The END of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1997 Movie)

➡ The text discusses a podcast episode about the anime series “Neon Genesis Evangelion”. The hosts discuss the confusing order of watching the series and its movie, “The End of Evangelion”. They also talk about the controversial and mature content in the movie, and how it differs from the TV series. The hosts express their discomfort with some scenes and discuss the cultural differences between Japan and the West.
➡ The text discusses an anime movie that was initially intended for direct-to-video release but ended up being a big-budget production due to its cultural impact in Japan and financial backing from fashion companies. The movie answers many questions from the series but is confusing for those who haven’t seen the previous episodes. The plot involves humanity consolidating into a single life form using AVAs, a concept spearheaded by Shinji’s father. Despite its complexity, the movie was the fourth highest-grossing in Japan that year.
➡ The text discusses a complex series of events involving characters like Shinji, Asuka, and Masato. Shinji and Asuka are believed to be the only ones who didn’t join a collective consciousness, giving an Adam and Eve vibe. There’s a lot of action, including a mech battle and Masato shooting three people before dying. The text also explores Shinji’s sexual orientation and his confusion about it. The narrative ends with a chaotic scene where everyone melts, and it’s suggested that Shinji is seen as a devil.
➡ The text discusses a complex anime plot involving a character named Shinji who uses his mind to perform extraordinary feats. The story takes place in a realm called Instrumentality Land, inside an ‘egg of humanity’, where all humans collectively form a new entity. The narrative explores the concept of a hive mind and the evolution of humanity into a super organism. The text also mentions various animation techniques, music, and references to other shows and movies.
➡ The text discusses a complex series of events from a show or movie, including characters like Shinji, Korra, Kaori, Misato, and Rey. The characters seem to have powers that cause others to explode upon touch, and there’s speculation about whether this is happening in Shinji’s mind or in a collective consciousness. The text also mentions a potential alternate live-action version of the story, and ends with anticipation for a final episode that might bring psychological closure.
➡ The author promotes their unique conspiracy-themed comics and merchandise available on paranoidamerican.com. They live a digital life, creating podcasts and music, available on podcastiopodcastius.org and rovingsagemedia.bangcamp.com respectively. They encourage support through Patreon, which could help them buy physical items like a guitar. The author also expresses their passion for writing and music, and their resilience against criticism.

I think Shinji’s becoming an incel. So much more abandoned. Games at the Cartoon Cabal beyond what’s Just in a Name at the Cartoon Cabal See just at what Costco’s fame at the Cartoon Cabal So much for the fun and games at the Cartoon Cabal. Well, welcome to the Cartoon Cabal, where we have come to the end of evangelion after doing 25 episodes. We’ll explain that in a bit. This is Matt here. It’s the paranoid American over there. How is it confusing? Okay, right. We’re just talking about the chronology of how to watch this because again, we’re.

We’re at the end kind of. Not quite, but it is our first view of all of this. So when you get to the end of Evangelion, it is kind of confusing exactly how to watch it. The TV show completely completed in 1996 to weird controversy. After that, Anno had weird depression and lots of hate mail from fans. A lot of people still liked it. It’s kind of like, I guess, when, you know, when the Star wars cycle ends or whatever. Right. That I think it had that kind of vibe in Japan. And I was a little confused, too.

So maybe we can just describe this to me on the air. But yes, that’s to watch this movie. Neon Genesis Evangelion. The end of Evangelion. We were told to watch that before episode 25. However, through watching this movie, I saw a title screen that said episode 25. So is this just a long director’s cut version of episode 25? Is that what’s. You watch? You watch 25. That was with all the weird metaphysical interviews. Right. So that was a completely different episode or 26 before we watch 26. Okay, so here’s what happens in the movie. It has a title card that says 25 on it.

Yes. Just to add to the confusion. So the series ends 26 episodes. It’s. The ending’s not clear. They ran out. They ran out of all the money, which, I mean, we’ve been noticing up through 25 that, you know, money’s gone, plots changing. Anno is changing the plan as we go. It’s on paper napkins now. All the animation. Yes, yes, it were basically some. I mean, I wouldn’t have been that. The previews at the end basically were. Weren’t they? So they do 25, 26. They have different titles. About half a year later, there is Death Rebirth put into theaters.

Death is just a summary of the first 24 episodes. So it’s a compilation of things seen before it. And then it ends with the first 25 minutes of this movie, which apparently they did start working on after episode 26 at some point. Anno. Just like, this is a different 25 and 26. So death, rebirth, we don’t need to watch that. That’s been made clear that Death and Rebirth. No. No point in watching that. End of Evangelion comes out about a year, year and a half later. 97. Death and rebirth had promotion in the theater, so, you know, it had posters and stuff by this time.

