This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

Even if it had just stuck to the teenagers-fighting-robot formula and alternating-action-and-contemplation style of its early episodes, Neon Genesis Evangelion would have been an excellent series. The first six chapters of the saga offer rich characterizations, stunning visuals, and an intriguing mythology which are enough to sustain our interest. Enough...but Hideaki Anno had so much more up his sleeve. The introduction of Asuka, a fiery personality who startlingly alters the tempo and tone of the show with her dynamic introduction. A series of deceptively straightforward yet clever monster-of-the-week episodes in which we can almost believe that Evangelion has settled into its routine. And then things get truly weird. The appearance of genuinely avant-garde sequences like Rei's vision or Shinji's escape from inside an abstract Angel, moments of bold visual and conceptual exploration that are barely contained by the surrounding genre trappings. Character moments that dive deeper and deeper into their despairing hearts, suggesting things may not turn out well after all. Spectacular meltdowns. Dazzling montages. Unbroken still shots and stretches of silence. Titles flashing across the screen, voices cascading across the soundtrack, samples of sublime classical music juxtaposed against images of visceral violence. Whispers and hints of a tangled mythology unraveling and reassembling before our ears and eyes like the Lance of Longinus as it is hurled beyond the limits of earth's atmosphere.

And then finally...these episodes, ideas and images and sounds so wild and sensorily overwhelming that they can't be even be contained within a single unit of the show, spilling out over the final forty minutes of Shinji's journey from the empty streets of a seaside city to the echo chambers of his own entangled consciousness. For twenty-four episodes Shinji has been told - and told himself - not to run away. Now as space itself folds and expands and disintegrates, running away is no longer even an option. There's nowhere left to run, no surface to run across, he is everywhere and nowhere.

Welcome to the Human Instrumentality Project.

The reasons for these episodes' strange shape - the still shots, the sketchy drawings, the wide range of styles, the lack of a clear, grounded story, the stream-of-consciousness approach - are vague and varied. Hideaki Anno may have experienced depression while the series was in production, reshaping its narrative and style to suit his newfound interest in psychoanalysis. The script could have been altered last-minute, so that there was no time to fully animate new episodes. Or Gainax, the production company that often flew by the seat of its pants, may have ran out of funds. Some even accuse Anno of "trolling" fans, giving them the exact opposite of what they wanted, because of his frustration with the socially withdrawn, sexually-obsessed otaku culture. Some of these explanations overlap, others contradict each other, and depending which source you ask, you'll get a different emphasis. Hell, even Anno himself has changed his explanations on different occasions.

Ultimately what matters is the effect of the episodes themselves. And "Do you love me?" and "Take care of yourself" are as brilliant as they are frustrating, as exhausting as they are enrapturing. The sheer volume of information thrown at us in less than an hour can feel overwhelming; paying close attention, I'm sure I missed about 50% of what was said, shown, or suggested...and this is at least my third full run-through of the series. Oddly enough, I barely remembered most of the content onscreen despite those several viewings (the last in the summer of 2012; this is being written in the spring of 2015). I eagerly awaited these episodes more than any other in this rewatch, and was constantly surprised by what I saw and heard.

Lately I've been reading up on the lore of Evangelion - the various theories, the historical context of Anno's creation, the plot and characters details I hadn't picked up on before (moving from the slow, hypnotic pace of Twin Peaks to the hyperkinetic visual assault of Evangelion has required a bit of an adjustment). But all of that new information, that wider understanding of the Eva universe, evaporated as I plunged into these episodes. Despite the heady concepts presented - often verbally - these final chapters are really meant to be processed not intellectually, but viscerally.

So far I've said very little about what's in the episodes, focusing instead on my own reaction (appropriately, given the introspective nature of episodes 25 & 26). We begin by plunging into case studies of Shinji, Asuka, Rei, and Misato which unfold over the course of episode 25. I've heard it said that these episodes unfold entirely in Shinji's head but that does not seem quite accurate. The other characters speak and move in ways that suggest they have an independent existence and that they are not only his mental impressions (at one point he and Misato note that both of them are "the versions that exist" inside each other's heads). But any semblance of physical reality has fallen by the wayside. These episodes resemble the visions experienced by the three pilots in episodes 16, 20, 22, and 23, but with a difference. This time, boldly, there is no outside context, and no introduction to smooth us from an Angel battle into what we can identify as a dreamscape.

This is a brilliant maneuver, even if it was conditioned by economic limitations (and the same goes for the static frames, repeated shots, and childlike drawings that compose most of the visuals). The earlier visions were shocking but we still felt we had one foot in the world of "reality." Episodes 25 and 26 demolish the standing of that reality, suggesting both explicitly and implicitly that it is no more real than other possibilities and that the essential truth isn't bound by physical limitations, but rather conditioned by psychological circumstances. Through harsh mutual interrogations, the characters identify their issues and the sources of their trauma - group therapy meets self-criticism meets re-education meets psychological warfare (prodding us to wonder if the distinctions between those terms are facades for the same phenomenon). Misato joins the adolescents, revealing that her composure and desire to please conceal a soul as broken as theirs, but we already knew that. Indeed, this psychodrama doesn't tell us anything particularly new about the characters - it consolidates and crystallizes our existing knowledge into a series of case studies. The age-old adage "show, don't tell" has always been under fire in the talky world of Neon Genesis Evangelion (though many memorable moments display character through action as well). But Evangelion gets away with "telling" because its didacticism is so dynamic, presenting info-dumps as audiovisual overloads with a distinctly Godardian rhythm.

The two episodes bleed into one another and overlap, and taken together they are so radically different from the rest of the series that it makes sense to discuss them simultaneously, as I am here. Nonetheless, there is a distinction to be made between them. Episode 25 feels more a bit more rigorous in its organization, like an animated dossier presented to the unseen conductors of the Human Instrumentality Program, as they probe for weaknesses in the subjects' egos and seek to open them up to a collectivized consciousness. But Episode 26 plunges into the stream-of-consciousness that the previous episode only dips a toe into. We may very well be fully with Shinji this time although initially it is suggested that he and Asuka together are the central subjects. Perhaps this is since Misato is older and possibly (one alarming and bloody still frame suggests) dead, while Rei is not quite human. Shinji and Asuka, meanwhile, emerge as the two most plausible protagonists, opponents in much of the drama only because they truly have so much in common.

We travel with Shinji through a beautiful collage ranging from actual still photographs to gorgeously sketchy animations (his body floating through the white space of the blank canvas, magically mutating into various forms) and finally to my favorite part of the episodes, a sequence at once shockingly ordinary and aggressively disorienting. Shinji...wakes up. Ah, it's all a dream! Asuka nags him as a platonic buddy with barely hidden romantic designs. Yui and Gendo hover in the kitchen, mom in an apron at the sink, father with his nose buried in the newspaper. Here their devastating indifference is transformed into lovable distraction. And you were there, and you were there, and you were there too: even Pen-Pen appears as an alarm clock, a rational explanation for why a penguin wormed its way into Shinji's mecha nightmare.

In the street Shinji collides with Rei, perhaps the most incongrous figure in this whole alternate reality: the mysterious clone has been transformed into a sweater-clad schoolgirl, rushing to class with toast in her mouth and groaning with pain when she bonks her head against Shinji's and shrieking in embarassment when he sees her panties. At school, girls fight over our usually timid hero, who cracks jokes with his friends and mocks them for being "whipped." The foxy Miss Misato marches into the classroom to preside over the unruly class. This entire passage is a riot, cleverly playing on our associations from the series we've just watched. An astonishingly bold gesture in one sense, but we also worry that the entire series has been retconned into a wild dream, its psychodrama safely recontextualized in a teen-comedy anime. Not quite.

We emerge into the nether-realm of Shinji's consciousness as he discovers this is but one of many possible realities, over which he has more control than he realized. He towers over the model-sized cityscape of Tokyo-3, takes his place on a stage surrounded by his fellow cast members (in a kind of acid-fueled Japanese take on "This is Your Life, Shinji Ikaru"), and then stands on a Little Prince-sized planet (some have suggested this is Lilith's black moon), safely surrounded by his friends, family, and enemies - not that those categories are mutually exclusive. Shinji realizes he can love himself, everyone applauds, and the episode ends on an upbeat high note or else a completely inexplicable mind-fuck or...why not both at once?

Many hate these episodes or find them disappointing. Here is roughly what I wrote when I first saw them nearly four years ago:

The last two episodes were pretty interesting, and I liked how far avant-garde Anno was willing to go, though I had some mixed emotions as they reminded me of screenplays I wrote in my late teens and early twenties, which is not necessarily a good thing! On the same subject, but from a different point of view, I was awfully intrigued by where he went with Shinji at the end of the penultimate episode.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the series' final moments - I suspect that this is supposed to be in some sense ironic since everything I've gathered suggests that End of Evangelion is not a happy ending, besides which this whole "instrumentality" thing is built up  fairly ambiguously.

Honestly, I still don't know if episodes 25 & 26 represent an alternative perspective to the apocalyptic tenor of End of Evangelion, if they offer a genuine beacon of warm camaraderie for the lonely little boy, or if they cynically present a successful (and dangerous) operation of Instrumentality at face-value to make us think that Shinji is successfully integrating his personality when he is in fact crawling up his own (or Anno's) ass. That is left to our interpretation and imagination - just what you would expect from the master, Hideaki Anno!

Should the episodes be more clear? Is their ambiguity a virtue? I'll discuss these questions in a moment with Bob Clark, my erstwhile partner in this whole Evangelion enterprise, but for now I'll just say that whatever criticisms can be made against these episode...man oh man am I glad they exist!



me: So, putting aside End of Evangelion (for the moment)...does the show have a happy ending?

Bob: Putting aside End of Evangelion, I'm not even sure you can say the show has AN ending, at all. It really does read as a summary of events not shown. It's more an epilogue than an actual ending.
It's like an extended "To Be Continued". It has a summation of the themes of the show up to now, sure, and does so with tremendous visual gusto. But it blithely overlooks a whole lot of development the show was leading to, and really is only capitalized on by the movie.
Looking at it now, a good contemporary analogue is the episode "Epitath One" from the Joss Whedon show "Dollhouse". It follows a big climactic "finale" episode (that actually was a finale, as EO wasn't aired), and shows an extended future scenario aftermath that only gets filled out by the next season.

me: What developments did you feel it overlooked?

Bob: Well, the connection between Yui and the Evas, for one thing

me: He does refer to the Eva as his mother in one scene.

Bob: Yeah, but it's something that only really makes sense after EoE. There's so much that goes on here that is completely opaque the first time you see it.

me: That's what I like about the episode though. It's less about making sense and more about the experience. A bit like the Black Lodge at the end of Twin Peaks.

Bob: On one hand, you can see it as a capitulation of an aesthetic that Anno has been developing and building on ever since Splitting of the Breast. And at its best moments, he really nails it. But it's hard to believe that this was always the intended ending. At the very least, I buy the idea that Anno decided to let loose and play as much as possible because he knew he was going to follow it up with EoE.

me: I though EoE was only commissioned after the fallout from the series though?

Bob: I'm not sure. One theory I think is that they began planning for EoE as the series was winding down. There's some credence to it in that both Gunbuster and Nadia's endings are done in 1.85 (sadly I don't think the DVD of Nadia has it like that), and that's how EoE is done.

me: Do you buy the theory that 25/26 is the "internal" version of what we see externally in EoE?

Bob: I think it makes sense, yeah. I don't think a one to one correlation is quite so easy or interesting, but it works to an extent. And a lot of the two endings do feel tremendously linked. There are significant questions, though.
Like, let's assume that everything in these endings is "what's going on inside everyone's heads during Instrumentality."
Can Misato and Ritsuko even be a part of that? If you die before Instrumentality, can you really be a part of it?

me: I was wondering that too. But doesnt the film also play with that idea?

Bob: I don't remember. But the finality of Misato's death is a big blow at the end, I think.

me: There's another question about this episode. Are we JUST in Shinji's mind? Or are we in others' as well? Are they bleeding into one another - the process of Instrumentality unfolding in super-slow motion perhaps?
Interestingly, they show Ritsuko and Misato dead here, without context.

Bob: Yeah, that's why I mentioned them.

me: So if it's an inconsistency it's a conscious one.

Bob: Well, they definitely tease the question. There's some overlap in the "Shinji in Asuka's mind talking to the Asuka in Shinji's mind" thing.
But then Shinji's shown all of that happening on a stage, so the question is really still if it's all still in him. One of the reasons why this ending is a little unsatisfying is because (as they admit to, with time) we only focus on Shinji at the end.

me: They play with the idea a lot. At the beginning of ep. 26 they say "now we will focus just on Shinji" right? Or something to that effect? But then aren't there still parts in there where we seem to be exploring other characters' minds? Or am I just remembering parts from ep. 25?

Bob: There might be a little, but they really hammer in on Shinji. And that card seems to be a full admission of "we had more planned, but we had to scale back, hopefully we'll be able to do the rest"

me: Well they do give everyone the stage for a bit in ep. 25.
Or at least the big 4.

Bob: Right. But after that they bottleneck.
And even in 25 there's lots of stuff that is suggestive of things that happen in EoE, like Unit 2 in fetal position in water.

me: And of course the Misato/Ritsuko shots.
How do you feel about the episode in the larger context of EoE existing? Do you feel it's complementary, or redundant?

Bob: Definitely complementary. In some cases, really strong. Some things in this episode scream "recycled animation", and other things really feel like brilliant repurposings.
That moment when Shinji's outline is surrounded by red, and filled with subliminal glimpses of all the angels and images of the series is really interesting.

me: Do you see the ending as sincerely hopeful? Or an illusion?
Let's separate from EoE for a moment if we can.
Is the "congratulations" a lie?

Bob: I think in a sense it's addressed to the audience, the kids who were watching at the time. It seems that it's directed at the kids Shinji's age who might have watched this around the time they would be graduating from middle school.

me: So, sincere?

Bob: I think so yeah. I think it's holding back some, but sincere mostly.
I will mention something that's looking forward to EoE, however.
Both endings are making a crucial allusion together I think.Know what I'm talking about?

me: No.

Bob: Okay, in this ending, everybody's standing around Shinji clapping
In the next ending, we have one character straddling another, mimicing sex.Put them together, and what do you have?

me: Clockwork Orange?

Bob: That's it.
Add to that Instrumentality's likening to brainwashing. Add to that Ludwig Van.
And even add to that "congratulations" being a kind of mark of maturity.

me: Lot of Kubrick in this series...

Bob: Yeah, that's why I thought it really stands out.
Hell, the eyeball in Gendo's hand, as well.

me: That makes it sound more like the ending is cynical or an illusion.
i.e. "Congratulations, you've just been successfully brainwashed!"

Bob: It's more like "you've successfully beaten brainwashing."Remember, that ending of Clockwork Orange is meant to show the return to freedom in Alex's mind.

me: I feel like it was probably supposed to be more ambiguous/ironic (it is in the book, as I recall). But that got kind of bungled. I think Clockwork Orange a bit hamhanded and misguided as a message movie, but viscerally brilliant.
But yeah if we're tracing Kubrick - we could find strong obvious connections to 2001, and arguably as you've pointed out Clockwork. Also Strangelove I would say.
Lolita is obviously there (esp Gendo w/ Rei, not to say they are having sex but still).
You could also throw in The Killing, the idea of this operation going off flawlessly and then everything is bungled afterwards and everyone kinda falls. Think Gendo when he achieves Instrumentality. But at that point we're into plot/themes not visuals. And anyone that's mostly coincidence I'm sure.
Can't think of any Barry Lyndon links. But Full Metal Jacket inasmuch as the soldiers are dehumanized/bullied/broken down.
Anyway...
The school sequence. Thoughts?

Bob: Ha, I feel like we're getting ahead of ourselves.

me: Well, behind technically, since we started with the ending!

Bob: All of the sequences in the second episode, or most of them, I think are expressions of different ways to experience and aleviate social anxiety, and the way that Anno plays with the medium really pushes the message as much as the substance themselves.
Everything in the school fantasy is self-consciously playing on genre tropes in anime, putting all the characters into roles that are much more comfortable fits in the domestic/school comedy settings. Not just more comfortable for Shinji, but for the audience as well.
Asuka is still a tsundere, but is now unambiguously his childhood friend and romantic potential. Shinji is more expressive. Rei is practically a bimbo.
It's practically an Archie comic in these scenes. And it's a situation pretty familiar to a lot of wellworn anime, even respected ones and mangas from masters like Rumiko Takashi. This is really making good on all the harem-comedy teasings we had before.
The bit where Gendo and Yui are in the kitchen and we never see their faces is a big tell, for me. It reminds me of Project A-ko-- another big parody-pastiche anime-- where parents are self consciously not present. It underlines how much anime trades of the fantasy of adolescent independence. And how much Eva has been rug-pulling it, revealing how painful that would really be.

me: The funny thing about it too is on its own terms, it works. It doesn't play like a parody but there's that extra level of parody there because of how we entered into the sequence. It is simultaneously the most conventional part of these 2 episodes and the most incredibly surreal.
And it feels like even as Anno is using it for a larger purpose, he's having fun with it too. There's genuine affection there for the characters. Almost like he's writing fanfiction of his own work.

Bob: Urusei Yatsura would be a good example of something that both obeys these tropes, but does so with a lot of art and creativity. Especially the parts of the anime that Oshii did.
Everybody's out of their roles, but not out of character. Even Shinji doesn't seem too out of himself. It's like this is how he imagines he'd be if he weren't so withdrawn. This is how he wants to be... or at least it's how he think the world expects him.

me: Yes, exactly. It's the characters in a new, fairly absurd situation (at least absurd in the larger context of the series) but they are still themselves.
Well, except for Rei.

Bob: This actually did eventually spawn a whole manga series of what that world would be like.

me: Haha I'm sure.

Bob: The other thing is it's fairly common for anime and manga to have plenty of these "alternate universe" stories told, even by the same creators.
(Project A-ko is again an example of this)

me: And that's a reason it rings true. Because it's exactly the kind of mundane fantasy so many people compose about themselves. Especially when they are jr. high age.
It's telling that this is a story of a kid who pilots giant robots - but the part that is most clearly a fantasy is the ordinary, jaunty, fun day at school.
Why do you think Rei is so different in this alternate universe though?
Any significance to it, since the other characters all seem so much like themselves (or at least the aspect of themselves they present to the world)?

Bob: It's the ironic counterpoint to prevalent themes in anime, I think. She's turned into a bit of a ditzy sexpot. The way she runs with toast in her teeth is a pretty common trope to show how ditsy and busy she is.

me: I get that part but...it's interesting that every other character is kept somewhat consistent and she's like an alternate version completely. I'm trying to figure out if that says anything about Shinji's view of her and/or about her.
Like his way to include her in his happy, fun fantasy reality would be to bring her down to earth (and totally change her character as a result).
It's like maybe Rei and what she represents are the hardest part to reconcile into his idea of a totally "normal" life. Even more than his cruel father and dead (well, sort of) mother. She's kind of the embodiment of everything beyond human reality in the series. As the film shows, she's certainly the embodiment of Instrumentality. So bringing her down to earth is a way of resisting it, maybe.

