End of Evangelion DVD review
Yellow Menace celebrates both its relaunch and the anniversary of Neon Genesis Evangelion with a long-overdue review of the original series’ concluding movie, End of Evangelion, released theatrically in Japan in 1997 and on DVD in the US in 2002. Along with its companion piece, Death and Rebirth, the film represents a second shot at concluding the landmark anime series. Intriguingly, End of Evangelion can be viewed either as a replacement to the series finale or merely an alternate portrayal of the same events.
As we mentioned in our original review of Death and Rebirth, Evangelion began with the standard teenagers-in-giant-robots-save-the-world premise and then veered into dark psychological territory and murky conspiracies. The series protagonist, Shinji Ikari, becomes steadily more alienated and withdrawn throughout the series, a psychological journey that mirrored creator Hideaki Anno’s own bout with depression.
The series did not follow a conventionally heroic story arc. Shinji’s victories over the powerful beings known as Angels left him feeling not triumph and confidence, but guilt and self-loathing. Many of the characters also seemed to be psychologically damaged; their interactions explored the series’ theme of the “Hedgehog’s Dilemma” – people want to be close to others, but that closeness inevitably results in pain. One result is a lack of a conventional romantic subplot. Shinji feels a confusing mixture of lust, fear, disgust and empathy for various female characters.
The series’ persistent refusal to conform to expectations perplexed fans and led to nervousness on the part of its financial backers, even as the complex plot and relationships, rich symbolism and allusions to religious and existential philosophies attracted a wide audience. Still, budget cuts restricted the planned two-part finale to an introspective exploration of Shinji’s mental state during the Third Impact with minimal animation. At the end, the notoriously passive and indecisive Shinji finally makes a choice that determines humanity’s future, although the precise results were left to the viewer’s imagination.
The ambiguity of the series ending dissatisfied many fans, whose demands for a more conventionally told resolution prompted GAINAX, the studio producing Evangelion, to greenlight the Death and Rebirth / End of Evangelion project. The film wraps up several of the plot threads left dangling by the series’ last two episodes – like the initiation of the Third Impact and the fates of several characters – but remains ambigu-licious.
Since End of Evangelion is intended to replace or supplement the final two episodes of the series, the film is divided into two parts: Episode 25: Air and Episode 26: Magokoro o, kimi ni / My Purest Heart for You. There’s even a closing credit sequence (with Japanese titles) after Episode 25. The Japanese version reportedly had no credits after the second episode, but the US release places the English version credits there.
Air utilizes the original script intended for episode 25, which was not produced due to budget constraints. It begins after Shinji has defeated the final Angel at a great psychological cost. In pain, he visits the hospitalized Asuka, pilot of Eva Unit 02. He fails to rouse her from her comatose state, but his efforts cause the sheet to fall, revealing her nearly-nude form. Shinji’s subsequent expression of confused frustration, lust and self-loathing is disturbing enough for even him to realize.
But the defeat of the Angels hasn’t resulted in security for NERV, the organization that created the EVAs. Instead, they find themselves in violent conflict with an equally relentless enemy they aren’t prepared to defend against: Fellow humans. As various agendas and conspiracies come to fruition, special forces soldiers storm NERV headquarters, systematically and brutally killing the practically defenseless NERV personnel they encounter.
Just as all seems lost, Asuka wakens in the control seat of her EVA at the bottom of a lake, where she’d been hidden from the marauding forces. Realizing that her EVA contains the spirit of her mother, she throws off her catatonia and engages in a frenzied battle with both the mechanized forces and nine pilotless EVA units. Her battle – in which a nearly berserk Asuka employs impressive EVA-fu along with her unit’s Progressive Knife and improvised weaponry – is a thrilling and impressive action sequence.
But the futility that lurks as a dark undercurrent to the series overtakes Asuka, as well. In her moment of triumph, the defeated EVAs rise somehow and destroy Unit 02, leaving Asuka screaming in pain, her final fate unknown.