I know, it’s just like, I’m just trying to kill this project. They barely promoted the thing and then it became really successful. Anyway. This was the fourth successful, fourth most successful film in Japan in 1997, which is. That’s kind of a mind blower. It doesn’t feel like the fourth most successful film of anything. That’s not to say I don’t like it. I just don’t see audiences, you know, like, congregating around it. So why do we have to watch episode 26 after the movie? Okay, that was just a suggestion from some of my other podcasting buddies who have seen the series before who, you know, like, probably own a few Ava models in their house, that sort of thing.

And they just were like, hey, they said do it this way. Because what we’re watching now is the complementary ending, I guess is what they call it. The 25 and 26 of the series is that weird psychological, you know, introspective thing. I think the whole thing takes place in Instrumentality or whatever. This is the one that takes place mostly outside so you see what’s actually happening. So once everyone is putting. Put into this brain Soup, that’s the 25 that we watched last week. It’s very confusing. That’s. That’s. That was kind of the biggest stress getting into the show.

It’s like, how are we going to do when we get to the end? And I don’t know if this is universal or even applicable in Japan, but at least in the States, whenever you have a cartoon or a TV show that gets turned into a movie, usually cartoon, there’s this concept that, well, when it gets to the movies, they’re going to do something edgier than they would do on Cartoon, right? Like, they’re gonna do something a little bit over the top. And this one kind of starts with one not. Not only scene one within, like. Like within the first three minutes, but overall, there’s way more blood and violence and sex and degenerate behavior in this one movie.

Than the entire series. And I get that because it was. The TV show was airing while people were having dinner, essentially. But I don’t. I didn’t get the feeling in the first 10 episodes of Ava that it was ever going to go like full sort of heavy metal Akira at the end. Well, here we are. Yeah. Yeah, here we are. I mean, Rey just runs around naked through the whole thing, which. And this is. I know the excuse in Japan, and it’s not a good one. It’s like Rey is a clone. She starts falling apart. She’s amorphous.

Right. So she’s not a person. She’s not a 14 year old girl. So it’s okay to do that in Japanese mindset. I’m not. I’m. I don’t feel like a perv. Right. Seeing it, but it’s kind of like video games. Like you can. When there’s like the ten year. It looks like the ten year old girl, but she’s like. But she’s a thousand year old elf, so I can like be attracted to her, which I’m like, no, that doesn’t. That doesn’t check out for me at least. Japan’s a wild place. It’s not. There’s. There’s certain things that would not basically acclimate the same way in other forms of western culture, for sure.

I mean, this. This movie is basically, you know, the dead center of otaku culture. With Anno also kind of like. Like, I think he’s trying to make the otaku feel bad in this. He is an otaku guy. That means, you know, just like geek. In Japan, otaku is the. The crate. The. The what? The crazy guy. He’s self loathing in this, just as Shinji’s very self loathing. If we didn’t like Shinji from the start. Hey, this movie makes him even worse. I would say it’s maybe the coolest thing Shinji’s ever done. Not in a good way.

I’m not saying this in a congratulatory way by any means. I’m just saying that out of all the things he’s done, this is the first time that he did something risky and bold on his own accord that he can’t blame an angel for. Yeah. He finally takes agency and it turns out he’s kind of a horrible kid. Just a j. He’s just a Japanese otaku kid. I guess it’s just kind of okay. Yeah. So if there’s an explanation for Rey. Oh, it’s a clone. Oh, it’s a 10,000 year old vampire. Whatever the explanation is. All right, what about Oscar? Well, she doesn’t quite get as.

I mean, yeah, they do get pretty smutty with Oscar, but they don’t just have her running around, you know, with. With nipples for half the movie. Just within the first three minutes. Just one of the first three minutes. Okay. Yeah, that’s a good thing. Of course, nobody feels good about watching that scene. I think I was looking, doing the research. It’s like this scene is often listed as one of the most unpleasant scenes in Japanese anime. I, in my own, I guess, innocence, the first time I watched it, I didn’t realize what had happened. I made a note of like, they have to know what that looked like, right? And then like a few minutes went by and then someone said something to Shinji or he said something that like, oh my God, I’ve done the horrible thing.

And I was like, wait, are they implying that he actually did what I. It looked like he did. And that’s when I had to go back and rewatch it. And I went online and sure enough, and I guess I. In my innocence, I did not think that that’s how they were going to open this movie up in the first three minutes. Yeah, I actually, my plan, I started watching this a week ago. It’s like, I’ll watch it twice, right? And I guess I kind of did. What happened ended up happening is I watched it like really slowly and then ended up rewatching a bunch of it as I went.

So technically I watched it once, but I did an awful lot of like, you know, wait a minute, what? Huh. Which I guess, I guess that’s a good way to go about this one. We did Perfect Blue a while ago. That was a ova that, you know, the straight to the video store, like anime. This was going to be that for a while. And then apparently people just. The TV show had become. Had made a cultural impact in Japan. So like fashion companies just started throwing money at the corporation. So whereas those last five episodes were like made on a shoestring budget, this one is made on like for an anime, like a mega budget.