Bob: I think this is one of the areas where Anno's commentary about fan culture gets in the way of the characters a little. But it wouldn't be out of Shinji's character to imagine her like that, necessarily. Especially since he then says this is only one of many possible worlds he could create/imagine.The fact that there's no room or presence for Kaworu in this scene, or in anything besides the very beginning of the 25th episode is another telling absence, by the way. Especially since there's plenty of well worn room for some kind of prince-of-school worship if they wanted to shoehorn him into the fantasy.
It's also interesting that he imagines a role for Asuka where she's always been at his side. As though he has her there both as friend, romantic partner, and protector. That's what he imagines a friend and lover is essentially-- somebody who guards you from all the world's terrors. Who else would you want in your corner but Asuka?

me: We've talked about what's represented by him gravitating toward Asuka vs. Rei. In this situation, Asuka is really the possibility of the social, human world for Shinji. Which has its own limitations just as the ethereal spirit realm of Rei does, if taken alone.
I like how the school stuff also toys with the "it was all a dream" idea for a bit. The whole Wizard of Oz "you were there, you were there", etc trope - even Pen Pen, as an alarm clock which makes a bit more "realistic" sense than an actual pet penguin. (Although I guess a dream theory would be shot down when we see Rei, who would have been in his "dream" before he met her).

Bob: True. Although, the way he sees her in Tokyo 3 before he sees her... that's an interesting dream element.
And again, that's another thing that the series ending doesn't follow up on. It would seem that's a foreshadowing of Instrumentality, but it's never followed up on here. Only in EoE.
The question of what Instrumentality is, by the way, is something that is really plumbed in an interesting way in both episodes. Early on, the way they describe Instrumentality, it feels like they're describing social structures, communities. That one can lose one's individual identity to those larger structures, stop being one's self.
The way that the two episodes here break down the way people try to deal with loneliness-- through personal relationships (Kaji/Misato), through fierce independence (Asuka), through commitment to a cause you may not understand (Rei and Gendo), and then finally everything Shinji goes through in the second episode, which to an extent I think is breaking down what it's like to be an artist.

me: How so?

Bob: Well, the preponderance of self-consciously drawn imagery is one thing. It's obviously to help save on animation, but it's too nakedly noticeable not to be more meaningful. You can even see it as the school fantasy gradually breaks down from full animation, to those copic-marker drawn images, and then...
...what looks like what might be a pure script. His fantasy is breaking down into storyboards, then a script-- his act of fantasy is the creative act of trying to understand the world around him and connect to it through expressing himself.
That's something that really screamed out at me during what you might call the Bill Plympton section, the very sketchy animated portion. Before that we get a lot of still photographs that look like they might've been trace-reference images for the various photoreal images in the series. Then we get the copic-marker section of all the girls screaming at Shinji. Then the sketched animation, which winds up being a step by step breakdown of how to express yourself through systematic restraint and limitations.
The way that Anno constantly changes angle after the horizon line is added, it's as though Anno/Shinji is playing with all these different possible angles for how to look at the world, it feels like the director speaking directly to the audience, giving them a little art lesson to try and better understand how to express themselves and socialize through art.
The whole morphing-section by the way is such a great consolidation both of the body-horror of instrumentality, the body breaking down into liquid form, but doing so in a way that's a lot easier on the viewer, and affords such a great summary of the fluid nature of personality, and artistic expression.

me: It was interesting watching this after that video in which Anno goes into a classroom and literally teaches kids how to animate. Because I did see a lot of continuity there.
There's a shot in the transformation-of-the-sketch sequence that looked almost exactly like what he animated himself in the classroom.
It's worth watching in full. A great portrait of him in an interesting light.And different from some of the stuff I've been reading which makes him sound like Lars Von Trier on steroids haha.
Although I kind of think Von Trier may be more of a softie than people realize too.
I just mean stuff like this, which I literally just read.Not being conversant w/ anime at all I read it and am look, oh ok, really? Hm. Well then...on w/ all the stuff in the series that has nothing to do with meta-commentary on the anime community and still works perfectly well on its own & can be taken at face value, you know?
It sounds honestly a hell of a lot like the people who accused Lynch of trolling fans with FWWM. His most personal movie, probably, and they concluded it was a cynical gesture to either a) rake in additional $ on his flash-in-the-pan series, b) an elaborate hoax to express his boredom w/ his own material, c) a sarcastic attack on the people who liked his work.
Sound familiar?

Bob: I think a lot of this is true broadly, but I also think that there's a little too much being read into here. Yeah, Eva is a meta commentary and accusatory at times. But it's also intended to be a fun adventure show in parts. It is the very thing it's deconstructing.
I agree that he was angry with the way Asuka and Rei are sexualized. I think that Kaworu is much more than just trolling the fans. But yeah, so much of this is interesting, but shallow.
It is similar to the TP fans who could only read the whole thing in an ironic context, but fail to appreciate just how... Boy-Scout-y Lynch really is.

me: Before you said we were getting ahead of ourselves. Let's rewind to earlier, maybe back to 25? What did you want to address?

Bob: I think it's really interesting that we DON'T see SEELE in the ending at all.

me: And the fact that we are totally in medias res. To the point where there's no "here's reality and now let's pass through the gateway into another vision"...no, this is the only reality we get beginning to end.
I really, really loved that. To be in that confused state, it really helps to not remember/know how you arrived there.
Plus it contributes to the sense that this isn't a "dream" or "hallucination" or whatever. it's, in a sense, a deeper level of reality than the physical universe we've inhabited for (most of) 24 episodes.
It turns the whole concept inside-out. Instead of the physical universe as a gateway into inner visions, it's the reverse.

Bob: Right. But the fact that we've been prepared for this by all the other moments-- from Splitting of the Breast and Oral Stage to the "Mind Rape". It's the climax of that aesthetic.
What's also interesting is how grounded some of it is. Where the hell is this stage from? All this backstage stuff? Nowhere in the show previously. It's just there out of nowhere to give context to the artificiality of it all.

me: It's both a mindfuck without a context and a mindfuck whose context is the rest of the series.

Bob: And without concrete explanation of what instrumentality is, it feels like Shinji's response to everything that came before. Killing Kaworu, a human being ostensibly, causes him to finally break. but again, that just makes it more interesting how completely absent he is from all this.

me: Definitely. I remember if I really had a clue that this was supposed to be part of some bigger thing happening at the time, that this was the Human Instrumentality Project and not just Shinji's personal catharsis/psychodrama. I mean they do say it's Instrumentality in the episode but they say a lot of shit that flies right past. Anyway, that's such a cool way to do it.
To experience it from the inside.

Bob: And to have so much of what is elaborated later rendered in an impressionistic way. Shinji does say it's like melting, as he's going out of focus slowly. Really effective use of minimalism.

me: That was a beautiful image.
It's really hard for me to imagine liking this episode more if the budget was higher. I mean I guess if it was just End of Evangelion (but then again, that works so beautifully as a film and I have to feel it would have been somewhat compromised by being limited to 2 TV episodes). Basically I think we got the best of both worlds.

Bob: I think that if we got the original ending, whatever it might've been, it probably would've been a little of both these things.

me: Maybe...but that might have diluted both.
Rei's monologue is interesting. I was almost a bit surprised they gave her one side-by-side with Shinji and Asuka almost like she is another teenager with problems. But her "problems" are a whole different ballgame.
What's your take on what Instrumentality means for her?

Bob: I suppose it really does mean the end of her as a person. Everybody else sort of becomes one in the sea of souls. Rei, however-- she's supposed to be completely subsumed into Lillith.
I think that if we got whatever the "hybrid" ending of the original might've been, it would've followed up on all the mythology the show had been building up, but in shorter form, and some of the gentler abstraction that we get here, than the absolutely aggressive stuff in EoE. I think in a sense it would've been a bit more unambiguously positive.

me: She says she desires death but must obey the will of her master, essentially, right?
What do you make of Asuka's and Misato's experience with Instrumentality? Is it just a recognition of their insecurities, or is something new actually achieved?

Bob: Well, with Asuka I think we only get the first half of something. We need the rest of EoE to really understand it. Mostly it's just a recap of her insecurities, but after that she kind of dissolves as a person (pun intended). And Misato-- she's treated similarly, but it's really hard to tell if she's actually present in the soup.
After a while they really just become mouthpieces for the psycho/philo mumbo jumbo that Shinji needs to bounce off of to become whole again. They stop being characters themselves. Asuka's still herself for a while, but drops away until the fantasy, oddly. She's most herself there.
It won't be until EoE that we really get a sense of people with their identities still intact, fighting to remain individuals, even in the midst of instrumentality.

me: That's a good point about the slippage between these characters as distinct individuals vs. projections of Shinji's own psyche vs. messengers from whoever is implementing Instrumentality.
The charitable interpretation would be that this works to show Shinji slipping in and out of connecting to other people but more likely it's just sort of a kitchen sink approach.
I like the idea of the characters slipping in and out of being themselves, shells to probe Shinji, and/or projections from within himself. Though I'm not sure how well that would hold up under scrutiny.

Bob: Especially because we get instrumentality without any idea of whose agenda is really being fulfilled. SEELE? Gendo? The Angels? None of that is addressed here at all.
There's hints of a conflict (Misato and Ritsuko dead) but nothing conclusive.

me: My main criticism of the episodes, especially the first one (though maybe the first part of the second one too) is the sheer volume of information. I mean, I'm not totally sure that is a flaw but at the same time it feels like a lot of the psychological/emotional revelation needs to be digested but its just machine gun fired at us. Pretty overwhelming.

Bob: This is the thing that really suffers in the loss of budget I think. The hybrid version woudl've been a lot gentler in this.

me: So much is explicitly stated, and so quickly. My favorite parts of the episode are probably more visually-driven than verbally. Or rather (because all parts of the episode are pretty visually-driven) the parts where the verbal is pared down.

Bob: Like, maybe between the Sea of Dirac type stuff, we would've gotten more concrete glimpses of the bigger conflict that is shown in detail in EoE.

me: Again, one could probably justify this but it's one thing to be assaulted/overwhelmed by tons of emotions and sensations and another to be assaulted/overwhelmed by descriptions/statements of said emotions and sensations. its the tell-don't-show instinct which is sometimes NGE's Achille's heel.
The redemptive quality is that there's virtually always something interesting going on even during info dumps. Usually not shots of just people's faces with mouths moving at least.

Bob: Yeah, exactly. We get plenty of expressive visual accompaniment to the exposition. It's practitically German expressionism.

me: And that's true even in the more conventional episodes. If I can critique NGE for being too heavy on verbal expression it at least never skimps on visual expression.
Of course I also watch subs so that only adds to the overwhelming nature haha.
I don't have too much specifically to point out but the sound design and mixing of these episodes is fantastic.Listened to it on headphones and I feel like it goes a long way to compensating for what could be seen as visual limitations (though of course I love how these limitations are used too).

Bob: They also do a great job of bringing back all the previous mindscape music. It all goes back to Splitting of the Breast.

me: Wonderfully scored.
Any other thoughts on the episodes?

Bob: Jeez, there's so much we could get into.
Like, the heightened prominence of all the Bridge Bunnies in the Instrumentality portions. Shinji didn't even really know them! What the fuck are they doing there!

me: There are parts where it feels it's really more for the viewer, summarizing, touching base, concluding, than for Shinji himself (this relates also to the slippage of the characters being mental images but also themselves - something Rei kind of calls out when she tells Asuka "that applies to you too" in the middle of her acting all objective & scolding Shinji).
Also aren't they the last people to say Congratulations to Shinji before his parents?
Kind of an odd choice. I guess going from most important to least, but then saving the actually most important for last.

Bob: I think so. I remember that in one bit where Shinji is hearing all of those people on the phone, Asuka's the first voice.

me: Here's a bigger question, that admittedly relates to the more we learn about Instrumentality in EoE...
What exactly does the outcome of the episode mean in terms of Instrumentality?
Has Shinji broken out of it, because he's confident in himself? Or is this his happier, more peaceful state in which he's connecting to other people (who seem more like idealizations of each other), hence he is fulfilling Instrumentality?

Bob: That's a good question. Is this the defeat of Instrumentality, or the fulfillment of it? We barely even know what it is. For all we know, it might've been possible to create a new Eden with it, a paradise of all human desires fulfilled. Ultimately I think it's more that he's decided to coexist with others and not nullify his connection with them into something he completely controls, and which is therefore isolating.
By joining with people and being positive about himself, he's able to join the social human community without destroying his own individual spirit. He's able to express himself without negating his uniqueness through self consciousness or social mediation. In that sense, this really is the defeat of what Instrumentality was-- a prolonged, physical state of denial.
We also have to wonder how much of Shinji's inner vision in the TV ending is purely him. How much of it is everyone else? How much of it is whatever angelic medium is going through all this? Remember, all those "inner moments" in past episodes signified communion with Angels or Angel tech, like the Eva. So obviously what's going on has a mediating element of the divine. And that's what Angels are, after all. Messengers of god, the medium with which God communicates to man.And finally, maybe that's why things have to get so abstract and expressionistic in the end. This is a final confrontation with the Angels, the messengers, the masters of the medium.
It'll be followed up on somewhat in EoE, despite it being more literal even in the dream stuff, but here, it really is about the conflict between the messenge and the messenger. When you're up against the angels of any nature, better or otherwise, it's going to get somewhat meta.

me: If Shinji DOES escape Instrumentality...why/how? It's clearer in EoE. Here it seems more like he's following a certain logical flow.
There doesn't seem to be a point where he fights and/or breaks free and/or is rescued and/or is even given the option not to undergo Instrumentality.

Bob: Well, it does arrive right after he imagines a world that works for him. So perhaps that's the step of positivity here-- if you can imagine a better world, a better life, why not take that positivity and live with it and use it?
Shinji breaking with Instrumentality in EoE is more about defiance, as I remember it. It's not about what he feels, as much, as about his resolve to remain himself, and not just be a part of the soup. Here, it's more that he can find something in himself that he wants to share with others. There-- the question is if you want to be yourself, on your own terms, even if it means loneliness.

me: Why the titles at the end? "Thank you father. Goodbye, mother." I get the part about the kids.

Bob: Hm. I wonder if Anno's mother had died at that point?

me: Well, she was in the classroom video so no! That's why it stuck out to me, because I had just watched that.
Makes it seem like it's almost Shinji saying that instead.

Bob: I suppose so.
God knows what he's thanking his father for though.
The children thing now-- if that's Shinji saying congratulations, it implies that maybe the children are the ones who are going to reject Instrumentality en masse and inherit the world.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.


As for two last episodes, I would like to introduce what has been said about them in Japanese anime critics scene. Significance of these two episodes have been discussed in so many occasions and the overview of these discussions may help to give us a better perspective on the issue. Frankly, I don't know if I agree with these discussions. But these two are often discussed texts on the issue, I believe.

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"In the last two episodes, Anno suddenly abandoned the narrative flow in the work in progress, and ended the TV series with Sinji's monologue and the description of his inner world only. All the service beautifully constructed up until Episode 24 were scrapped at the beginning of Episode 25 without any explanation. Particularly, the scene of the different Evangelion world inserted in the last episode - in this world, Eva does not exist and Shinji and co. are living a happy school life - made the work a meta-fiction and made a pointed criticism on the genre, laughing at desires of some particular group of fans. This ending created uneasy tensions among anime fans, and some pretty nasty insults and badmouthing toward Anno floated around in internet for some time.

But in my opinion, the essence of Evangelion is not in these episodes. First of all, it is unclear how much of these two episodes were planned in advance (there was a rumor that the TV stations demanded changes on the original gory ending in the script) and it was reported that the final ending of the narrative will be reproduced in the LD/VT version, we cannot take the naked meta-fictional strategy in the two episodes as Annno's intention. It is true that the development of the last two episodes actually showed Anno's direction (intention) directly, namely at the level of the narrative. However, even without these two episodes, I think the double structure of the NGE is obvious in its style, and its critical aspect is still intact. Actually, the problem of these two episodes might have camouflaged the real radicalness of the original series."

- "How Hideaki Anno finished 80's Japanese Anime" by Hiroki Azuma, 1996

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To be continued...

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Syndromes and a Century (2006/Thailand/dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul) appeared at #83 on my original list.

What it is • Two doctors meet, a man and a woman: she is interviewing him for a job at the hospital. They discuss his military history, he mentions he plays basketball, she asks him to hold out his fist (I've never quite been clear on why - to test his nerves?), and she asks him what "DDT" stands for (the best he can do is "Destroy Dirty Things"). This happens twice in the movie, at the beginning and then again halfway through. The first time we tend to stay closer to the woman when the interview ends, the second time we stick mostly with the man. In both cases, we also spend time with other characters in the hospital, and in a few cases scenes are repeated, or rather echoed with slight differences. As each half moves along, however, they grow further and further apart, creating a sense of a fork in the road in which the two paths lead in very, very different directions. Oh, and I've neglected to mention one crucial detail. The hospital of the first half is a rural clinic, surrounded by sun-dappled ferns and characterized by an easygoing, pleasant mood. The hospital of the second half - despite the presence of the same characters - seems to exist in an alternate universe: it is a massive structure with white walls and ceilings, heavily staffed and located in the heart of a city. This clever dual structure provides the skeleton of Syndromes and a Century's structure, but the meat on those bones is composed of individual moments: humorous and poignant character interactions, lingering shots of people and places, near-abstract depictions of afternoon eclipses in the countryside or ominous tubes sucking all the smoke from a basement room. Syndromes and a Century exists primarily to absorb us in a sense of space, or rather two very different spaces.

Why I like it •
I have always been fascinated by the juxtaposition of city and country, so Syndromes' parallel structure already has me hooked. But even if it only existed as that first half set in the balmy, blissful clinic, I would love it. There is no overarching story here, though there are many small stories scattered throughout, which the film's leisurely pace and open-ended approach allow us to explore. The second half is more unsettling, not quite as charming, as the first and that's certainly the point. The characters seem less comfortable with themselves, their environment, and one another, and the constant buzz of the metropolis, the flowing crowd, the windowless rooms, set both them and us on edge. Yet Weerasethakul also finds interest and excitement in this manmade jungle, carving out memorable interactions and capturing beautiful, unforgettable images of the warped machinery and stark design. Like Satantango, Platform, and Celine and Julie Go Boating, Syndromes and a Century creates a loose, energized structure to evoke a sense of openness and endless potential. These are films that open up a dream space and then let us wander inside of it, leaving us with a richer sense of wonder for our own world once they have ended.

How you can see it • Syndromes and a Century is available on DVD from Netflix. I wrote a full-length review as part of my "Best of the 21st Century?" series. This initial viewing inspired me to collect screen-captured frames from the movie in my very first visual tribute (something that has since become a common feature for this blog). If you haven't yet been won over by my description of the film, I invite you to look at those pictures: in this case images really do speak louder than words. A clip from Syndromes and a Century appears at 0:35 in "Falling into the Future" (the final chapter of my "32 Days of Movies" series).

What do you think? • Do you see many parallels between the first and second half of the film? Do you prefer one location to the other, or enjoy both in different ways? Are you absorbed into the world of Syndromes and a Century or do you find yourself restless? Have you seen any other Weerasethakul films and if so, which is your favorite, and why? Do you see a "Lynchian" element in the film's dual structure, offbeat character interactions, and moody shots (that close-up of the pipe comes to mind)? Does the film remind you of dreams, in it sense of shifting location and identity? If you are familiar with Thai history or contemporary society, what connections do you see in this film (the Thai government censored the movie, and in protest Weerasethakul inserted black leader and silence for the entire duration of the four deleted scenes)? Are there any other films you can think of that have a similar feeling of openness and exploration?

Since June (technically, since 2012 although there was a break of several years) I have been surveying the entire series of Neon Genesis Evangelion with an episode guide consisting of weekly reviews and discussions with Bob Clark, the Evangelion fan who introduced me to the show. This week we are scheduled to reach the cinematic climax of that saga, The End of Evangelion - a dazzling fusion of avant-garde experimentation and action anime, and one of my favorite films of all time. Not coincidentally, another ongoing series - my Friday "Favorites" countdown list - is also scheduled to cover The End of Evangelion (which landed at #82 on the top 100 list this is based on). To complete the triumvirate, I decided to create a short video on the film for my biweekly YouTube/Vimeo upload - it should be popping up by today and tomorrow. So the plan was to have three posts on The End of Evangelion this week.

