The End of Evangelion

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and hate Hideaki Anno

by Laura Bissey

Ah, Evangelion. Rarely has an anime caused such an commotion in the fan community both in America and in Japan. When first shown on Japanese television, it caused a media uproar - and in no small part due to the fact that everyone - even people who would normally never consider watching anime - were transfixed by the series. I admit that I was one of those transfixed.

The angst-ridden (and more often than not murky) plot focuses primarily on a 14 year old boy, Shinji Ikari (voiced by the lovely and compelling Megumi Ogata), whose mother has died, and whose father abandoned him at an early age in pursuit of his scientific research. Left to live with relatives, he grows up with no sense of family, no friends, no real self-image or self-esteem, and a complete lack of purpose. He's a shadow, really, and is content to do what the people around him tell him to. In a sense, he's the prototypical otaku; he's completely internalized, completely self-absorbed and completely self-loathing. Not much in the way of external stimulus is able to get through to him.

That is, until the fateful day he receives a message from his long-absent father, asking Shinji to join him at NERV, a research center apparently dedicated to discovering the exact cause of a world-wide catastrophe at the South Pole that occurred, oh, about 14 years ago. (Coincidence? Hmmmm . . .) Through some mysterious set of circumstances, the polar ice caps melted, flooding the world. This event was also the trigger point for the recent attacks leveled (largely in Japan) by a series of creatures referred to as angels. Much to Shinji's horror, his father expects him to pilot one of the giant robots known as "Eva" and defend what is left of the free world from this strange menace. Shinji is joined by two other girls, Rei Ayanami (Megumi Hayashibara in her most understated role ever) and Asuka Langley Soryu (voiced by seiyuu Miyamura Yuko).

So, by explaining all that I'm sure you feel as though you have a good grasp on Evangelion, right? Ha! It is to laugh! When I say that Evangelion has a more than murky plot, I am - regrettably - holding out on you. To say that it is a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside an animation studio that obviously didn't consider a script before the series went into production is to say too little! And the problem here is that I loved Evangelion. I didn't mind the murkiness, or the overwhelming nihilism that pervaded nearly every aspect of the show. I loved the characters; I wanted to take Shinji home and make sure he had a nice, home-cooked meal. I loved the goofy artiness of it all. And even in the face of the show's overwhelming bleakness, there were still bright spots: people reaching out, internalized cocoons being broken, potential being realized . . . that is, until the series began to approach its end, and viewers worldwide began scratching their heads and wondering what the hell was going on. Did everyone die? Is this all in Shinji's head? And why do they keep recycling footage from earlier in the series? Why exactly did we need to see a four minute elevator scene in which the characters moved not at all? A number of fans claim that the real problem with Evangelion is that the animation studio, Gainax, ran out of money towards the end, and had little scripted out to begin with, hence the inexplicable ending. And then . . . and then . . . came The End of Evangelion.

In an attempt to salvage the series (and to provide a weak explanation of the mess the show had become), two short movies were made, which answered no questions whatsoever, leaving fans far more frustrated than they were in the beginning. A third, longer movie was released, and touted as The End of Evangelion. It promised to tie up loose ends and provide answers, as it was - as you can tell from the title - the last word on the subject. Fans were wary of this, and with good reason.

The End of Evangelion is easily the bleakest, most horrifying anime I have seen in recent years. It's difficult for me to sum up the film in a pithy paragraph, as it was so convoluted and complicated that I find myself incapable of the task. But I'll tell you that I honestly can't remember being as disgusted by any other show. And I do mean any. Any character that you may have had sympathy - or even love - for is treated in an appallingly debased fashion. This I could expect from, say, your average tentacle porn, but Evangelion set a precedent with their characters. They were made to be sympathetic, and you could easily find yourself identifying with them. It's as if the creators wanted you to like them, then mocked you for it, and provided you with good reasons that you shouldn't have in the first place. They act in ways that completely conflict with everything you knew about them in the first place. They really do their best to make you hate them.

For instance, at the beginning of The End of Evangelion, Shinji comes to see Asuka, his temperamental fellow pilot who lies on her hospital bed in a coma, unable to speak, respond, or react. After begging her to get up and essentially kicking his ass into action, he winds up masturbating over her helpless body. Afterwards, he looks at his hand and says, "I am scum." And even though I never believed that before, I certainly did then - it completely flies in the face of everything that was ever established about his character, and it cheapens everything you ever felt for him. It's as though Gainax wanted to force fandom to feel stupid for their loyalty to these characters.

And not surprisingly, people die in horrifying ways. Okay, technically they don't die; the AT field (that's Absolute Terror Field to you and me) that surrounds and separates all living things in the Evangelion universe dissolves, leaving people like giant kernels of fleshy pink popped popcorn, able to finally unite wholly with one another. The worst, for me, was the sweet-natured Maya Ibuki, a minor character who was a science officer at NERV, working under the tough and virtually emotionless Ritsuko Akagi. As the world around NERV falls apart, she winds up hiding under a desk, completely non-functional, unable to do anything but scream hysterically, until she sees a vision of her heart's desire, her sempai Ritsuko. Relieved beyond belief, she reaches for her . . . and dies in the same hideous fashion. No one is spared. Everyone - explodes.

At the end of the film, Shinji discovers that he alone has the power to turn everything back the way it was, should he choose to do so - and divide those people who have lost their AT fields. And even though he's asked if he wants to be hurt the way he was before again, he says he thinks so, because his feelings for them were real. Sounds vaguely hopeful, right? Until the next scene, where he wakes at the edge of a horrifying sea of AT, the only other person with him Asuka, who loathes him. As he tries to choke her, she reaches up to caress his cheek, as he begins sobbing. The end. Pretty bloody cheerful, eh?

There was a lot of talk amongst fandom that the series creator, Hideaki Anno, was trying to teach otaku a lesson: these were just characters, they weren't real, and they weren't worth investing your time and emotion into. And also to turn off your television, get the hell out of your tiny apartment, and start interacting with the real world. And while I think that this is pretty good advice, I have to admit that it also horrifies me on one level - why did they create characters so sympathetic and so compelling, then? Why work hard to make fans care, only to slap their hands once they did? It was also thought the series was a form of personal therapy for Anno. How appropriate is it for a creator/director to utilize a public forum to air his personal demons? And why did he have to wait until we were all really hooked into the series to begin to do it?

I've seen an awful lot of bad anime, and have had no problem with it because I had virtually no expectations. However, with Evangelion, I was given a number of reasons to really love it, and then I was told I was a fool for doing so, and was fed a clouded, ridiculously obscure ending that was passed off as resolution. And while I may have been foolish to like these characters, I'm no idiot. In the final words of Asuka Langley, "How disgusting."

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