When Evangelion: 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time ended, I didn't know what to do at first. The movie had been pouring emotions into me for two and a half hours. All that feeling was choking me. There was simply so much on the screen, so much in the text, it was impossible to respond in any appropriate or sane manner. I wanted to scream, I wanted to weep, I felt like I was about to explode. I thought I would lose control and write a million words that very day. And...
...I've already begun to lose control.
Before we get to Evangelion 3.0+1.0, we have to go back to 1997 and talk about a different movie. Thrice Upon a Time is the fourth movie in the Rebuild of Evangelion film series, a very telling title of the new series' goals. Why are we rebuilding at all? At some point in the past, in spite of the sustained popularity as a brand, Neon Genesis Evangelion was destroyed. The film The End of Evangelion was that destruction. So before we get into the Joy of Rebirth, we need to watch endure the Fate of the Destruction. These two films are intertwined on many levels, which I'll get into more in Part 2.
The End of Evangelion, directed by Hideaki Anno, is still a controversial film, decades later. Considering how bold, unflinching, and strange the film it is, it would be disappointed if it wasn't divisive. A movie this difficult should not have an easy response. One of the bigger (re)-examinations of Evangelion in recent years happened on the Waypoint Podcast feed. The critics there gave a deep analysis in their first brush with the franchise. The End of Evangelion left them miserable and defeated. The movie is at times both challenging and hideous. Its grossest scenes remain notorious. All the technical artistry at work in Anno's eye for cinematography and gorgeous animation are somewhat betrayed by the twisted sexual insecurities at play on the script level. It's a hard movie to love.
Oh, and the world ends and everybody fucking dies.
The End of Evangelion is also one of the greatest movies ever made. It may sit right at the very top for me. That's a claim I'm a bit sheepish to admit to. But if I'm a critic worth anything, I should be able to back it up. This movie and Neon Genesis Evangelion have meant quite a lot to me personally. My own psychic defense, my AT field, is alarmed considering that I am daring myself to open up to such an extent. There is brilliance in The End of Evangelion. It isn't a movie that only exists to shock and appall, it is about redemption, hope, and the shaky first steps towards growth.
I am going to explain quite a lot about The End of Evangelion, but this is not "Evangelion Explained" or anything like that. There's quite of detail and side materials that are simply beyond the scope here. For example, I am not going to discuss "First Ancestral Race". If you don't know what that is, don't worry about it. Those physics at play in the backstory are very important on a wiki-level of detailing the lore. Also, if you want to know what all the allusions to Jewish mysticism and Gnostic texts are, you can study that. I recommend learning more. But I feel that learning what everything "means" is a secondary concern to the emotional and character mechanics of this movie.
If The End of Evangelion leaves things vague or a mystery, that's the intended effect of the text. Most characters do not know what is going on, precisely. You should probably be in their shoes. Evangelion isn't a
math problem to be solved. The initial shock and emotions of your first screening are probably closer to the intended impact than any dives into the Eva Wiki. Many things in The End of Evangelion are revealed, in glorious triumphs of outrageous terror. Absolute confusion is part of the film's overall effect. You shouldn't "get it" all at once.
For example, I don't think you need to know what Gendo Ikari said to poor
Ritsuko Akagi before he shot her. I don't think you need to know what the Black Moon is, or why the Eva Series are portraying the Sefirot of the Tree of Life. But you should probably know more about the men at the center of this story.
I.
The primary character of Neon Genesis Evangelion is Shinji Ikari, a fourteen-year-old boy riddled with self-doubt and fear of others.
The primary character of this essay might instead end up being his creator, Hideaki Anno, the central creator, writer, and director of all things Evangelion. Anno has been indistinguishable from Evangelion in a way that very few anime auteurs are with their creations. Every aspect of Dragon Ball was written and designed by Akira Toriyama. Yet Toriyama keeps a distant space between him and the manga. He sees his creation as just a comic and cartoon, and isn't shy about how he forgot key details. It is just a story for children to him, Toriyama is not taking it personally. Anno, instead, leaves everything on the field. He wrote "I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion - myself, a broken man who could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead."