You can see it. You can see absolutely see the difference. There’s so much more like in between frames that give things more fluid, there’s more detail, there’s more like mech stuff going on. I’m just thinking too though, it opens up and for example, this one actually says Sega. They don’t have to hide and say it’s like a fake Sega anymore. So they’re Sponsored by Sega. You said they’re sponsored by fashion companies. I just wonder your. Your company decided to back and promote this movie. You’re in the theater, you brought your family. The first three minutes play by.

Are you like. Yeah, I’m so glad that we’ve made this movie. The center of our, our promotion for Q4, a late 90s fashion company. Sure. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. That’s, that’s, that’s weird. Abercrombie and Fitch territory, right? Yeah, I guess it’s like something About Mary just came out. So it’s kind of like in vogue. Robert Mapplethorpe had been kicking around a few years before that. Right. I mean, they were, you know, fashion companies are into this stuff at the time. I think there, there’s a few other things that took me a little bit off. For example, in this movie, they don’t pronounce it Seal.

They pronounce it Sealay. And I wasn’t sure if, like, what reality was anymore. Oh, that. Okay, well then this movie did its. Did its job in that case. Let me see there. So there were actually some really bizarre early versions of the plot for this, which I am. This. The, like one didn’t actually make it into the final movie. Yeah, I have. Sorry. I have, like, I have an insane amount of literature about this movie because it’s the kind of the dead center of Otaco. So when I think of something, I have to start looking for it, you know, I don’t know.

Riff for a second. I’ll get back to you in a second. Okay. So there’s a few other things. This movie, it. It does a pretty good job of explaining all of the unanswered questions I had, or at least most of them more than I thought they were ever going to be capable of. I remember even saying that in one of the previous episodes. How, like, how are they going to wrap all this up? How are they going to make it make sense? They do a decent job, but at the expense of. If you’ve never seen any of the previous episodes and you just go and watch this movie, I don’t understand how anyone could figure out what’s going on.

They would have to be lying to be like, oh, no. Yeah, I know, I get it. I followed along like, there’s. There’s zero chance anyone would understand anything going on in this movie without going through the first 25 episodes to get. No. And it’s the fourth highest grossing movie in Japan of that year. That’s insane. So that means that there had to be a significant Number of people that went in and watched this movie blind without any context. I guess theoretically if you had gone to see the one put in tears about six months before, which was the Death Rebirth.

If you. If that was your first Ava and then you came to this, you’d be mighty confused. But not as confused. You had that 60 minute recap that. That would have helped, I’m sure. So. Well, we. We watched all of it sometimes more than once per episode and it was still confusing again until you get here. And then it almost feels like someone really got to think through all the ramifications of this. The previous story. And then like tie little nice bows in the ends of all of them. So like one of the main ones was that this instrumentation project which they were all working towards it essentially the.

The COVID Ikaru. I’m gonna get these names wrong for the rest of my life. But that Shinji’s dad was working towards this concept where humanity consolidates into a single Life form using AVAs. And that once you create the single life form, a new evolution of life will evolve out of that thing, but it will no longer be human. It’ll be like some next level thing. That’s kind of the. The broadest stroke I think I can paint. And he gets reunited with his wife who is currently stuck in unit 01. Right. So it seems Oscar’s mom’s no.

2. So maybe that was actually the secret sauce of why you needed these specific people. And they just all happen to be 14. Your mom has to be in the AVA for you to run it. Yeah. So everyone’s mom was taking care of them this entire time. Like the Avas were the moms. That was kind of cool. Yeah. And. And then. But it’s still like. That makes Rey is what’s. Who’s is like a Russian. A rushing Russian nesting ray. Yeah. Which we did get images that alluded to that. So it wasn’t all BS along the way.

Okay, here’s a proposal of what this movie would have been from the guy who designed the mechs. I am now reading one of his promo. It involved the AVO one attacking the headquarters of the German branch of nerve in possession of a weapon called the Long Range Universal Invasion. Invasion Cannon or Dead God Spine. In the scenario, there would have been a war between Evangelions in a world affected by mysterious rays of light capable of turning people into werewolf like creatures. Nerv’s base would have been a sterilized stronghold surrounded by wolfman. Shinji in a flashback would have become his Eva with which he would have swapped bodies.

The Eva pilots would have been in politics, blah, blah, blah. Shinji would have run with the werewolves acclaimed as their king, while Rey would have cold bloodedly killed a werewolf, saying she hates animals. It’s probably good that this isn’t what happened. That doesn’t sound anything like any other plot point that had come up before that. It would have been. So it just turns into a werewolf movie. It almost sounds like you’re describing Dusk till Dawn. But the. The Neon Genesis Evangelion edition or Princess Mononoke, which was. Did make more money than this movie this year. They came out in the same year.

Well, this. This is not Ghibli animation. Well, Mononoke is the most hardcore Ghibli gets too, so. Okay, so I think I understand the instrumentation project now. And then he makes this statement that humanity’s only purpose was to give birth to these Avas, then advance to this next step. And then it cuts to Masado and Masado is looking into the real truth behind the Second Impact. And now all of a sudden Masado’s like Neo, that’s broken back into the Matrix and is here to just unlock all the secrets and like tear things down. She kind of makes like a complete 180.