That plan expanded as I realized that my discussion with Bob was so sprawling and in-depth that it made more sense to divide it into three separate entries - which will go up Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday - and for the cherry on top I am going to make a screen-cap visual tribute to the film's first half on Saturday (I already screen-capped the second half back when I first watched the movie)

So get ready for seven days of End of Evangelion coverage, starting today with this intro! Here is a schedule for the upcoming entries:

MONDAY - video essay: "The 3 1/2 minute review of The End of Evangelion"

TUESDAY - Neon Genesis Evangelion series - The End of Evangelion: my review in the context of the series, final comments from Murderous Ink & pt. 1 of discussion with Bob Clark

WEDNESDAY - Neon Genesis Evangelion series - The End of Evangelion: pt. 2 of discussion with Bob Clark

THURSDAY - Neon Genesis Evangelion series - The End of Evangelion: pt. 3 of discussion with Bob Clark

FRIDAY - Favorites entry on The End of Evangelion (capsule review discussing it as a standalone film)

SATURDAY - visual tribute to The End of Evangelion

And please share your own reflections and reactions to the discussion as the week goes along, and afterwards as well!

This video is an entry in End of Evangelion Week on this blog: every day a new post on the film will go up.

Here is my follow up to the last "3 1/2 Minute Review" video, which covered the TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion - a brief essay devoted to the remarkable follow-up feature film, The End of Evangelion. The first half of the video is spoiler-free; halfway through there is a prominent spoiler warning so that those who haven't seen the film yet can tune out.

Apologies for the poor audio quality of the narration, due to technical difficulties on my end.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

From its first few minutes, Neon Genesis Evangelion has alternated between meditative stillness and frenetic activity. Appropriately then, it's hard to tell if The End of Evangelion - the feature film produced a year after the series ended - takes its sweet time or moves so fast that it leaves us in the dust. Hideaki Anno certainly enjoys making us wait, even if he isn't always to blame: the nature of this vast co-production forces us to sit through a full minute and a half of logos before the film actually begins (aside from this litany of production companies, there are no opening credits). The DVD edition makes us wait even longer by attaching the film's trailer to the beginning of the movie - a trailer which perversely features only live action; the women onscreen are the voice actors appearing as their characters in a mundane alternate universe mostly cut from the movie. Shinji is the first character we see in the actual movie, but the broken boy's eyes are hidden by his bangs in the first shot, and they will mostly remain hidden for about thirty minutes. Likewise, Shinji will barely speak in the first half of the film even though his banshee-like scream closes it with a bang. And yet while Shinji sleepwalks, the world around him collapses.

Four minutes into the film, the show's simmering but latent sexuality has burst forth in ugly fashion - Shinji masturbates next to a comatose Asuka in the hospital. Thirteen minutes into the film, the violence has been escalated too: government forces invade NERV headquarters, creating a bloodbath so brutal and relentless that it could serve as the climax to any other action anime. But we're only getting started. Twenty-five minutes into the film, Asuka (who until now has been as passive as Shinji) gets to fulfill her arc by discovering her mother's AT field and launching the Eva battle to end all Eva battles, demolishing not just the Japanese military but eight Mass-Produced Evas whose toothy grins are no match for her Teutonic fury. Again, this gloriously-staged fight sequence could conclude any lesser anime but as we reel from this disorienting onslaught of action and anxiety, it all comes tumbling down. Thirty-six minutes into the film, after uncomfortably propositioning her teenage ward (mortally wounded, she is hoping to motivate him to escape into safety), Misato dies. Forty minutes into the film, Ritsuko is shot to death by Gendo. Forty-three minutes into the film, Asuka's Eva is torn to shred by the reactivated Evas - with her inside. Forty-five minutes into the film, the end credits roll...and we're only halfway through The End of Evangelion!

Rei's arm falls off at the fifty-minute mark (shortly before Gendo stuffs his hand inside her breast and apparently impregnates her with Adam, the fetal god implanted in his hand - yes, the fetal god implanted in his hand). She is absorbed into the goddess Lillith fifty-six minutes into the film. For about ten minutes all hell (or heaven?) breaks loose as a ghostlike giant naked Rei (with some help from Kaworu) shatters Shinji's ego in the sky, where he has been transported by the SEELE-controlled Evas, forming a luminiscent hologram of the Tree of Life high in the earth's atmosphere. An hour and eight minutes into the movie, Shinji - inside a vision, possibly shared with her - strangles Asuka and Instrumentality begins in earnest. Within five minutes, the entire population of the earth explodes into orange goo, Gendo is bitten in half by a giant beast (operated by his wife's soul) and three clones of Rei contemplate the dead commander's glasses to the upbeat poppy tempo of "Komm, Susser Tod" ("Come, Sweet Death," sung in English, lyrics penned by Anno himself). I'm pretty sure the world has ended an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie - but another fifteen minutes remains. The End of Evangelion is the kind of movie where you won't be able to catch your breath until the final frame, at which point you may want to rewind it to the beginning and start it all over again. I've watched it three times in the past four days.

I had seen the film maybe two or three times in the past. The first time, I was confounded not just by the insane imagery (which I didn't even attempt to figure out) but by what should be taken from it. Was this, as I put it at the time, "a kind of super-Buddhist perverse happy ending" in which all the fragmented, lonely characters are joined in blissful nirvana? The cheerful-melancholy music, luminous crosses bursting forth from the beleaguered planet, and the eerie inhuman smile marking the humongous Rei-goddess all establish this ambiguity, but so does the first half of the movie - and, to a certain extent, the show before it. Think about what we've witnessed up to this point. Halfway through the show, Shinji has made new friends while establishing a (relatively) enjoyable daily routine, settled into an incredibly important job that he excels at, and established an offbeat but dynamic family unit with Misato, Asuka, and even the remote Rei, an alternative to the broken biological family he has been running away from. For the first time since he was a little child in his mother's arms, the fourteen-year-old Shinji has hope. The remainder of the series strips away these accomplishments, and the rest of the cast suffers too. Ritsuko is betrayed by Gendo, Misato loses Kaji, Toji is mutilated by Shinji, Asuka's confidence is finally shattered by an Angel, and Rei dies - only to be replaced by another Rei whose grasp on her identity appears even flimsier than the previous clone's (although this films prompts us to question that conclusion). A broken Shinji is embraced by Kaworu, the new kid whose unconditional love and warm presence finally convinces Shinji that love and hope are real...until this potential love-of-his-life turns out to be an Angel whom Shinji must annihilate. Everyone is utterly broken by episode 24 of the series - even the sheltered city has been destroyed - and so the stage is set for Instrumentality.

In the light of this physical carnage and (even worse) psychological devastation, why is it such a bad thing for the boundaries between individuals to be shattered, for living and dead to be united in the warm bath of Lillith's bloodstream, for the souls of humanity to be stored away in a Black Moon where misunderstanding and aggression and loneliness are forgotten in the bliss of everything and nothing? What hedgehog wouldn't leap at the chance to lose its quills, finally huddling with other liberated porcupines in a protective mass? And yet...Shinji resists Instrumentality throughout the film. He is frightened inside the Eva as Rei/Lillith hovers before him (to be fair, who wouldn't be?). As is his ego wears down, he confronts Asuka in the "Hell Kitchen" - a replica of the spot where they shared that unsatisfying kiss, and where she finally realized Kaji had died. There he asks for her to accept him as himself: he doesn't want to join with her in mutual understanding - he wants to pull her into his world. Only after she spurns this fumbling advance does he lash out and strangle her, unleashing Instrumentality out of a desire to punish, rather than embrace, humanity. And inside the womb of Lillith, even as everyone else is sucked into the sea of LCL, Shinji decides that he needs other people so he can feel real. Is it his selfishness, rather than his bravery, which ultimately saves him from destruction? After breaking free from Rei's comforting embrace he escapes his mother's protective shell. Shinji drifts back to earth as Yui (in her Eva arc) floats off into space: both are essentially rejecting (or rejected by) Instrumentality in favor of individuality. The mother's individuality will be immortal but lonely. Shinji's will be fragile but, at least potentially, connected to other individuals.

The End of Evangelion is not so much about a two-way battle between individuality and Instrumentality. Instead there are at least three avenues facing the characters: isolation, surrender, or engagement. The first avenue, extreme isolation, is experienced in the early scenes of the film, in which every character is cut off from one another, with violence established as the only viable form of contact. Anno, whose well-publicized bouts of depression found their expression in the Evangelion characters, conveys the obvious limitations of this state with palpable despair. The second avenue, extreme surrender, appears in the simultaneously horrifying and tempting form of Instrumentality. This is represented in literal terms as the union of all souls but framed figuratively as an escape into an illusory protective shell, in which our socially-shaped identity can only wither and die. For Anno, the relevant example of this is the "otaku" culture, devoted to anime/manga entertainment, which he embraced well into his thirties (and which in turn both embraced and rejected his work on Evangelion). Working within the confines of the mecha genre, he demolishes its comforting conventions through narrative and stylistic experimentation, challenging his audience to wake up from the dream and look at the world around them. Hence the extended live-action sequence near the end of the film, in which we see not only the locations that inspired the animation (and the actresses who link these drawings to human reality) but an actual audience in a theater, staring back at us from the same screen we are staring at.

Where do episodes 25 and 26 fit into this framework? On the series, we are plunged directly into Instrumentality without the build-up offered by the film; the experience is both more challenging and more comforting than what we encounter in End of Evangelion. The abstraction of the final episodes can be disorienting for many viewers (I've noticed that, despite its own controversial reputation, End of is more popular among fans than 25 and 26). However, there is also something soothing about this approach: most notably the cheerful "Congratulations!" chorus of the TV conclusion vs. the intensity of a muttered "How disgusting." The episodes don't actually force us to watch the characters die despite brief glimpses of Misato's and Ritsuko's corpses. And nothing in the series is as vivid or hallucinatory as the feeding frenzy of the Mass-Produced Evas, the wholesale slaughter of NERV, the literal disintegration of the bridge crew, and the swirling cosmic light show conducted by an astral Ayanami. By framing its issues so philosophically, the series provokes us on a cerebral level while End of Evangelion tackles the same subject viscerally (not to make too clean a delineation: the film provides many moments that force us to think hard, and the final episodes contains many images and sounds that hit us in the gut). Some see the film as a "replacement" for the unsatisfactory episodes, which should henceforth be ignored. Others see the two endings as alternatives, equally valid, neither one definitive. Others consider them parallel narratives, the interior and exterior versions of the same story.

One popular theory holds that 25 and 26 can actually be nested within the film, since relatively little screentime is devoted to Shinji's experience "inside" Instrumentality in End of Evangelion, let alone the other characters' (Instrumentality unfolds over roughly eighteen minutes in the film vs. forty-eight in the series). I personally like this idea, and think it would make sense to place the beginning of episode 25 at the moment when the afterglow of "Komm, Susser Tod" fades into snatches of dialogue in which unseen people - speaking in the voices of Rei, Misato, and Asuka - "break up" with someone (Shinji? themselves? us?). This is shortly after Shinji's Eva, wrapped tightly in the LCL cross, penetrated by the Lance of Longinus, enters into Rei's third eye and encounters the sea of giggling Rei-like forms swimming in perfect harmony around a glowing core. Shinji is on the cusp of ego death, the perfect time to cue Instrumentality as we see it in those two episodes. The show, of course, ends with every character surrounding Shinji, applauding him and offering a hearty "Congratulations!" If we take this as Shinji's acceptance, not of Instrumentality but of his own individual worth, what could follow that memorable finish? Well, in this case, the live-action montage, in which Anno takes the show's directness a step further, pointedly asking us to confront our own identity, our own options, before pulling us back into the animated universe where Rei begins to bleed those souls back into their world and Shinji makes his final decision.

And so, finally, we reach that third avenue. Brilliantly, The End of Evangelion does not just end with a darker, more cinematic incarnation of the "Congratulations" send-off, affirming that, yes, life will continue to be difficult but the hope for happiness remains. Instead, we get another title: "The End of Evangelion - One More Final: I Need You." Shinji's resolution to live in the world, amongst other people, is put to the test in what initially appears to be a lonely, if gorgeous, wasteland. The sea is red with the bloodlike LCL, the impaled Evas are crucified across the horizon, and half of Rei's face fills the sky, a literal godhead drained of the life that animated it. Shinji is all alone again. Cmmdr. Gendo Ikari, the father for whom a dim hope of reconciliation once flickered, has proven himself completely incapable of supporting Shinji. Cmmdr. This parent is a lost cause for his son because - ironically - he is too much like him, running away from intimacy and the pain that comes with it. Besides, Gendo pinned all his hope on a single idea, Yui - ironically, he may be the only one who won't ever be united with her. He's cut in half by his own desire, and we never see him join the sea of LCL. (One is reminded of Alice in Lost Highway, hissing "You'll never have me" in response to a pleading "I want you," because, naturally, the will is its own worst enemy.)

So Shinji is more an orphan than ever. What about his mother, who was - in a sense - his closest ally throughout the film? Their warm goodbye reinforces the notion that Shinji must escape the womb, literal and figurative, to be born into the world. His only confidence in the series comes from piloting the Eva but he can't rely on that crutch any longer. Kaworu, Shinji's shining ideal, is like the sun - draw too close and you'll get burned. He was a necessary, deeply rewarding, and deeply painful part of Shinji's development, but he is the very embodiment of escape from life's harsh realities. As Kaworu himself told Shinji, they cannot co-exist: one must obliterate the other. Rei, in many ways Shinji's soulmate, may be too much his soulmate - she is more inside than outside of him. She is the possibility not just of mutual understanding, but self understanding. Through their relationship each comes to comprehend and appreciate him/herself better. Now a physical reminder of Rei rests among the hills, her life force flows in the red sea (the lilim are of Lillith, after all), and her spirit flashes briefly into Shinji's view as if to usher him into a new stage of his life, just as she did in the opening minutes of the series. What will the stage be this time? Who will appear alongside Shinji, if not any of these other characters?

Where is Misato, who in her fumbling, well-meaning fashion has been mentoring Shinji from the first few minutes of the series? Their relationship is the one constant throughout Neon Genesis Evangelion - other characters occasionally slip into the background, but we never lose sight of Misato, the first and last person to offer Shinji encouragement and connection. Pushing him toward the Eva, she says, "Find out why you came here. Find out why you exist at all. And when you've found your answers, come back to me." She gives him her cross necklace and offers him a "grown-up kiss" before promising to "do the rest" when he returns. Creepy perhaps, but underneath the brazen sexual overtones is Misato's sincere desire to connect the only way she knows how. Now Shinji has found out - to the extent it's possible - why he came there and why he exists, or at least why he wants to. He can come back to Misato, the surrogate in-the-flesh mother to replace the spiritual mother from whom he has separated once again. Putting aside a literally sexual interpretation of her promised intimacy they can live together as friends, the only ones who have ever had each other's backs. Right?

Shinji might hope for this, but Misato is not so foolish. Like Yui, she can give Shinji an idea of what it human connection means, but she can not actually fulfill this connection. After Shinji gets in that elevator, Misato slumps down to die, accepting that her role is to guide Shinji to the promised land but not to enter with him. She also tells her young friend, "From now on, you're on your own. You'll have to make your own decisions," before compassionately describing her own mistakes and pleading with him to move through his pain and sorrow, to accept them without surrendering to them. These are parting words, and she knows it. When we find Shinji on the empty beach at film's end, Misato's cross is nailed to a post. She has not re-emerged from the LCL, and maybe she never will. Either way, she - Shinji's closest human contact, yet separated from him by age and experience - is not what he needs right now. Guidance has gone as far as it can with Shinji, as have support, and unconditional love, and security, and authority. Neon Genesis Evangelion is the story of many but as the story ends, most of these characters have found what they needed (if not necessarily what they wanted).

But there is one other character besides Shinji whose story has not yet been resolved, who has not served her purpose for him, and for whom he has not yet served his purpose. Fundamentally, her issues are the same as Shinji's even if expressed in radically different fashion. One hedgehog, proclaiming his desire to connect with others, flees in fright from their dangerous spines. The second hedgehog, insisting she wants nothing to do with others, repeatedly and painfully thrusts herself into those spines. Again, the two extremes, the two avenues which Anno tells us must be rejected - or rather compromised, a balance found in between, maintained through hard work, faith, and acceptance. Frankly, I don't care if their intimacy entails sex or even romance - the possibility feels like a red herring. More important is that, by sheer necessity, it will demand simple human interaction. Anno could not have chosen better characters to send on that painful, ugly middle path, frustrating yet the only rewarding way forward. Rather than a broad highway between two extremes, perhaps we should see this avenue of engagement as a tightrope, easily giving way to either isolation on one side, surrender/escape on the other. Will they fall from this precarious path? Will they even attempt to stay on it?

Shinji sits up. Asuka does not move. Shinji begins to strangle her, sitting atop her in the same position as Rei's in Instrumentality. This time, however, the dominant figure is performing an act of hate rather than love. Asuka does not react for a while - just as she could not react when he pleasured himself next to her immobile form in the hospital. But then she reaches up and touches his cheek, and he slowly lets go of her neck. Shinji cannot look at Asuka. Asuka looks at him, lowering her one good eye in his direction to observe his pathetic weeping. Moments before the film ends, Asuka says something - depending on the translation it's either "I'm going to be sick" or (the most common interpretation) "How disgusting."

It is. A flooded landscape, everything useful turned to rust. A palm full of semen, webbed between the fingers as if mocking the desire for contact. Pools of blood intermingling as machine guns and flamethrowers lay waste to thousands of lives in a matter of moments. Guts and gore and eye fluid and more blood sprawled across a meadow, dripping from the jaws of inhuman killers. Orange goo exploding with a squish and splash, annihilating the intricate composition of the human body in one climactic shudder. A puffy living corpse nailed to a slab, with little half-formed limbs dangling limply from its amputated flesh. Cherubic bubble-faced monsters, piercing themselves as they moan in ecstacy. A stream of yet more blood spreading across the starry sky, a red milky way replacing one maternal symbol with another. An angel (who isn't an Angel at all) spraying the stuff of life and death from her neck, welcoming a holy stigmata into the cervix in her forehead, fusing with the body she strides as she asks what it wishes. All of messy humanity becoming one in a process as gleeful as it is gross. Remember, we are dealing with the human form, tossing and turning its way into the great unknown. Millions of souls finding their place in the stream, one body bobbing up to the surface. A broken body and a broken spirit alone together on a beach, the neverending story, oldest one in the book. Silence. Speech. Stillness. Movement.

How disgusting. And how beautiful.

Bob: Oddly, this viewing was a lot more... hopeful than the last time I watched it. Maybe it's because of having more and more distance from the sheer terror of the bleakest parts, more acceptance knowing the end. Maybe it's because of seeing Anno top himself with spectacle in the Rebuild movies. But a lot of the sting was gone this time.
But also-- it's a lot easier to understand what the fuck is going on, now.

me: I remember you saying that you see the film as very pessimistic, even though Shinji & Asuka seem to get a fresh start at the end, and Instrumentality is overturned.

Bob: Yeah, I'm not as sure now.

me: About the pessimism?

Bob: I mean, it's genuinely apocalyptic.
I still think that the series captures a lot of the message a little better, but the feelings captured here, outside of the worst of the carnage and the most desperate of the inner moments, is delivered in an almost joyous visual register. I mean, once you actually try to understand what you're seeing. The first viewings are really tough to crack. It's like the last moments of 2001 on speed.

me: Do you mean "understand" in the sense of relating it to the mythology of the show? SEELE's plans, Lilith, the black moon, Yui in the Eva, etc?

