasing their feathery, angelic wings, and circling her like vultures. They have very eerie designs; whitewashed, phallic heads and absurd, red-lipped grins. Bach’s “Air on a G String” quietly plays on as the mechanical behemoths savagely tear each other to shreds. Asuka is pierced through the eye by the Lance of Longinus and eaten alive by the white Evas. Asuka tries to awaken the “berserk” mode of the Eva, with one hand reaching for the sun. She is killed as it splits in two. Even at the end, Asuka was never strong enough to defeat the enemy by herself. By the time Shinji arrives, he’s too late. He screams out in horror as dismembered pieces of the Eva’s body flash before his eyes.
Eros and Thanatos: “I need you.”
The two themes most present in the latter part of The End of Evangelion are intense, sexual desire and quiet, blissful death. The Tenebrae have left, and in comes Thanatos, the god of death in Greek mythology. He had a touch as gentle as sleep and he is accompanied by Eros. The film strangely wishes to connect the two themes. The fate of destruction is the joy of rebirth. Death can be as wonderful as sex, and sex as scary as dying.
The second half of the film also mirrors he first half, insofar that it opens with a scene of sexual violence. Gendo intends to have Rei return to Lilith in order to bring on instrumentality and revive Yui. In a callback to Shinji touching Rei in episode five, his Adam-infected hand touches Rei’s breast and is absorbed into her body. He lowers his hand down from her chest and towards her uterus. Rei twitches in discomfort. Watching an older man touch a fourteen year old girl like this is unsettling, but it is meant to visually convey the sort of twisted relationship that Gendo and Rei have. That of exploitation. This incarnation of Rei, however, is not as devoted to Gendo as previous one. This is hinted at by the fact that she crushed the glasses that the earlier Rei treasured. Hearing Shinji’s cries for help, she rejects Gendo’s authority and goes off to help his son. She rejoins with the crucified Lillith and is restored to her original, divine self.
Meanwhile, Unit-01’s true form is awakened. He sprouts goldenrod wings and is crucified by the lances of the Eva series. An image of the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life envelops the Eva as it ascends to the heavens, while Unit-02’s decapitated head stares on blankly from Earth. This is the pinnacle of the Judeo-Christian imagery scattered throughout Evangelion. The anime’s assistant director, Kazuya Tsurumaki (who also co-directed this movie), has said that the religious images “looked cool”, but that “Evangelion’s religious themes are not an indication of its overall intellectual value.” This truth becomes evident to most viewers after repeat viewings of the series. The real focus of the plot is on the psychological states of the characters and how they interact with each other. Much of the religious symbolism is purely aesthetic, but I wouldn’t dismiss its value just yet.
The usage of Judeo-Christian terms and symbols added a mythic quality to the series that differentiated it from other mecha anime at the time. Religion is such a formative part of our culture and history, that we all have a subconscious familiarity with its language. When you utilize religious imagery, you provoke in audiences the emotions that religion offers: profundity, enigma, and awe. Religion also asks many of the same existential questions that Evangelion does, like “Why do I exist?” and “What is moral?”. Religion is a living animal, and when you bring that beast into your home, it’ll roam of its own free will. It is this visual language that allows viewers to feel the presence of god when Rei merges with Lilith.
Lilith-Rei is living spectacle of animated brilliance, rivaled only by the Chernabog of Fantasia or the Nightcrawler of Princess Mononoke. The animators took great care to make her lifelike and voluptuous. Consider the scene when she rises above stratosphere, arched backwards, she heaves out a deep breath, as if it’s her first, and swings forward, her hands delicately encircling the crucified Unit-01. She intends to combine with him to spark Third Impact, but he’s much too terrified of her, with his mental defenses too strong. Since she also has Adam inside of her, she summons forth Kaworu, the only one who showed Shinji unconditional love. This is enough to weaken his defenses, allowing them to merge. Now all that’s left is for Shinji to direct the nature of instrumentality, but before that he must confront his own demons.
What follows is a reinterpretation of the last two episodes of the original show. It touches upon many of the similar themes: the fear of confronting others and how our illusions of others feeds into self-loathing and paranoia. There’s the sandbox scene, in which Shinji makes sand pyramid with two other dolls (which represent Rei and Asuka). The two dolls are taken away by “Mama” (who resembles Misato) and is left to complete the pyramid all by himself. Shinji destroys the pyramid. His success is meaningless if there’s no one to share it with. The whole sequence is laced with an Oedipal eroticism, with the two hills in the background unmistakably shaped like breasts. What this is meant to get across is that Shinji craves affection, but getting that will not be easy.
He sees Misato having sex with Kaji. In the original show, Misato was embarrassed to have him see this, but here she embraces it, wanting Shinji to accept this nature of the adult world, even if it makes him uncomfortable. Risking discomfort is a necessary part of interacting with others. There’s a surreal sex scene between Shinji and Asuka, where Shinji says that Asuka only hates him because she sees all of her own weaknesses in him. Rei asks Shinji if he ever really tried to understand Asuka. Instead of giving her an answer, he demands that the women around him to be nicer. They say that they are, but he rejects this, insisting that they keep things secretive by not being upfront with him. Shinji wants his love handed to him freely. The problem is not so much with them as it is with himself, and he has trouble accepting that. These scenes represent a slow breakdown of his ability to relate with other people.