It almost feels like a different character. Like, I know it’s animation and she’s drawn the same, but it feels like they got a completely different personality to represent what Misado is now. She’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way. Well, I do find Misado to be like kind of one of the most interesting characters because her and Oscar are the fun ones. Oscar just turns out to be a little bit, let’s call it. I mean, she’s bratty, to be honest, and she hates everyone, you know, Whereas Misado has this really weird drama thing where she’s kind of like.

I don’t know, it’s. I find Masado to be a lot more fascinating. Probably because she’s not a kid, right? Yeah, I mean, she’s like a manic depressive and she’s a drunk. But sometimes it just fit. It felt in the series leading up to this that they would just kind of make her act completely detached. But I. And I guess it is a good reminder that they’re living in the close to like a post apocalyptic world as we can get. Oh, well, I kept saying during the proper series, yeah, it doesn’t really look that apocalyptic. And this episode looks quite apocalyptic.

The final scene there on like the what, the shores of hell of the past Tokyo 3 or whatever. Well, because it ultimately succeeds, this idea to consolidate it halfway can. Succeeds to consolidate all humans into this big, like, boil that forms on the earth. And then I guess when you pop it, angels come out or something. I, I mean, there’s. There’s a little bit of an insinuation of what happens, but it gets thwarted because Rey decides to thwart. I mean, it gets a little complicated, but it doesn’t. They don’t actually take over humanity. And Shinji ends up becoming the star again.

Gendo gets what he wants. He. He. He thinks that he’s being betrayed, but in the end, he actually gets exactly what he wants. Right? So he doesn’t get a comeuppance. He gets reunited with his wife in the, in the weird boil zone, right, where minds are fused. There is an insinuation that Asuka and. And Shinji are the only people that opted out of the collective consciousness. So they’re the only humans now? Well, I, I felt like that they represented people that didn’t get sucked into the collective consciousness and there would be way more than just them.

But, yeah, maybe they’re the only ones. I, I kind of agree. That’s what I said. That’s why I came away with that there wouldn’t be the only people. Other people have opted out as well. But I’m just noting that commentators have noted that it’s kind of Adam and Eve vibe at the end, which is definitely weird because why don’t we. We can jump around this thing. It doesn’t. We don’t have to talk about those two episodes. But yeah, he strangles her until he doesn’t. Which is. And that’s one of the. I mean, God, you could write a Freudian book about that scene.

You know, there’s a lot of weird, like, flashback kind of. You’re wondering if you’re seeing reality yet. So then you get one with Asuka, and Asuka just keeps saying, like, I don’t want to die over and over and over again. And. And then there’s this nerve arc that gets struck by this big, like, cross of energy. And then Asuka throws the ship, like, directly into, like, her Ava. She throws a nerve ship into a bridge and it explodes. This is right after Masato shoots three people to death and then saves Shinji. But then she gets shot on the way out.

So this is the most action that you’ll see in this entire series in like, a very small amount of time. Oh, yeah. The mech battle with Oscar is like. It’s like hey, let’s throw money at it for once, you know? So that’s what we get. I gotta say, it’s just in retrospect, Unit One probably looks the coolest, but I think it would have suited Oscar better. Like, Oscar should have had Unit One. And I think aesthetically, it would have matched her better than it matches Shinji. Well, she’s a redhead. She’s got a red suit. I know, it just doesn’t.

Yeah, I guess. But maybe it’s like a Metroid. I don’t know. Red is her color. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It probably is a Metroid thing. Um, and I. We’re not going to talk. Maybe we will, but I doubt we’re going to talk much about that sequence of the episode, which is the most, like, fun and entertaining. Although, again, you’ve had the first scene to just leave that weird taste. There’s not a lot of dice because we’re just going to do it injustice by trying to describe how great the visuals are. Like, just listen. I guess the one thing that really was interesting in that was how they’re like, oh, my God.

We’re used to fighting angels. Now we have to fight actual humans. And we don’t really know how to do this. I don’t know. It seemed a little easier. It seems a lot easier to take out humans than it did to take out angels, because every angel was almost like the puzzle of the week. Like, oh, you have to figure out how to solve it. This one’s too far away. This one is inside a volcano. This one is an invisible. And this one is just like, how do you kill humans? You pick up the ship and you throw it into a bridge and they’re dead.

That’s not that hard. But that’s. At that point, seal is basically already 99. Completely destroyed nerve. You know, most of the staff is now dead on the floor, so they did not really repel the attack. Well, despite Oscar throwing a ship at a. You know, through whatever. And then also, I just have this. I was sort of keeping tabs on whether or not Shinji is gay during the course of this movie because it go. The. The meter bounces around a little bit at the end of the previous episodes, and you’re like, okay, Shinji’s gay now because he gets hit on by this gay angel.

