Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion

The End of Evangelion (1997) rewrites the television series' ending and does it from where the series stopped. The last two episodes had abandoned the outside world and taken place entirely inside the characters' minds. Most of the audience read that as an evasion: the robots, the siege and the war were left unresolved. This film is what those two episodes should have been, showing what follows episode twenty four from the outside. The result is the hardest passage in the whole series. All of humanity joining a single consciousness is depicted, and there the film moves into abstraction, live action footage and concert imagery. During that section letters scroll across the screen. They are rewritten versions of mail sent to the studio. The popular account is that Anno received death threats over the series ending and put them in the film. Measured, the picture is more complicated. Anno explained that the letters could not be used as they were for legal reasons, so the staff rewrote them; a close friend wrote the harshest lines. Some of what appears was aimed at Death and Rebirth, and a substantial part of the real mail was praise rather than threat. So the hatred on screen is a staged version of the real thing. The final scene takes place on a beach and has been argued over for more than twenty years. None of it makes sense without the series. It runs 87 minutes. Good for: anime, experimental narrative, and anyone who finished the series. Less good for: the violence and sexual content are explicit, and the film refuses to comfort you.