Evangelion is a story that repeats.”
– Hideaki Anno
For any potential criticism you can levy against the acclaimed and monumentally popular anime franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion, it is ostensibly understood among fans and critics that finality has been a recurring issue that’s hung over the series and its many iterations. On March 27th, 1996, the Gainax Studio produced television series aired its final episode on Japanese airwaves to intense reactions which ranged from confusion and disappointment to outrage and hostility at the time. A year later, a film adaptation — fittingly titled The End of Evangelion — was effectively released as a corrective measure to bring the flagship series to a “proper” conclusion in light of the divisive reception to the series’ ending. And just earlier this year in March, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the final entry in a quadriptych of film adaptations known as the Rebuilds series, was released as the latest attempt to bring Evangelion as we know it to a definitive end.
For a quarter century, NGE has been locked in a struggle to find a conclusion that can inject some finality to the franchise in a satisfying manner. With each new ending produced and presented as canonical, the story of the series has remained consistent, but the prospective ends have differed widely in tone, theme, presentation, and relation to conclusivity. For 25 years, we as the audience have been told the same story of the sheltered and emotionally sensitive teen Shinji Ikari being thrust into humanity’s cataclysmic conflict with the mysterious celestial beings known as the Angels to prevent an apocalyptic event. With each retelling, they’ve never ended the same way.
This is because NGE is a series that can be understood as having two narratives happening concurrently: one forward-facing about a teenage boy joining a special military organization against his will to fight Angels at the behest of his distant father, and the other a naked expression of its eccentric creator’s turbulent interiority. Evangelion is the brainchild of industry veteran Hideaki Anno, and as it has become popularly theorized that the series’ overall trajectory is intrinsically tied to the writer-director’s ever-shifting mental state. His very open battles with depression and self-reproach have been cast upon and read into his creation extensively, with his characters becoming repositories for his temperament and the series’ overall tone becoming a reflection of his mood at any given time. Never does this psychological dynamic between creator and creation become more apparent than when he has been tasked with bringing the series to multiple closes over the years.
Anno has been fairly open about his creative processes and how his mental health and fundamental indecisiveness affects the production of the series. Candidly, he has gone as far as admitting to entering into production of the series without a solidified plan for the narrative, characters — and by extension — how the series would conclude. Claiming that NGE is the direct result of his own uncertainty, Anno describes in a 1996 interview with NewType how “listening to various opinions or analysing my own state of mind, I kept questioning myself” and that the series’ narrative concepts and character development was entirely dependent on this “personal stocktaking.” Thus, we can view the many endings to Evangelion not only as expressions of Anno’s irresoluteness when it comes to storytelling, but as an expression of wayward Ego. By looking at how Evangelion ends, we learn quite a bit about the director’s headspace and how it has shifted (even healed) whenever he redoes it.
The First Impact: The Original Television Ending
Marred in controversy, the original ending to NGE as depicted in the final two episodes of the series has gone down in infamy. Originally believed to be the result of the production running over its budget before a proper conclusion could be animated, notably these last two episodes are presented as a cycling of abstract visual digressions and remixed shots from the series as dialogue interrogates the characters and their mental states in something akin to a therapy session in limbo. The overarching narratives of the series — the confrontation between the god-like angels and mankind, the machiavellian plot of shadow organization SEELE, the subterfuge of the conniving Geno Ikari, etc — are effectively undealt with as the episodes instead feature the characters becoming uncomfortably real as they interrogate their very existence and self-worth in gutting, extended dialogue exchanges. Explained away as the internal process of Human Instrumentality — a key concept in the series wherein all human existence is combined into a single being — in the heart of Shinji Ikari, these episodes are a climax without a climax; two episodes of internal debate set to familiar images jumbled and washed in the sea of Anno’s turbulent state of mind, perpetually blocked by budgetary constraints and personal uncertainty.
One could understand the frustrations at the time: imagine being back in 1996, knowing there are only two episodes left of Evangelion, and the plot is left to the wayside for the sake of the characters finding closure to their many hang-ups in dialogue so honest it feels uncomfortable. While the series had notably become more psychologically complex concerning character as it progressed, the ending Anno settled on would naturally come as a shock to the audience who had been patiently watching the series build to something climactic. Instead, they were left with a now heavily memed scene of Shinji being congratulated by his friends and family for coming to terms with the paradox of human nature: for as much pain we think originates from others, the self needs others to define it
Entering the production of the series in the precarious state of mind he was in due to his ongoing battle with depression, Anno was fundamentally incapable of drawing the entangled narrative to a close at the time, as “the story has not yet ended in [his] mind” in more ways than one. With his debilitating emotional state bleeding into the show, Anno became stymied by his spiraling confidence, and thus, he didn’t “end” Evangelion the first time around. In his mind, he couldn’t.