And it’s like the first person that gives him affection. In this one, Masado kisses Shinji and she’s like, we’ll. We’ll make this more adult later on. Like, also, like, okay, maybe Shinji’s not gay anymore. Masado just fixed him. And she says, this is how grown ups kissed. We’ll. We’ll get the rest when you get. When I get back. All right. And then my. My note was like, what a tease. Like, she knows she’s dying. What a tease, you know? And this is gonna screw Shinji up even more. Now it’s like, oh, now I’m. I’m back into the confused area.

I’m attracted and love Masado. And she’s like, let’s take this to the next level. But I also know that she’s dying. So did she only say this because she knows she’s gonna die and doesn’t have to follow it up with anything? Or like, oh, my God, Masato loves me. I can’t wait to see her. Maybe he didn’t realize she was gonna die. There’s no way that this makes Shinji a better person. And he’s 14, 15. He hasn’t worked it out yet. He’s. He’s. It’s just gonna. It’s. You know, he’s gonna be a very confused kid, which he is anyway.

And Misato just made this way more confusing than it needs to be. It’s like, hey, Shinji, I’m gonna murder three people in front of you, and then I’m gonna kiss you, and then I’m gonna say something pretty adult to you, and then I’m gonna die. Yeah. Yeah, that’s some weird stuff. And then Kari K. Comes back in kind of a. Well, I guess that’s already in the headspace. So it’s not a flashback. That is karu. Or is it? It’s. Yeah. Also, why is Adam fat now? Pizza. Been delivering pizzas to. You notice that too, right? Like, they show Adam, and all of a sudden he’s like, got a beer belly.

And I. And I went and checked. Adam didn’t always have a beer belly. Or is that Lilith? It doesn’t matter that much. But I think, anyway, there was the spear stuck in the abdomen before. Maybe that was preventing growth or something. It was keeping it deflated. Yeah. Like you said at the end, you know what happens if you pop the boil? You know, with collective consciousness inside, watching everybody get ripped apart and rendered to become part of it was a pretty wild scene. The. Also, it was kind of. I realized that it was going all south as soon as Oscar starts kicking ass and you’re like, oh, wow.

She actually just took down, like, seven or eight of these angels, and then they all just come right back to life, and they just pounce. On her and it’s over. It’s pretty, it’s pretty brutal. Yeah. Up to that point, I, I, My note is, it’s, it was playing like a Bond, James Bond finale on like hallucinogens, you know, and she basically gets impaled by eight or nine different angels. And then unit one comes up for Shinji and they’re like, that’s unit one, Devil incarnate. And I’m just thinking it’s just Shinji, man. Like, we still know this is Shinji, right? But I guess everyone is terrified of, of unit one now.

Yeah, sorry, I’m just taking. There’s a Blood Geyser times 2. Blood Geyser and waterfall. I’m trying to. Ashinji is the devil then. Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out where we are in my notes at this point. More angel feeding. We, we get a full on. What is it called when a bunch of animals all eat the one thing? Angels feeding frenzy. We get an angel feeding frenzy. That’s, that’s the word I was looking for. So Ray falling apart. Shinji’s mind brought the lance off. Yeah, well, and Rey’s arm falls off and then she, everyone melts.

And they also describe that the, the reason and how this is happening is that she’s got an at field because she’s also an angel and that the 80 field is what’s keeping her form. But like, as she starts dropping her AT field, like, arms will fall off. And this is when Akari, he like puts his hand through her boob and then like moves it down inside of her body. And I think that this is him like basically saying, like, Rey, you know, fought like, follow my plan. And then she doesn’t follow the plan. No, not at all.

Then we, we get to actually see one of the seal guy who looks like kind of like an out of shape Cyclops, and he melts a few minutes later. So he’s like a little mini atom. Yeah, that or like the, the, what’s the, the nasty guy from the Spawn comic book. Looks like a little. Oh, John Leguizamo’s clown guy. Violator, I think. Violator. There we go. I am specifically thinking of the comic book version, I think in that case though. Yeah, the fat, the fat Violator before he turns into like the bug violator. Yeah, yeah. So the seal guy kind of made me think of that as well a little bit.

Maybe it’s late 90s, you know, like visual design styles of the time. There’s a scene here where Shinji sucks The Lance of Longinus back from outer space again with his mind, which is. Okay, maybe that’s the coolest thing that he’s ever done. The second one was something horrible that he feels horrible about. And he should. And he should. And she. And she knew. And then everything blows up. I did note because I showed Japan. I was like, oh, there goes my house, kind of. Because as we have time in the weird. What do we. What do we just.

Instrumentality Land. What is. You know, a good 10 or 20 minutes of this takes place in Instrumentality Land, I guess in the egg, I guess. Like, it’s happening inside this egg of humanity, which is. They keep referring to humanity as the 18th angel that, like all of humanity collective into this Lilith Egg becomes a new singular Angel. But then it seems they’re still having, like, some individual experiences, which we saw in episode 25. This one does make it more oblique and a little bit more, like, difficult to tell what’s happening, right? A little bit. Although, I mean, this.