Bob: Yeah, that's one level of it.
Let's talk about some of the recurring imagery within the film itself. The most obvious one is the plasm/fluid throughout-- Shinji's ejaculate, blood blood blood, bakelite, LCL.... am I missing anything?
Oh. Water, obviously.

me: We start with water.
And the LCL thing is crucial. All the fluid speaks to the desire to lose boundaries.
Frustrated in the case of Shinji's masturbation, fulfilled in the LCL in the end.
Hell, you could even put Shinji's tears in there, in the end. In that case just limited enough that it isn't eradicating/offering an alternative to individuality, but extending it just enough to touch another person.
It's kind of the opposite of the masturbation scene. Instead of jerking off at her, he is crying on her.
And earlier, of course, him crying on Misato's cross.
And Asuka's Eva buried in the water, of course. She's the character least suited to Instrumentality.
The "middle" credits also have a kind of liquidy/fluid feel to them, they way they shimmer and flow and twist.
And the spilled coffee, which also relates to Kaji's death.

Bob: Shinji's introduction-- coming out of the water, presumably after contemplating/attempting suicide. And then basically the same thing happens at the end.

me: Interesting. I didn't think that maybe he was contemplating drowning himself. Hell, I was wondering why his bangs were down over his face! That makes sense.

Bob: That and he's in that flooded area, dwelling on killing Kaworu.

me: We have to wait a long time to see Shinji's eyes. Visually, this film feels so, so different from the series.
Less like a cartoon if that makes sense.

Bob: I know exactly what that means. There's a few reasons for that I think.
First of all, the "off model" thing I was talking about at the tail end of the series-- it really shows here.
The characters are drawn much sharper, less hewing to the distinctive angular look that Sadamoto's character designs generally have. They look less like geometric polygons, more expressive. That's not to say they look less "cartoony"-- Asuka especially retains a very pointedly anime look, but it's different than how we're used to seeing her.
Now again, this is something that was happening a lot in the last portion of the show, but not to this extent. Partly it's because this is really the most heightened the drama has ever been, and as such this is the most expressive we've seen things. Partly it's because of the growing comfort the team all has with the designs, the characters, and with that comes a willingness to play a little looser. You can see that in the original stuff that pops up in the Rebuild movies, too.
But one of the biggest things, of course, is that they're animating for 1.85, and on 35 millimeter film this time. You have a much broader, richer canvas than the 1.33 16mm approach they had on the series, so they're playing with it.

me: There also seem to be more texture in the faces - like literally more lines. Sometimes to almost ridiculous extent like when Shinji screams, but a lot of times with Asuka too in the battle.

Bob: They have more time to devote to this than they did for the series, I'd think. More time, more money, and obviously more resources.
It's interesting seeing Anno play with this, because it results in probably the most tactile thing in anime since Akira, right when the action and body horror is reaching critical Lovecraftian mass. All those extra lines and texture really helps you feel the weight of what's happening more than you would've if they'd done this on TV, where you generally only had glimpses of this kind of detail.

me: Comparing Misato in ep. 1 & here. Such a world of difference.
In the nuance & detail. In fact I feel like we may have even brought that up way back when we discussed the early episodes. I'll have to go back and look.

Bob: You get some of that in Rebuild, too. Simply they just have more room to play in the film.
And this is the peak moment, the absolute climax, so to see them deviate from the norm a bit makes total sense in an expressionistic sense.

me: But Rei is an interesting example of this. She feels more angular, almost fragile in this. She seems more like an alien, in fact there are certain shots where she reminded me very much of Puck at the end of Close Encounters.
Asuka of course. They do some really wild things with her face here.The lines in it, the angles. Wrinkles almost. Just incredible.
Although she also has those iconic moments of sheer bliss where she's as cartoony/anime-y as all hell, mouth open, eyes wide, hair blowing in the wind.
I love the range of expressivity in this movie.
And it's also very disorienting coming from the series. Much the same as Fire Walk With Me is coming from Twin Peaks. From frame one something just feels fundamentally different. It's one of those cases where knowing the source might actually make the viewer feel even more lost in a way.

Bob: In a sense. I have to admit that this time it felt more apiece of the show than it did before, but I can definitely see that. I like imagining how critics might've felt seeing this divorced from the series.
For all the epic sights, it's a surprisingly intimate story, with only a handful of actual locations. Those locations may include the depths of a top secret base and the edge of Earth orbit, but really you can probably limit the settings to one hand without much waffling.
It oddly makes it feel something like one of those bottle-episode-esque "trapped in a single place" sci fi movies from the 50's, like The Thing From Another World, or the Carpenter remake. The emphasis is on all of the monstrous stuff happening in this one core place.
Helps make it all feel, in its own way, like a B-Movie. Which isn't bad.
Even the cast is remarkably shorn, from what we had previously in the series. There's no presence of Shinji's friends, for instance, and only one quick aside to the Mayor or whoever of Tokyo 2. In a sense, it feels even more intimate, even claustrophobic than episodes of the show that put a direct human face on all of the carnage outside of NERV HQ.
One of the big visual things I noticed this time, that sets it apart from the show, is symmetry. There are so many symmetrical compositions in the film, and symmetry in the film's structure itself, which you didn't see so much in the series.

me: I think the symmetry mostly has to do with Instrumentality, doesn't it? Like whenever we see a really symmetrical image it is in the midst of all souls joining together (the tree of life formation in the sky leaps to mind of course).
Are there symmetrical moments you can think of that aren't to do with Instrumentality?

Bob: I wouldn't say that there's symmetrical moments that DON'T have to do with Instrumentality. The whole movie does, to an extent. I'm just saying it's something that wasn't in the series as much, and it's throughout the whole film.
Say-- the shot of Misato walking down the hallway early on, to the Bond-style music.
I was struck by how much the music serves to cushion the surreal and horrific stuff we're shown. I always thought of it as a twist-the-knife contrast. But this time, it was more like it helped make the strange things we were seeing easier to digest. And sometimes it even helped to make the Instrumentality stuff, the Third Impact feel more hopeful. It helps you see the strange beauty in it much more. It's like a victory, especially towards the end. You feel the immense weight and effort it takes to make all the plans go awry.
By the way, the amount of non-Japanese language used throughout Evangelion is really fascinating to me. You get it on the series with Fly Me to the Moon, obviously.
But in the film probably THE crucial song has a German title and English lyrics, sung by what sounds like an American...

Bob: Actually, it sounded way more like britpop to me.
In fact, the guitar strands we hear throughout... it sounds like George Harrison.

The most TV element of the movie is the way that Shinji's reaction to seeing Unit 2 is repeated, shot for shot, at the end of the first part and beginning of the second. It's very much "last time on Evangelion..."
It raises the question of how much of this would've been like this if it were the ending of the TV series.

me: Oh yeah, Shinji, goddamn. When he screams! It looks like an old man, or a goblin or something.
And those Mass Produced Evas...fucking incredible. I love how this movie just keeps upping and upping the ante when you think it can't get any more breathtaking and disturbing.
Their ejection from the planes. Gliding down like deadly doves. Those weapons they carry, like surfboards at their side. The gaping jaws, no eyes. Just everything. Wow.

Bob: Oh god, yeah.
I think the original plan was to have a whole bunch of new angels at once, but these identical things are a great culmination of everything NERV and SEELE were planning in the past.
And just the visual they display-- they remind me of the poster for Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. That and Audrey II. All mouth.

me: Yes!
Yes! To both of those analogies. I was trying to think what they reminded me of. Little Shop of Horrors, so much.

Bob: Especially if you take into account the lost ending that Anno couldn't have possibly seen.

me: A lot of people have pointed out how weighty the battle feels. Like you can FEEL every move Asuka makes. Do you know if it was rotoscoped?

Bob:  I think the Eva was rotoscoped.

me: Yeah you get that crazy, weighty feel to it. It's funny - I don't really feel that so much with CGI even though so much of it is motion-capture.
Like there's a heaviness to cel-animated rotoscoping.
I don't know why.

Bob: I honestly feel that with CGI, you're worse off with motion-capture. Guillermo Del Toro said that he picked ILM to do Pacific Rim over Weta because he wanted the animation to be done in key frames, by hand, rather than mo-cap. It was more expressive that way.

me: Why do you think it works better in cel animation than CG?
I mean, it's WEIRD in traditional animation. I remember not really liking that look when I was a kid. But there's a perverse thrill to it, especially when it's mixed with more abstract forms of animation here.
Like it feels really disorienting to be getting something with that much of a physical presence in the Eva universe, which has been very pointedly about drawings. Sometimes very still, frozen drawings and even in the more dynamic battles, a very animated feel. Like that one in ep. 19, where the Eva acts like an animal. Here, it's very much acting like a human.
In either case, not totally like a robot.

Bob: Ultimately, rotoscoping, you still have to actually paint over it. You still have to keyframe it yourself. In CGI, you can certainly do the keyframing yourself. But MoCap is usually used to cut that out of the equation, to replace a lot of it with algorithms.
And oddly, because it's focused on an "actual actor's" performance, it's seen as superior. I really prefer the "performance of the animator" concept.
I think that Anno used footage of Michael Jordan as reference for some scenes in the show.One reason why the Evas are so lanky and angular.

me: A very 90s thing to do.
Let's rewind a little.
Do you have any thoughts on the invasion of NERV? It's ultra-violent.
Pretty brutal stuff and almost callous in its disregard for human life. I mean the invading army's I suppose, but the film too feels sort of shocking after the series which couched its violence in a certain way.
It reminds me of the really bloodthirsty movies I made as a kid with friends where everyone was getting shot with water pistols and coughing up gallons of ketchup while flailing to their deaths.
I think that was the first thing that really shocked me the first time I saw it. Well, that and Shiji's giz but I think it took me a moment to realize what I'd actually seen there haha. I was kind of like, nah they didn't just show that...
The first half of the movie has a lot of stuff like that, really. Very Fire Walk With Me. "You can't show THIS on television..."

Bob: Yeah. You can sense how they would've cut around it on TV, but they take full advantage of taking things much further.
On the violence-- well, it perfectly shows all the problems of mankind, violence and inhumanity boiled down here. I was a little surprised this time-- I thought when I watched it before there was a scene where Toji is found and killed in the hospital by those guys. But I guess he's healed and left by then?

me: Yeah they say him and Kensuke and Hikari left in ep. 24.
Wow, that's interesting. You just imagined it?

Bob: Hm, well I wonder where that memory comes from.

me: To be honest...his character probably should have died for dramatic reasons on the show.

Bob: In the manga he dies in the Eva battle. But this would've been a great place to show the audience that SEELE means business.

me: But that kind of highlights the contrast with the film, I guess. Even on the series where a character pretty clearly needed to die, they spare him. In the film, nope. Bam. Bam. Bam. Not only countless extras slaughtered in really ugly fashion. But Misato. Ritsuko. Asuka (I'd say). It's pretty sobering.
Granted, the end of the film gives it some silver lining. But boy do we earn it by that point.

Bob: I still don't think Asuka actually dies. But if not for Instrumentality, she would. She's definitely a goner.
And that's something that I wonder how it would've been on TV. I think we still would've seen Shinji fail to save her in time, but maybe with more of an effort? Or if not that, get there in time to save her, but still be used to bring about Instrumentality, as happens in the manga.
Random thought I had today-- Aren't the Angels, as "self sufficient life forms", essentially beings that are living embodiments of Instrumentality?

me: How so?

Bob: Such a big deal is made out of the fact that the Angels need no food, no support, are completely self sufficient. It's established really early on in the show, during the first attack.
We only see one of them ever at a time. So they kind of represent the kind of ever-shifting life form that we see during the Plympton period of the end of the TV show, constant evolution.
Remember-- in Instrumentality, everyone is rendered into one single being. That's the whole point. Individual identity is gone. Humanity is rendered, essentially, one giant Angel.
I'm just talking about the fact that they're one single life form, self sufficient. They are an Angel, which fits what Misato says-- we are the 18th Angel. We are once we get rid of all our differences.

me: Yes, that's a good point and a good reference (Misato's statement). Something that occurred to me recently is that the later angel attacks very much seem to take a form of proto-Instrumentality.
In the early attacks they are, well, attacking. Very violent, confrontational (even if just, as we discussed, in self-defense). Yet maybe beginning with the Splitting of the Breast it is the opposite, not us vs. you, one will come out on top, but "let's be one."
They even say that literally a few times.
I guess the in-world explanation would be that the Angels are evolving to a point where they know how to get into the pilot's minds. But that up to that point, their goal is the same they just don't know how to get there yet. They are exploring, curious.
However some of those middle angels do seem to be more purely destructive.

Bob: It's all part of the dialogue. They make offers, the offers are refused, they reply with greater force. Repeat.

me: Like ep. 8 to 12. And not totally sure where ep. 13 fits into that either.

Bob: You know, even Liliputian Hitcher counts as the Angels invading a human mind.

me: Suppose a case could be made for that being the first one.
The whole SEELE thing throws me a bit. They have their script/expectations but unless I missed something, up to ep. 24 they did not have contact with the Angels, nor were they "rooting" for them right? Yet Kaworu seems to be their tool. How did that come about?

Bob: I've always had suspicions that SEELE was secretly manipulating the Angels. Not necessarily hoping they'd win, but wanting to push them into attacking NERV in order to move the whole Instrumentality plan ahead, and learn as much as possible against their real adversary, Gendo. The Rebuilds basically imply this. The battles against the Angels have a very false flag feel to them, like Palpatine manipulating both sides of the Clone Wars.

me: Hm. How would they be able to do that? What understanding would they have of the Angels, or what ability to communicate/instigate them?
How do you think SEELE would be able to manipulate the Angels?

Bob: Finding them. Poking and prodding them. Provoking them into an attack. Doing what armies and navies do in Godzilla movies, but on purpose.

me: So like offscreen they are tracking down Angels and somehow instigating them into attacking? I suppose it's possible. SEELE is confusing!

Bob: Which actually bolsters my thought that perhaps SEELE is (mis)leading the Angels all along. They're programmed to go make contact with something that actually won't do exactly what they think it'll do.

me: Doesn't SEELE wrongly think it is Adam down in Terminal Dogma?

Bob: Exactly. And when Kaworu gets there, and sees that it's Lilith, he realizes the jig is up.

me: But you were saying SEELE was misleading the Angels. In that case, though, they were being misled themselves.
And why would they want him to make contact with Adam, anyway, as that would be a Third Impact without Instrumentality? Humanity would perish and be replaced by Angels. So they must have known it was Lilith (I'm not sure how, though) & sent Kaworu there as a kind of decoy to get the last Angel out of the way & pave the way for Instrumentality.

Bob: Exactly right.
Remember, they keep talking about it as a script they have to follow. A schedule to keep. I think SEELE, and even Gendo know exactly what's really going on with the Angels. They could've left them alone, at Antarctica, and not instigated any of this. In the movie, they even say that the Second Impact was provoked in order to stop Adam's growth and put them on the path for THEIR version of Instrumentality. Or maybe the only version of it.

me: SEELE says their goal is to use Shinji to start Instrumentality, and yet earlier didn't they want all the pilots destroyed? It seems like they are accepting Plan B there.

Bob: Eh... there's a lot of Plan B's floating around
Even the "pilots killed" plan is a Plan B.

me: But the point is I don't think destroying Shinji's ego was part of their master plan, was it?
Maybe they have to do that since he's inside Unit-01.

Bob: Well, by the time he's up in the sky, it certainly is.

me: Do you think they wanted to use Eva 01 but without the pilot? And then once he was inside they just had to get past him to still be able to use Eva 01?
I just can't figure out what they actually wanted.

Bob: I don't think it's super important.

me: Not the character/thematic stuff, no - but it is the central engine of the plot for much of the show and the first half of the movie at least.
There's this idea that there are different forms/directions for Instrumentality. Like SEELE's was to make themselves gods, Gendo's was to reunite himself with Yui, and Yui's was something else - to preserve humanity forever I guess.
And then there is Rei's version, which is pretty much the version that triumphs. Is it an extension of Yui's? Is it something else entirely?
I'm not sure.

Bob: Yeah. But then, they all result in the same thing. SEELE really did want to have all their forms destroyed to just be a sea of LCL. That was their idea of paradise.

me: That's what the movie seems to suggest, certainly. But there's this idea out there that they wanted Instrumentality so that they could become gods. Not totally sure where that comes from now that I think about it because yeah, once you're in the LCL you are kind of on the same level as everyone else.
There is a big difference, really, between Instrumentality as it could/is supposed to be and Instrumentality as enacted by Rei/Adam/Lilith/whatever-"Giant Naked Rei"-is.
And that difference is that Shinji is given the controls and asked "what do you want" by GNR.
Which certainly didn't seem to be in SEELE's or Gendo's playbook.
Not sure about Yui's.
Again, I'm not really sure what she wants/wanted out of all this.
Is the desire to hand control over to Shinji Rei's or Yui's desire?

Bob: I don't know. I think it's more interesting if it's Rei's, because he's then rejecting not only his father's plans, but his mother's, and going off to find his own path.
I suppose SEELE were expecting/hoping that they would be given the controls. That with Shinji's ego gone, they would be able to take it. Likewise, that's what Gendo wanted-- Shinji's ego gone, he can take control and bring back Yui.

me: Hm. So pull her out of the LCL rather than push everyone else in?

Bob: That, or at the very least, be reunited with her in the LCL if all else fails.

me: Something that I think is pretty well-supported by ep. 24...
Kaworu has Adam's soul just as Rei has Lilith's.
I'm not sure what that says about him in this movie.
But it explains to a certain extent why he's tagging along with Rei in all those scenes. Since Lilith and Adam are fused in Terminal Dogma.

Bob: It means that he's essentially talking to "God" between the two of them at the end. The two beings that began the human race.

me: Well not according to that theory - "First Ancestral Race" and all...
White egg & black egg, humans vs. angels.
But I'm not sure how much of that theorizing is supported by the series evidence.
Probably ep. 24 comes down the closest to that idea of two competing races.
But they don't get explicit as all the "two eggs crashed on earth and Lilith won out" stuff.

Bob: No, they don't.
I would say that video you watched before got one big thing in the mythology wrong, if we trust what we hear in the film.
The thing the video got wrong, that I noticed, was saying Adam and Lilith both crashed into the Earth. It seems here that Adam was the first offspring of Lilith. Misato says it. To Shinji maybe.
Basically making Man vs Angel a huge Cain and Abel story.

me: That's funny, as I read something recently which said Shinji and Asuka aren't playing Adam and Eve at the end of the movie, they're playing Cain and Abel.

Bob: Well what's interesting there is, it's Cain and Abel redeemed, if you see it that way.
And if you want to get even more biblical, they're not reenacting Adam and Eve-- they're reenacting Adam and Lilith. Lilith was originally kicked out of Paradise because she insisted on being on top during sex, and Adam refused that. What we have here is a really extreme symbolic expression of that-- Shinji treating Asuka with sexual violence. And the fact that he winds up stopping, of course, means it's a defeat of the old story, the beginning of something new.

me: "Mankind was spawned from a being called Lilith, just like Adam was." Hm, interesting, yeah that's an outright contradiction of that lore.
It also implies that it isn't Angels vs. humans. It's Angel 1 vs. Angel 2 vs. Angel 3 vs. (etc.) vs. Angel 18 (humans). All equal offspring of Lilith. But that seems contradicted by some other stuff. I dunno.
I suppose Misato/Kaji could be wrong (he was wrong about Adam before) but I'm not sure what the narrative utility of that would be.
There's never a point at which we see Angels fighting, for example.
It's Angels vs. humanity throughout the show. And then there's stuff where they link Lilith to humans and not to Angels. Kaworu talking about the lilim and Maya saying, when giant Rei emerges, that it's a human not an angel.