Shinji's struggles are Anno's own. Shinji's mantra "I mustn't run
away", is the same thing Anno said to himself when he started work on Eva.
Hideaki Anno is such a vast voice with Evangelion that he's at this point not just the auteur, he's effectively the primary source. Most things we know about this series come from his interviews and his own candid expressions of his struggles with mental illness. So we should get deeper into who Anno was in the 1990s. He was one of the co-founders of Gainax, the anime studio that produced Evangelion. His background is in mecha anime, being a huge fan of things like Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon, both created by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Another mentor figure is Hayao Miyazaki, director of most of Studio Ghibli's greatest movies, and under whom Anno worked on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in 1984.
As much of a stark departure that Evangelion seems to be compared to other mecha anime of the 1990s, it is not a total break from older work in the genre. Ideon, in particular, definitely had a huge impact on Anno's future work. (I've never seen Space Runaway Ideon, but I need to
track it down, because that clip is incredible.) Tomino was already making mecha anime with spiritual themes and the struggles of people to communicate in the 1980s. His works often end so dark as to be apocalyptic. You can see in the early Gundam protagonists of Amuro and Kamille a similar trajectory to Shinji. There's the Oedipal themes, the stress of piloting, and the eventual collapse inward.
After the difficulties of the 1991 anime, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Anno had been left unable to work for four years. Whatever respite he had from his struggles in 1995 during Evangelion did not last. Anno would fall into a much worse depression immediately afterwards. He came very close to suicide at some point between the end of the series and The End of Evangelion. Later he would credit his survival to his friends and mentors, particularly Miyazaki. Whatever darkness he was going through seems to have dissipated after Evangelion. In 2002, he would marry manga writer, Moyoko Anno. He generally seems to be in a better place now, and you can see it in Evangelion 3.0+1.0. However, I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?
In 1997, Hideaki Anno was probably at the single lowest point in his life. The End of Evangelion is not the work of a happy man. That the movie still manages to conclude on a shocking reversal of its negative themes is remarkable. It took strength to find light in all that darkness.
II.
Notoriously, the original Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series ended in a way that could be charitably called "unsatisfying". The traditional narrative of Shinji, his Eva Unit 01, and their battle against the Angels dissolved into something very different, and something unexpected. The historiography on what happened at the end of this show has changed quite a lot over the last few years. I can recall most of the English-speaking internet taking a matter of fact that Gainax had run out of money during production. Meaning the final two episodes were just slapped together random psychobabble only created to finish out the schedule. This has all turned out to be mostly untrue - and won't be the only myth that persists around the production. Gainax is notoriously terrible with money, frequently bankrupt, or otherwise in chaos, yet that wasn't the only or main factor that led to the idiosyncratic choices of Episodes 25 and 26.
Hideaki Anno did not know Eva's ending when he started writing, and changed the story multiple times mid-run. (That's why you don't have to worry about that Precursor Race business.) But he never half-assed anything. All the characters of the show appearing to tell Shinji "congratulations"? That wasn't a rip-off, it was Anno's full intended ending. Sure, you never found out "what happened next" in the story. However, you still do, in a way. Just in a more direct essay-like format with more a experimental style versus the extended allegory of a "normal" ending. "Episodes 25 and 26 as broadcast on TV accurately reflect my mood at the time. I am very satisfied. I regret nothing.", said Anno.
Those episodes are Anno skipping right to his ultimate thesis. Along the way breaking down not just staged scenes and the fourth wall, but also genre. Things turn into a slice of life parody at one point, to demonstrate all the possibilities of happy lives and better futures. Rei Ayanami running late to class with toast in her mouth is an All-Timer great moment in Eva history. Perhaps the thesis in mind was delivered clumsily, and you can argue over which version of that story you prefer.
Still, you cannot disregard the material as "irrelevant" or "non-canon". I recommend you watch both endings, as the "psychobabble" episodes lays out ideas clearly that The End of Evangelion only shows in metaphor. The End of Evangelion is structured around being Episodes 25' and 26'. Therefore, not replacements for the first 25 and 26, but alternates. Even after rewriting Evangelion for almost twenty years now, Anno has not much budged from his thoughts in Episode 26. We keep coming back to the same place, just with many alternate paths. Rebuild of Evangelion is just the latest revision of the same conclusion - but I'll get into that more next time.