Meanwhile, with NERV’s security force being massacred by the invading soldiers, operations commander Misato Katsuragi leaves her staff to their last stand in the control room and goes off in search of Shinji, while NERV leader Gendo Ikari calmly goes to set in motion his own plan: initiating the Third Impact – the merging of all humanity into one.
As before, though, no one’s schemes go quite the way they planned, though the Third Impact does occur, with Shinji and EVA Unit 01 at its center. The other nine EVAs form a kabbalistic Tree of Life, the bodies of all humans dissolve into a vast sea of LCL while their souls are merged in Instrumentality, a mass mind in which no individuality exists. The being that launches the Third Impact and accumulates the souls of humanity manifests itself to Shinji as a gigantic image of Rei Ayanami.
The Rei-image asks Shinji what he wants. Indecisive and depressed as ever, Shinji has no answer at first, but embarks on an introspective journey that, like the originally televised episodes, combines still images, animation, dialogue, title cards and even live-action footage, including images of the series’ main voice actresses. Shinji converses with Rei, Asuka, his mother Yui and other characters, or at least their manifestations within his own mind, and relives the suffering he experienced and caused others as well.
At the film’s’ climax, Shinji realizes that a world without individuality is one without suffering, but also without joy. He explicitly rejects Instrumentality, which destroys the gigantic Rei-image and the nine EVAs. Shinji emerges in the flesh on the shores of the sea of LCL amidst the ruins of Tokyo-3. And he isn’t alone, although the meanings of his interactions with the one he discovers are still debated by anime fans.
Though End of Evangelion adopts a much more linear storyline, it still retains plenty of tantalizing ambiguity. For example, the original episodes showed brief images of the bodies of several main characters. The film depicts the deaths of several favorite characters, but oddly, an apparition of Rei Ayanami appears fleetingly by the bodies, perhaps hinting that their souls were also merged in Instrumentality and may survive somehow. And Gendo Ikari’s final words to Ritsuko Akagi are deliberately obscured.
As with the series, much about the film is symbolic and deliberately left to the viewer’s interpretation. This rich symbolic nature is one of Evangelion’s strongest assets, but can prove frustrating to casual viewers or those seeking a more conventional storyline.
Manga Entertainment’s DVD of the film duplicates the excellent presentation of its Death and Rebirth disc. The film’s original Japanese track and an excellent English dub – featuring many of the cast from the ADV release of the series – are present, along with optional Japanese subtitles. A welcome feature allows onscreen subtitles only for the Japanese text frequently displayed onscreen.
Unlike the Death and Rebirth disc, though, DVD extras are relatively scant this time around. There’s a collection of Manga previews (including trailers for notable titles like Perfect Blue and the original Ghost in the Shell) and an excellent commentary track by voice actors Amanda Winn Lee, Jason Lee, and anime expert Taliesin Jaffe. Of particular interest are discussions of how and why the Manga team interpreted the original Japanese dialogue.
Neon Genesis Evangelion did not follow a traditional story patterns, so its unconventional ending, though unplanned, shouldn’t be too surprising. While perhaps anticlimactic, the story nevertheless resolves in its own symbolic way. End of Evangelion does not replace but rather supplements the series conclusion, providing much-desired revelations about the fates of several favorite characters and the mechanism by which the Third Impact began, as well as an absolutely dynamite EVA battle sequence. It’s a vital addition to the experience of any Evangelion fan.
End of Evangelion
Written and directed by: Hideaki Anno
Starring: Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara, and Yûko Miyamura (Japanese version); Spike Spencer, Amanda Winn Lee and Tiffany Grant (English version)
Released by:
Manga Entertainment
Related Links:
End of Evangelion IMDb entry
End of Evangelion DVD at Amazon.com
Official site (Manga Entertainment)
Second opinion at DVD Vision Japan
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