Bob: Really, so much of this is left ambiguous for a reason. To keep you wondering, and to make you accept the reality that in life, you never have full answers to some things.
Here's a thought about the end, and also the beginning-- that sight of Quantum Rei. Because what he sees in the first episode has got to be a Quantum Rei.

me: Yes, definitely.

Bob: What are they doing there? Both at the start of the show, and at the end of the film? QR comes when a person is collected into Instrumentality, or when somebody dies (Ritsuko). But they're clearly not doing that here.

me: Yes, great point.
I guess the best argument could be she appears to Shinji at those moments when he is on the cusp of co-existing. For him the biggest challenge may not be Instrumentality or death, but simply living with other people as an individual. So she appears to him at the beginning of his adventure, and again at the end, as a new adventure begins. Both taking him out of his shell. Maybe...
Like bookmarks.

Bob: I mean, it's obviously there primarily to bookend the series
You could also see them as symbols of mortality. She's there, waiting in the background. She isn't taking you yet. She will at some point. But she keeps her distance.

me: But also reinforcing that idea, that both times he is entertaining something new, unfamiliar, challenging.

Bob: I wonder if Anno didn't simply think "why DID we have her like that at the start?" and come up with an explanation on the fly, like the crew of LOST did for everything. This is a GOOD version of how to do that.

me: I was just thinking that. Is the first Rei evidence of Anno playing the long-con or is the last Rei evidence of Anno's genius at the ret-con?
Either way, kinda brilliant.
When I first saw End of Evangelion I couldn't figure if Instrumentality was, in some perverse way, a good thing. I think it's pretty clear Anno doesn't intend it to be, at least as end goal (which is an interesting question we can address in a bit). But I think it may be necessary and important as a step.

Bob: I think Instrumentality is important as a possible choice that you have to avoid.

me: If the problem of the characters, from the beginning of the show through the end of the film, is that they withdraw from other people and try to live without human connection isn't it odd that Instrumentality, which joins everyone as one, is presented as the ultimate mistake?
It's sort of an odd dramatic paradox. For the most part, NGE's message is "don't run away" but really, in the end, Instrumentality isn't about running away, it's about just the opposite.

Bob: Yes, but what brings everybody together? Eradicating all of their differences, everything that makes them individual humans. You're no longer connecting with a person who is different from yourself and overcoming the obstacles of those differences. You're simply annihilating yourselves. It's just death. Like in Barry Lyndon-- They Are All Equal Now.

me: I understand all that but still, it's basically taking something that is conceptually the opposite of the central problem and equating it with that problem. There is something of a contradiction there. I can't quite get over the cognitive dissonance of it. But maybe I'm missing something.
Maybe the best we could say is they offer two extremes, neither of which offers true potential for growth.
Because ultimately the Hedgehog's dilemma isn't just about getting too close, it's also about getting too far away. You have to find that happy medium, as Misato says. That's the best I can do for squaring that circle.

Bob: In the movie we are, in a sense, presented with a cinematic rhetorical argument for why Instrumentality is necessary evil, and also why it's the greatest evil of all. The first part of the movie is showing all of the walls that people put up, all of the forms of aggression and hostility we treat with everybody. All the things that, supposedly, Instrumentality will break.
And it's not just in the violence, although that's what made me think about it. All of the characters are acting in ways that are about closing themselves off from others, or pushing to destroy those who they think oppose them.
It's really in everything. SEELE sending the JSSDF to slaughter the NERV personnel. Shinji and Asuka breaking contact from all people, comatose. Shinji's selfish, perverse masturbation. Even Asuka's passionate battle fury to defend herself, and recall how she's basically able to command her AT field to attack, literally using her personal walls to defend herself.

me: Although that's also about her finally connecting with her mother.
All of the pilots go back to their mothers in this film. Asuka finally syncing with her mom in the Eva, and realizing she didn't abandon her. Rei floating up to Lilith ("welcome home") - not exactly a mother, but about as close as you can get for that character and basically the same principle: the larger being she came from. And of course, Shinji and Yui.
But it isn't enough. They have to move beyond that in the end.
Instrumentality isn't just an analogue for death, it's a pretty explicit analogue for the womb.
That's where that Freudian aspect comes in pretty heavy.
 

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.


Three years ago this week, on November 2, 2012, I published my first conversation with Bob Clark on the subject of Neon Genesis Evangelion, episode 1. He was the one who introduced me to the show a year earlier and when I decided to do an episode guide (my first since Twin Peaks in 2008) I realized that it would be good to have him on board. He was much more familiar with the series than I was, and perhaps even more importantly he had a grounding in both the conventions of the anime genre and the techniques of animation in general.

We conducted seven chats to accompany the first seven episodes and then took what I expected to be a short break over the holidays while I worked on a short film and devoted my blog to promoting it. Starting ongoing series without having the end already in sight is a big risk, and sure enough nearly a year and a half passed before Bob and I got back into the flow of things by discussing episode 8 (this time, we also brought the Japanese film blogger Murderous Ink in to offer additional comments - his last contribution was shared yesterday).

That was the spring of 2014, when I was just beginning to fall under the spell of Twin Peaks again (a bigger obsession than anything I've experienced in the past decade) and so after we reached episode 16, the Evangelion project paused once again. This time I had been wise enough to hold off on publishing our discussions, knowing that I didn't want to do so until we had covered everything through the finale and follow-up film at which point I could leisurely schedule the entries on a weekly basis without any further hiatuses.

The opportunity finally arrived this spring, a year after our last pause. This time I was able to give Evangelion the attention it deserved, exploring the fandom and the mythology in a way I never had before (even though I'd watched the series several times up to that point). Bob's and my conversations grew even longer and more intense as we reached the final stretch of the series climaxing with a chat on The End of Evangelion, that spanned several hours over two different nights.

The first part of that discussion - dwelling on the themes, motifs, techniques, and mythology of the show - went up yesterday. Today's conclusion focuses on the characters - specifically very brief discussions of Ritsuko and Gendo, longer discussions of Misato, Kaworu, and Rei and a very long, in-depth discussion of Asuka, before concluding with our reflections on the enigmatic Yui. Shinji, of course, figures into most of these different character sections as well.

And with that, my conversations on Neon Genesis Evangelion with Bob Clark - which have formed the core of this episode guide since its inception - will come to an end. In the future, due to logistics and my desire to quickly build up a bigger backlog, I don't plan on doing episodic discussions for my TV viewing diaries...but I am hoping to have series-spanning conversations whenever I finish a show, both with Bob and with other contributors as I go. Next up is The Prisoner, and now that the end of this Evangelion series is in sight maybe I will finally start watching it so that I'm ready to start posting the entries in a month!

Meanwhile, the Evangelion series will continue for another four weeks, as I will offer solo reviews of each Rebuild film before wrapping up with a full directory for the entire series, gathering all the entries in one convenient location. But first, here is my most extensive conversation yet with Bob, a final look at the personalities and themes that made The End of Evangelion, and the show that inspired it, so great.


me: Misato's role in the series, and maybe by extension the film, is interesting to me because it feels less clear than Asuka's or Rei's. Both of them have very specific functions to serve for Shinji, very definite relationships.
We mentioned Asuka is the yin to Shinji's yang. And Rei exists as a kind of reflection of him.
His relationship to Asuka helps (or at least offers the possibility, seldom realized on the show) for them to realize human contact from the two extremes of extroverted standoffishness and introverted neediness.
His relationship to Rei helps both him and her to let down their guards, to feel safe with emotions and take control of their lives and decisions.
But his relationship to Misato feels more unresolved, more multifaceted than either of those. And it's clearer to me what that means for her than for him.

Bob: Misato's function early on is to give the movie a running sense of momentum. She drives all of the early NERV base stuff, keeps the defense up and going. Which I suppose is why she can die once he's taken to the Eva, where he needs to be. The elevator scene is essentially a baton passing moment. He has to take an active role in his own life now, and not just accept her constant orders and leadership.

me: See that's interesting to me (what you said about Misato) but more in the full context of the series and film than just the film, where it has a kind of mechanistic plot element to it.
But the idea that her role in series, boiled down to an action-movie microcosm in the film, is to move Shinji from point a to point b. Maybe like Virgil leading Dante through Inferno and Purgatorio. But she can't go with him into the Paradise.
I like that notion, it works for me.

Bob: Exactly, that's a good comparison.
With Asuka as Beatrice done as a final boss battle.

me: Haha yeah.

Bob: It's not a bad idea in a sense. Misato takes him deep into the layers of hell and purgatory. They do mention malbolgias. And then when Shinji tries to go save Asuka, he's rising into the sky.
Remembering Dante further, there's a point when Dante has to move beyond his personal attachment to Beatrice in the end in his quest for redemption. He has to give her up in order to really understand the universal truth of God, who in the end is rendered as a kind of graphic representation of the universe, almost a screen-saver, something abstract to stand as a symbol of "the love that moves the stars".

me: So you're saying Dante was in favor of Human Instrumentality, essentially?

Bob: More like he was in favor of the Jedi Code I guess.

me: Now, on Misato's end of it...I wonder if there really is a resolution.
That's interesting to me. In psychological terms, I get the role Shinji plays for her maybe a bit more than the role she plays for Shinji. But in dramatic terms, it's the reverse. What Shinji gets from Misato is clear in terms of his character growth. What she gets from him in terms of character growth, I'm not sure. It seems like maybe not much. And I kind of like that. For one, it feels real (even if it makes her stick out a bit amongst the characters who have clearer arcs). For another - it relates to what she says, I think in episode 25: that she wants to feel needed.
In a sense her role is less to do with her than with the others. And yet Anno fleshes her out so much, makes her at times the protagonist of NGE (she has more screentime than anyone other than Shinji, and might actually rival him in that department). So it's so interesting, and one reason she's emerged as a personal favorite character this time around. It's like the whole AI thing, in a way: she's a plot device given full realization as an individual character.
She almost SHOULDN'T have the inner life and needs and desires she does, from a strictly functional point of view. It's so great that she does anyway and it's adds such an interesting element to Eva. (By functional I mean like if some screenwriting guru was offering advice, they'd say oh don't go into her consciousness, she's there to move the characters along, caring about her thoughts and feelings will only be a distraction. I love that Anno goes there anyway)

Bob: Yeah. She's more Qui-Gon in TPM, a mentor with a smidge of personal embellishment, than Obi-Wan in ANH, a pure mentor archetype and almost nothing else.

me: Except that she ends up with much more than a smidge.
She's like a character who should be like Qui-Gon but is developed like Anakin instead.
It's almost incongruous.
Anno said something interesting about Shinji and Misato being the heroes of the story.

Bob: Usually we expect our mentor characters to be completely there to service the main character, and have no inner life at all.
I'm reminded of when JK Rowling started telling people that Dumbledore was gay.
It's not just surprising because all of the Obi-Wan/Gandalf types are supposed to be straight. It's surprising because we kind of expect them to almost be sexless. Like they simply don't exist outside of their relationship to the main character.
And indeed, that's exactly how he functions in the stories. The fact that she could reveal Dumbledore's sexuality in an interview and never, not once have it actually come up in the books or movies, shows just how reinforced that archetype is.
It's one reason why I liked the Clone Wars. We got to see Anakin as a mentor to Ashoka. He's not quite as screwed up as Misato is with Shinji but... well in a sense he might be a lot more.

me: That raises another good point about defying mentor stereotypes. Not only is Misato a mentor figure who is fleshed-out as her own character, it's really questionable how successful she is as a mentor at all.

Bob: I'd say she's successful helping Shinji come to life as a person. Without her, he'd basically be stuck completely on his own and almost comatose, like Rei.
Now, maybe being brought into contact with Asuka could've woken him up, too. But Misato helps prepare him for her.
Like Morpheus, "All I can do is show you the door. You're the one who has to go through it".

me: Earlier I was going to say that maybe she is a tragic figure, because she doesn't quite seem to get fulfillment in her personal arc the way the other characters do. But then I thought now, that isn't tragic for her because her purpose is to help others. But now, wondering if she really does, she DOES seem tragic in a sense. I do think she does a lot of good for Shinji (as well as some bad) but ultimately it's like she can only take him so far. Literally in the film itself, but figuratively, in a larger sense, too.
But it also seems like she needs/wants to take him further. I don't know, there's a lot to think about with her.



me: Well, I disagree with you about Rei.
I think she becomes a real character over the course of the show, though in EoE that character is subsumed into a goddess.

Bob: No, I think she's a real character. I just think that she's very much a reflection of Yui. And here, her action in subsuming into Lilith is very much her choosing Shinji over Gendo.

me: I've kind of changed my mind about the Yui thing. She is her physically, but I don't think she really has too much in common with her if that makes sense. Almost like a daughter, shares the genetic material, but is a different person. If anything, I'd say she's more Lilith than Yui. In fact she's probably the most Christlike figure in Evangelion, even more than Kaworu: divinity and humanity in the same package.
That one essay really made me see her as more of a full character. It was something I already felt on some level, but couldn't quite articulate, and it wasn't totally clear to me.
But just as we're saying Misato took Shinji to a certain place, and then maybe he was able to go from there, I think Shinji gets Rei to a certain place, and the rest of her journey is essentially on her own but it continues, subtly (since she isn't a central character for a huge long stretch of episodes).

Bob: Yeah. Asuka helps get her there, too. "I'm not your doll anymore"
That's what I thought of in that scene where she rejects Gendo.
An echo of the elevator scene.

me: You think so? I don't see that as much.
There is that dinner scene where she makes an effort to include Rei (who doesn't eat meat). A minor moment, but maybe that has some impact on her, I don't know.
For me though the elevator scene is more about Rei's attempt (and failure) to impact Asuka than vice-versa.

Bob: Yeah, but something rubs off on her there, I think. Else why does she make the doll reference?

me: Well, she does say to Asuka she isn't a doll in that scene too. Do you feel she wouldn't have thought that if Asuka hadn't accused her of it in the first place? That's an interesting point.
We also should probably  touch on the whole Rei II/Rei III thing as well, since the Rei we see in EoE technically isn't the same as pre-ep. 23 Rei.
What do you think she retains from clone to clone?
What is the consistency of the soul?

Bob: Well, obviously her attachment to Shinji. And it seems perhaps her interactions with others like Asuka.

me: But as in, when Rei III wakes up in the hospital, what remains from Rei II?
What lessons that she has learned, growth she has experienced, carry over? It doesn't seem like she is starting again from (pardon the expression) zero.

Bob: Obviously it isn't entirely clear, even to her. But she reacts to the glasses in a somewhat new way, one that seems based on her experiences with Shinji and others.

me:  I almost wonder if the form her death takes as each Rei impacts her next incarnation. Like the first Rei is killed and the next Rei has no real fear of death. Then, that Rei kills herself to save another and the final Rei has a power/agency that the previous one did not. Like each death represents both a cumulation of previous experience and a quantum leap to the next level. Though with only 3 Reis to examine, one of which very little is known about, that's hard to determine.
I will say this, the biggest trajectory for Rei over the series, if we take her as some semblance of a consistent character between II & III, is from reverance of Gendo to abandonment of him. To the point where she finally crushes those glasses in EoE (after reverantly preserving them, growing more uncomfortable with them, and then ALMOST breaking them in earlier episodes).

Bob: The fact that it comes after the Magi/Ritsuko's mother reject Ritsuko feels meaningful.
Ritsuko's mother, as the brain of the Magi, sides with Gendo and refuses to destroy NERV HQ as she attempted to do. The fact that then Rei refuses to do what Gendo wants feels meaningful.

me: It makes me feel almost like a comparison is being made. Ritsuko, despite her dislike for her mother, remains dependent on her somehow. Whereas Rei has broken free from the parent figure. Which is such a big message of Evangelion.

Bob: It's also a question of who each person is siding with. Ritsuko's mother sides with Gendo. Rei sides with Shinji.

me: As far as Shinji being the active one, yeah the climax w/ Rei is in Yashimi. But I'd say HER climax, where the relationship with Shinji really pays off, doesn't come until ep. 23 when she sacrifices herself to save him.
And then it pays off even more in this movie. When she rejects Gendo by saying, ironically, "Ikari is calling me." The other Ikari.

Bob: Sort of. But that's sort of a denoument in a sense from what starts at Yashima.
It's the culmination of what begins when she really bonds with him. That's the biggest thing. And yeah, there's more pay off here.

me: Right, I'd just see that as the beginning rather than the climax. It's the climax of an early arc, but the beginning of a larger, more subtle transformation.

Bob: But really, the biggest hurdle she ever climbs is actually learning to smile, that somebody actually does care for her. Everything else that follows is a reaction from that.

me: Maybe Shinji finally gets what he needs in the end, Kaworu's comfort combined with Asuka's honesty, when she emerges from the LCL.
Which I guess begs the question, is he able to give her what she needs at the end of the movie? What has he learned? We've been following his psychological journey throughout but I'm wondering if his growth is less clear in the film than in the final episodes?
Anyway, what's your take on why he strangles her?
I mean at the end, on the beach.

Bob: I think he's still stuck in that primal instinct mode, there. I mean, after everything that's happened, sanity is not really an option for him.
It's also there, I think, as a recapitulation of everything in the movie. It's there to show exactly what it takes to overcome that primal instinct we all have, that instinct for hostility directed at the thing which we desire the most. Shinji strangles Asuka because she's the one he's most attracted to, and because she greets him with indifference or hostility so often. Which isn't to say that it's justifiable what he does-- what he does, in a sense, is symbolic of the hostility we react with every day.
It's basically the most direct visual translation of the Hedgehog's Dilemma. The closer we get to people, the more prone we are to hurting them. Only here, it's presented not as an inevitable consequence, but as something we make a choice to do. Shinji doesn't accidentally hurt her. He fucking chokes her. Even as an instinct, it's an action he's taking.
In a sense, I think he's presenting both of these actions less as character driven things (it works for fans reading him jerking off as a bird flipped to sexualizing otaku, so it'll work here) but as a kind of tableaux of human behavior. On one hand, you have hostility, represented by Shinji choking Asuka. On the other hand, you have compassion, represented by Asuka tenderly touching his cheek. You can see them as character motivations, and that's probably how you have to see it eventually.
But it's also rhetorical, in a way.
Shinji is presented choking first, because it represents our primal side, the instinct human nature has to lash out thanks to the void left in all of us, as individual beings. Asuka's caress represents the positive social behavior that quiets this destructive impulse, and fills the void with companionship and love.

me: I agree with that, I just wonder what it also says about the characters.
Or about Shinji, anyway.

Bob: I know. I'm just trying to get at the root of what it's all about in the root themes of the show.
Shinji's choke is the AT Field, and Asuka's caress is the soul that reaches beyond it.
And in that sense, I think we have the character drive for both of them, and the goals they reach by the end of their arcs.

me: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I guess I just wonder - is the caress enough? If he's been through all of that and his first instinct is to choke? I know he says, coming out of the LCL, that things aren't magically going to be better, he'll still have to struggle, etc. But it almost seems like he didn't learn anything there. I dunno. This isn't how I felt going into the discussion, haha. It's just something I'm mulling over now as we talk.

Bob: He's that way because it's what got him out of the LCL, in a sense. The decision to accept himself as an individual, separate from other human beings, is the instinct to put up walls with other people. That choke is his wall.

me: Right, and then we're back to the question of is Instrumentality actually a good thing?