The reception to Evangelion cannot help but have mattered quite a lot to Hideaki Anno. Yes, that reception was fantastic for the most part, so fantastic that they're still selling Evangelion toys and figures to this day. (Somebody please buy me that Asuka Nendoroid, thanks.) Anno has been considered one of the great geniuses of anime ever since. He was showered in praise after the series, but also showered in extreme hatred. Most of it came from within. Nobody is as capable of hating Anno as much he seems to sometimes hate himself. But some of it came from the fans themselves.
In an early example of toxic internet fandom making their voices heard, Anno and Gainax were assaulted with death threats and outrage from their fans, deeply unhappy with the original series ending. (If this sounds like a dress rehearsal for the culture wars of the modern internet, yeah, that's right.) The studio was vandalized. This is all fairly well-known and part of the "Eva Legend" at this point. Fans were not just unhappy with Episode 25 and 26, they were deeply aggrieved. Anno at the same felt uncertainty over the "otaku" lifestyle and its childish limitations. He was already taking issue with internet fandom in 1996 interviews with NewType magazine. Considering the state of mind Anno was in, any criticism, especially utterly toxic ones from reckless fans had to hurt, and hurt badly.
Still, he wasn't making this movie for them. Anno made the movie for Anno.
III.
Now, we're pretty far into things, and I still have not yet actually gone into the content of The End of Evangelion all that much. We've done a lot of set-up, so let's finally do this.
Firstly, this is a movie that is going to be very much an extreme deviation from audience expectations. A fan looking for a "traditional" ending, would probably have had this laundry list of demands:
- The heroes overcoming the odds.
- A grand spectacle of giant robot action.
- Heroes overcoming their internal struggles.
- A clear depiction of the narrative's final act and ending, with hopefully a lucid explanation for the many mystery arcs of the series.
- Shinji's final confrontation with Gendo, the worst father in anime history.
- Your preferred love interest in Shinji's harem winning, be it Asuka, Misato, Rei, or even Kowaru.
The End of Evangelion knows how a traditional shonen action story should end. But it just isn't going to give you any of those things. If anything, this movie is going to assault you from start to finish with the very opposite. We start the movie with that Shinji "I'm so fucked up" scene. It's a mission statement of unpleasantness.
Whatever limits Neon Genesis Evangelion had due to appearing on television are out the window. The gloves are off. Things will not be easier from there.
The End of Evangelion is a horrifying movie. This is not quite Anno's grand revenge on the fandom as some speculate. It is often like a torpedo of pure hatred. But I wonder who it really was fired at. Despite rumors that Anno included real hate mail in the final movie, that is another myth. All the letters that appear were written by a friend of Anno's. He's less in conversation with fans, than intrusive thoughts. The intense demands of fandom, real or imagined, positive or negative, are mixed in with a montage of chaotic negativity at the center of Shinji's mind. Shinji and Anno, for a moment in the movie, are one and the same, torturing themselves, almost desperate to prove they are as awful as they believe. It's rough stuff.
However, do not think the audience is getting off easily. There's a sequence towards the film's end where the animated cels turns into a live-action shot of an audience in a cinema. The mirror is dropped down, and you too, are a part of Anno's apocalypse. I'm in here with you. Like Shinji, and Anno, we cannot escape.
Children already feel like their troubles are the end of the world. The End of Evangelion makes that delusion quite literal. The pain and isolation of Shinji and his father rips the entire planet open and melts the whole human race in a cacophony of the most anime of anime nonsense. The heroes lose, and lose almost immediately. They are stomped down with ruthless thoroughness. Along the way, there are no jokes. Very few moments of triumph. The one time happy music plays is only with bitter irony. Come Sweet Death is cheerfully sung, yet it is all discordant notes as it plays over Third Impact ending the world. Importantly, the lyrics read off what sounds to me like a suicide letter.
