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End of Evangelion discussion (spoilers) LONG POST
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by Seculi Terminus
on 2005-12-14 19:48:53 (edited 2005-12-14 20:22:48)
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What I want to do with this thread is basically offer a literal critique of what happens in the movie and what it all means (or could possibly mean.) The movie IS pretty complicated, but the biggest part is that it's all just so erudite - but if you understand the references, I think it can be really interesting. I'm pretty sure I don't know all of what was poured into it, but I think I have noticed a few things that could explain what's going on and why it has to happen. Anyway, on we go..... The first thing we see when we play the movie is some scenes of a few Japanese women with lots of writing and talking overlapping. I don't know what they're saying or what the text says since it's not translated, but I've heard that the Japanese women are actually supposed to be Rei, Asuka and Misato - in one of the alternate versions of the last three episodes, there's a scene where you see the same ones and it's made plain that this is who they're supposed to be. I don't have a clue if any of this means anything since I can't tell what they're saying, but I thought I'd throw that out. (If someone could translate this, it'd be great! ^^) Then you get the title along with the 1,000 companies that helped produce it. The first actual scene of the movie opens with the flooded area surrounding Tokyo-3 - and in the commentary one of the guys noted that it was the same place where Shinji first met Kaworu, as well as the same place that made the ending credits scene of part one of Death and Rebirth. One of the buildings/piles of rubble looks an AWFUL lot like one of the finished Eva series, and knowing GAINAX this probably wasn't accidental, but it might have been only foreshadowing. Next scene the famous scene with Shinji and Asuka in a coma. He starts asking her for help, shakes her, yada yada, you know what happens if you've seen the movie. Now, I've heard that all of NERV is actually designed to match the human brain, and that basically, if you knew your stuff about brain anatomy, you could tell which parts/rooms in the place corresponded with the place in the human brain. If you could do this, it might shed some light on the actual scenes - like, if you knew that Asuka's room was in the area of NERV where feelings of isolation or pain were felt in the human brain, then it might tell us something about what was going on. But I don't know anything about it. It's just something I've heard. Next scene, the staff are talking about how they're surprised they're still on alert considering all the Angels had been defeated. They figure they're gonna be killed to protect government secrets or whatever before long. Just after that (we're two minutes through the movie so far! YAY!) Misato is reviewing to herself (probably to get the audience up to speed or to refresh their memory) the basic plotline so far. The story goes that humankind has reached the end of its potential as far as evolution is concerned - so SEELE is running the Human Instrumentality Project to take us to the next stage. btw: instrumentality: 1: a subsidiary organ of government created for a special purpose; "are the judicial instrumentalities of local governments adequate?"; "he studied the French instrumentalities for law enforcement" 2: the quality of being instrumental for some purpose 3: an artifact (or system of artifacts) that is instrumental in accomplishing some end - Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University Also, "instrumentality" can also mean the way the masculine does things or solves problems, as opposed to the feminine "expressive." The word has a sense of cold, ruthless objectivity and is frequently used next to other words like "subjugation" or "suppression." It basically carries the sense that the people you're dealing with are nothing but tools or other nonfeeling matter. It may not mean much now, but there's a lot to do about gender and sex later on, so I thought I'd mention it. Back to Misato, the next evolution of humanity is said to be the combination of all humans souls into one being - in other words, into God. There's a lot of talk in old Christian ascetic manuals and writings that in order to come to live with God, you must first completely reject all physical things (mere "illusions," in one person's sense - I forgot who exactly said it, but I could probably find the reference if somebody really cares) so that he may basically become transfigured while in life - you know the scene where Jesus comes back from the dead, and he's asking his disciples what they want in return for being so good, and a few of them don't want to die, so Jesus instantly turns them to spirit matter so that they can move on to Heaven without ever tasting death. This is basically the same thing, except the idea is that it is done by human effort. Moreover, once someone gets to Heaven, it is said, they become one with God: it's like how when you love someone, all you can do is think about them all the time. Your consciousness