Friend's Thoughts on Eva *Spoilers*

[Shinn Asuka]

My friend on Zophar, IceNine0, wrote this.

Ok, so here we go. I'm aware of the backstory behind End of Eva's creation, but not sure of the details. Some people say Anno was satisfied with the series' ending and was pressured into making the movies whilst others say he was planning to make them all along. I personally believe the former, considering the radical shift of view between eps 25+26 and End of Eva.

As I understand it -

Big Theme of Evangelion -

An individual person is alone, tormented, isolated and fearful. He/she can never truly understand anyone else and no one can understand him/her.

Moral of 25 + 26:

However, if one tries hard enough to love oneself, breaks through the barriers of communication and learns to care for and try to understand others, he'll achieve as true of happiness as possible. This happens automatically during third impact and Shinji is saved.

End of Evangelion:

Humans are masochistic, live for selfish gain, and take a perverse pleasure in dealing and receiving pain. When all of humanity is merged together, Shinji can't cope and it feels "all wrong". Everyone still hates him and he still fears everyone else. No one will ever understand each other. In the end, Shinji chooses to sacrifice everything to be with the person who hates him the most, Asuka. It all fits in with the first text in End of Eva - "that's why it'd be good if everyone dies"

I almost feel that EoE is a savage backlash by Anno against his fans for the pain and betrayal they caused him. The dark, vicious twists put on all the characters and the pessimistic ending are evidence of that.

Now, going out on a limb, I believe Shinji and Asuka's characters in EoE to be symbolic of those psychotic Eva fans' relation to Evangelion the series.

Think of the scene where Shinji wanks off over Asuka in the sick room (Yeah, EoE is messed up). Forsaking everyone else in his life, he tries to awaken an unconscious Asuka on life support (the Evangelion series) saying that she's "the only one who can help him" (like those crazy fans who sent Anno death threats). After Shinji savagely shakes her, Asuka's gown falls open, revealing her naked body (the dark, painful messed uppedness of EoE, all that's left for Anno to express), and then Shinji masturbates over her, takes a perverse, self-destructive pleasure in the act and says "Man, I'm fucked up." He's equivalently naive and insane to those fans who rejected the hope of the original series (even committed suicide over it).

Those are my two cents, anyway. EoE was way cool, but I prefer to think of original 25 and 26 as Anno's intended ending.