---
title: 'The End of Evangelion - Analysis'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dl5esIF6QEY'
video_id: 'Dl5esIF6QEY'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1471
---

# The End of Evangelion - Analysis

> Source: [The End of Evangelion - Analysis](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dl5esIF6QEY)

## Summary

The speaker shares first impressions of the final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion and the film The End of Evangelion, comparing the two endings. They argue that the TV series ending, despite budget constraints, is superior because it focuses on Shinji's internal psychological battle, while the film provides external context but lacks emotional depth.

### Key Points

- **First Impressions of Evangelion's Endings** [0:00] — The speaker watched the final two TV episodes and The End of Evangelion, sharing initial thoughts and feelings.
- **TV Series Finale Backlash** [1:10] — The TV series finale received backlash, leading to the creation of The End of Evangelion a year later, retelling the ending from a different perspective.
- **Genius of Rewatchability** [3:06] — The story rewards rewatching after knowing the ending, similar to how Star Wars backstories enhance original films.
- **More Than Mecha** [4:42] — Evangelion is not just about giant robots; it focuses on the pilots' inner lives, blending slice-of-life with apocalyptic mythology.
- **Three Layers of Story** [6:26] — The series has three layers: slice-of-life, mythological battle, and the inner journey of characters, especially Shinji.
- **External Battle as Metaphor** [7:49] — The external battle is a metaphor for the inner battle against trauma, fear, and the longing for healing.
- **TV Ending Superiority** [8:08] — The speaker believes the TV series ending is superior to The End of Evangelion because it focuses on inner conflict rather than external action.
- **Budget Constraints Led to Creativity** [10:10] — The final episodes were made under extreme budget and time constraints, forcing the use of abstract imagery and stock footage.
- **Creator's Personal Experience** [13:36] — Hideaki Anno's own depression influenced Shinji's character; a psychology book helped him understand his condition.
- **The End of Evangelion as Opposite Ending** [19:51] — The film shows Shinji making worse decisions, presenting a mirror image of the TV series' healing arc.

### Conclusion

The speaker finds the TV series ending more emotionally resonant and true to the story's core, while The End of Evangelion offers a contrasting, more external perspective that leaves them exhausted but intrigued.

