[0:06] Which of Evangelion’s endings is the real one?
[0:09] Some background: Neon Genesis Evangelion was a 
landmark giant robot anime whose influence is  
[0:15] still felt today. It took a common trope 
in Japanese children’s entertainment–a  
[0:20] young boy becomes a man by fighting monsters 
in a giant robot his father built–and  
[0:24] turns it into a Freudian nightmare. 
It’s still a coming of age story,  
[0:28] but coming of age in Evangelion 
is a terrifying, messy,  
[0:32] violent thing. The robots–biological machines 
full of teeth and blood and the ground up  
[0:38] souls of the pilots’ mothers–serve as a potent 
metaphor for the body horror of adolescence.  
[0:43] And the heightened stakes that come from choosing 
to pilot these fleshbots, doing something  
[0:48] scary and risky that puts you in the path of great 
harm and lets you inflict great harm yourself,  
[0:54] stands in for the sudden psychological weight of 
adulthood. The central question is not whether its  
[0:59] protagonist Shinji will be a hero: It’s whether 
he will simply be, whether he will accept the  
[1:05] world with its people and its pain or retreat 
into himself, completely safe and utterly alone.
[1:11] In addition to this existential question, there 
were also cool mech fights and political intrigue,  
[1:16] but those take money to animate, and by the 
time the studio, Gainax, wAS producing the final  
[1:22] episodes, they had none. So instead of wrapping 
up the plot, the original series’ finale zeroed  
[1:27] in on Shinji's character and his decision whether 
to accept the hurt of other people or escape into  
[1:33] his own mind. It presents these questions in 
abstract, bloodless terms, the safe void of  
[1:39] solipsism a blank sheet of paper, the pain knowing 
and being known a series of angry scribbles.  
[1:45] And it ends with Shinji accepting, wholeheartedly, 
that he wants to live, to try to relate to others  
[1:52] even when it hurts, to seek love despite 
its promise loss. The rest of the characters  
[1:58] applaud and congratulate him. It is, after the 
agony of the last 24 episodes, a happy ending.
[2:05] Of course, fans hated this. Dropping the plot 
entirely to lecture on the themes is, to put it  
[2:10] mildly, a bold move, and the death threats the 
studio received were a sort of grim prelude to  
[2:16] the worst parts of fandom to come. But because the 
show was a hit, Gainax had the opportunity to make  
[2:22] a movie, titled The End of Evangelion, to provide 
a more satisfying conclusion. And while my reading  
[2:28] of it has always been that End of Evangelion and 
the original series’ finale tell ultimately the  
[2:33] same story, the tone is waaaaay different. The 
movie was bleaker and grosser and meaner than  
[2:41] even the most horrific parts of the TV show. It 
too ends with the ultimate existential question  
[2:47] of to be or not to be, but it’s not represented as 
abstractions anymore. Though still metaphorical,  
[2:53] part of Shinji’s head trip, it is rooted in 
the story and its characters. The pain of being  
[2:59] known is not a series of angry scribbles: It’s 
Shinji’s fellow pilot Asuka tearing into him for  
[3:06] his selfishness and cowardice. And the rejection 
of others is not a clean blank sheet of solitude.
[3:12] It’s Shinji choking Asuka out.
[3:27] The End of Evangelion follows the same rough 
character arc for Shinji as the series:  
[3:33] He has to decide whether he wants to brave this 
world. He has his moment of doubt, briefly ending  
[3:38] that world to escape it. And, finally, he 
changes his mind, choosing to accept the  
[3:44] agony and ecstasy of other people. But that final 
decision, so triumphant in the original series,  
[3:50] is much grimmer in the movie. Instead of 
rising to his feet while the rest of the  
[3:55] cast congratulates him, here Shinji wakes 
to a desolate beach and a sea of blood,  
[4:01] the giant corpse of his friend slash mom slash 
apotheosis of humanity staring lifelessly ahead.  
[4:08] The scene is quiet and deliberate and surreal and 
excruciating. The only other person is Asuka, this  
[4:16] time the real Asuka, not a figment of Shinji’s 
mind, not a synecdoche for other people as a whole  
[4:22] but her own person and all thrill and terror that 
promises. And, faced with a real person, Shinji  
[4:29] relapses. He chokes Asuka again, tries to bring 
back his solitude through violence. But she gently  
[4:37] caresses his cheek, and he weeps and loosens his 
grip, and she tells him, simply, “how disgusting.”
