CyberPundit, as tavalla said, in this very summer the alternate ending (OK one of the alternate endings, the Japanese team has so far made at least two cuts of EACH of both the 2-episode TV ending and the 2-feature-length-part “movie” alternate ending) is being released in the USA . From your last comment, you may be interested in it…
…and in any case will still leave the average person going: “Huh!!! WHAT!!!”. More action AND more Gnostic Christianity/Kabbalah.
I finally saw the last two episodes and they were pretty much as I expected since the earlier “pshychological” sequences gave a good taste of what was to come.
I tried to keep an open mind about the philosophical/hallucinatory style but overall I don’t think it was well executed. There was no reason to devote two whole episode purely to the interior monologue sequence. They could have tied up the loose ends in the story and done the mystical sequence. There just wasn’t enough material there, to justify two episodes and it got very repetive. Finally whatever mood they had built up was completely dissipated in the very final “congratulations” sequence.
Anyway I am looking forward to the movies and overall I thought the series was great.
BTW does anyone know of a good cite which tries to resolve or at least discuss all the various sub-plots?
The End of Evangelion – one of the movies – resolves most of the loose ends. But that movie is disturbing, and not in a good way.
Hideakki Anno was very upset at the reception the series got, and the movie is sort of a slap in the face to the fans. Sex, violence, and pain. The series was about Shinji all along, not the angels, instrumentality, etc., and so Anno didn’t feel the need to tie up those sub-plots before he ended.
As for the subplots, ask away. I’ve never found one site that covers everything, but I’ve read plenty, and I’m reading the manga, now. Eva is my main geek obsession 
Hmm if the sub-plots are going to be resolved in End of Evangelion maybe I will wait for that.
Just a couple of questions though:
http://www.lwhy.clara.net/nge/
I found a good site which has good discussion of the plot and characters. It does explain clear up that Rei was killed by Ritsuki’s mother so don’t bother with that. I also suspect that the issue of SEELE and the angels is meant to be left unresolved.
BTW what did you think of the last two episodes?
In answer:
Ritsuko’s mother does kill Rei (the first of three Rei’s at any rate) in a fit of anger. Dr. Akagi then kills herself out of guilt. Another Rei is simply put into operation after that.
SEELE’s relationship to the angels is never fully explained, even in the movie.
In the manga, we do learn more about the secret organization. They possess a set of scrolls – the “Dead Sea Scrolls” – that hold vague prophecies about the evolution of life on earth, human history, and the events in Evangelion. The prophecies supposedly predate all life on earth, are of unknown origin, and in the pictures in the manga, appear to be etched in stone in some strange language.
SEELE and Gendo have different interpretations of these vague prophecies. SEELE’s goal is to get its “scenario” through at all costs. To this end, they construct the last angel, Tabris or Nagisa Kaworu. Rei is also a constructed angel, so they have the power to do this.
Did they make the other angels? Or just predict their arrival through the prophecies? This is never revealed, or at least it hasn’t been yet. A friend is sending me volume 7 of the manga from Germany (it’s not out yet in English or French). If the answer comes up, I’ll let you know.
They grow on you.
Seriously. After seeing the movie, I prefer the first version, and many of the more obsessed fans (including me) don’t consider the movie to be canon.
He did botch those last couple of moments. But not because they were just about Shinji or because it was such a happy ending. It was too sweet, too saccharine, to sitcom-y.
But when I saw it a second (and a third, and a fourth) time, I realized it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. It’s just the original shock of expecting one thing and getting another that does it.
The series needed a happy ending. But it could have used one that was more creative and complex than the one it got. Still, it’s not so bad – certainly no as bad as it’s made out to be.
The rest of the last two episodes, IMHO, are wonderful. A beautiful reflection on the meaning of human existence. But my favourite will always be episode 24 – the third-to-last and the pivotal one of the series.
Dude! The irony. I just now finished watching the first 11 episodes (over two nights). I was about to get online and dig up the other thread about spoilers on the SDMB, to say that they’re no big deal and anybody who reads an internet thread about a show or movie deserves whatever spoilers he gets. And then I run into this.