Considering this is a giant robot anime, The End of Evangelion is unsatisfying as an action movie. The pilot children are too defeated at the start to function. Shinji spends the entire movie either unwilling to move, or physically restrained inside his robot, as incapable of action as before. There is no "final boss" to be defeated. The horrors of the Human Instrumentality Project are beyond any machine gun or variable knife to cut through.
The NERV staff at the start of the film find themselves at battle with Japanese special forces. I call it "battle" but it is more of a systematic one-sided slaughter. At this point, we have seen two dozen episodes of combat against Angels. These are beings so strange and alien that they are beyond our understanding on any level. Yet now, the most terrifying violence comes at the hands of normal humans deploying very usual physics to pull bullets in heads. The result, despite being mundane compared to the absurdities to come, is utter butchery.
Notably, the one exception to all this one-sided beat down is with Asuka Langley Soryu and her Eva Unit 02. Shinji fails to overcome his own demons and fails to be the hero everybody needs. But Asuka does not fail. She finds love inside her robot, finds the soul of her long-lost mother. Asuka is back, herself again, better than before. She and Unit 02 engage in a spectacular fight, smashing the JDSF like they're toys. Then against the demonic Eva Series, she kicks more ass. This exactly the grand emotional pay-off you'd want from an action series. It is probably still the most exciting mecha fight in the series history. Rebuild, despite modern CG animation and a seemingly infinite budget, never does top this crescendo of action thrills.
And then Asuka loses. Straight-up. She's devoured fucking alive by the Eva Series. Even at her best, at her most emotionally complete, with her mother's love behind her, she's not enough. The End of Evangelion aint fair. This is a fight that cannot be won with heroism, no matter how pure.
IV.
The central villain of this piece, Gendo Ikari, is not defeated. At least, not defeated by the heroes. Gendo is betrayed by the latest Rei Clone, who decides to become Lilith on her own, and chooses Shinji over his father. (Honestly who wouldn't? Gendo is awful.) Later when all the souls of humanity are dissolved to merge with Lilith, everybody is offered a twisted form of paradise. That is, everybody except Gendo. A monstrous Eva Unit 01 devours him. Even if the heaven Human Instrumentality creates is a perverse parody of true salvation, Gendo is not even offered that. He's going to the regular old Hell. Sure, it's fitting punishment for an evil man who failed as a person and a father, but it hardly solves any of the pain he created. Shinji is still carrying those psychic scars, after all.
Interestingly, returning to Hideaki Anno, this is the place where he seems to have some distance with his avatar Shinji. There is no indication that he had particular trouble with his parents. Anno talks about the arcs here as a classic Oedipal complex. (And yeah, dude, that isn't subtle.) But it's all in dispassionate terms, it's disappointingly generic. Using Freud like this is a cliche. The suffering of depressiong Anno feels is real, and he's open about that. Shinji has deep parental and psycho-sexual issues in this film, yet I cannot find any evidence that those connect to Anno directly. So as we go deeper into the film's message, Anno is going to disappear from this essay for a time. Perhaps this is the place where Anno's own AT Field goes up. I will not speculate how the themes of the fiction reflect back on his own experience.
The difficulties of sexuality lead us to that issue of the "harem". This is one of those classic fandom arguments that have no answer. Everybody wants their particular pairing to be "the winner". It's a fun kind of mostly innocent gossip that we all enjoy. Never mind that Shinji is clearly too immature at this point in his life to handle a relationship. But the movie goes further than that. The End of Evangelion is cowering in utter terror over female sexuality
First off, Kaworu. Since Shinji crushed him in Episode 24, he's still dead. He only appears as an illusion projected by Lilith-Rei to briefly open Shinji's barriers and allow Third Impact to commence. The issue of Shinji's sexual orientation is not relevant to this movie. If male attraction is an issue that troubles Shinji, it is not worrying him now during the height of his fear and loneliness. Women, not bishounen boys, are what terrify him.