This is a fairly popular trope now. It’s basically like the hive mind thing. And I don’t know, you probably haven’t seen any of it yet, but the Pluribus show, which has Rhea Seehorn, which got popular from Breaking Bad, and we’ve already seen the first episode. I saw the first episode and I didn’t dislike it. I just didn’t watch the second, that’s all. After you get far enough into it, though, it’s basically the same premise just executed in a slightly different way. But it’s that this next evolution of humanity is a evolved form, but it also requires everyone to join this hive mind.

And once everyone’s part of this hive mind, then all of humanity becomes a super organism. And then that super organism can somehow evolve to this next state of being. Although that way it doesn’t plan all the way out in the. In Pluribus, hence they still have a TV show going, so it’s not fully resolved. And the same thing in this one, but it doesn’t get resolved because it kind of gets foiled. Since the combination of Shinji and Rey are still on the side of humanity more so than on the side of evolving to this new super Angel.

But Gendo still gets what he wants, I think. Huh? Yeah. My notes in this segment is I. I guess we’re going French New Wave or Kubrick or something. And I did not see a lot of Kubrick references when I started doing my research for this one. Pretty sure Masado does it, which we get a very glurid scene with that. Although they’re a lot of the still shots in this where there’s dialogue. Apparently the reason for that is he didn’t want them to. He wanted them to do their lines like a live action movie. And because of the animation constraints of the time, now you can do that.

You put three people in a room, you know, get in cg. But at the time, it was very difficult to sync all that up. So he’s like, oh, I’ll show a shot. You guys just talk. And we don’t need to animate your lips moving or anything. It didn’t. It didn’t bug me. There’s so many other cool visuals on here. It’s easy to let some of those go and then. But the point was for audio. So the. What you’re hearing is this very natural sounding conversation in bad teenage poetry. Again, the end of the show is definitely in the bad teenage poetry.

Although that. That is also forgivable because. And I don’t say this lightly, we’ve. We’ve watched so much animation over the last couple years and just throughout lifetimes. This scene where Rey leaves Akari and enters fat Adam is probably one of the coolest animation sequences I’ve. I’ve ever seen. I like it so much. It is so over the top that even if you don’t know anything about this movie, you just want to see some weird, cool Japanese anime stuff. That entire scene with Rey, like, turning into Adam and everything that follows after that is just like a master class in surreal anime.

Now there is a gender bender of an Astral Kaiju. And there’s my note for that bite too, right soon after that, it’s like, okay, Shinji’s gay again. Or. Or at least as. As you instructed me, boy love gay. Or I. Once he’s on the train and stuck with Rey and Asuka, I’m like, I think Shinji’s becoming an incel. He’s gonna be angry at these ladies and his. You know. Yeah. I mean, he. He needs. Yeah. Kiara was the only person that was nice to him. I mean, and Masado, but like in a. Kind of a manipulative, you know, brain blaster away, I guess.

Karu also kind of messed up Shinji’s head, but at least Karu is an angel, so he has an excuse. And then there’s this like, basically the final scene where the AVA reconstructs itself that Rey goes into as like this big tree of life. And my first note was like, they do get it like this. What? Regardless of what you think about how much they actually get into Kabbalah and, like, all sorts of esotericism within the show at the end. They do make good on it. They make good on understanding how it represents these emanations of, like, how a inanimate and intangible thing becomes a physical object in the material world and, you know, three or four dimensions.

And they actually show that recreating itself with these different angels showing up as a different node on this tree of Life. So I thought that that was pretty cool. And then also, it immediately goes into, like, this blueprint of life and talking about how it’s the blueprint of reality, which is, I think, on, like, that’s the. The most oversimplified way that you can describe it and still be on the money. So it took a little bit of. And again, this. Maybe this is easy to retrofit. It’s like people were sort of criticizing us for just throwing a whole bunch of esoteric symbols in here and not making good on it.

So they make good on it in this ending sequence. Yeah. What else was I thinking about? I do wonder if Waking Life was kind of somewhat. Have you seen the movie Waking Life? Yeah, I’ve tried. Like, it’s a movie that, like, I want to like more than I do. Like, if that makes sense. Okay. For some reason, I’ve been able to groove with that movie. Weirdly, I’ve never been able to get through a scanner directly, which theoretically is a better film. But, yeah, opposite for me, man, I can get it through the scan because they both use that exact same.

That’s why I’m bringing it up. Weird rotoscoping thing. Anyway, I was trying to figure out, like, kind of what space this was taking place in. And I was similarly thinking Waking Life and how the scenes just kind of drift into each other, you know, dreamlike on purpose as everyone is being broken down and turned into this primordial soup. They mentioned going through the Chamber of Guff as an inside. Where we’re inside the chamber where all the original Adam. Outside. We’re all our individual selves. Yeah, this. I mean, this is how you enter this. This Egg of Lilith, too, to basically merge with everyone else and turn into the next evolved being.