Everybody start using the bracket-spoiler-bracket tag, please! I don’t mean to gang up on KKBattousai; I just noticed a couple of other things on the thread that I wish I hadn’t read… The little <spoilers> mentions (or no mention at all) can get read over without being noticed! Especially when the OP says no spoilers!
So speaking of the OP: after 11 episodes, I’m kind of split. There are aspects to it that I like a lot, and some things are done extremely well – the evangelion designs, the way some information is presented subliminally, and the combat sequences. And I like how they’ve managed to give the story some layers. Like “Cowboy Bebop,” the show manages to take a bunch of anime/manga cliches – post-apocalyptic neo-Tokyo with teens and giant robot fights, in this case – and combine them to form something new. But at the same time, there are a lot of cliches that don’t really seem to be going anywhere, at least yet, a lot of filler stuff that doesn’t ring true.
I guess I just have to dig up the rest of the episodes. Netflix only has the first three discs, though. And I will say this: the opening sequence is really growing on me. I thought it was cheesy at first, but now I think it’s pretty cool. It reminds me a little of Space:1999’s opening, which is the pinnacle of cheesy cool.
Sol Grundy,
I am afraid my last couple of posts contain some spoilers; I more or less assumed that anyone who was still following the thread has already seen the series. Sorry about that.
Hamish,
Maybe I will give the last couple of episodes another go. I think I liked the episode about the history of NERV best. I also liked , in a lighthearted way, the 3-4 episodes after Asuka comes into the series.
The last two episodes are easier to appreciate once you’ve seen the movie. Stylistically, it’s wonderful. But with Evangelion, I crave substance.
(The best description of the End of Evangelion. I’ve heard so far is “Like 2001: a Space Odyssey, Disney’s Fantasia, and Pulp Fiction in a cinematic blender”).
If you liked the NERV episode, you’d like the manga – lots of background, flashbacks, and character development.
My favourite early episode is #9 – that’s one of those Asuka episodes. The one that requires perfect coordination. It’s full of of interesting symbolism, but mostly it’s just fun to watch.
Well, without spoiling it, I can assure that starting at episode 16, there be no more filler. If anything, the series will move too quickly.
I also apologize for the spoilers I posted. I thought by this point, Cyberpundit and I were the only two reading this thread – it was a very silly assumption to make.
And I apologize for my inadequte spoiler notation. I only started using the spoiler box (never learned what the vBcode for the thing was until recently) in the last few days.
Sore-e about that.
Well, I finally managed to rent the rest of the episodes (had to drive all the way to Japantown to find them!) and just finished watching them all.
Spoilers here if the series hasn’t already been spoiled for you!
So on the whole I liked it very much, but count me in with the hated-the-last-two-episodes camp. It’s just an enormous cop-out – artfully done, but a cop-out all the same. The recurring line is that “the show was never about Angel battles to start with; it was about the characters.” Right, we get that, it was apparent all along and was handled much more effectively in the earlier episodes. Is it supposed to be just a coincidence that the last 2 eps are mostly pencil drawings, shots of text against a black screen, closeups of storyboards, still frames, etc.? I don’t know anything about the actual production of the series, but it’s obvious to me that they ran out of time and/or money to do the ending of the show justice.
It’s irritating to read attempts to rationalize it as something more than that. My problem with the ending isn’t that it was too obtuse or confusing, it’s that it was too simple – it’s all grade-school psychoanalysis that expresses nothing that wasn’t already more effectively said in an earlier episode. In the second episode, when Shinji remembers his first battle, when Unit 01 went into berserk mode and Shinji saw the eye of the Evangelion staring back at him, that all said so much more and said it more effectively than two episodes’ worth of “What am I? Am I you? Am I happy? Is this reality?” and such babble. It just all feels like cheesy anime trying to look “deep,” which is frustrating because the rest of the series actually is pretty deep.
To be honest, none of the characters are all that complex – they all have one big neurosis or character flaw that they keep going over again and again. But the reason the show worked so well is because it used all the conventional anime stuff – giant robot battles, hot barely-dressed cartoon women, secret post-apocalyptic government conspiracies – to explore their neuroses. When you take all that away, and just “go into the mind of one of the characters,” it just exposes how shallow the whole thing is.