## Transcript

so i've watched the final two episodes
of neon genesis evangelion as well as
the end of evangelion and i have
thoughts
and feelings and
ideas
and i want to share them with you and
what you're about to see is an excerpt
from my weekly show story secrets that i
record every week for my patrons if you
would like to get access to the full
show take a look at patreon.com father
roderick i would love it if you could
join my patreon community
[Music]
in this episode i want to talk about my
first impressions and it's just first
impressions i'm not at the point yet
where i would dare to give an analysis
and an explanation of the finale of this
story but i want to
tell you
what my first thoughts are after having
seen the two last episodes of the
television series
and then also the two other episodes
that were made a year later after the
television series finale got a lot of
backlash from from the fans at the time
so they retold the story of what happens
at the end
of of uh
shinji's journey you could say
but this time from another perspective
and and from a different angle and also
with changes and it's fascinating uh to
juxtapose these two to compare them to
one another
and it also had a huge impact on me
because i was expecting certain things
to happen and i was at first utterly
confused and i have had a lot of
emotions while watching both the ending
of the television series and also
the end of evangelion that's the name
the overall title for these two
kind of remake
remade episodes
um
and and that that kind of wraps up that
first part of the story because of
course the manga continues the story and
there are also a few other
made for tv
uh
movies
that have come out afterwards which i
haven't seen yet but i'll get to that at
a later point
so that's what i would want to do first
give you my overall
sentiment and my first thoughts about
the way this story
uh ends and and where everything that
i've been studying for so many months
actually led to
um and and and then what i want to do
next time
is
to go back and re-watch now that i know
how the story is ending
i want to go
back to the first episode and do a deep
dive analysis of everything
that i now can see in that first episode
and then the second and the third we'll
we'll be busy for a while
that i've met that i missed because i
didn't know where the story went i
didn't know the full background this is
one of those genius stories that
it really pays off to go back after
you've seen how it ends
it's kind of
a little bit with you know i'm a big
star wars fan with star wars as well
what they do now is to enhance the
movies that we already know
by telling the backstory so we've seen
the story of obi-wan kenobi and now that
we know how he spent his time on
tatooine between the prequels and a new
hope
that when you now re-watch a new hope
that character all of a sudden has way
more depth than some of the things
things that he says
carry much more weight than they had
when that backstory wasn't there and so
i love that when when when the story has
so many layers and and so many layers
are added to that story that it makes
you want to go back and re-evaluate what
you thought you knew that for me is
is part of the attraction of neon
evangelion
or neon genesis evangelion so that's
what we're going to do
and then every week when i do a deep
dive per episode i will also create a
short tic talk video where i just take
one highlight of of that episode or i
will just probably repackage it or
re-record it um
but as you know the tick tocks are only
a few minutes you know it's two three
minutes what i do on tick tock is
usually considered to be very long
because it's a short attention span type
of medium but i hope that people are are
are intrigued by what they see on tick
tock so that they come over and if they
become a patron they can also join you
as an audience and listen to these shows
what i love about this story is that it
is not just
a story about you know huge mega robots
fighting each other uh what
the the creators wanted to do was to set
it apart from
series that do that that
you know are about these big
uh mech robots fighting and battling
each other they wanted to give this
story
um more of a soul maybe even literally
in a certain way
and that is why from the beginning we
follow the pilots of those big you know
robots or whatever creatures they are
and we get to know a little bit of their
backstory and the series constantly
switches between the very mundane
day-to-day life of these kids because
they're all like 13 14 years old um
trying to deal with school with you know
their burgeoning emotions and going
through puberty and whatnot so it
from on the one hand this looks like a
very kind of common
japanese slice of life type of anime
and then
there are these big dramatic fighting
scenes this overall
huge mythology
that
shows you little pieces of what's going
on but never reveals the full truth and
and even at points during the story
tries to
kind of make you think
about about things in a certain way and
only to completely turn that up upside
down later on when you realize what is
truly going on and this is not just true
for us as an audience but it's also true
for a lot of the main characters who
have actually no idea what they are
involved in
and then there is a third layer so
you've got the slice of life stuff
you've got the the big
mythological apocalyptic battle going on
and then there is the inner journey
there is a
what connects these two stories is what
happens on the inside
of the main characters and more
particularly of shinji who is the the
main the main character i wouldn't say
the hero of the story because he's he
definitely is not a hero and doesn't see
himself as a hero but he's a protagonist
and
because of this inner story
which also is about a battle but it's
not a battle with forces from the
outside it's a battle an inside battle
between the good and evil inside of
every one of us
with with trauma and hurt and fear and
everything that holds us back and then
at the same time this longing for
liberation for healing for you know
something else
and
because you have that external story of
a battle and you've got that internal
story and it is at the same time
about these regular kids that a lot of
us can identify with because we've all
been you know at that age 13 14 years
old so we do recognize a lot of
their emotions and the conflicts and the
little things that make life very hard
at that age
but
what i believe
is so genius about this story is that
ultimately the bigger story of the big
outside external battle
is
