Flash back to 1997, when this film first debuted. Gainax went from a fallen studio breathing its last to an unstoppable juggernaut virtually overnight. Evangelion had become the show for all of Japan. People who never cared about a cartoon before were talking about just what all this crap could possibly mean and add up to. It was the generation’s Lost. Well before the movies were announced, director Hideaki Anno had carte blanche to do whatever he saw fit; And that he certainly did.
It’s rather telling that The End of Evangelion presents itself like two extended-length episodes of the TV series – Episode 25’ and Episode 26’. That extra apostrophe isn’t just for show either – it means “prime” as in Mathematics. Living up to those numbers and that punctuation mark, End of Eva spares no time to bring newcomers up to speed. Either you know everything leading up to this point or you don’t.
Even so, like any great finale, even newcomers can get the general gist of what’s going on and get caught up in the rush of it all. To put it simply, the phantom organization Seele has gotten tired of our ostensible heroes, the Eva pilots and the crew of the other enigmatic organization, NERV, and finally puts into action plans to take them down. To this end, they decide to launch the might of the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Forces against them. To put it in terms that our younger, hipper readers might get, imagine if Microsoft finally tired of Google’s shenanigans and decided to buy out the National Guard to kill them all and let God sort ‘em out. It’s ludicrous but you just gotta run with it.
What begins is utter brutality that only alludes to what’s to come in the second half. Essentially, the JSSDF come in, guns and flamethrowers blazing, and make short work of all our favorite tan-shirted staff members. The show was never any stranger to violence, as evidenced by its move to a late-night airing after parental complaints. However, up to now, it was all distanced by the fact that it was giant robots and monsters doing the vast majority of the blood-letting. Here however, we have no such safety net. Never is this more apparent than when Maya, by far the most naïve NERV staffer, is handed a pistol and is told in no uncertain terms that it’s “do or die.” As bodies pile up in the halls, the helpless look in her eyes suggests a decided lack of “do.” It’s an understated moment under the blaring of klaxons, but it sticks in my mind as a beat of subtlety in an orchestra of bombast.
Couple that with a brutal scene where one of the biomechanical Evas (and heroines) is graphically eviscerated, and it’s already one of the most visually disturbing cartoons this side of Angel Cop (Watch out for that article next time folks!).
Then it gets worse.
The second half of the film remains one of the greatest fast ones pulled in the history of anime. Without putting too fine a point on it, if the first half was an assault on the senses, at least it was grounded in some kind of rational reality. As the so-called Episode 26’ opens however, it becomes clear that reason has been banished from the room. Oh we could do some write-up about how this all ties into the series but, really, for our purposes this Halloween it’s all about scary, tripped-up insanity and director Anno delivers that in spades. Taking every single self-referential trick he learned in the TV series, the whole film is like an ironic reversal of the Toei-style climatic orgy of explosive action that we were building up to in the first half. In place of “slam-bang,” we get a heaping dose of “huh-what?!”
Like a stream-of-conscious mind vomit, there is a clash of visual styles and techniques throughout the climax. Reversed animation cels give a blurred dream-like quality to past footage while being intercut with actual death threats sent to the Gainax offices following the original ending. Startlingly ordinary live-action footage is interwoven as creepy lipstick-wearing white robots spontaneously gain little girls faces while stabbing themselves in orgasmic glee; nearly everyone in the cast being unceremoniously killed off or otherwise exploded into ectoplasm; crayon scrawlings of roadkill and eerie faces as a happy little ditty plays in the background. It says something that the DVD cover reflects one of the tamer moments in the barrage.
The original series always made a point of switching its identity – an episode would have a comedic exchange only to be quickly followed by self-loathing introspection. Here however Anno focuses on scarring souls and eyeballs for life and it works gloriously. Even if you haven’t seen a single episode of the series, there’s no denying the sheer creep value of everything. Not surprising to know that voice actress Yuko Miyamura (Asuka Langley) literally had a few mental breakdowns as she delved into her character’s tortured psyche.
When it comes down to it, if you’re looking for something to cap off your Halloween season, there’re few better places to go than The End.