While the plot remains technically unresolved, there is something to be read into the wish fulfillment on display in his chosen ending for the series. Anno uses the conclusion to stage an extensive talk therapy session where protagonist Shinji (whose personality he has admitted is patterned after himself) has an epiphany and breaks through his ongoing neuroses to become a more complete, rounded person. It’s not inconceivable to assume Anno was seeking closure more for himself than the series with his first attempt at ending it, even if he can only personally achieve it through an analog. He has since claimed these episodes “accurately reflect his mood at the time” and that he “regrets nothing.” If we view the episodes as attempts at personal growth and healing, we can understand why.
The Second Impact: ‘The End of Evangelion’
But even if Anno was satisfied with how he was able to bring his creation to a close at the time, the fervent NGE fanbase wasn’t. At all. While anime fandoms have been known to be particularly toxic communities, the controversy surrounding the final episodes of the series was unprecedented to the point of the dramatic: after the episodes aired the Gainax offices were vandalized and Anno’s life was threatened multiple times online over its perceived lack of storyline resolution. Only a year after production of the series concluded, a new ending was released, fittingly titled The End of Evangelion. The film was ostensibly and transparently a theatrical re-do of the final two episodes, a “complementary ending” meant to bring the series to a conclusion the likes of which impossible with the budgetary and time constraints implied with television production.
In many ways, EoE was the “proper” climax to the series that fans had originally anticipated: an immaculately realized apocalyptic vision which is as awe-inspiring in its scale as it is horrific in its narrative implications. It’s a theologically-infused spectacle of grand proportions that takes the intricate plotlines to a conclusive end-point, with the epic confrontation between SEELE and Nerv, climactic, pulse-pounding mecha action, and the visual-actualization of the long referenced plot points of Third Impact and the Human Instrumentality Project, featuring world-bending, surreal scenes which had never been realized in the series up to this point. It culminates in an onslaught of phantasmagoric imagery which depicts the destruction of humanity implied with Instrumentality in a manner which feels as dire and terminal as befitting the essential concept.
And yet, despite the massive improvement in visuals and its desire to show rather than tell, EoE unsurprisingly carries the same sentiment as the conclusion to the series. As Shinji witnesses the instrumentality of all human life on earth, he stumbles upon the exact same epiphany: humanity is a prickly concept wherein our desire to have the emptiness in our hearts masked by the company of others opens us up to both joy and pain and accepting that is just part of existence. But unlike the show, wherein Shinji is immediately congratulated for coming upon this universal truism, Shinji rejects the instrumentality of mankind into a single consciousness and awakens in an apocalyptic landscape and breaks down in tears after attempting to strangle fellow main character Asuka. With this concluding shot being shrouded in more ambiguity and the tone of the film being much more cynical, bleak, and radiating hopelessness — what can we gather about Anno’s mental state from this sudden shift from only a year prior?
As mentioned, Anno was bombarded with negative criticism and death threats after the airing of the final two episodes, which understandably couldn’t help but have negatively impacted his already precarious mental disposition. Speaking candidly in the NHK produced documentary about the making of the final film, The Final Challenge of Evangelion, Anno speaks to how the intense negative reaction to his series finale placed him in a suicidal spiral which robbed him not only of his desire to create, but his very will to live. Thrust back into his series a year later through the demand by the very people who mercilessly spurned it, how could this latest iteration not reflect his self-destructive attitude when, emotionally, he could not sink any further?
Rather than tenderly guiding his self-insert into an affirming epiphany about the validity of his existence, Anno’s film languishes on the destructive cost of such an epiphany with bleak, violent, and disturbing imagery inflicted upon the audience. This wasn’t so much a healing experience for Anno as it was an act of self-flagellation; an intense reaction to the rejection by his “fans” of his attempts at coming to terms with his own mental insecurities, who turns him being forced back into his creation around on his audience by destroying it irreparably. It is challenging not to read the brutal violence on display and ugly circumstances inflicted upon the vibrant world he created as directed bitter resentment.
While the conclusion of the television series allowed itself to be read as hopeful despite its narrative sidestepping and ambivalence, that same hope seemed to have been utterly wrung out of EoE (and, by extension, Anno). The message has not wavered as audiences walk away with the same moral truism, that interpersonal connections open us up to pain along with joy, but now that pain has been displayed to us in horrid detail and that joy is obscured and muted. Shinji, denied the validation and comfort of his epiphany and left in an uncertain limbo of what comes next, lies traumatized on a beach with the world crashing around him and reaches out and tries to destroy the first thing he sees, someone he once cared about. At one point, this was to be the last, indelible image of Evangelion ever produced. A fitting end for an entity that continued to tax and take from its creator. Anno couldn’t conceive of a new ending, but he found within that ending the desire to destroy his creation.
