EoE and the series

Alright boys, what the fucked did I just watch? Any semblance of an explanation aside from me being a fag would be greatly appreciated.

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Also, is shinji a gay?

Yui

The film opens with Evangelion’s familiar summer-noises, alongside some good scenic shots that recall the show’s opening. The set-up is one which implies a potential movie in its own right, but quickly goes to a shot of Asuka unconscious in the hospital, as Shinji cries. Accidentally ripping off her gown and seeing her naked body, he masturbates (replete with a shot of his glazed hand) and calls himself disgusting. Ok, this is a terrible start, and a moment that’s only there to highlight Shinji’s immaturity and frustrations, in the least subtle way possible for the sake of getting a reaction. Meanwhile, Nerv is awaiting Instrumentality, as Seele fails to hack into the Magi system to overtake them from within. Asuka is quickly transported to her Eva, and Seele’s ground invasion of Nerv begins, with the objective to eliminate all Eva pilots and staff.

As shells explode over Asuka’s drowned Eva, she curls up and repeats that she doesn’t want to die — a choice that seems too melodramatic for cinema (at least on paper) but has an odd resonance, here, as animation, especially in the absence of all other sounds and superficial realism. Yet instead of allowing the moment’s pathos to play out, The End Of Evangelion comes into its second bad moment: Asuka’s communing with her mother, who seems to tell her that she’ll protect the girl, after which Eva 02 jumps out of the water, and begins to repulse the Japanese army. The triumphant music, Asuka’s hammy declarations of her ‘epiphany,’ and so on, follow the biggest superhero cliches imaginable, for even if one argues that Asuka’s eventual injury (and possible death) is a subversion of this cliche, that is simply not the case, now, from the framing of the images to the number of scenes in between this one and her eventual defeat, which is simply too far-away to work in any real subversive context.

Seeing this, Seele decides to release the Mass Production Evangelions to deal with Asuka, which are some of the best designed villains in the entire series. They behave and look reptilian on land, yet clearly resemble vultures in flight, making their eventual ‘plucking’ at 02’s anthropomorphic features all the more unsettling. This includes the disemboweling of 02, to their blurred appearance in Asuka’s line of vision as she pathetically reaches out her hand at them, only to see them circle above and unexpectedly launch their spears into her body — a final insult, in a sense, for they never visit her again, and the viewer’s forced to deal with the suddenness and lack of closure. In fact, I’d argue that this sort of manipulativeness is what anime is often best at, and while viewers might wince at the word, this is really art’s chief advantage over life. Art, after all, can pick and choose its own facts, its own narrative order, without much concern for anything but effect. It is an idea that is too often glossed over, even as every book, film, or story of value that we consume is calculated for doing — then masking! — precisely that.

The End Of Evangelion Instrumentality Human ComplementMeanwhile, Seele’s invasion has destroyed much of Nerv, and killed off quite a few staff members. Shinji is ‘misbehaving’ again, and refuses to get up when called by Misato, forcing her to drag him off the floor, as he pines for Asuka’s attention, as well as her safety. Misato gets shot, and tells Shinji she will never forgive him if he refuses to pilot his Eva at this critical time. He agrees, and this kicks off End’s Instrumentality sequence, wherein — unlike in the show — we can be more certain that these are the famed ‘complements’ returning to one another, ending with Shinji sobbing over the (possibly dead) body of Asuka.

It’s a long process, and visually superior (at least in a technical sense) to the series: there is, for instance, the great shot of Lilith coming off of her cross, down to how the skin physically rebounds after escaping the nails; a shot of Mistako speaking to a lover, all the while the image is of a spinning fan; a ‘turn’ towards Shinji’s childhood, with blurred-out, grainy images that suggest how he colors and discolors such memories; live-action sequences that are shot documentary-style as the characters seem to enter into a higher plane of existence; and, of course, the last few suggestive shots, of two petrified figures across the destroyed world, above two living (?) ones.

At bottom, End’s primary reason for existence is to provide an alternative to the show’s mythos: or rather, a glimpse into how this mythos plays out physically, thus turning The End Of Evangelion into an action film, first, wherein the first half is dedicated to war (external and not), and the latter portion to its after-shocks, in a way that’s visible rather than implied. Yet for all these changes — all of them, by the way, stylistic, or on the level of plot — it is important to realize that the exchanges between characters are still quite similar to those in Evangelion. The ideas re: death, living, identity, personal boundaries, and pain are the same, and expressed with the same mix of novelty and platitudes. One could argue, then, that Hideaki Anno was merely tossing darts in the hopes that a few of them would stick, a ratio he’s not improved upon since the original series. For every well-parsed line or interesting phrasing, there are atrocities such as: “If you decide to live, anywhere can be heaven — because you’re alive. There will be chances to be happy anywhere. As long as the sun, earth, and moon exist, everything will be alright.” In short, the material can still be bad, bad, bad, with the caveat that a noble failure, as parts of Evangelion are, can be MUCH better to learn from, for the sake of the future, than a merely solid work of animation, as The End Of Evangelion generally is.

But why the fuck was shinji choking a possibly dead best girl? Is he just a sociopath?

Proving to see if she was real/tangible and if she would resist

That makes sense. Thank you user, you've been very helpful.