becomes centered on this other person. In their view, heaven is love of God on crack - to become so infatuated with God that your consciousnesses actually merge. So basically, what SEELE is trying to do is force everyone to merge together, living in complete, loving, single-consciousness Godhood. They are trying to become equals with God - or maybe it's even more in a revolutionary sense, and they're trying to overthrow God. Back to Misato again. She relates that they won't make use of Adam or NERV to do it, they'll use the Evas - "just like Kaji said they would." Switch scenes to SEELE. Their conversing among themselves and Gendou about how they're going to do it - they can't use the Lance of Longinus. (If you watched the commentary or are Catholic, you probably already know this, but the Lance of Longinus in the spear that was thrown into the side of Jesus at his crucifixion and was the thing which officially killed him off. It's said that if the Lance of Longinus can kill the Son of God, it could kill anything.) They also cannot use Lilithm who is the first wife of Adam, made from dust as he was instead of out of Adam's rib. (basically all I know about her can be found at this reference: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/alphabet.html It's not that much to read; just a few paragraphs.) They decide to use "Lilith's only true offspring: Eva Unit 01." They also talk about some other stuff like the fate of destruction (as the theory goes, you can't grow something without killing something else; you kill a cow to feed your family, you kill your old self to change into a new person, etc.) Gendou quips "Death creates nothing." Fuyutsuki says that mankind lives because it has the will to live - that that was the decision of Yui who chose to stay in Eva 01. (For a wonderful book on the will to live and a lot of the stuff that was said in here, I'd suggest "A Tragic Sense of Life" by Miguel de Unamuno. Basically, logic, truth and reason (which, of course, are masculine) are on the side of death, and religion, hope and faith are on the side of life, on the side of the feminine. The statement is argued that we need both to survive. Next scene is Rei in her apartment. As you probably already know, she is both an Angel and the clone of Yui. Then, it switches to a view of Shinji - Hideaki Anno always throws in the tape recorder (you see a lot of musical metaphor like this in his work - and always tempo, tempo! to paraphrase Nietzsche), which has now stopped. The end has been reached. Misato is hacking into some secret NERV files when the system shuts down. She thinks, first, that NERV is onto her, then realizes that it's not NERV. Okay, that's not really necessary, I just like that part. To make a long story short, SEELE starts a forceful takeover of NERV using the military. SEELE's idea is to take over the two Evas by force, since they don't have Adam or the Lance. There's some interesting stuff in there, but nothing much that isn't covered in the commentary that comes with the movie. I will mention, though, that from the garage scene with Shinji and Misato, it's fun to note that Shinji (masculine) has lost his will to live which Misato (feminine) rails on him for. And then you have the clock scene, with the government official with the huge pendulum behind him. I'm not sure what the symbology is, but it could the bright white windows behind him could be past, present and future or maybe the Christian Godhead (perhaps a counterweight, so to speak, against the feminine godhead of Asuka, Rei and Misato. And then you have the Magi, which is three manifestations of one woman...) Just throwing out ideas here. More feminine/masculine stuff: you have Asuka in the "I don't want to die" scene in which she is reunited with her mother's soul and finds the will to go on living. Then, the finished Eva series, complete with Kaworu dummy plugs, is launched to kill her. It's kind of interesting that they're the only ones that even remotely resemble normal angels, with their wings and white paint job. Sorry for fragmenting this with so many little comments, but I HAVE to mention the gold cross that Misato and Shinji walk through to get to the elevator to Eva-01. It's like the message is "Believers Only." None from the army were able to pursue them beyond this point. Then, Shinji and Misato argue. Shinji hates the fact that all he can do is kill people, and Misato lectures him for not being able to accept the fact that life is painful. I think you could very easily view this scene as the inner dialogue all of us go through, battling between out masculine and feminine sides as each strives to lead us on. Significantly, Misato dies once she (sorta) cheers Shinji up. This is the signal that Shinji's feminine is beginning to die, IMO. Gendou shoots the logic-bound Ritsuko and says something we can't make out. ("I saved hundreds a month by switching to Geico!" - thanks for the joke, NeoMikey! - from AMV Hell 3) Asuka starts fighting the Eva series and gets downed by the Lance of Longinus. (Pardon me for mentioning this, but it might be significant: are Asuka's breasts smaller than normal, or is it just me? O_o; ) The Eva series comes back to life (resurrected, you might say) and finishes