Secondly,
Rei. The sight of a naked Rei, planet-sized now, yet with perfect white
skin and a body drawn for fan-service,
is one of those images that somehow haunts you forever. Her ghosts mind-rape the entire cast. Countless innocents are just wiped away in a pre-programmed system of soul collectivization. The Eva Series evolve into Rei-like entities and penetrate themselves with spears, moaning too just in case you missed the metaphor.
Whatever sexual arousal that's intended, it is juxtaposed by the nightmare
unfolding. Huge Godzilla-sized anime boobs, perfect spheres of male
objectification are also the harbinger of a violent collapsing of reality itself. This
Rei-Lilith figure itself then fails. The disturbingly alluring goddess body falls to pieces into continental-sized chunks of meat.
Then we have
Misato. Shinji and Misato together is a bad idea, and even in the
Nineties we should have known better. Shinji is 14, Misato is 29, what
the fuck are we doing, Anno? However, when struggling with an entire gender, Shinji often sees Asuka, Rei, and Misato as a three-headed succubus of temptation. So sadly, Misato is on the docket, and that is simply bad.
Misato has to play mother for
Shinji multiple times through the series. Along with Rei, she's also in the extended Oedipal complex happening here. In this movie, Misato is playing the role of both a protector and a possible sexual partner.
She takes a bullet for Shinji and is mortally wounded. The film then shows a kiss
scene between them, but it is miserable. Any promise of sexual pleasure
is undercut by the sheer pathetic desperation of the scene. This is
Misato's final move, her last card to play, to get Shinji into Unit 01,
the only place he might have even the vaguest hope of surviving. She
knows she's lying, he knows she's lying. To me, this is a worse scene than the more infamous one I'm about to talk about.
Finally, Asuka. And here we go. That scene.
Shinji masturbates to Asuka's corpse-like body. This is a violation. It's bad. It's the ultimate act of wallowing in total misery for Shinji, a validation that he is as unlovable and disgusting as he imagines himself. A dream Asuka confronts Shinji as The End of Evangelion's narrative dissolves, mocking him about this very act. It leads Shinji to strangle her in his own mind. This is empty rage, but reflected on himself. That isn't the real Asuka, it's a projection of Shinji's own failures and self-hatred. It also is an uncomfortable reminder that sexual insecurity does lead to real violence, and Shinji is teetering on the edge of evil.
We end The End of Evangelion with Shinji and Asuka alone on the beach with red ocean, possibly the only two humans left alive. Their final interaction hints back to both the masturbation scene and the strangling, as Shinji nearly kills Asuka. Asuka gets the last line of the movie, finally responding to Shinji's violation unambiguously in her own words. "How disgusting".
Disgusting indeed. There is no version of a healthy sexual relationship between people in this version of Evangelion. Maybe Rebuild will have something more to say on that.
V.
As horrible as the events I have described are, they are still successful pieces of filmmaking. The shot compositions are often magnificent. Hideaki Anno and his team have incredible talent for cinematography. Even if it is to draw unspeakable abominations, they do it with awe-inspiring craft. Plus, twenty years later, this kind of traditional animation is so rarely performed anymore. This movie is like a priceless antique from a fallen empire.
The End of Evangelion is a spectacular achievement in horror and destruction. But also, even in that horror, there is awe and wonder. It is a twisted, awful reiminaging of Christianity with crucified robots, and largely random dropping of Kabbalistic imagery. It is stunning, unforgettable for good or ill. The End of Evangelion is, in terms of raw craft, a masterpiece.
It is extraordinary as well that The End of Evangelion is only ninety minutes long. Definitely that length is not felt in any viewing. The movie does not "drag", it is exciting and intense the whole way through. But this movie feels much longer. It is incredible how much movie there is in this movie.
The End of Evangelion is not just challenging in content, but also in style. It expects the audience to parse out metaphor and sit down for extended acts of experimental film making. People compare Evangelion to David Lynch. But I think that is only because there is very little else out there that has been this bold and has reached a wide audience. Lynch and Anno are nothing alike in personality or the stories they tell. But "Lynchian" is one of the few adjectives we have to describe what is going on here. Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion are not telling the same stories at all, except that both concluded with remarkably surreal piles of expressionistic filmmaking and terrifying strangeness. And both were followed-up by sequel films that were even more cryptic masterpieces.