Bob: I really don't think so. I mean, if you examine it more fully as a sci-fi concept, I suppose it's there to ensure the survival of the human race on a potentially doomed planet by distilling them into a purely mental form. It's similar to the idea of Singularity.
But as an emotional reality in the series, it represents giving up on living in the world in such graphic and symbolic terms. It's basically suicide as the end of the world.

me: This is true. But I think Shinji's return to individuality is only meaningful inasmuch as he uses it to grow beyond extreme anti-Instrumentality. But I guess that's the message. As long as he's there, living life, the possibility to grow remains even if it isn't yet attained.
It's about hope, not a straight-up happy ending. But the possibility of happiness.

Bob: Well that's what makes it such a great ending. It's a truly open ending, rather than a false closed conclusion. It begs "what happened next?". Where do these characters go with their lives? It's an epic magnification of the Graduate.

me: Yup, but more hopeful. The Graduate is freedom, followed by "then what?" and the implicit answer "nothing." EoE whispers, "maybe something."
What do you make of the idea that Asuka has a deathwish in the final scene? I've seen that theory tossed around.
I haven't seen it explained but I'm assuming it means she pats his cheek because he's going to kill her and is then disappointed when he doesn't.
Which doesn't really make sense to me, because then why did she come out of the LCL?

Bob: A deathwish? Uh... No. I don't think that makes sense.
I think her patting his cheek only makes sense as an olive branch, to stop him.
It's not "go ahead, kill me". It's maybe "even if you're choking me, I love/don't hate you". But not "kill me."
It's her demonstrating the maternal side of affection he yearns for, what we saw between him and Yui.
Something that reminds me of it is the kiss that Christine gives the Phantom in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, at the end. Even though he's threatening the life of Raul, even though he's been murdering and threatening everyone, her kiss is delivered as an act of grace, compassion and pity. She's thinking of the horror and loneliness he's lived with in the past, and simply wants to show him some tenderness, which moves him to free them.

me: Why would Asuka of all people be compelled to do this/feel this way, I wonder?
We talked about Shinji's side of it, how even coming out of the LCL he's still burdened with that attitude he had before.
But with Asuka, it's the opposite question/problem.
What was the catalyst for this transformation?

Bob: She came to life in her cockpit when she realized her mother was with her the whole time, that she wasn't abandoned into self destruction the way she'd lived with all that time. It gives her the drive to fight for her own life to such a degree we've never seen before in the series, show things with the Eva that shouldn't be possible.

me: How does that lead to compassion for Shinji though?

Bob: What's motivating it is the maternal, the parental acceptance. And what she offers Shinji is a gesture of the same thing, the maternal.

me: So you're saying by syncing with the Eva, she's discovered not just her own mother but the mother within her?

Bob: More or less. If she'd gotten that type of affection from her mother as a child, she probably wouldn't have been quite the hostile case we'd seen in the past.

me: I could see that, although during the fight itself it hasn't seemed to sink in yet ("stupid Shinji useless again" or something like that when he doesn't show up for battle). I'm inclined to think maybe it's what she experiences in the Eva (when the Mass Produced Evas attack and dismember her). She's experienced complete psychological breakdown already but now she has either flat-out died or experienced about as close to physical death as you can get.

Bob: "Useless Shinji"-- remember how many times he's actually saved her in the past. It's more like her combat persona is returning, the braggart in her. She expects that he's going to show up and save her, and he does pretty much everything he can do to do that.

me: It's funny, I don't know if it's the familiarity w/ classic Hollywood rom-com tropes or just you brainwashing me (lol) but it just seemed pretty logical that Shinji & Asuka were destined for each other on previous viewings, at least on the 2nd and 3rd. I can't quite remember how I felt on the 1st. Reading a lot of the very strongly anti-Asushin stuff recently, it led me to question that idea. But there's no denying the movie pushes it really hard.
But it pushes it in a different way than the hints in the middle-section of the series. It's less hero-gets-the-girl/softens-her-heart than, these two HAVE to learn how to live together.
I've read a lot of convincing arguments about how dysfunctional/unhealthy they are, about how they really SHOULDN'T be in a relationship. But I think that's kind of the point. It isn't "these two are meant for each other", it's "if humanity is to continue, both in the personal/figurative sense and in the narrative/literal sense, this extreme gap must be bridged. Not in the sense of a total rapprochement perhaps but at least a co-existence."

Bob: Yeah. It's basically something like, each of them has a different set of psychological, emotional and social tools that the other needs.

me: It's sort of the realistic, sober version of what Instrumentality takes to the extreme. Finding that hedgehog's balance.

Bob: It's also asking the audience to understand that a true relationship, romantic or otherwise, can't simply be based on peaceful co-existence or similarities. You have to be able to learn to live with people who are different than you. Who get on your nerves a little. You have to accept that even if you love somebody in a true, deep, romantic sense, it's totally unrealistic to expect them to be absolutely perfect all the time. Unconditional love doesn't work that way, in reality.
In real life, the one you love is going to call you an idiot sometimes. And you're going to do the same to them.

me: Yes, and I'd take it even further. In a way I think the whole "shipping" concept misses the point. Because it's not about them ever being lovey-dovey, breaking down their mutual AT-fields to spoon in fanart bliss. It's about them being fundamentally incompatible and yet, that's life, here they are together forced to share the same space and that's the reality of what Anno is asking of his audience.
It's so not a Hollywood ending and that's what's so beautiful about it.
They are NOT gonna live happily ever after.
But they're gonna live...and that's something.

Bob: Yeah. They're gonna live. Together. Probably fight and feud and get on each other's nerves. That's the reality of what's underneath all this. They're each going to have different ways to solve problems, and if they can learn from one another, so much the better. They can't be clones of each other. The combative is heightened in order to see that they're fundamentally different. Not incompatible, just different.
To give a more western example-- let's say fan dreams came true and Mulder and Scully do wind up together. There's no way on Earth they get along 24.7.

me: What I like about it though is that they are the only ones.
Sure, other people may come out of the soup eventually.
But it needs to end with just them.
Because it's less a choice they've made as it is a necessity. It's not that they want to get along, it's that they have to. That's the human condition right there.
Or not so much "get along" as "exist together."

Bob: Yeah. But it's also a great expression of what attraction can be like. Usually we see it in purely positive terms-- the whole world dissolves away, and there's just you and the person you love. Tony sees Maria, and everything else is filtered out by Vaseline or whatever.
This shows an extreme version of that-- yes, it's just you and the person you love. Literally. Everyone else is fucking dead. Or Tang, at least.
It shows the extremity of how that can feel-- how desperate and isolating, how lonely it can feel to find a match with somebody and feel either that the world is against you or barren except for the other person.
I remember Stephen, I think, saying something similar about the moment when Padme declares her love for Anakin finally in Attack of the Clones. Right before they're led out to be executed.

me: Mhm. Well we might see it a little differently, or maybe not. Love as a result of necessity vs. necessity as a result of love.
I'm still kind of turning it all over in my mind.

Bob: It's both in a sense. Like I said, they both have tools the other needs.


me: Yui's role in all of this is really interesting and ambiguous to me.
A lot of people see her as a very conniving, manipulative figure despite her pleasant demeanor in ep. 21.
What is your take on her in this movie?

Bob: Oh, Yui's distance both here and in the presentation of the narrative is a big thing. We spend so much time on the fallout of the actual events and the relationship between Shinji and Asuka that all the other relationships suffer. But in the case of Yui, I think the distance helps, because it really illustrates the distance she put between herself and Shinji when she essentially abandoned him to devote herself to Instrumentality.
In the end, when he's floating away from her in the sea of LCL, he's also floating away from his dependence on her, and of the approval he kept seeking in Gendo (who's basically completely gone from him in this movie).
Instead, he moves forward, and in classic Oedipal fashion, finds a projection/reflection of the maternal affection he needs in Asuka.
Maybe he's strangling her at the end because he's still lashing out against the father blindly, not even noticing who's rejecting him anymore. When she caresses him, it's reminding her who she is, and he can put down his offenses.

me: But as to Yui herself...what do you think her motives are/were?
The get pretty emphatic about her in the end, cutting back to that scene in ep. 21 (I think the only time they explicitly reproduce a scene from the show, right?) as unit-01 drifts off into space to represent humanity, I guess.

Bob: I think to an extent all of Instrumentality was basically her idea. She's sort of the mastermind of it all.

me: Hm - like she convinced SEELE even, in the beginning?

Bob: Yeah. It was her proposal. I suppose maybe they were looking into other, equally apocalyptic ideas, but she was the one who did all the legwork and conceiving of this.
She's given such short shrift in the show, and yet this movie reveals how crucial she is to the whole thing. And the way he floats away from her at the end? Makes me wonder if there wasn't more planned for her.
It feels like we are missing something crucial there. Like there's missing material between her and Shinji. We never really have the two of them coming to terms, or confronting each others.

me: I'm still not sure what she is exactly. Her every appearance in the show and film is imbued with this positive, soothing vibe. Yet people have very negative interpretations of her.
Why does she want to be in the Eva (DOES she want to be in the Eva?) and what does this have to do with Shinji?

Bob: She's the one who plans Instrumentality, even while also planning to have a child.

me: How does her serving as a beacon of humanity help him?
I wonder...does she plan Instrumentality, or does she just know it is going to happen and that she wants to be in the Eva when it does?
She certainly doesn't seem upset about it getting cancelled in the end.

Bob: It seems like from the movie, we can infer she's the one who plans it.

me: How so?

Bob: The scene of her talking with Fuyutski. The creation of the Evas as the creation of Gods. The plan to use Unit 1 as an ark for humanity.

me: But I'm thinking maybe she just means that HER soul will be within it.
Because, like I said, she doesn't ever seem particularly invested in Instrumentality.

Bob: I think the ultimate intention was everyone's souls were going to be in it. But when Shinji turns it down, that's what it turns into.

me: But everyone's souls aren't in it, they're in Lilith & the black moon. I don't know, the more I think about it the more I wonder if Yui's plan isn't almost anti-Instrumentality. In the sense that she isolates her soul in the Evangelion which basically protects it from merging with everyone else's, preserving humanity outside of Instrumentality. But again, either way, I'm not totally sure how it relates to Shinji.
It seems like she does actually care about him and consider him as part of her plans. But I'm not sure how.

Bob: Well, everyone's souls were certainly supposed to be housed in SOMEthing. Living eternally beyond earth.

me: The black moon, I think.
And Lilith's body.

Bob: That image of them floating apart-- it's reminiscent of the floating imagery in Oshii's movies. In Ghost in the Shell, Makoto floating to her own reflection scuba diving. And in Beautiful Dreamer, the second Uresei Yatsura movie, where the lead is lost in one endless dream world after another.
What's interesting there is that at the end of that UY film, the main character is in very much a situation similar to Instrumentality. He realizes he's the one dreaming, after having been surrounded by his comic Scooby Doo style crew of friends realizing they're in a dream world, but not sure who's actually controlling it. When he realizes he's the dreamer, he takes control of it and turns it into his own selfish lucid sex fantasy.
But ultimately he realizes how lonely that is, and how much he wants to just be with Lum, the main female character. Or something like that. It's been a while since I saw it.
The overhead/glass ceiling shot-- really feels like a nice subtle callback to the beginning of the show, the moment Shinji is saying he's okay with living alone (and the place where the pilots all accept they know they can die in battle) becomes the place where he says he'd rather live with people.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The End of Evangelion (1997/Japan/dir. Hideaki Anno & Kazuya Tsurumaki) appeared at #82 on my original list.

What it is • Welcome to the end of the world. This animated masterpiece begins in a flooded wasteland, introducing us to an array of characters who are completely isolated from one another, buried in their own grief, guilt, depression, and loneliness. We are fifteen years after a cataclysmic event that wiped out most of the earth's population, and mere days after the last of many battles with monstrous creatures (called Angels, ironically) who laid waste to this particular city and destroyed the psyches of the teenage warriors forced to fight them. (The battles with the Angels are depicted in the television show Neon Genesis Evangelion, to which this film is a follow-up.) So the scenario is already post-apocalyptic...but we ain't seen nothing yet. At least half the film is consumed by "The Human Instrumentality Project," in which the physical bodies of humanity are dissolved and their souls are fused together in a vast sea of consciousness, dissolving pain and suffering alongside individuality and agency. Shinji, the 14-year-old mecha pilot who is placed at the center of Instrumentality, must decide if he wants relief from his loneliness by dissolving his identity, or if he should seek love and acceptance the hard way, as a separate but active person. The film depicts this process through a gorgeous swirl of rich animation (mixing sci-fi action, spiritual symbolism, and psychological allegory), live-action footage, children's drawings, and other raw material.

Why I like it •
The End of Evangelion is one of two films on this list to be spun off from a TV show (the other is - surprise! - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me). In both cases the movie is attached to an edgy series I love, but in both cases the movie represents an even darker, richer, cinematic experience than the show - one which, despite the narrative confusion, can stand on its own as an unforgettable visual experience. Also like Fire Walk With Me, End of Evangelion is delivered in two sharply delineated halves (in this case, the halves are actually separated by an extended credits sequence!). The first part of the film is more straightforward, covering the failed battle to preserve NERV headquarters. We watch the characters we've come to know and love over the series get destroyed, one by one, and the message seems to be that on our own, we can't survive. No wonder Shinji welcomes Instrumentality - a process that takes up the second half of the film, a dazzling mix of avant-garde imagery and, well, even more avant-garde imagery. Taking a sci-fi premise, the film launches into something that transcends genre and medium, an exploration of what it means to be human captured through a vivid whirlpool of color and music. A giant, luminous goddess sprays blood from her neck...a sea of orange goo spreads across the globe...a flock of vulture-like organic robots, with lances piercing their torsos, circle a black moon rising into outer space. Good God, what's not to love?!? There are many varying explanations and theories to explain what we see, but End of Evangelion may be best experienced as a pure hallucinatory trip.

How you can see it • Unfortunately, the current DVD of The End of Evangelion is not the best quality but it's still worth tracking down on Netflix. This whole week has also been devoted to End of Evangelion coverage, including a short video review and an in-depth essay and two-part discussion with Bob Clark on the style & story as well as on the characters, as part of my ongoing Neon Genesis Evangelion weekly series (I just finished discussing every episode of the show). A clip from the film appears at 2:35 in "Living in the Nineties" (chapter 29 of my "32 Days of Movies" video series). My video comparison between Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion also contains many clips from the The End of Evangelion, demonstrating how it relates to both the Twin Peaks final episode and the film Fire Walk With Me.

What do you think? • Have you seen the film outside of the series context? How did it hold up for you? If you have seen the series, do you think this movie is a fitting conclusion? What is its relationship to the final two episodes of the series, whose "events" it overlaps with? Do you think Shinji made the right decision in the end, regarding Instrumentality? Whose version of Instrumentality are we seeing - SEELE's, Yui's, Rei's, or someone else's? Why does Shinji do what he does in the hospital room? In the kitchen vision halfway through? On the beach at the end? Are Shinji and Asuka soulmates, beyond their conflict? What is the significance of Shinji seeing Kaworu in the sky? What do you think will happen to the characters who die onscreen, yet who get to see Rei before they die? Why do we see those particular characters in the final scene - what is the significance of their survival? What do you think the future holds for Yui/Unit-01? What's your favorite action moment in the film? Your favorite contemplative moment? Do you have a favorite character from the series, and if so what do you think of their fate in the film? Can you think of other films that extend/transform an existing story in similar fashion to The End of Evangelion?

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Unlike the previous essays, the Rebuild films will not be accompanied by chats with other bloggers.

We're back at the beginning. Sort of. Almost everything about the early part of Evangelion 1.11, the "rebuild" feature film released in 2008, is identical to the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The same Angel attack, the same appearance of Rei in the abandoned city streets, the same Misato-Shinji rendezvous. But there are subtle differences. The first deviation is that the sea from which the Angel emerges is red, like the LCL concluding The End of Evangelion (one of the first clues for a favorite fan theory, that the Rebuilds actually take place after the original series, in a kind of reincarnated alternate universe). There are other subtle detours form the first two episodes: Sachiel the Angel (who is referred to as the "fourth" rather than the "third" Angel) reformulates in a different, more textured fashion; the Eva does not deflect debris from Shinji by releasing its hand; the berserker attack occurs in real-time rather than flashback. As the film continues, it will stray further from the original script but overall this is very much like a recap, gorgeously animated but suffering from some of the limitations inherent in the digest approach.

I've seen Evangelion 1.11 (a slightly revised version of the theatrically-released Evangelion 1.0) twice now, and still am not really sure how I feel about it. Its approach generally feels distracting: as I sit through the movie, my mind is constantly drawn back to the series, whose storyline it follows so closely. Although the increased budget pays off in bravura setpieces and decorative flourishes, the comparison is generally not to the film's benefit. The first six episodes of the show had a "miniseries" feel to them, progressing from Shinji's terrifying entry into this world to his slow adjustment and alienation and finally his connection to Rei Ayanamil at the end of Operation Yashimi. And yet somehow the film, boiling this narrative down into its essential components and structuring them into a feature, actually feels more episodic than the series to me. It loses the gradual feel of Shinji's adjustment and so it sometimes seems like he is being shuffled from one event to the next, rather than growing naturally as a character. But again, this may just be because I'm watching the film so soon after the series. Perhaps if I watched in isolation, when the show was not so fresh in my mind, it would flow better as a movie?

There are definite advantages to the film. Or rather, opportunities that prove equally effective. I wouldn't change anything about the series: the at-times elemental animation (including the diamond-like Angel Ramiel), the long static frames and slow pacing, even the goofy, cartoonish details that threw me the first time I watched it. But it's still very cool to see the film's alternate take, especially on the final battle. Ramiel becomes a mutating, morphing, genuinely frightening visual phenomenon. Indeed, it's in the final passage that Evangelion 1.11 most commits itself as a movie and an expansion of the show's visuals. In comparison to the cinematic climax, the show's execution of Operation Yashimi - the attempt to divert all electricity in Japan into a battle with the deadly Angel - actually feels a bit rushed and light. Onscreen here every detail is treated with lavish attention, and we get a deep sense of the immense weight behind this effort, the endless convoys, the gargantuan machinery, a whole society comandeered in an effort to save itself. The battle itself is also fleshed out and extended as Shinji's and Rei's Evas are engulfed in a cascade of light and heat. If at times Evangelion 1.11 betrays its TV roots in terms of storytelling, this ending feels like a true movie ending. I can only imagine its power on the big screen.

Where the film is most routinely criticized is in its characterization. I'm inclined to concur, yet I can't exactly say why. So much of the action and dialogue remains - theoretically there should not be a noticeable difference. Yet the pacing feels a bit off, even if it's just the breathing space of the opening and closing credits between each narrative beat. Somehow, when Shinji moves in with Misato, or when he attempts to talk to Rei, or when he befriends Toji and Kensuke, it feels less like a natural evolution of the characters and more like a plot hitting its obligatory checkpoints. In the last case it's explicable at least: the mundane charms of Shinji's school life are very much circumscribed in the emphasis on action and even lore (SEELE's monoliths and the gigantic Lillith - properly identified - appear far ahead of the show's schedule, and the movie ends with Kaworu emerging from a coffin on the moon, one of the most noticeable changes from the original material). But even when the show's events are traced meticulously, the presentation is a little off-kilter. Part of it might be all the lavish, loving technological details - when we spend an extended sequence watching all the buildings of Tokyo-3 rise and descend in loving CGI detail it becomes harder to fixate on the characters and their relationships. Whether due to budget or aesthetics (or both), the show was very economical in its storytelling and there was less to distract us from the personal aspect of the story.