Third Impact: ‘Rebuild’ Series and a Final End
Or so we all thought. Not a decade later, the Rebuild quadrilogy of films were announced as a new version of Evangelion. Anno, with his new production outlet Studio Khara, would no longer be constrained by the limits of technology, budget, or even production time. After a foray into live-action filmmaking with the likes of Love & Pop (1998), Shiki-Jitsu (2000), and Cutie Honey (2004) — as well as several other non Evangelion anime projects — Anno returned once more to his flagship series despite the aggrieved and destructive note he had left it on. In an interview with Collider conducted after the quadrilogy had been completed, whenever he attempted to work on a new project “Evangelion was the only option” as he had now believed he could “do interesting stuff with Evangelion again” after leaving it a figurative and literal limbo back in the late 1990s. Anno would tell the story of Shinji Ikari one more time with the implication being it would be the last time.
But rather than viewing these films as a concession from a frustrated filmmaker incapable of moving on or escaping his most popular creation, it is more fitting to see them now that they have concluded as a reclamation of the series by a newly energized creator who is afforded the time, space, and indisputable control he never had to realize his vision however he saw fit. As Anno claims in an interview with Time Magazine, from their conception the Rebuild films were to radically alter the canon, depart from the structure of the television series, and (most importantly) end the series in a completely different way. And how couldn’t the now 61-year-old director end the series differently after the benefit of two previous attempts, over two decades of hindsight, reflection and distance from the person he was then, and the opportunity to ruminate on and meddle with the conclusion to his heart’s content due to the protracted development cycle of the films? Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: Thrice Upon a Time was to be the definitive end of the series not just for the story, but for Anno himself.
So how did Anno end it? Well in a word, he didn’t. Again.
Without getting into the granular details of how the films significantly depart from original story of the series and the new intricate narrative involving, among other things, a 14 year time-jump and multiple new characters, factions, and storylines circling Shinji Ikari and his involvement with the instrumentality of mankind, Thrice upon a Time represents a lateral move in terms of conclusions. Finding himself in a position wherein he can literally reconfigure the world to his liking after a convoluted set of circumstances, Shinji decides instead to rewrite his world with only one difference: no Evangelions (as in the mecha he and his fellow protagonists pilot). Within the fiction of the film, the characters are shown an infinite number of universes and realize they have been stuck in a cyclical process of reliving the same story and set of events in perpetuity. In response, to free himself and the rest of the cast from being chained to this cycle of recursion, Shinji creates a world where there is no cataclysmic conflict with the mysterious celestial beings known as the Angels, no Human Instrumentality Project, no private military organizations deciding the world’s fate, and no need for him to be a pilot of an Eva.
We leave the franchise with the image of a now adult Shinji Ikari, having never gone through the hardships of his 14-year-old self, peacefully waiting at a Tokyo train station in the “real world.” Or in other words, he lives in a world without Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Can we qualify this as a proper ending, or is this Anno memishly tapping his temple and saying “Can’t end Evangelion if Evangelion never existed” in another effort to wiggle his way out of finally injecting some finality to his most popular creation? Shinji breaking free of the repetitive cycle of Evangelion itself, stepping outside of the narrative he is a part of, and proclaiming he cannot move on and be fulfilled so long as “Evangelions” exist in his world, seems like a pretty clear — and blunt — metaphor for where Anno stands in relation to his series with its latest and definitive end. This reverting of Evangelion (the franchise) in Thrice Upon a Time reads as a tacit acknowledgement by Anno that so long as NGE exists he cannot move forward as a creative, and even with newer technology, more time, and greater budgets, Evangelion will always remain the same despite his and the Studio Khara’s staff’s best efforts to redefine it.
As endings go, it is undeniably definitive — both in terms of narrative and the prospect of viewing it through the lens of its creator’s disposition. Possibly knowing that so long as the story of Evangelion was left open enough to be continued he would be compelled to return (such as he did in the mid-2000s when he initiated the Rebuild project), Anno utilized the ending to Thrice Upon a Time as a bold way to amicably break away from his all-consuming creation for good. But unlike in EoE, where this forceful break reads as a resentful creator attempting to destroy his creation before it does him out of spite, the “unmaking” of Evangelion in Thrice Upon a Time feels more like a liberatory expression of contentedness with the magnitude of his work and an acknowledgment that he can no longer move forward with it.
By all accounts, the creator of NGE has proclaimed numerous times since the release of his final Evangelion film that for him “the story of Evangelion ended” and that it is “very peaceful” for him to have brought it finally to a close. Much as he left his protagonist in the closing minutes of Thrice Upon a Time, Anno himself is older, finally content, and ready for the next step in a world without Evangelion after being compelled to relive it for a quarter century. According to IMDB, his next undertaking will be a dream project in writing and producing the Shinji Higuchi directed Shin Ultraman (2022), a reimagining of the long-running Tsuburaya Productions tokusatsu series which served as one of Anno’s chief inspirations to become a filmmaker. We can only assume he won’t be returning to Evangelion any time soon.