As strange as the imagery of Human Instrumentality has been so far, it is nothing compared to the sequences of intense arthouse filmmaking that follows. The End of Evangelion becomes even more surreal than the original Episodes 25 and 26 it theoretically "replaces".
There are many incredible scenes that do not have no in a traditional narrative, yet are works of art. One of those might be my favorite single scene of the movie. This involves a child Shinji building a sandcastle. He builds a perfect pyramid that looks just like NERV HQ. The other children leave, meaning nobody is there to cherish Shinji's creation. So he smashes it, only to get still no reaction at all.
Those children were not children, they were hideous dolls. Their mother might be just a mannequin posed on a chair. The sandbox, and Shinji, and this entire extended metaphor, are all on a set. There's two stage light on stands in the shot. This is a kind of intense formalism, starkly illuminating the artifice of the medium. Except, this is animation, not live-action. (Don't worry, the live-action part comes later.) The lighting instruments are not creating light for the scene. They have no practical purpose. They're as much of a drawing as Shinji is. We have gone beyond formalism to a post-modern collapse of medium and representation. The End of Evangelion itself is just a play, after all, an act. Poor Shinji has no knowledge that he is just a construct who will suffer for all eternity every time you press play on the DVD. He is unaware that he is but the poorest player on the stage. He is Anno's sandcastle, built again and again, never appreciated and fated always, to be destroyed. This awful little drama is the best depiction of the cycles of depression I've ever seen.
Shockingly, despite how dense of a movie and how often unpleasant the material is, The End of Evangelion did not drive people away. Assuming driving people away was Anno's goal at all. It certainly feels at times like the movie is a molotov cocktail and Anno is tossing it in our faces. Yet, even with abstract scenes, a total disregard to all good taste, and no easy answers, this movie did not kill the franchise. The End of Evangelion was a massive success. It's uncompromising material helped build the Eva Legend bigger than ever.
Consider the Hollywood blockbusters of the last thirty years. They have been comparatively cowardly with their need to appeal to mass fandom on the simplest and easiest of levels. It's remarkable how much more cinema could be achieving. Star Wars Episode IX bent over backwards to please everybody and actually was an explosive missile heading right for our eyes. That franchise will not recover for years.
Meanwhile, here there are scenes that have many layers of narrative deconstruction at work, and the wildly bold choices worked. Audiences felt something. They even wanted more.
VI.
So why would people be happy with a movie with such negativity? Well, The End of Evangelion isn't just about abject failure and destruction. It's also a blindingly bright message of hope.
Considering the total failure of most relationships on screen, one could guess that Human Instrumentality is the answer for Shinji. We've seen how every connection around Shinji has already failed. All his friendships have been surprises to him, and still unhappy disappointments for their brevity. The world has been a place where people have either ignored him or used him. Shinji has never felt a true unconditional love, only manipulations. His father has so destroyed his sense of safety with betrayal after betrayal, Shinji cannot know what offers of love are genuine and what are just schemes to make him pilot robots. He cannot trust that anybody could even love him.
The fantasy of Instrumentality is to dissolve that. Evangelion, despite all the religious apocrypha, is not actually all that much about religion. Anno is not Christian or Jewish, he has never shown concern over his immortal soul. In the Eva universe, we have Angels, but no God. A robot is crucified but faith is irrelevant. Yet religion and Anno both seem to agree on a fundamental point: the physical world might be inadequate. Pain is not only likely in the human condition, it might be inevitable. Human beings are incomplete creatures that need a higher power; they cannot exist alone. In Evangelion, that higher power is not God, but a kind of mass surrender into each other. All our fears and barriers that keep us from communicating in concert and achieve full understanding can be erased. All the physical limitations that lead to conflict can be pushed aside. We can have a utopia, with all becoming one.
Many forms of faith demand a kind of erasure of the self before God. Evangelion fantasizes about an erasure of the self before All. Unfortunately, Rei-Lilith is not asking for your consent in her salvation. You're coming whether you want to or not. Only Shinji, alone, gets to say no.