Compare it to Cowboy Bebop, which managed to hit on a lot of the same themes – how people are afraid or unable to connect with each other, how your identity is defined by the people around you – without coming right out and saying them, and while still being action-oriented and genuinely funny as well.
Still, I liked it a lot. The entire episode in which Unit 04 attacks, I watched with my mouth hanging open just thinking, “This is so bad-ass!” I just think I’d have liked it better if they’d stopped at episode 24, or at least waited until the release of a movie.
And in retrospect, I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about the spoilers. I think that the 5-year rule applies, and on top of that, it’s my own fault for going into a thread marked “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” one of the most talked-about anime series ever, and then getting upset when people are talking about the series. I was wrong. I hate myself. But who am I? What am I? Am I you?
again with the SPOILERS!
I forgot to mention – now that I’ve finally seen the series, what’s up with this? I assume you’re talking about Rei, right? I didn’t get that from the show at all. I understood that he was sleeping with Dr. Atsugi, but not with Rei. As I saw it, the Dr. Atsugis senior and junior were jealous of Rei not because Ikari was actually sleeping with her, but because she represented his wife and the fact that he loved her more than he would ever love either of them. I’m inclined to think that sleeping with a 14-year-old, even a “dummy plug,” is a little bit too much for even an unrepetent asshole like Ikari-san.
Actually I was confused about this also. I think what KK was saying was that Ritsuki was sleeping with Ikari and that Rei was the one who treated Shinji like dirt. Of course I wouldn’t exactly call Ritsuki a zombie so it got me confused.
BTW I agree with your comments about Bebop. I thought the last two episodes in particular packed a big emotional punch as well as tying some of the plot threads nicely in a way that NGE didn’t. The scene between Faye and Spike near the end, for instance, was quite moving especially after we know the ending.
OTOH I enjoyed the darker poltical/religious themes of NGE so I am not sure which serial I enjoyed more (last two episodes apart).
BTW I think Bebop would be a great anime for mainstream audiences in the US since it’s a lot more accesible than ,say, NGE. I think Cartoon Network is showing it but I wish one of the networks would take a risk and show it. The way it segues effortlessly from genre to genre is quite amazing and I can’t think of anything quite like it on American TV.
First off, I hope it’s apparent that I meant to type “Dr. Akagi,” but I’m a big dumb gaijin when it comes to Japanese names.
Cartoon Network is showing Bebop, as part of their “Adult Swim Action” block. And I personally think they’re doing an outstanding job of it – their promotions are excellent, as usual (it’s clear that they “get” the show and what makes it cool), and they put it under “Adult Swim” instead of “Toonami” so that they don’t have to edit it. That means it doesn’t get quite as much exposure as Dragonball or Gundam, but I doubt that Bebop would ever be as popular as those series because it’s not so action-oriented.
It was only aired on the Australian Cartoon Network, I believe.
I’ve seen NGE DVDs for sale and I’m trying to decide whether I should get them.
I liked Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Princess Mononoke. DBZ doesn’t appeal to me - it seems like it’s written for a younger audience.
I think the DVD packaging gave me the impression that NGE was also aimed at a young audience. Judging from the discussion here, it sounds like its for adults.
Do you think I’d like this series?
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Disclaimer: It’s been a really long time since I watched Eva. I watched in on video even! :eek:
Treated him like dirt: Asuka Langley
Sleeping w/ Shinji’s dad: Rei. I know she was Gendo’s (um, Shinji’s dad, if that’s not his name) creation, but I went the ecchi route in explaining why his glasses were in Rei’s apartment all the time. (It was more than once, right?)
Like I said, it’s been a while. 
Count me in as a huge Eva fan. I have the sereis and Death and Rebirth on DVD, and can’t wait for End of Evangelion.
The main version of “Fly Me to the Moon” for the closing credits blows Sinatra’s version out of the water. I can’t even listen to that bastard’s version of it.
KKBattousai:
Ritsuko (and years earlier her mother) was sleeping with Gendo, not Rei. I think she has hi glasses because she is a partial clone of Shinji’s mother. I don’t like the idea of Rei sleeping with Gendo, and I didn’t really see anything in the series that points in that direction.