Asuka off. In one scene, she's shown holding her stomach - the same place as her womb, almost like she's checking to see if it's there. That might be a stretch, but remember, Asuka is a feminine figure who, the entire series, has been striving to become masculine. Once all the rest of the major feminine figures in Shinji's life are killed, he goes berserk, fully realizing his destructive, masculine nature, and the first part of the movie ends. The start of part 2 shows Lilith hanging on the cross. Now, there's some obvious symbology that maybe it wasn't Jesus who was killed, but the feminine. Gendou inserts his hand, the one with the Adam fetus, first into Rei's breast, then down into her womb. But Rei senses Shinji's plight and rejects Gendou. Eva-01 is hung on a cross by the Lances of the Eva series, who then rearrange themselves into the Tree of Life, the symbol of the Kabbalah that is said to contain all knowledge of existence. Fuyutsuki explaims that it's an anti-AT field: in other words, an anti-individuality field. (Remember, "the AT field is the barrier that separates our minds.") Destroying the AT field would unite all consciousness. The army, who has been lied to, groans that their mission has been a failure. The Red Earth Ceremony is mentioned, but I don't know what it means. I haven't heard of it anywhere yet. All humanity is now returning to its origins: Lilith's womb. Rei unites with Lilith, and her mask falls off, revealing Rei underneath. I assume that this is a hint that Rei was Lilith reincarnated from the beginning. She grows to world-size proportions, breathing in a long, deep breath like she was coming back from the dead. The Eva series then rearrange themselves into the true symbol of inifinity around Shinji, bringing out his inner destructive impulse, his destrudo. (The translation in Evangelion seems to be false. Also, the destrudo is the male energic opposite of the female energy - libido.) It stated that Shinji's ego, his sense of self, is falling apart. Then Kaworu springs up from Rei - although I don't know exactly what Kaworu symbolizes. Anyway, as Fuyutsuki puts it, the Angels have the fruit of the tree of everlasting life, whereas mankind has the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When they are combined, God is made - and in this instance, in Eva-01's form. Eva-01 becomes God, the collective consciousness, the unity of souls. So Shinji, being God, has anything he wants. But what is it? Now the playground scene. This is probably my favorite scene in all of Evangelion. (I thought I heard in the commentary that the sun in between the two hills was symbolic of the feminine, which is, of course, that of sex, nurturing and reproduction. I'm not entirely sure what this would mean, though, and I have a different take on it.) You notice, first of all, that the playground he is playing in is staged: there are cameras and lights all around it. Some children are playing with him, but they're both porcelain dolls, fakes. They aren't real. Eventually, someone playing the part of their mother comes and takes them away, leaving Shinji alone. I don't know what the swing means. Shinji goes on, making a sand castle, then, crying, smashes it and starts over from the beginning.. This is obviously a reference to Nietzsche, who posited an Ubermenschen, a Superman, who is driven to destroy himself and rebuild his persona into something better, eventually hoping to reach perfection, and thus become the kings and nobles of art, society and morality. ("Like a child who, upon building a sand castle, bashes it to pieces only to rebuild it again," to paraphrase.) Basically, this is identifying Shinji as an Ubermenschen. In my own personal study, I find them to be very closely tied together with the masculine/destructive, but I'm not sure if Nietzsche actually stated it outright. (As for the rebuilding of the sand castle, which would be feminine and productive, all I can say is that you need some feminine to reach your true heights as masculine: if all you do is break things, eventually you'll run out.) I think you could also make the connection that Anno-sama is stating that only the Ubermenschen is authentic, true to himself, whereas others are just playing parts and putting on acts. Asuka calls him annoying and Shinji retorts that it's because she's just like him. Asuka accuses him of being stupid and arrogant and not understanding her. (Although it sounds like it might be the other way around.) Shinji says that it's impossible to understand them, because all they do is cause him pain. They aren't nice to him. They say, We ARE nice to you. He shoots back, "LIARS!" All they do is hide behind lies and false truths. His destructiveness, his need for objective truth, won't allow him to accept it. They say they do it because the truth only causes pain. All that truth does, the truth he's after, is cause death, pain and destruction. That's why they lie to him. But ambiguity only causes him pain, because he's an Ubermenschen. Things, for him, are basically reversed: he needs not emotional truth, but objective. Emotions change and waver, but only objectivity lasts. He needs to know that he won't be abandoned, but is only misunderstood. His element may be that