So a human’s AT Field would be the aura in this case, I suppose, with having a weird synthetic one. But. Yeah, well. But the angel AT Fields can stop bullets. A lot of powerful auras. Human auras can’t stop. Maybe there are some out there, but I don’t know. We also should talk about the music we’re getting during this segment. It’s all like box air, right? On a. Air on a G string. That always sounds a little dirty. But that’s why the episode’s called Air. Although why is it called an episode? It’s a movie. Again, that’s all confusing.

And then it switches for the final sequence in the kind of in between world, the entire. Inside the Chamber of Guff, we start getting, like a real poppy song. I. I forgot what the song was, but it made me think of that. Well, you didn’t watch the Prisoner, but the end of the Prisoner has this really bizarre sequence where they use the Beatles. All you need is love, which is quite a catch in 1967 with this thing. Like this weird surrealist trip is going to end with like this poppy song, you know? Well, okay, so this movie explained a lot of questions.

It tied up a lot of loose ends for me. But I’m not really sure how the movie ends. Like, is it happily ever after? Probably not. Yeah. I’m sitting here trying to think of it. Hold on. I’m trying to see if I can figure out what this song is. Original soundtrack that could help me because it’s talking about all the classical music where I’m looking here. Opening expansion block. I think we hear oh de joy in this movie again too. A little bit of that. Or it was in the last episode, I think. No, that was with Korra, because he whistles it and then when he has the battle with Kaori, they play it.

Was it here too? Let’s go with yes. Okay. I actually can’t figure out what that poppy song was at the end. Huh? It wasn’t on the soundtrack, it seems. Yeah, no, no, no luck on that. Okay. Anyway, it’s like, there’s so much material here. It’s. It’s kind of hard to find. But that was a weird take, just with the music choice. I liked it. I mean, we end every episode with like, some version of Fly Me to the Moon. So it tracks, right? It’s not like a new thing. So the other. There was another cool, like, surreal part to the end of that whole sequence where Misato and Rey are just going up and touching people and they pop.

So if they touch you, you just explode, like on touch. So is this like some super angel frequency power that they’ve had all along and they knew they had that power, or are these new evolved versions of Ray and Slash Misado? I have like, Misado Slash Ray because it, like, can transform into different people. But this is Already inside the. The collective consciousness. Right. So it’s just like weird dream logic. So up now. When I touch, you’re going to explode. Maybe they reconstitute five minutes later. You know, what is. Is this collective conscious or is this just Shinji’s mind? Are we back to that? Because that was in the previous episode.

That everything happening is just happening inside of Shinji’s head would seem like his part of his. And we haven’t watched 26 yet, so we’ll get to that. But it seems like Shinji had been kind of like kind of sequestered in this one part of the consciousness. Like you don’t want to deal with anybody here. This part’s for you. Enjoy. That’s the impression I got. So enjoy your train. And. And I guess that makes you wonder back to that original train episode, that maybe this is just a big cycle. Like maybe all of this was also happening then and we only got to see what Shinji was allowing himself to see.

Yeah. And this is not me noticing. This is reading it. There’s a flash of Rey and her schoolgirl outfit, which is the exact same flash of Rey that is in the first episode on the city street before we meet Rey. So don’t even know what that means. Just the Easter egg, I guess. So now seeing the whole thing from start to end, aside from episode 26, which we’ll go back and watch just to that one is supposed to. Anna’s description is I tied up the show psychologically with the original 26, and this is trying to get more of like the what actually happened vibe out because he couldn’t animate it when he did the show.

That seems to be the. The gist of it. So I think we’re going to get something. I think we might get a little more of an answer for Shinji watching that last episode or not. We’ll see a little more closure. Okay. But I guess what I was thinking is that this is one of those series that if you went back and re watched it from the start again after you know everything’s going to happen, you’d probably understand a lot more of what’s being set up. Although I’m not sure. And also I’m not sure if I’m ready to go back and re watch the whole series just because we saw the movie.

I don’t know if I. I almost feel that we would be trying to put in more foresight than the actual original writers had than we would have to put into it. Yeah, well, so that’s. That’s kind of what happens with. Not so much the animation, the American version of animation movie, but take a Serenity. You go see Serenity. I, I, you know, if you liked it, I loved it. But then there’s now I want to go watch Firefly again. You watch two episodes, like, yeah, good enough. Yeah. And that show’s fine, but yeah, just like, yeah, I’m not actually rewatching this whole thing.

I don’t have time for that. Before Shinji and Asuka leave this space, we get the. The live action footage. Some of it was filmed in Tokyo. When you see the theater crowd, that is actually a theater crowd watching the Evangelion Death Rebirth movie from several months earlier. So that’s kind of fun. So you get that. And then a lot of the footage is one town over. I actually started looking. Are those the power towers that are actually near my house? I was like, no, that’s just what they all look like in your valley, dumbass. When I.