This breakdown climaxes in the coffee table scene, which is an amalgamation of real memories, as well as Shinji’s own feelings about Asuka. Shinji pours himself out to Asuka, begging her to help him. She responds angrily, saying that he’s only clinging to her because she’s the only available option left. She pushes Shinji down onto the floor and adds that she cannot love him because he doesn’t even love himself. Shinji, now exhausted both mentally and physically from his trials, having lost all that he’s ever loved to death, losing all semblance of reality, asks this Asuka, even if she’s a fake, to cradle him from loneliness. She refuses. Now he is truly alone and without defense. So he responds with violence. Shinji strangles Asuka, his head down, unable to accept the monster he has become. The song “Komm Susser Todd” or “Come Sweet Death”, starts playing, which represents Shinji’s suicidal hatred of himself and all humanity. It is at this point where he decides that if peple will not love him unconditionally, then they are all better off dead.
Rei grants his wish and kills everyone on Earth. When compared to the first half of the film, the deaths are mostly blissful, with everyone dissolving into LCL. Some are embraced by the visages of those they loved the most. Makoto is embraced by Misato, Maya is embraced by Ritsuko, and Fuyutsuki sees Yui. Gendo, however, is not met with any such bliss. He feels guilty for having shut Shinji out of his life, admitting that he closed himself off out of fear of hurting others. This makes him the end result of Shinji’s behavior. Gendo’s head is chomped off by a monstrous version of Unit-01. Karma for his treatment of Shinji. After death, his glasses are poignantly picked up the second Rei, the one who was most devoted to him.
End of Evangelion’s Human Instrumentality sequence stands alongside the Star Gate journey from 2001: A Space Odyssey, as the most visually stimulating climax in cinema. Rei puts her careful hands over the black moon, while the planet’s souls, represented by glowing red balls of light which swirl up into the divine hold. Each disappearance leaves behind giant, green crosses which cover the world’s surface. The Rei-infected Eva series, impale themselves with lances, and cry out in ecstasy like St. Theresa in Bernini’s sculpture. They lie themselves out in crucifixion, against the backdrop of the planet, the moon, and the sun. This all makes for a an unbelievable sight, a sort of global Sabbath that pushes the limits of animated film. The cross that is Unit-01 soon becomes a phallus, entering through the vaginal third eye of Rei, performing a spiritual coitus.
This next sequence is not animated. It is in live action, with the camera catching visuals of urban Japan and the inside of a movie theater. We hear Rei lecturing Shinji about his tendency to run away from reality. Anime, and the otaku subculture as a whole, are often derided as “escapism” from the responsibilities of the “real world.” Evangelion recognizes that it is only an anime, a brief “escape”, and that after the film, you must return the “real world” like Shinji. This is why End of Evangelion is a hopeful film. It opens a door for the disaffected in our world to walk through, a door that welcomes them back to the fold humanity. It shows that even “escapism” has its practical applications.
Lilith-Rei’s neck slits, and a massive spray of her blood sends an arc through space, her arms and head start to slip off and deteriorate. She is dying, but she dies with a macabre beauty. Another blissful death. We see Shinji and Rei in a sexual union, that great metaphor of instrumentality, where you cannot tell where one ends and another begins. The scene carries both erotic and spiritual ecstasy in a cosmic, aquatic backdrop. This is the peak of Shinji’s Oedipal complex, long driven by his incessant desire for affection. He was stuck in the “oral stage” of life, with the mother being the first to love him. His mother had long been absent from the start and he desires a return to her. He has now reached that place here with Rei, but it doesn’t feel quite right. All pleasure and no pain. This is not true living. Rei warns Shinji that bringing people back to their individual forms will allow them to feel fear again. He accepts that. He is greeted one last time by Kaworu and Rei. They represent the hope that one day in the future, humans truly start to understand one another. Shinji admits that returning to the “real world” may mean rejection, but that it could also mean acceptance. What follows is a tremendous sequence where Unit-01 balances the Lance of Longinus while its spidery, orange wings curl up around him. There’s a particular striking moment when the small, glowing Rei stares at the massive, lifeless mech. Beauty and the Beast.
The final scene of the film follows through on the outcomes of interacting with others: acceptance and rejection. Shinji is isolated on the red earth, the waters on the shore are like blood, and half of Rei’s giant head stares creepily into space. Shinji sees Rei one last time, as a vision off in the distance, a bookend to the opening of the television series. She exits the stage the same way that she entered. Asuka also appears on the shore, though she’s bandaged from the last fight. She’s ready to face the real world. Shinji stoically starts to choke her, as he did in his revenge fantasy. She responds by gently caressing his cheek, performing a rare act of compassion and acceptance. Shinji suddenly realizes that Asuka is not as evil as he made her out to be. He misunderstood her just as so many had misunderstood him. He breaks down into tears, realizing how little he understood, and how much further he has to go. Asuka ends the movie by saying, “How disgusting.” She still struggles to accept that no woman is an island; that she can never truly live alone.
End of Evangelion’s ultimate argument is that the afflictions of the soul are just as devastating and important as the end of the world. That the root of all human conflict often comes from a failure to be loved or listened to. It is a story that argues for living, not simply as an individual, but as an individual who can work to empathize with others as well as forgive their own failings. It is a gospel of hope.
Great Anime
