The more you love someone, the more their suffering will affect you.
It’s difficult for me, as a viewer, to really feel grief for a character that the author himself already hates. Rather, above all, I suppose I do feel the absolute hopelessness and melodramatic nihilism seeping through each and every frame of End of Evangelion (EoE), so perhaps I do feel depressed. But to say that I feel for the characters would be disingenuous. To create something beautiful, you must first love it. With mere hatred and resentment, one might be a victim of a fault in writing: bad melodrama. Though without establishing how the series leading to the movie is and how the movie actually ends, this would definitely seem like an unjust critique, for arguably, this movie has quite a positive conclusion considering that this is Evangelion that we’re talking about. So let us first talk a bit about the series as a whole.
Evangelion's main selling point is perhaps its strangely thorough and unflinching presentation of the characters' psyche, under the influence of a hopeless apocalypse. The most obvious trait that every character seems to share is that they all are fundamentally broken human beings with literally no redeeming quality, and the author views this somewhat as a demonstration of his own belief. That is, all humans, after exploring the deepest, most vulnerable of their Freudian ids, are exposed to be inherently disgusting, full of selfish needs and nothing else. The movie therefore ends on a loosely absurdist note, being that for one to find the meaningful in the ostensible meaningless, it accepts the fact that humans are despicable but they should all accept each other’s flaws and come to appreciate who they truly are.
For context: Human Instrumentality Project eradicates structuralism, individualism, freedom of choice and any sort of desires and struggles simply because there's nothing to be desired or struggled to begin with. It is the ultimate escapism for weaklings (since abandoning the self relieves you from everything), and also is a desperate, unrealistic resolution to its abiding misanthropy. Rejecting Human Instrumentality means escaping escapism, accepting responsibilities, retaining individuality – viz. understanding one's own shortcomings, learning to deal with it and learning to appreciate others even with the pre-existing 'AT-Field'. Therefore in all of this rambling, it actually has quite a simple message with the aid of some profound ideas - accept the insecurities and flaws and appreciate yourself and others. The problem is not so much in this seemingly irreproachable conclusive message, but rather in its execution (or at times, lack thereof).
As we spend the majority of the runtime in both the series and the movie exploring all the despicable human traits reside in our characters without any glimmer of faith in humanity whatsoever, the said conclusion seems rather dubious and otiose, because we have not come to love the characters, or more accurately, we’re not supposed to love them. If the movie wants us to love our pathetic absurdist self, it should’ve executed in such a manner instead of insisting on whining how the characters are so vulnerable and flawed. Admittedly, the flaws of Evangelion’s characters are very human, even relatable in many ways; though as shown through how irredeemable every character is, it is easy to lose every shred of hope and humanity, and so it seems as if we’re just experiencing a philosophical misanthropic manifesto of the author himself with a forced positive final note. It’s almost uncanny in a way. At the end of everything, the characters supposedly accept the barest of each other’s flaw, but not to have come to appreciate their valuable attributes because simply, there is none. EoE merely persuades its characters to appreciate other people’s flaws and not their strengths, because every character in the movie is too broken and similarly insecure. Talking about realism, that seems highly irrational and delusory to me. Human simply isn’t a complete blackness with only deep dark desires, nor are they all about insecurities. To undermine the goods would both be unwise and, as I’ve mentioned, melodramatic in poor taste.
I’m sure for Anno who had been suffering from clinical depression at the time, this would be a feasible point of view. The total hopelessness, total nihilism, total cynicism in oneself and in humanity, and the desperate desire for the nonexistent love that is. However, this is, if anything, foolish and parochial. It doesn’t accurately represent humans, nor does it hold much worth since it derives from a suicidal man after all. For this reason, he bitterly self-inserts and has thus come to despise the characters, and perceivably struggles to see the lights within his own creations. The approach of believing in such complete absence of so many things, in such a setting that aims to convey humanity as a whole, has created this sense of misanthropy and profound hatred, ultimately resulting in the misalignment with the movie’s underlying philosophy.
For better or worse, it’s clear that EoE is not within the realm of subtlety when it comes to psychoanalysis, or character self-analysis in general. I’m not talking about every little action the character decides to take here (which can sometimes be subtle), but their psychological trip that literally vomits dialogues of emotions with an unchanging formula – has a character confronted with his/her own issues, has them denied it, has them begged further to deny it, drives them practically insane, has them admitted it. I remember being so intrigued when this method of character reflection was first introduced in the second half of the series, until they kept chewing it over and over again even in the movie. The issue isn’t that it’s so raw and lacks subtlety, but it is overused with over-expositions, and thus has the earmarks of being whiny. This was slightly more balanced in the series, since different methods of characterizing are used more varyingly. Though for this movie, this method takes up the entire climax. Characters having existential crises every so often does not interest me, more so when there’s nothing new to put on the table. Shinji’s (or any other character) flaws have been previously explored, at which the movie's "crazy phantasmagoric sequences" are but visually whiny (albeit impressively so). So, contrary to some popular beliefs, the characters weren't terribly complex or anything in this movie.
It also doesn’t help how convoluted of a story EoE is, making it incredibly distracting for the first several viewings. The entire point of EoE is to discern the characters’ internal struggles and appetency to appreciate and be appreciated. By way of explanation, EoE is executed as a character-driven movie. So making a plot this infuriatingly convoluted really isn’t a wise decision, because it distracts viewers from what the movie tries to convey. If, and only if, the convoluted narrative has some sort of thematic value, meta even, then it might’ve been perfectly acceptable, which unfortunately isn’t the case for EoE. Even after reading pages of explanations to fully understand the supposed plot holes, it is still the narrative’s fault for being so negligent of properly explaining all the already jarring events. It barely scratches the origin of the Angels, or Lilith, or anything, and these are supposed to be the mystery built-up throughout the series awaiting for a satisfying payoff. It is a narratively incoherent mess of a story that really doesn’t have to be so overly complicated. Sure, it's easier to shrug it all off and give the audience a big middle finger since "nothing matters anymore at that point". But this wasn't Burning, the movie, type of ambiguity. It's simply more lazy than tactful.
But here we are. Despite all of that being said, I still gave this a 5, meaning it was not bad at all. Because even though the movie failed to make me deeply care about the characters, it still gave me adequate emotional depth that I could spiritually connect to. As I said, it’s a raw movie with raw emotions, about very real issues, even if under the director's disagreeable lens (since that didn’t really detract it from being emotionally impactful). Because the director and author, Hideaki Anno, is also being raw and very true to himself in the movie. It doesn’t mean I liked his bizarre point of view any better, but it’s undeniably difficult to completely hate the movie simply for how emotionally real it is. Other than that, the animation, music and choreography were also pretty great, and since I have quite a soft spot for that, I’m giving the movie a bit of personal bias here. So, audiovisual-wise, this movie is exceptional to say the least. And emotionally, it excels, considering how much I downright disdain the pov this movie took.
In conclusion, ok movie, nice audiovisual, whatever philosophy, bad execution. Used to be a 10 from me for such a long time, and for holding some personal significance, I'd say it's a 5/10.