i think a metaphor of the inner battle
and that
brings me to the last two episodes of
the television series and why they are
so incredibly good
um
and i know that this is
this is kind of uh
a solitary position not many people
actually liked the ending of the
television series even the majority of
the people that follow me on tik tok and
there are hundreds of thousands of them
most of them agree that the way the
television show ends is rubbish and if
you really want to get a good experience
of the ending of the story you have to
watch the end of evangelion i
disagree and i i really want to to
stress
how much these last two episodes first
of all follow from the entire story that
that came before it
and then secondly are
told in a way that is so
creative and innovative
and and touch upon such deep layers that
that that are so relatable
that i actually believe that the way the
television show ended is far superior
to the way they wrap up the story in the
end of evangelion
it's it's for me it's no doubt no
discussion possible the television show
ending
is the ending that this story needed
and yes
the movie gives a lot of context and
gives you a lot of like oh so what's
going on
what we didn't see in the television
show
but it's only information it doesn't for
me it doesn't go to the core of what
this story is about which is this inner
conflict and so the last two episodes of
the series are almost entirely taking
place inside the minds
of the main protagonists especially
shinji but also to a lesser extent asuka
and and and rey
um
and
it's very atypical now one of the kind
of pragmatic reasons for these final two
episodes to be so different also
stylistically
is that they actually ran out of time
and they ran out of resources
the whole
series was made under extreme duress it
was very very difficult
to get these episodes done in time
especially getting the story started
took months and months of preparation i
think the first episode it took them six
months to write it and to prepare for it
and so they were in a crunch time wise
they also were in a crunch budget-wise
there was almost no money left and this
is still an anime from the time that
everything was hand-drawn and so
yes of course there are a few i think
computer graphics involved but still
every
second
that you see consists of 24 individual
frames you know that's how that's how uh
uh animation works or in this case in
anime oftentimes much less frames and
that's one of the ways that anime has
such a distinct
style it's oftentimes because they use
one cell sometimes for several seconds
and they will just change the or move
the background
but but the rest of the image is static
that's why
everything is so stylized and and and
oftentimes you're looking at a scene for
instance when they go down to the the
city below the surface of tokyo three
and the only thing that moves is the
background it's it's the the elevator
but the rest is static it was just a
very pragmatic way of saving money
because
then you don't have to draw all these
different
you know cells you can just use one
drawing and then just
have the background move you just make a
bigger background
so what was
what was
uh
conceived as a as a way to cut the
budget it was something that was that
made also in a certain way the look that
we associate so much with anime
and
the problem was that for the last two
episodes of the television series they
were under contract
they didn't even have the money the
budget to do like super low level
cell animation
so even with the tricks that they used
in in previous episodes they weren't
able to get to the end of the story and
so that's why they they had to resort
to even
more mundane sources of imagery and
that's why in this these two last
episodes you will also see real footage
like just stock footage from from people
from trains from whatever and you see
sketches you see pencil sketches
they reuse almost everything that they
created in the past including their
their their pencil sketches to
tell that story
uh um of what happens on the inside of
of shinji's mind
so it's super abstract and i can i can
totally
see why that is jarring to a lot of
people but what i think is so genius is
that despite those constraints despite
that crunch
it still does something extraordinary
because the
the journey of
shinji what he goes through what he
starts to realize over time
is is so
deep and so true and the reason i think
that it has such an emotional impact at
least on me
is that this is actually
based on
on uh hideako anno's
own experiences
he has often
said in interviews that he suffers from
depression and that before he started to
make neon genesis evangelion he had
had a period of time several years where
he was in a deep depression
and then someone
gave him
a book
about psychology i'm not exactly sure
which book it was
but but during his depression he started
to read that book and to him it was a
revelation
that psychology book helped him
to understand what was going on
why he was suffering from depression
what the choices were
that he needed to make and a lot of what
you see in shinji's character and that
also is sometimes grating and irritating
is like he's always
crying always whining complaining always
blaming everyone around him
but he's afraid to look inside so he he
is constantly on the run
he he wants to hide between other people
and then when other people don't help
him he feels even more powerless very
very similar i think to what many people
who suffer from depression also
experience this is this this you're
closed up from the world it seems like
you're completely isolated no one can
help you and you can't help yourself
so
there doesn't seem to be an exit and
having more insight in
how your brain works
how your emotions are linked to neural
pathways and how trauma can can make
certain connections in your brain that
are not healthy but you keep
repeating the patterns and so that
always kind of repeats and even
strengthens
the the depressed feelings
once you start to understand how that
works you can also
maybe
discover a way out
and that is what is happening in these
last two episodes where shinji who has
gone through so much emotional trauma in
his early years he lost his mom he has a
horrible father again not spoiler
because it's it's in the first episode
his father is a horrible person
um
he he
every time
that he fights these
big these angels these these aggressive
monsters
it's it's a reflection of what's
happening inside of him he feels like
he's he's in a fight with with forces
that he can't understand that seem to
come back all the time and there's