[4:46] This is the world Shinji has decided to accept: 
not the blue skies and congratulations of the  
[4:52] original series but a strange and silent 
and barren place, filled with brief,  
[4:57] undeserved tenderness and scorn earned many 
times over. He has made the right choice, the  
[5:04] good choice, the brave choice, but the reward for 
that choice is not a bright and happy ceremony,  
[5:10] not a sudden unbreakable will to live, not a 
cure for his loneliness and pain that means,  
[5:16] from here on out, things are going to get better. 
It is instead an awful and iterative process,  
[5:23] one where he will stumble and regress, 
where the challenges of life feel  
[5:27] only slightly less terrible than the 
oblivion that is their alternative.
[5:34] Most of the time, the choice to continue 
living is automatic, pushed on by momentum  
[5:38] and survival instincts. But, without going into 
too much detail, there have been times in my  
[5:44] life where it has had to be a very deliberate 
decision. And sometimes that decision has felt  
[5:50] like Evangelion’s original ending, and I am 
excited to do the scary and difficult things  
[5:55] that will make my life better. And sometimes it 
has felt like the movie’s ending, like I am not  
[6:00] rising to the challenge but lurching towards it, 
not filled with a renewed purpose but merely a  
[6:06] spite just animating enough to keep me going. The 
choice to live can be a resounding affirmation  
[6:12] of the joys of this world, and it can just as 
easily be a half-hearted refusal to die just yet.
[6:20] And this is why Evangelion’s two endings enrich 
each other, why they are more effective in tandem  
[6:26] than they would be alone. By telling 
the same story in very different ways,  
[6:31] it draws attention to their contrasts while 
letting those contrasts occupy the same space.  
[6:37] It’s like one image superimposed on the other, 
or a word struck through, the End of Evangelion  
[6:43] replacing the original finale but not entirely 
erasing it, showing you clearly both what this new  
[6:50] ending is and what it is no longer. This is why my 
most enduring takeaway of this story's conclusion  
[6:57] is not anything in either ending, despite 
how striking they are in their own ways,  
[7:02] but the space between them, the push and the 
pull, the conversation formed by their many  
[7:08] similarities and crucial differences. On 
their own, each ending is just one thing,  
[7:14] no matter how effective that thing is. 
Together, though, they're something else.
[7:19] This is novel because most stories, with 
their single endings, encourage the reader  
[7:24] to extrapolate from the final scene. A moment 
of happiness becomes "happily ever after,"  
[7:30] while a downer ending suggests a whole world of 
sadness when the story finally ends. The Sopranos  
[7:36] uses this to interesting effect by making the 
paranoia of its last scene stretch out like an  
[7:41] eternal punishment. An ending does not show us 
every single thing that happens to this universe  
[7:47] and its inhabitants, but by showing us one last 
thing, it asks to fill in the rest accordingly.
[7:53] But the strange harmony of Evangelion’s 
two endings doesn’t allow for such a neat  
[7:58] extrapolation. That they are at odds with 
each other, two tellings of the same thing,  
[8:02] means that one single tone (sopranos joke) 
doesn’t get to define what this world becomes.  
[8:07] That, instead, there is dissonance. There is, 
where the conflict of the story is supposed  
[8:13] to give way to resolution, more conflict. 
Where as a bittersweet ending may contain  
[8:19] several feelings within its whole, 
these endings defy wholeness entirely.
[8:25] And, given what the ending is about, 
that’s perfect. Because Evangelion is,  
[8:30] ultimately, about Shinji’s decision to live, 
to hurt, to be. And, no matter the telling,  
[8:37] his decision is yes. But that yes is never 
final: You do not choose just once to go on,  
[8:44] then go on forever. It is a choice you have to 
make over and over, and you will make it in the  
[8:49] optimism of the series' finale and the weary 
loathing of the film, in grace and in shame,  
[8:56] triumphantly and worn to marrow, beneath blue 
skies and amidst slick nightmare blackness,  
[9:03] at once a chorus of congratulations and 
a single whisper of “how disgusting.”  
[9:09] Either ending, on their own, captures a 
moment of this decision, but together,  
[9:14] they hold its exhausting repetition, its ebb and 
flow, its unending burden of a committment kept.
[9:22] The answer to the question we opened with–which 
of these endings is the real one–is not, as I had  
[9:29] suspected it would be when I started writing 
this, both of them. Instead, it is neither:  
[9:35] For in the space between them, the arc 
of lightning between two poles, there  
[9:40] is no ending at all. There is none of an ending’s 
peace, none of its certainty, none of its relief:  
[9:47] There is only the story’s middle, stretching 
on and on, wonderfully, awfully, forward.