Evangelion….

Okay this is a really good anime and all but did anyone understand the last 2 or 3 episodes? i was completly loss and did not know what they were talking about…..will someone please explain what it all means especially that ****minor spoiler****instrumentality thing………so confusing….

I didn’t get the ending either. I heard that the two movies ("Death and Rebirth" and "End of Evangelion") clear everything up and make the ending understandable, but I haven’t seen them yet. (Probably getting Death and Rebirth for Christmas. :))

Personally, I hated the ending. A large part of why I like Eva so much is because I really identify with Shinji and Rei. So of course I was hoping for an ending that resolved their parts of the story. Instead, the ending didn’t really resolve Shinji’s problems. (anyone can say "I can control my own reality" or whatever the last episode was about. It’s about living with that attitude every day, not just accepting it for one episode, that solves things. If there were another episode, Shinji could easily go back to being his normal, depressed self and it would completely defeat the purpose.) It barely even mentioned Rei or any of the other characters, so we really don’t know what happened to them. And the story itself never got resolved. I’m with you on the "What the hell was the instrumentality project?" thing. I know it had something to do with the genetic experiment that created Rei, but other than that I’m clueless.

[EDIT: Forgot to mention, I doubt this is true but someone told me once that the reason they made the two movies was because so many people who had watched the series in Japan agreed with you and me on the ending, Anno actually started receiving death threats demanding that he change the ending! 😮 It’s probably just the anime equivalent to an urban legend, but still…]

I have seen the two movies (actually I own them on DVD, but oh well lol ) :

I won’t spoil anything, but while you DO get some answers…you actually get new questions to compensate :p So, it’s a LITTLE more understandable, but not by much…

EDIT : Fujin…I actually recommend , should you get only one of the movies, to ONLY get "The End of Evangelion".

"Death and Rebirth" is nothing more than a "compressed re-telling of the story", and a bit messed up chronologically too. And, for what LITTLE new story is added in the last 30 minutes, you get to see it again at the beginning of "The End of Evangelion"…Therefore, unless you’re in for the double-sided DVD that has a very comprehensive guide to Evangelion, I don’t recommend you go with this one. ( That means if you were going to get it on VHS, don’t bother with "Death and Rebirth". )

I’m getting the DVD, not the VHS… the DVD is double-sided? Is this just a special edition version or are all the Death and Rebirth DVDs like that?

So, without spoiling the story, can you tell me what you mean by "new questions to contemplate"? I don’t mind if a story is left open-ended, just as long as it makes sense.

I’m afraid it would indeed spoil the story, but I can tell one thing : YES, you finally get a definite answer what the angels really are, among other things.

Well, since there is only one version I know , probably all the "Death and Rebirth" DVDs are double-sided…I might be wrong on this one, though.

I get it now……it just goes through at how Shinji has the power to change and alter the current reality…….

i liked the ending as soon as i got it, as i found the bit where he went back to school funny….so i enjoyed it…..

I am so smart, no one i knows gets it.,….. only me, aint i smart?

Actually…That’s not it at all :p lol

It’s just what happens in Shinji’s MIND. Then he sees other possibilities of what his life could’ve turned on…but all of it, except for SOME parts are only happening in his mind.

Yes, and then he goes on to relize that his life is not just about piloting the Eva, and that he doens’t need it to survive…….or live for that matter…….

Whoa you don’t have the third movie!:eek:
Oh wait a second. You won’t want it anyway. It’s only on vhs still in japan. Also it’s not for kids, it’s called: "Neon Geneisis Evangelion Hentai Movie" 12 minutes long.

Shorter then NGE Death and Rebirth. That movie was bad, but it had some new scenes in it. End of Evangelion was good and I think it is much better than episodes 25-26. However it is confusing for most people. So Fujin once you get around to watching the episodes avoid 25 and 26. The Human Instrumentality Project. It deals about the Truth of NERV seen through the eyes of Shinji, Asuka, Rei, and Misato. The movie is sad though, the ending will take awhile to figure out though, one sentace could change the way you think of the movie turns out.

There actually aren’t answers to the questions posed by Evangelion. It was written by an insane guy in a mental institution. People think it’s deep, but the truth is that it just doesn’t make sense…

If he really was so crazy how could he think this up. You’re basically saying he was making it all up as he went along and that it magically formed a well-thought out plot? I know he is a little psychoic, but aren’t we all? It shows signs of actual genuine story telling which for me shows it wasn’t just by accident, but he worked hard to accomplish a rich storyline that Gainex studios would later make the series world known. Also if he where crazy how in the world could he have known what the "Sephiroth" was and how it translated to the evolution of man. Currently we are faced with a Darwinian Theory on our evolution! This story was well thought, for instance, Shinji and Rei togther face down their problems early off. Rei struggles and cuts off her journey to Kamer (forgot the actual spelling) which is the final gate to evolution. If you read passages of Book of the Dead, the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the Bible the journey matchs pretty well with how the anime goes.

***MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD***
So please don’t read Enigmatic Angel or you will spoil the ending!

The Angels in the end are actually forms of man that didn’t attain the will to evolve like man did so in theory we are the 18th Angel!
Much like the 13th Angel which is the "tiny organisms" that worked together to inflict serious damage on NERV could actually depict that man is it’s own worse enemy and has only evolved through the art of war. Killing has been a prime objective in humanity in the real world. World War 2, and the Cold War showed amazing technological advancement in both offense and defensive measures.

He must not have been that crazy to make this plot so intricate and precise that it was just in accident, I really do hope he is not in an Insane Asylum because he really doesn’t seem to be that crazy at all. To put the emotion sadness and joy so apart from everyone it makes the story richer. Gendo was trying to destroy the world in a way, but if you knew that would you work for him just to die? Evangelion plays on your mind that humans are not just perfect or kind, but we are really like animals and we use weapons that we hate to accomplish something we hate for doing. This makes humanity in it’s own eyes as not worth it’s costly deeds worthy in our world, but that rather we are like a flu that refuses to die. So TeeKay I would actually watch every episode and the End of Evangelion movie at least ONCE more and be careful on what you see and hear. You learn more the 2nd and 3rd times around. Then you will see what it is really about. Also during the final two episodes replace Shinji with "I" the creator and NERV with Gainex Studios to understand his unparalleled ways of thinking. Try it. 🙂

I didn’t read most of Shinji’s post because I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but AFAIK Anno isn’t in a mental institution or even psychotic at all. I’ve read that he has clinical depression, which is a serious condition but not something that would normally cause insanity or the need to be put in a mental institution. IIRC, Anno is working with live-action Japanese films right now, and I doubt he’s doing that from a mental institution.

Other than that, I won’t respond to TK’s post until I see the movies. As it stands right now, Eva was (in my opinion) a good story that turned crappy at the end.

From what I’ve read in other places, the ending of the TV series (the ending everyone hated) was supposed to be a view from Shinji’s perspective on things during the last few events, and the new movies were supposed to be what all was "really" going on during all that stuff near the TV series.

But I don’t know, having only seen scant amounts of the televised series and none of the two new movies (but I intend to get Perfect Collection, Death and Rebirth, and End of Evangelion… as soon as I get the cash. Then I’m going to sit down one weekend and watch it all from beginning to end. If it screws my head up, you’ll be the first to know because I’ll probably post about it. 😀 ).