I can't help but feel that I'm judging the film unfairly, yet it rather stubbornly invites comparison to the series so perhaps I'm not to blame. It would certainly be interesting to watch the film before the show (and I would love to hear from anyone who did just this); questions of similarity pushed aside, does Evangelion 1.11 actually work as a standalone feature film? Take, for example, Shinji's runaway adventure. It consumed an entire episode of the series, but here it essentially unfolds in a few relatively short scenes. Though the TV episode has been dismissed by some fans as filler, to me it was one of the crucial keys in unveiling Evangelion's themes and general mood. While its shortening provides an interesting intellectual provocation (we discover that NERV has been following Shinji all along, and that he probably knew it), it also makes the film feel a bit more like a highlight reel. On the other hand, can these variations - as well as the consistencies - tell us something about both the show and the film? Will the future films (at the time of writing this, I have only seen 2.22) underscore Evangelion 1.11's relationship to the series? We'll see. When I first watched this movie, I had been eagerly anticipating it as a "correction" to some of the show's flaws (what I saw as its occasionally excessive cartoonishness and reliance on static frames). I'm a movie buff rather than TV fan, so I figured a cinematic Evangelion would be the perfect distillation of the show's best qualities. Instead, it made me appreciate the extended format and low-key focus of series all the more. I'm glad the Rebuilds exist, especially for that spellbinding final battle. But I'm not yet sure how necessary they are.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Civil War (1990/USA/dir. Ken Burns) appeared at #81 on my original list.

What it is • As a commentator notes very late in the documentary, the American Civil War is an immeasurable gulf separating the "before" and "after." Remarkably, Ken Burns' 11-hour PBS opus attempts to bridge that gulf and if the ambition of this attempt is awe-inspiring, the extent to which he succeeds is even more so. Burns evokes this bygone world by employing striking contemporaneous photographs (a new medium at the time of the war), modern-day battlefield cinematography (given a meditative air by the emptiness of the locations), a few fleeting newsreels from veterans' reunions in the early twentieth century (which are among the most arresting artifacts of the series), and especially the stirring soundtrack (cycling various motifs from the 19th century and coupling them with the gorgeous, mournful "Ashokan Farewell" theme, which was actually composed in 1982). He also sprinkles the series with interviews, but not as much as we might expect (maybe a half-dozen subjects, whose input is mostly limited) - allowing David McCullough's soothing narration to do most of the historical heavy-lifting while historian Shelby Foote is given the lion's share of talking-head screentime, mostly to contributing colorful anecdotes to the film's texture. The Civil War was a rather shocking hit in 1990, racking up numbers that would have been breathtaking for a major network, let alone public television. That success is undoubtedly due in large part not just to the subject, but to Burns' treatment: creating an all-encompassing format that allowed viewers to immerse themselves in a zeitgeist.

Why I like it •
That's why I love the film so much as well: The Civil War is not just a history, it is a movie in the full sense of the word. I have read certain criticisms of Burns, and can envision others: that his portrait is too romantic, missing the ugliness of combat which was the central experience for the soldiers; that his fascination with colorful characters and their individual stories sidesteps the larger historical forces at work - and makes way for a certain gauzy mythology, particularly when it comes to the glamorous yet deeply repugnant Confederacy; that his reliance on certain techniques becomes overbearing and monotonous over the course of nearly half-a-day's worth of material. What's interesting is that these potential weaknesses are inseparable from the film's strengths. I think some are more fair than others (in particular, Burns' techniques do sometimes become grating in his and his brother's later works, ripe for parody in their solemn use of repetition and sentiment, but they still feel fresh for me here and appropriate to the time period and material). Obviously I come here to praise rather than bury The Civil War, and so I would argue that what the strengths and flaws alike to contribute is a sense of history as mythology which I think is just as important in a way as history as journalism (which is not to say the film isn't often both). The Civil War does an admirable job conveying the thrust and import of various battles, it certainly does not sidestep the centrality of slavery to the conflict (to the mild chagrin of Foote, the film's primary mouthpiece, as we would discover in a later follow-up interview), and its structural division into many vignettes ensures an attention to detail does not get lost in the film's broad sweep. This balance between the elephantine scope of its subject and the termitic texture of its approach is what makes the documentary such a remarkable and - despite the massive influence of Burns' approach - unique accomplishment. When I speak of history as mythology, then, what I mean is that The Civil War is less about reporting every detail of the conflict than it is about conveying what it felt like, to the people of the time and to us today. The Civil War belongs not just to the soldiers who fought it, but to the entire nation: it is the United States'Iliad and Odyssey but separated from the present by a mere century and captured with nascent technology that allows the inexplicable aura of the period to reach our eyes and ears today.

How you can see it • The Civil War is available on DVD from Netflix. Also, I would be pretty surprised if it isn't available from your local library! You can watch a clip from the documentary at 4:50 in "New Age" (chapter 26 of my "32 Days of Movies" video series).

What do you think? • Is this Ken Burns' finest moment? Would he improve on his style later, or come to rely on it too much? Do you enjoy and/or respect his approach to filmmaking? How does The Civil War compare to other sweeping historical documentaries? When it comes to history, do you prefer the worm's eye view or the bird's eye view? Do you think both approaches are possible in the same package? What did you learn about the Civil War from this film? What do you wish Burns had included in the coverage? Do you feel the film emphasizes the importance of slavery enough? Do you feel it takes sides? Do you think it should? Does the film do justice do the various battles? To the various participants? If Ken Burns was making The Civil War today, what do you think he would do differently, and would it be to the film's benefit?

Due to a busy schedule this weekend, including the creation of an upcoming Fandor video, I had to delay my Side by Side video analysis of the similarities and differences between two Hitchcock classics: Rear Window and Dial M For Murder. However, the video should be completed in the next few days and when it is I will update this post to share it.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Unlike the previous essays, the Rebuild films will not be accompanied by chats with other bloggers.

If Evangelion 1.11 is the pop song cover that tries to hit all the same notes (while upping the production value), then Evangelion 2.22 is the jazz version, following the same rough structure but unafraid to cut loose and go off on wild riffs and tangents. Approached in the right spirit, this can be a whole lot of fun. Anno mostly seems to be using events and images from the series as touchstones to shoot off in new directions. The first time I watched 2.22 I was mostly frustrated and disappointed by these departures. True, the film corresponds to the more light-hearted monster-of-the-week episodes of the series (roughly episodes 7 - 13) but it also overlaps with the darker, deeper episodes 14 - 19. The more playful tone of 2.22's first half didn't seem suitable as buildup for the drama; I had been expecting a big-screen version of the Evangelion series (not necessarily in plot, but in "feel"). Knowing what to expect this time, I still wasn't entirely sure what the point of the film was, but I enjoyed it much more.

First off, as spectacle Evangelion 2.22 is pretty, well, spectacular. Maybe even more than 1.11 this is essentially an action movie and it delivers one dazzling setpiece after another, beginning with the opening prologue that introduces Mari, a new pilot, as she destroys both the Angel and her own Eva in a battle inside a tunnel. Shortly thereafter Asuka is introduced inside Unit-01, easily slaying an Angel that took her and Shinji, together, an entire episode to defeat on the show (the revisualization of this Angel is also a treat, taking Ramiel's geometrical mutations to another level). Maybe the most dazzling Angelic transformation is the eighth (Sahaquiel, the outer-space "eye" Angel on the series). Its resolutely CGI redesign looks quite literally like a visitor from another dimension (the third, in this case) and when its multicolored "petals" descend from the sky and settle softly across the countryside before self-destructing, the effect is a gorgeous mix of realistic texture and heightened stylization.

As in this section of the series, the most important Angels, dramatically speaking, are the two last ones: the possessed Unit-03 and the nearly undefeatable Zeruel. Here is where the Rebuild both sticks closest to the original script, and makes the most shocking departures. Toji is no longer Unit-03's pilot, a fact revealed via a few playful winks and nudges (he reads his popsicle stick and whines "I didn't win!" and later we see him reunited with his sister, giving his character's arc a conclusion so absurd, joyful, and anticlimactic, that it becomes genuinely comical). Instead, Asuka is in the pilot's seat - and her "transformation" into an Angel - wings of light and all - is conveyed in one of the film's sharpest visual flourishes (although apparently the storyboards offered something far more striking...and disturbing). As in the series, Shinji is ordered to destroy this Eva/Angel and then forced into standby as the dummy plug takes over to do the job. This time, he knows the pilot ahead of time - this plus the fact that it's Asuka, ostensibly a much more important character than Toji - raises the stakes, right? Unfortunately in the world of the film Asuka has only recently been introduced and somehow this scene, which should be so impactful, didn't especially resonate with me on either viewing.

The next battle, with Zeruel, follows a similar structure with Unit-02 (piloted by Mari rather than Asuka now) losing its arms and Rei launching a suicide mission which fails to destroy the Angel. This time, though, it really does result in her death - or so it seems - when the Angel devours her Eva and transforms its body into that of the Giant Naked Rei we saw briefly in the director's cut of the series (and extensively in End of Evangelion). Already, the imagery and dramatic stakes feel more apocalyptic, fusing the important turning points of episodes 19 and 23. As on the show, Shinji has quit piloting but this time it is Mari, carrying him in the palm of her ravaged Eva's hand, who gives him a pep talk rather than Kaji. Again, he gets back into his Eva, drives the Angel from Central Dogma, and runs out of battery when he is just about to destroy the Angel's core (we even get a repeat of several iconic shots, including Gendo half-covered in blood, watching the battle intensely). Again, the Eva reactivates in an animalistic berserker mode - but this time Shinji and his Eva go further. Determined to rescue Rei, his Eva eventually pulls her gigantic form out of the Angel and apparently triggers the Third Impact; the film ends on this cliffhanger (save for a quick post-credits tag in which Kaworu pierces Shinji with the lance and descends from the sky in his Eva). Now the script is really flipped, and we can expect 3.33 to depart even further from our memories and expectations.

Reading up on the series and films recently, I've discovered that 2.22 might be the most unpopular of the Rebuilds - or at least its critics seem to be the loudest (3.33 also appears to be controversial, but I've seen it defended more often than this film). Despite the carnage in the film's second half, the film's tone is described as being too light (and too focused on sexualized fanservice). Just as in 1.11, characterization is accused of taking a backseat to the action - and the new character, Mari, is widely seen as not a character at all but a half-baked attempt at merchandising. Asuka's development is also bemoaned - she has even has a different last name in the movie, and it's hinted that she might have different backstory (playing with a doll-like puppet in bed, she doesn't seem to have the same troubled family history as she did before, and when she climbs into bed with Shinji she doesn't offer a pathetic, sleep-talking "Mommy" but an actual conversation). Much of the first half is consumed by cutesy school-crush plotlines in which Rei and Asuka cook for Shinji and Mari - for some reason - parachutes out of the sky to land on top of him. I can see merit in most of these criticisms, and share many of them. But for whatever reason, they didn't bother me as much this time around.

Indeed, I would rather see the Rebuilds offer alternate takes on characters, battles, and even themes (the films are, so far, pushing in a far more positive, optimistic direction than the series perhaps reflecting Anno's own improved state of mind). After all, we've already got the series and if we're going to draw from this well again let's do something new with the water. One of the most interesting turnarounds is Rei. Anno famously said that he ended her first arc too early on the show, allowing her to smile in episode six and then sidelining her for a very long stretch because he didn't know what to do with her. In fact, there are hints of deep, rich character development with Rei throughout the series (read this fantastic set of essays for evidence of such growth) but it is usually buried beneath the surface or hidden in subtle background details.

The Rebuilds decide to make this development more obvious and so Rei shows more emotion (as best she can), actively reaches out to connect the various characters, and openly voices her devotion to Shinji on several occasions - as she only would in episode 23 on the series (and even then, with typical Rei restraint). Between Rei's more active characterization, Asuka's chummier attitude, and the general feel-good vibe at the school, Evangelion 2.22 doesn't feel terribly far from the "normal" alternate universe shown episode 26. This isn't necessarily a good thing, though it can be fun, but in Rei's case at least the change is subtle enough to be compelling and rewarding - and in some ways an improvement on the series' desire to sideline her for so long.

At the end of the film, when Shinji rescues Rei, her character actually seems to be the most important to him. By this point in the series, her connection to Yui was being heavily underscored but - aside from one shot from Gendo's perspective - this link is mostly submerged in the film. (Indeed, as someone pointed out in the Reddit Rewatch discussions, the mother-Eva link is barely even hinted at in these films, although Yui's link to Unit-01 is at least established. However, Asuka can pilot both Unit 02 and 03, and Mari hops into Unit-02 without a hitch.) As a result, Shinji's love for Rei (and Rei's love for Shinji) seems less idealized/displaced than it was in the series, more emphatically about their own affection for one another as friends. At times 2.22 seems determined to "undo"The End of Evangelion, which firmly established Shinji's and Asuka's relationship as the most important to Shinji, and Rei definitely seems to be taking her place here (although there are indications that 3.33 will bring Kaworu back, with a vengeance).

Indeed, Asuka feels much more like a supporting character in the film than she did in the series. Still arrogant and brash, her attitude results more from childish overconfidence than terrified insecurity. Other characters also suffer, though more from the shortened runtime than any refocus. Kaji's spy maneuvers are barely hinted at this time and Ritsuko's character remains more functional than fleshed-out (the Magi are largely ignored in these films). Gendo, on the other hand, is softened a bit - he seems more lonely and aloof then actively harsh and cruel. Misato, meanwhile, is the same and gets plenty of screentime. Her role mostly involves supervising the kids and commanding the missions. Nonetheless, we do get a glimpse of her experience in the Second Impact - in a flashback that eschews elaborate CGI for suggestive sketches; it's one of this lavish film's most gorgeous moments.

Overall, Evangelion 2.22 is wonderful to look at it, but its imagery lacks the dramatic weight and visionary power of The End of Evangelion. What's missing, I suppose, is not only the deep emotion of the film but a sense of precision. Compared to the budget-troubled series, The End of Evangelion was fairly lavish but everything we saw seemed to exist for a reason - even if we couldn't pinpoint that reason. I can't say the same for 2.22 ; as in the first Rebuild, there are countless flourishes which give the film a nice texture and atmosphere but also seem to lead us astray from any central narrative throughline. This isn't necessarily a flaw, but it is a limitation. I had a good time watching Evangelion 2.22 and I'm sure I'll watch it again at some point. But its awesome surfaces feel a bit...shallow. And you could never say that about Neon Genesis Evangelion at its best.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938/USA/dir. Michael Curtiz & William Keighley) appeared at #80 on my original list.

What it is • Welcome to Sherwood Forest, cloaked in lush green and lit by brilliant sunlight. Through these trees parade Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) and his merry men, fomenting unrest and having a jolly time of it. Many Robin Hood adaptations, especially today, look to darken the story or give it a more naturalistic texture, but Adventures revels in its heightened artifice and sense of fun, with the emphasis on swashbuckling, colorful costumes, and the cheerful romance between Robin and Marian (Flynn's frequent onscreen partner Olivia de Havilland, who is simply luminous here). Similarly, the structure is casually episodic, collecting famous moments from the Robin legend rather than forcing everything into a streamlined narrative structure. This is a proudly traditional take on the classic story, and as such it may be the most archetypal Robin Hood. However, the film does contain several elements that mark it as a film of its time, displaying a concern for social/historical context than even many of the more "realistic" latter-day interpretations avoid. The Adventures of Robin Hood very much emphasizes the importance of ethnic strife and state persecution, continually hammering home the idea that the aristocratic Normans are oppressing the common, salt-of-the-earth Saxons (Robin, himself a nobleman but also a Saxon, sides with clan over class). The film even offers Robin Hood a solemn refugee camp to run amidst all the derring-do! As such, it's hard not to see the looming war in Europe casting a shadow over the sunny swashbuckler of 1938.

Why I like it •
I quite like those idiosyncratic elements, inadvertently marking The Adventures of Robin Hood as a product of its time as well as a film for the ages. But most of all, I love the film for its energy and its eye candy - this is one of the most vivid Technicolor masterworks of the 1930s with its lush emerald green and dazzling purples and reds dotting a wardrobe more concerned with joyous expressivity than drab accuracy. De Havilland (who - still living - will celebrate her 100th birthday next year) is also beyond lovely, while Flynn is charming in a lighthearted, breezy way (supposedly he found the character boring, yet he always gives the appearance of having a ball). Meanwhile Claude Rains purrs with delightful wickedness, and the supporting characters fill out the lively, varied ensemble - Una O'Connor in particular steals scenes with the same gusto that Robin robs the rich. Basil Rathborne unfortunately isn't able to flex the charismatic villain muscle he displayed in Captain Blood (Guy of Gisborne is very much a stick-in-the-mud) but he gets to deliver the swashbuckling goods in a climactic duel with Flynn. The Adventures of Robin Hood is the quintessence of what Golden Age Hollywood could achieve; I first saw the film at a retrospective screening and the big screen held me rapt for the entire duration. The movie is as cocky and confident in its ability to entertain as Robin himself.

How you can see it • Available on DVD from Netflix, the film is also streaming on these sites. I included a clip at 1:35 in Hooray for Hollywood! (chapter 5 of my 32 Days of Movies video series).

What do you think? • What is your favorite Robin Hood adaptation? Swashbuckling adventure? Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland pairing? Do you prefer Robin Hood's chief villain to be Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham, or Guy of Gisborne? What do various adaptations of the story tell us about the times in which they were made? Is there an explanation for one of the film's odd cuts, in which the embracing Flynn and de Havilland suddenly appear to be separated in close-ups (this isn't an open-ended subjective quesiton like the others, but something I genuinely am confused by)? Do you prefer films to push stories like Robin Hood toward a greater realism and/or darkness, or would you rather they embrace their escapist entertainment qualities...or find a balance between the two approaches? What gave the Golden Age films their special glow, and do you think this quality is overrated, do you wish films today would emulate it, or do you feel it worked for its time and now attempts to reproduce it would feel forced our out of place?

Every month, I will be offering at least one post on Twin Peaks...up until Showtime re-airs the original series. Then I will post extensive coverage of each episode (mixing new reactions with my many older pieces) immediately after they air. Stay tuned.

The following meta-analysis was originally posted on my Tumblr in October, and I thought it would be worth sharing here as well. Major spoilers for Twin Peaks follow the jump.

Thinking about Bob’s plans for Cooper in the Black Lodge (thanks to a post by @outerspacelesbian), I am reminded how many differing interpretations there are of precisely when Coop loses his soul to Bob, or splits into two, or however you want to frame it. I’ve heard people suggest that it’s as soon as the Little Man “tests” him with the coffee and it runs like motor oil, indicating that Bob is already fated to win (see this video).

In Wrapped in Plastic, John Thorne suggests that Cooper’s split arrives soon after he stumbles through the curtains with a stomach wound and sees himself and Annie lying on the floor at which point he is divided into good and bad Cooper (meaning the Cooper we see for the next several minutes, the one who willingly gives his soul to Windom and calmly walks after Bob takes it, is only half of Coop, the “good Coop” we see in FWWM, while the bad side is already lurking within the Red Room, ready to rise to the top).

Others conclude that Coop’s big mistake is offering to give his soul to Windom, since this represents an act of will (Martha Nochimson’s point) or a dangerously deluded self-sacrifice (as several fans have suggested) or even a sexist, anachronistically chivalric assumption that he must focus on rescuing Annie rather than respect her autonomous struggle within the Lodge and focus on his own (suggested by users on alt.tv.twin-peaks back in 1991).

There has been speculation that the turning point is Coop fleeing Bob in the end: that this is the dangerous fear that both Maj. Briggs and Hawk have spoken of, which opens him up to Bob’s power and awakens his own doppelganger. Finally, there is the assumption - which I myself have made in the past - that the most crucial moment is when Coop sees his doppelganger and turns to walk, and eventually run, away rather than face the shadow self/dweller on the threshold that Hawk prophesied in ep. 18.