there's no end to it and if you've
defeated one then there is another one
that pops up just like in depression you
may sometimes have that feeling that no
matter what you do no matter how
much you try to resist
it comes back in waves and then it takes
you back into that darkness and into
that solitude
and and there seems to be no victory
possible
until
you start to realize
that
you are the one
that can make a change
that
healing has to come from
the inside yes with maybe outside help
and with people that explain to you or a
book you know what that can tell you
this is how it works
you have to do the work there's no one
who can do it for you you can't take a
pill against depression you can take
medication to suppress the symptoms
but the the the origin
of what causes this inner darkness that
is something that's a fight you have to
fight yourself
that i think when i'm not a psychologist
but this is what i gather from from the
story this is what
uh idiacoano wanted to tell
the this is it's about his own battle
and his own efforts to overcome
this this isolation by opening up to the
people and by accepting that life is
fundamentally broken
that that it's not you know it's no use
to run away from pain and suffering like
we all do but
people that suffer from depression do it
maybe to the extreme
um but that the the the only way to to
get out of that darkness is to accept
that even though you may step into the
light it's not all going to be it's not
going to be like heaven there's still
going to be pain and violence and
suffering
but you have to grow stronger you have
to make the deliberate decision that you
want to live
and that you are worth
living
and that despite suffering you still
have value
and and so
that's a journey that i think is is
explained very well in these last two
episodes and and for me that was the
core of the story so i was so
uh
i was so fascinated that they that they
dared to tell that part of the story and
forego
the whole you know bigger mythology
which brings me to the to the end of
evangelion which is which is the movie
where in in the
well these two more cinematic
versions
of this ending they show what happened
at the same time in the outside world
and so
yeah that's fascinating that's
really riveting and it's it's also very
shocking because that that battle also
culminates in a lot of violence and
there were times there was like oh my
gosh i can't believe they i can't
believe they put this in the movie uh
there was this infamous scene in in the
hospital that a lot of people on tik tok
wanted me to comment upon
um
and and that's just part of the
tragic decisions that shinji takes over
and over again
and
it's just
minor tragedy compared to the
mass murder that takes place in that
final episode it's me it's really
gruesome i want to warn you that this is
unlike anything you've seen in the
television series um and yet
it's kind of a logical conclusion of
that story it's it is an apocalyptic
battle
but what is the big
shocker
of the end of evangelion is not
the scope of that final battle
but it is that in that movie shinji
takes
different
decisions
instead of
healing
he is actually getting worse
and so it's almost like a a mirror image
of the end of the television series
it's like the
you know that in in in stranger things
you've got the the regular world and
then you've got the
you know how do they call it the the
underworld or the the upside down and
and this is what
what gave me such a whiplash when when
watching the end of evangelion is like
but where where is the story that they
were telling in the last two television
episodes this is the opposite
and and it's only after seeing the whole
thing that i started to wonder well
maybe that's on purpose as well maybe
that is what they wanted to do
to tell
two possible endings
which then
makes the end of evangelion very
intriguing and definitely worth
re-exploring but and i'm going to wrap
things up and then i'm going into
spoiler territory but my final thoughts
about the end of evangelion is
that
it it baffled me i was watching and
again i've studied this series i thought
i knew what was going on
and then i i'm just there were so many
moments during that movie that i was
like what is happening what what am i
watching there are like minute long
sequences where i'm completely
out of
any clue as to why that is included i
there are hints
that there is a rhyme and reason to all
that
but at the same time it goes so fast and
there's so much happening that i just
don't have the time to to think about it
and so at the end of that movie i was
exhausted
i was emotionally intellectually
completely exhausted i was like
oh my goodness i have to re-watch this
multiple times and i probably will have
to do a lot of research
in order to fully understand why they
told the story this way and why
this story this version of the story is
so different and in many ways
opposite to what they showed at the end
of the television series
so
i i had so many emotions there was also
a lot of tragedy
in the end of evangelion there are
moments where you're like
no
no they they ju they didn't do
really
there were there were just times that
where i was just
man
don't tell this i don't want to see this
story it's just too it's too emotional
it's too hard it's too painful
and you know what that's probably again
on purpose they want us to feel like
that this is why this series is so good
it makes us feel so much
it makes us emote and and reflect and
and relate
to what we see and there are not many
series or many movies
that are able to do that because we're
so engulfed with media with stories and
a lot of it is
forgettable
there's so many stories where like yeah
that's that's a good popcorn movie i had
a good time and then you asked me a week
later what was the movie about uh yes
something with dinosaurs i i don't know
about the rest with neon genesis
evangelion i mean i can tell you uh for
hours
what
which moments struck me and what made me
think and what i discovered and there's
there's not a single day that i'm not
thinking about the meaning of neon even
uh neon genesis evangelion and it's not
just because i i make stuff for tic toc
it's just because this story is so good
and i want to re-watch it and you know
well that's why i'm doing this show
that's why i'm sharing that with you
knowing very well that not everyone will
be as passionate about this series but i
know that there are
enough of you that that appreciate this
and maybe even years later some of you
may listen to this years after i've
recorded this and still hopefully get
some value out of it
[Music]