of death, but he's still a child, and depends on the help of others. If no one will help him, they are his enemies. They can all just die. The scribbles signify his inner chaos. And so, the Anti-AT field expands. Goddess Rei looks over the egg adoringly, with infatuation. As the Anti-AT field reaches critical mass, everyone's bodies explode into LCL, the blood of Lilith, and their souls merge. Gendou confesses that it seems that when he was near Shinji, all he did was cause him pain, so it must be better not to interact with him at all. (My personal belief, although I can't say it's stated outright, is that Gendou, too, is an Ubermensch - one future possibility of Shinji. And you have to hand it to him - he's pretty romantic. All his life he has loved only one woman, changed significantly by her death, and spent the rest of his life fighting to be reunited with her. He's not perfect [no kidding] but he's not all bad, either.) He says he didn't think anyone could love him. He didn't deserve it. Because of that, he ran away from others to keep the pain away. His retribution is for Eva-01, the carrier of Yui's soul, to bite off his head at the end, instead of being united with a loved one like almost all the others. All the people in the world then lose their individuality and explode into LCL, covering the world with crosses. Next is a chaotic scene, featuring all the rejection and hate in the world. All of it combines at once, then fades into a sea of water. Shinji is shown Misato, Rei and Asuka, who, each in turn, ask him if he wants to be one with them. (The sexual reference is obvious: sex is, in this view, humankind's closest experience, it's greatest desire to becoming one with another.) The camera shows the audience in the theater. No one is there. "There is no spoon." :P had to throw that in, sorry Japan is shown as it really is. The swing is swinging, but with no one in it. Then, it goes back to the audience: two cameras shoot it at once, blending them all into each other. God, Shinji, and Goddess, Rei, converse. Shinji was unable to connect, unable to see the connection between his take on reality and the take of others. A world where only he exists isn't a real world, and a world where all consciousness is one is the same thing. But if you venture into true reality, you will feel separation, pain and loneliness again. Shinji says he thinks he understands now. Back to the audience: everyone is there, in their own individuality, in their own AT-field. Eva-01 breaks out of Goddess Rei, who falls slowly to her death. The souls of all humankind break out of the Egg of Lilith and back into the world. In the end, Shinji decided to accept reality. Yui tells him that pain is and always will be a part of life, but so is happiness. As long as he is alive, he has the chance to make a change. He can still be happy, and everything will be all right. He still doesn't know why he's here. He doesn't know where his happiness lies. He will always ask himself if he made the right decision. He bids his mother goodbye. Shinji wakes up on the beach next to Asuka. Misato's bloody cross hangs, nailed to a stick in the ground. Rei's blood forms a ring around the entire earth. And he sees, one last time, Rei looking back at him. He still has hope. He gets up, looking back at Asuka. Kneeling over her, his hands wrap around her neck, and he begins to strangle her. She holds her hand up to his face as his tears drop onto her own. "How disgusting." That's my $0.02. Plus change. AKA Home-Dog Ass-Masta' The G-Unit |
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Re: End of Evangelion discussion (spoilers) LONG POST
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on 2005-12-15 08:32:32 |
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long post alright.i've watch end of eva but i'm not quite satisfied with it.what happen to shinji and asuka in the end?is everything back to normal,where there are other ppl stil alive?(although the background during the ending scene looks like emptiness,only a sea of blood,so the possibility of other ppl being alive seems like almost zero) there's this one scene where you see asuka and rei in the "real world".i think their heads were a little too big... the part which completly took me off gaurd is when asuka said"how disgusting."i don't know if that was supposed to be a joke or something casue after all that has happened,she could only say those two words... |
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Re: End of Evangelion discussion (spoilers) LONG POST
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by Seculi Terminus
on 2005-12-15 08:43:21
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the point about the "how disgusting" was that the world was essentially unchanged from before. The whole point of the movie wasn't to give Shinji a perfect world where he could have everything he wanted; on the contrary, the point was that Shinji accept the world as-is. And part of that as-is is that Asuka (and others, we could assume) will still be disgusted with him. He will still face rejection. But at this world is real - and at least he now has the courage to face it. That's my $0.02. Plus change. AKA Home-Dog Ass-Masta' The G-Unit |