Yeah, I’m racist against power towers. Yes. Power. Yes. Japanese power towers. Yeah, yeah. No, any of them. They all have, like, the electromagnetic stuff going on. There is a power station on one of my walks. I walk. It’s like there’s a bit of the power station on both sides. And I. If I stand there for a while, look at my phone, I will start to feel a bit quizzy. So I think there’s something to that. I’m the same guy that rans on about Bluetooth, though I still haven’t made friends with my little Fender plugin amp because it uses Bluetooth.

You’re still living in the actual past. Like, not the angel future, but like the normal future. Yeah, not living the angel future yet, where we all have Bluetooth minds. Okay, let’s see. We are creating our own realities in this. I guess that’s the point of being inside. Create your own reality. But like we were talking about, sometimes the vivid dream is better than the lucid dream. So it seems inside the collective consciousness, you completely create your own reality. You’re living the lucid life in there, where if you’re outside and you’re your own consciousness, you have to live vivid life where things just happen.

How great is life in the non Lilith egg version of things? It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot going on. There’s not a lot of upside, is there? What. What are we seeing when we see the live action footage? I mean, we’re seeing tons of fan service. I feel like it was just fan service that there was like, actually no story reason to put that in there. Only because it happened so late into the movie. It’s practically part of the credits. There was. Well, we got the very important scene after that. But there I. I think they actually shot some of this.

There was going to be live actors playing Rei, Masato and Asuka and. And. And Shinji does not exist in this version of. I guess he’s sequestered or whatever. Right. So Shinji does not exist in this version. Here we go. The authors have planned a longer live action segment, so maybe they didn’t shoot it. The original segment of revolved around the character Asuka, who would wake up in an apartment after drinking and spending the night with Toji. Suz, I think that’s a classmate with whom she would engage in a sexual relationship. Misato would have been the roommate of the apartment next to hers.

And Rei, her rival in this series, would have been her colleague and one of her senpai kind of mentors experiencing a less strained relationship. Shinji would have never existed. So Bob Newhart. But walking through the streets of Tokyo 2 City, Asuka would have heard Shinji’s voice calling her. So I don’t know that that would have. Maybe. Does that need to be that? And then maybe she. Then we get the last scene. Actually, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. That’s something they probably should have done. It would be like a five minute sitcom that then deteriorates into like the final scene of this movie set up prior to this movie.

They could have done anything and it would have been like, okay, sure, that makes sense. Well, we have. What. Do you have anything else you want to say on. On this one? I feel like we can’t really put our final thoughts out until we do watch episode 20. Yeah, I’m waiting. I’m waiting to give like a full series breakdown impression until we do like the very final episode, which apparently brings psychological closure. I don’t know what that means. We’ll find out. So I. I also don’t know what that means, but. And then that’ll inform this a little more that.

That’s why I guess the order was a little confusing. So I took the advice I was given of do the movie and final episode. So we’ll find out next time if that was a good idea or not. Anyway, you want to tell people what you’re up to on the Internets and in the real world. The. The Internet where we all have a collective mind. In the real world where you can order things from your site. That’s still on the Internet. But then you get a real thing in the real world, right? You can. You can order a real thing in the real world and become part of the collective mind and you can do that app.

Just go to paranoidamerican.com for this year I’ve got a whole bunch of specials on different conspiracy themed comics and little sticker packs and things that I promise you will not find anywhere else because no one else is crazy enough to spend so much time and effort into making conspiracy themed comics like I am. So you want to go to the only place you can get it? Go to paranoidamerican.com maybe. I have chosen to live in instrumentality because everything I do is digital. Podcastiopodcastius.org that’s where I do all my podcasts. Rovingsagemedia.bangcamp.com that’s where you have all my music.

I don’t have anything real for you. I will send you nothing. But you can listen to stuff. You can support me on Patreon and then maybe I’ll buy something real like a guitar or something. Just buy something just buy something from paranoia American Just buy something just buy something from paranoia Mer get some merch, buy some art Click that link add to car say it back need that print Nod your head, give consent buy a comic three or four Think this I want more Buy a sticker from the store think this thought I want more Just buy something just buy something from paranoid American Just buy something just buy something from Paranoid I’m American paranoid.

Yeah I scribbled my life away Driven to write the page Will it enlight your brain Give you the flight my plane paper the highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real to real you will engage in your favorite of course the lord of inner rain I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hey maybe your language a game how they playing it well without Lakers evade them whatever the cause they are to shapeshift snakes get decapitated met is the apex execution of flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see Max them out that I light my trees blow it off in the face you’re despising me for what Though calculated and rather cut throat Paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real Lord give me your day your way vacate they wait around to hate Whatever they say man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy rotate when a beat hits a thing cause you well the for real you’re welcome.

They ain’t never had a deal you’re welcome man, they lacking appeal, you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
[tr:tra].