But why shouldn't Shinji, an immature and incomplete person, not take this offer?
There is one relationship I've yet to mention, and it on this one where The End of Evangelion turns. That's with Shinji's mother, Yui.
Yui Ikari is the most enigmatic character of the entire series. Even after Rebuild she remains a mystery. We never get to meet Yui directly, only instead meeting memories of her from Gendo and Fuyusuki. Yet Yui's fingerprints are all over the story. She has an army of blue-haired clones with the various Reis. Gendo's entire convoluted scheme to destroy the world is somehow connected to her research. Her soul, has been inside Eva Unit 01 since the very start. The events of the series have turned her into not just a super robot, but as close as you can get to a god. Yui is possibly positioned to have total control over Instrumentality and all this might have been her great scheme. Though when we meet Yui in The End of Evangelion, schemes and apocalypses are not on her mind at all.
She has one person on her mind: Shinji. We still never quite meet Yui, or at least the full person that was. We only see her play the role her son needs most of all right now: a mother. She is an impossibly warm light in the middle of spectacular evil. The Freudian metaphor of the series is so broad as to be clumsy. Shinji has been literally inside his mother in Unit 01 since the beginning. She has been protecting him.
But now she does more than just defend his body, she's here to tell him "it's okay".
People have been there for Shinji on and off through the series. However, nobody has been here for him now, at this level. Nobody has helped him during his depths of guilt and self-destruction. He's never had a person to turn to when he's been disgusted at himself, somebody who can love him in spite of that. Shinji doesn't need his pain erased or his past mistakes torn out of the history books, he needs validation that he is a person who deserves to exist. That he is a person, no matter what he imagines himself to be, that is deserving of love.
Yui tells her son:
"Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you will always have the chance to be happy. As long as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth exist, everything will be all right."
This is where The End of Evangelion gets me. I rarely cry at sad or bad things. I cry when presented with kindness. I cried just finding that quote. I barely wrote this passage without crying again.
This is maybe the most pure kindness imaginable. Yui's words are so sweet to be almost a nursery rhyme. It's impossibly optimistic, especially considering the movie that has preceded it. But it works. Yui and Unit 01 fly off into the stars to be some kind of monument to the humanity that was. Her final plan is beyond our mortal understanding at this point. Still, I understand what she's doing when she's helping Shinji. She only leaves when she knows he'll be okay.
Let me rather crudely jam myself into the story for a moment. At the time of writing, I'm a bit older than Misato, but when I first saw The End of Evangelion, I was about Shinji's age. Like all young adults, I was confused and scared. Like Shinji, I was one of those people who didn't know how to communicate with others. However, I was never Shinji. Shinji has never been as angry I was or still can be. I hated the world, I hated school, I hated the set middle-class path that I felt stuck on, and I hated God. I was crushingly self-obsessed. This made me terrified to reach out to anybody, certain they would hate me, certain that I couldn't be loved as a friend or romantic partner.
I don't know if The End of Evangelion helped me understand that life had value, that existence wasn't some grand betrayal by my parents or God. That I too, even in my own adolescent delusions, was beautiful. It reminded me that I had people who loved me. It helped me along the way. It was a small step on a journey I'm still on now.
But, enough about me. This is not my movie.
Rejecting Instrumentality is not just about individualism. Shinji is not a Randian hero. The individual human cannot exist alone. But he is willing to love himself as an individual in the end, and decide he is worthy of still existing. It's a tiny, possibly still insufficient step towards a healthy identity. We still don't see much evidence that things are better even after Shinji and Asuka come "back to life". Shinji does nearly kill her and her response is a sarcastic one-liner. This is not an easy ending of love triumphing. Yet, things are just a bit better. When you're in this kind of pain, any little step is a triumph.
The story of The End of Evangelion has been a terrible one, and terrible things have happened. There is maybe nothing left at the end except two preteens on a ruined white beach with bloody seas. But because people are still alive, because Shinji is still alive, and that he might still have a path left to finding happiness, the world still has value. We didn't need gods or Instrumentality. We just needed each other and the world.
There is still hope. Rebuilding can commence.
(To be continued...)
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