I still think that’s a really important moment (much more than walking away from Bob, which he seems to do calmly and, it could be noted, at Bob’s own command) but I’d like to explore another facet of that turning point: maybe the shadow-self emerges in the first place because Cooper has taken vengeance of Windom. I’ve heard others suggest this as well (on a dugpa thread I think) but I want to look at it in a larger context. Of course that isn’t what we see: instead we see Bob “rescue” Cooper, presumably because Windom has broken the rules of the Lodge by demanding Coop’s soul and he must be punished. In this interpretation, Coop is merely a witness to this pivotal moment, not an actor in it. But is this really what happens?

Consider that, especially as the film later shows it, Bob never really works alone. He needs a human partner and as Fire Walk With Me reveals, Leland was much a collaborator than a victim. What if, in the moment of surrendering his soul, Cooper *manifested* Bob to take revenge on Windom. Compounding this transgression, he won’t even allow himself to take responsibility for this decision - displacing that responsibility onto the outside figure of Bob. So not only is he acting out against another person, he won’t even accept that it’s him doing the acting out. And Bob plays along, as he always does, exculpating Coop while giving him exactly what he wants and giving him permission to go.

Immediately after this dramatic turnaround, two things happen. First, the evil Coop emerges from one side of the room now that Coop has left on the other, as if his approving retreat from the scene of the crime sealed the deal and now his dark side is manifest. Second, in the hallway outside the room, Coop runs into Leland who cackles, disingenuously, “I did not kill anyone.” This implicitly couples Cooper’s own denial with Leland’s, and analogizes their relationship to Bob, especially since Leland is (literally, in a visual sense) placed as the central axis around which the two Coopers face each other for the first time.

The scene becomes even more resonant when paired with the end of Fire Walk With Me. I’ve explained my thoughts on this elsewhere, so I’ll tread lightly for the moment, but it’s my read that Laura is the one who manifests the angel to save Ronette in the train car. If this is the case, then we have an exact mirror image of the finale’s climax. In both cases a character (Cooper/Laura) manifests an otherworldly being (Bob/the angel) to either reward or punish someone that they regard as their shadow self (Windom/Ronette). In the finale, this leads to Cooper being chased by his doppelganger, who emerges into the outside world aligned with a victorious Bob. In the film, this leads to Laura receiving the ring, and emerging into a higher spiritual plane having defeated Bob.

There’s much more that can be said about this idea. There are some holes in it as well (one could argue that Annie makes a better parallel for Ronette, and Windom for Leland, which changes the whole reading of Cooper’s actions) but for the moment I find this concept pretty compelling.

For further discussion see the thread that emerged on dugpa's World of Blue forum.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films.Unlike the previous essays, the Rebuild films will not be accompanied by chats with other bloggers.

And so my Neon Genesis Evangelion coverage finally comes to a close...for now. This is the only remaining Evangelion film or episode, at least until the release of Evangelion 4.0 (or 1.0 + 3.0, which is possibly going to be the title, whatever that means). This is also the first piece of Evangelion I have watched fresh for this series. In fact, by the time I tuned up 3.33 for this review I'd seen the the entire series run at least three or four times (some episodes five or six times), watched The End of Evangelion at least four times (three of them in the last few weeks), and watched the two earlier Rebuild films at least twice. Though I did not know much lore or history when I began this endeavor, this year I explored the world of Evangelion more deeply, learning about various theories, interpretations, and opinions. How exciting, then, to plunge into new (to me) Evangelion for the first time in four years! That's ultimately the pleasure and promise that the Rebuilds hold: the opportunity to experience this familiar world through new eyes. On that front, Evangelion 3.33 delivered more than any of the other Rebuilds, and I think it would be fair to call it my favorite of the three films.

This doesn't mean I love it to the same extent as the series or End of Evangelion even though in some ways it recalls their sensibility more than that of the first two Rebuilds. This is a much darker Evangelion, set in a truly dystopian future in which hope has almost been extinguished. Visually, 3.33 calls back to the stark minimalism of the show: gone is the sparkly Disneyland aesthetic of 2.22 in favor of a bleak, elemental design. We even get a bit more stylized abstraction than in the previous two films, though nothing like we had in episodes 25 or 26 (either on the show or as End of). This is the grim, grueling side of Evangelion that Anno always seems to gravitate back towards, and that stylistic decision is given narrative justification by the fallout (literally) from the end of 2.22. I knew a few things going into this movie: that there was some sort of fourteen-year "time skip" (though I didn't know how that would unfold), that the characters were all angry at Shinji, that Rei would not be the same Rei we saw in 2.22 (I'd call her "Rei III" but I'm not sure Ritsuko's mother ever strangled a "Rei I" in the world of the movie), and that Kaworu would play a big role in the film and at some point release Shinji from a collar he was forced to wear.

That's a fair amount of surprise taken away - especially knowing the "timeskip" aspect. But I still wasn't quite prepared for the shock of Shinji's "return" early in 3.33. After an early space battle involving Asuka and Mari, Shinji is somehow retrieved in an object that fell from the sky. Full disclosure: I'm still not totally sure what happened there (if he got lost inside Eva-01, and Eva-01 is now the engine of Misato's ship, how did he end up in space?). But I'm trying to give my initial reaction without much filter, so bear with me. When Shinji's Rip Van Winkle act ends, and he emerges into the future (or, well, the future's future) one shocking revelation follows another. Toji's sister, now older than him, is his medical officer. Misato and Ritsuko (whose blonde hair has been cropped tight) lead a group called Willen, which is now fighting against NERV. Everyone is in a bad mood, always; we even get a humorous glimpse of surly (!) Maya on board one of the battleships. And they allhate poor Shinji, who doesn't have a clue what he's done - the last thing he remembers is attempting to rescue Rei from the Angel. Now he is their prisoner, fixed with that electronic collar, and threatened with death when he tries to escape.

The biggest change is Misato. The talented but dysfunctional party girl we met in the series and the Rebuilds has become an entirely different person. I can't really understate this fact. She looks different (cloaked at all times beneath a commander's cap and behind dark shades), she talks differently, and God knows she acts differently. It's like Shinji's nightmare of Misato during her more overbearing, disapproving moments has taken on a life of its own. Indeed, the entire film seems like Shinji's worst nightmare. Everyone threatens and berates him, without telling him why. Then he discovers that he triggered the previous apocalypse (referred to as the "near-Third Impact" though from the looks of it, it was much more than "near"), probably killing millions of people including - implicitly - his friends and schoolmates. The Rei he meets has no memory of him, and none of the character growth observed in 2.22; a fact explains when he discovers the Rei cloning system (in an info-dump which also reveals that Yui is inside Eva-01 and Gendo is planning to trigger a Fourth Impact). And finally, in the end, when he thinks he is undoing all his mistakes, he triggers another world-ending event; no wonder as the film ends he is limp and speechless, Asuka dragging around this twice- (or I suppose, thrice-)wrecked world by his palm. At least this time Shinji doesn't have to blame himself for Kaworu's death; the Angel/Child still loses his head but it appears to be a suicide.

For some reason, handwaved as the "curse of the Eva," none of the pilots has aged in fourteen years, so Asuka is still the spunky, irritable showoff, Rei is still the petite, emotionless adolescent and Mari is...well, whatever Mari is. To be fair, she gets a little more development this time - revealing a near-sociopathic cheerfulness and bantering camaraderie with Asuka - but her characterization still feels the most lackluster of anyone. Anno does not really play with the idea that these characters are fourteen on the outside, but much older on the inside; instead their agelessness provides an excuse to keep something familiar in this strange new world. Once again, Rei proves the most interesting of the Rebuild pilots, this time for an entirely different reason than in the last film. She has completely reverted to robotic monotony, even less engaged than she was in 1.11 - a seemingly soulless doll who has no problem with being a doll. But as she discovers her clone identity, a certain humanity begins to flicker behind her stoic expression, creating a identity crisis for the girl who only does what she is "supposed" to do. In one of the more interesting moments, as her Eva battles Asuka, she asks "What would Rei Ayanami do?" and Asuka responds, furiously, "How the hell would I know? Do what you want to do!" (Rei ejects her plug before the Eva is destroyed). I'll be interested to see if and how the new Rei develops in the final chapter, especially if she comes face-to-face with the previous Rei - who may be trapped inside Eva-01.

Unlike the previous two films, Evangelion 3.33 focuses more on character than action, although of course there are still intense battle sequences serving as bookends. Kaworu's character is unusually human in this film, and perhaps more sincere in his attempt to reach out to Shinji. His overtures seemed like a possible ruse in the series, but in 3.33 he genuinely wants the best for Shinji, thinking that they are doing the right thing by removing the lances from Lilith. Kaworu's pensive, troubled expression as he realizes SEELE's (or Gendo's?) true intentions is unlike anything we glimpsed in the show, even when he recognized that the creature in Terminal Dogma wasn't Adam. Shinji is determined to follow through on Kaworu's initial plan despite his new friend's last-minute second thoughts - having lost so much and been dragged so low, Shinji simply has to believe he can (as the title references) "re-do." On the show, Shinji's spirit was broken by his own repeated attempts to save the world, at the command of others. In this film, his spirit is broken by the opposite: his (repeated) destruction of the world, in defiance of others. So much for the idea that the Rebuilds push toward a happier, more positive Evangelion; if that is still where they're heading, I'm not sure Shinji will be the vessel for this transformation.

If my first-time viewing of Evangelion 3.33 has been the most satisfying of all the Rebuilds, this is partly due to the third entry feeling the most like an actual movie. Obviously the previous two films had a cinematic sheen, but they didn't quite have a cinematic shape. 3.33 frames itself as a real narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end, less episodic than the last two movies - helped by the fact that Anno no longer seems much interested in mimicking the structure of the show. We get some of the late-series information, about Yui, Rei, Gendo, and so forth, and we get one major late-series event, Kaworu's appearance and death. But for the most part, a unique film plot has been concocted to make this the most efficient and self-contained film so far. Anno also makes good use of his 2.35:1 framing (the first time he has gone so wide), creating panoramic compositions conveying both open space and classical restraint. Although this is the most intimate of the Rebuilds, it somehow feels the least like television in its visual strategy.

As a movie, 3.33 still sacrifices some of the qualities of the series. Characters who were explored in-depth in the show are limited to supporting roles here, most notably Ritsuko (at this point any potential relationship with Gendo is a no-go, and I doubt we'll find out anything about her mother either). We also don't see Kaji at all, though I have to imagine he'll reappear somehow in the final entry. Asuka is still rather one-note compared to the series, and we'll probably never know much of value about Mari (though some interesting fan-theories suggest otherwise). I do hope Misato's arc is not complete, and I doubt it is, given a telling moment or two - especially when she has the opportunity to kill Shinji and silently refuses to pull the trigger. The Rebuild series is carefully choosing its emphasis: Shinji, Rei, and Gendo - whose role has been limited but very important so far, suggesting that in this version of the story he has more power and purpose than SEELE (their monoliths turn to stone in this film, and I'm not totally sure what that means either, except that they appear to be "dying"). Outside of that essentially familial trio the other characters are there to provide support. In Kaworu's case this entails a lot of screentime - more than he got on the show, in fact, but he is the only character this could be said about. In that supportive function, at least, Fuyutsuki actually does get a surprising amount of attention here; his short but essential speech to Shinji serves the same function as his flashbacks in the series.

So if we're still attempting that game of "parallel the show" (however loosely) we have now reached the final two episodes. How will 4.44 - or whatever Anno wants to call the final Rebuild - represent Human Instrumentality? Will it continue an emphasis on storytelling, characterization and action sequences before reaching that point or will the final film be one big feature-length mindfuck? Despite the Rebuilds' visual grandeur, they have been largely conventional in their stylistic range - will the conclusion allow us to see live-action, children's drawings, non-computerized experimental abstractions? Will Anno break the fourth wall? Say what you will about 3.33, it leaves us less certain than ever what to expect from Evangelion...and that's a good thing.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Wizard of Oz (1939/USA/dir. Victor Fleming & King Vidor) appeared at #79 on my original list.

What it is • In early 1939, it was MGM Production #1060, just another job for the many professional actors, technicians, and businessmen involved with its making. That August, released six days before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, it was a lavish family film, touched by vaudevillian comedy, screen-musical , and adventure/fantasy influences - an escapist treat for parents and children, whose half-cost and/or matinee tickets made it difficult for the studio to recoup its considerable investment. The following year, on Leap Day, the film's respectable nominations (including one for Best Picture) yielded two wins (both musical) plus a special award for Judy Garland. In 1949, when Frank Morgan - the wizard himself - passed away, this role was not mentioned in his filmography. Within a decade, broadcast in black-and-white on early television sets - so that even the candy-coated world of Oz took on the dusty shades of the Kansas sequence - the movie finally became the pop culture phenomenon it remains to this day. Since then, it has inspired in-depth psychoanalytic analyses, sync-ups with Pink Floyd records, and endless parodies and references and analogies from editorial cartoons to everyday speech. By sheer coincidence, as I wrote the previous sentence, another person in the room opened a backpack and discovered a Barnes & Noble bag featured the curled-up feet of the Wicked Witch of the East with text from L. Frank Baum's book (and while the original story remains a classic, it's unlikely it would be remembered nearly so universally today if not the film version which has long ago supplanted the literary images and phrases). The Wizard of Oz is truly inescapable; quite likely it is the most referenced motion picture in history, and certainly it is one of the most viewed. Yet at its core is a simple story, presented straightforwardly for all of its resonance and associations. A young girl, lonely and frustrated in her native Kansas, is apparently transported by a twister to a faraway land, where she must defeat the Wicked Witch of the West, befriend the lovably incomplete Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, and discover the truth about the fearsome Wizard in Emerald City before learning that "there's no place like home."

Why I like it •
Like everyone else, I have a personal history with the movie. Allow me to bore you with it for a moment. For my sixth birthday, my main desire was the brand new VHS release of The Land Before Time. I got that, but I also got a copy - released to accompany the 50th anniversary of the film - of The Wizard of Oz which .The video opened with a detergent commercial, shot through with quintessentially eighties fuzziness, in which a bunch of kids dress up as the Oz characters for their school play. Nine years later, in eighth grade, I re-enacted this ritual myself, cast as the Wizard in a jr. high production (to this day, I could probably recite much of Frank Morgan's dialogue from memory). Around the same time, I saw a premature 60th anniversary screening - my first big-screen encounter with the film (I remember being really struck by the film's classical aspect ratio for the first time) and in between those two poles - first video viewing and theatrical re-release - I read the book for the first time for an elementary school research paper on L. Frank Baum. Close to a decade later, I experienced a resurgence of interest when a friend encouraged the woolly "Dark Side of the Rainbow" exercise. Making sure to sync the lion's second roar with the needle-drop onto Pink Floyd's most famous album, most of the on-the-nose correspondences seemed unsurprisingly trivial. But what struck me unexpectedly was how well the mood of the music suited the images, bringing out the subterranean emotions embedded in the experience, evoking both prior Depressions  (the 1890s, the 1930s) and future depressions (neither L. Frank Baum nor Judy Garland had easy lives following the their success with this story). I noticed too that in a weird way the movie seemed almost documentary-like in its artificiality - the stylized sets made me more conscious of the soundstage surroundings than I would have been if the illusion was more convincing. This viewing led me to several related books, the best being The Making of The Wizard of Oz, which details the daily lives of the actors, the troubleshooting special effects, the decadent hotel parties of the Munchkin performers and other memorable details from the set. It was probably with this experience in mind that I included The Wizard of Oz on the 2011 "Favorites" list which spawned this series; other nostalgic classics were cut from the running (the point being what moved me now, now what moved me once upon a time) but the big picture of The Wizard of Oz still held fascination. Watching it yesterday, what stuck with me was the effectiveness of the framing device. Casting the bulk of the film as a dream and finding correspondences between Dorothy's "real-life" companions and the dream's characters could be perceived as a cliched cop-out. Instead, I find that it elevates the fantasy beyond trivial escapism and imbues the reality with a larger sense of music. I wonder if, without the Kansas sequences, the film would be as much of a classic today? Somehow anchoring the story in familiar Depression reality gives it an extra punch, and the notion of several levels of interacting reality inspired everyone from Salman Rushdie to David Lynch, indelibly shaping the dream-logic that characterizes some of the best high art and pop culture of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The Wizard of Oz itself is a fun entertainment whose aftertaste suggests so much more beneath the surface and along the margins. "What a world," indeed.

How you can see it • This one shouldn't be too hard to find. But if you want to revisit (or, shockingly, see it for the first time), The Wizard of Oz is on DVD from Netflix. And chances are good your local library has a copy unless it has gone missing over the years. The film is narrowly available (and can be tracked for future availability) streaming or digitally. Surprisingly, I have never written a review of the film before - probably because I long planned a massive essay, combining impressionistic riffing with loads of research, that never actually came about (had it not been for this proposed endeavor, I would definitely have covered it in my "Big Ones" series). My only copy is VHS, so it wasn't included in my video clips series a few years ago either. However, I did create a visual tribute to the tornado sequence several years ago and  several years before that, I mused about films like Wizard of Oz which become popular many years after their premiere. And of course the Wicked Witch placed on my list of favorite characters. Probably the first time I wrote about the film for this blog was a brief blurb on the aforementioned "Making of" book, which was a runner-up on my Reading the Movies movie-book list in 2009.

What do you think? • How did you first see The Wizard of Oz? Did it have a big impact? What are your favorite sequences in the film, your favorite characters, your favorite songs? Has the charm of the film worn off with repeat viewings and/or growing up, or did you never much care for it in the first place? Does the knowledge of its place in pop culture make it harder for you to view the film on its own? Does it enhance or impede your enjoyment? What is your favorite essay, film, book, comic, or other work inspired by the film? Do you like the book? How does it compare to the film for you? Have you shared it with your kids, or a younger generation? How did they respond? Do you think the Wizard, once he's unmasked, has genuine wisdom to offer or do you think he is still BS'ing the characters? Is Dorothy's return home a disappointing conclusion to her adventure? Or a necessary return to reality? Or something else entirely?

Due in large part to a weeklong out-of-town Thanksgiving vacation, I've fallen way behind on my videos. The Side-by-Side analysis of two weeks ago remains a work-in-progress (which really should be ready within a day, I swear!) and as a result I haven't even begun work yet on what was to be today's video - my second Cinepoem, cutting images to Julie Harris' reading of "After Great Pain." I'm very excited about the project, and already have a lot of ideas for it, but it will have to wait for a later date, probably this week.

Meanwhile, watch this space - I will update both for the Side by Side video when it appears, and also this Cinepoem. Hope your Thanksgiving was as enjoyable as mine!

The Neon Genesis Evangelion episode guide is rare among my viewing diaries in that all of my reviews are accompanied by lengthy chats with Bob Clark, who introduced me to the anime show a year before this viewing diary began. Unlike many of my upcoming episode guides, I had seen the series several times before writing about it; nonetheless I discovered a lot of new stuff about Evangelion on this watch-through. After seven episodes, the Japanese blogger Murderous Ink joined us to add his perspective, sometimes offering an extended commentary, at others sharing a few comments or corrections.

Also unusually, this series took a 2 1/2-year break after starting up in 2012. But here it is, finally finished and hopefully it can serve as a useful companion on your own rewatches, or - if you haven't actually seen it yet - a first viewing. It's certainly a wild ride.

Next week my next viewing diary will kick off with a review of the pilot episode of The Prisoner, the British cult classic from the sixties. I should probably get to watching it now! (So much for finishing these episode guides way ahead of time...)