"It's the end of the world Ladies and Gentlemen, and I'm feeling fine".
After a huge middle finger to the audience that were episodes 25 and 26 of the TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the not-unexpected outrage and protests by the fans, the series' creator Hideaki Anno fell into a whole new level of depression that was so deep it hit the centre of the Earth, bounced back through its own anus, turned into a hysteric hatred towards the fans and shot up right back into Anno's big head, traversing his large intestine on the way back and thereby planting some serious shit into his head. The result was a giant wank in the face and the ensuing skull-fucking that was the "End of Evangelion" movie. And what a movie it is!
Films like End of Evangelion are a rarity, and only come about every couple of years. This movie is the anime equivalent of "Dungeons and Dragons" or "The Room"; a movie so epically bad it's a joy to watch. Though, there is one precondition to properly enjoying this film if you have the misfortune of owning a brain ( unlike the people who rate this magnificent turd a 10/10 ); you have to give all your fucks beforehand. The opening scene of Shinji wanking over comatose Asuka should assist you in switching off the "caring" mode, in which case, you're in for a roller-coaster ride through some of the most amazing shit that has ever been animated. I'll say it openly: I enjoyed this movie a lot, only not in a way you'd usually associate with the word "enjoy".
You may have noticed by now that this review is already different from my usual ones, and that's due to two reasons:
1. End of Evangelion is in a special league of its own regarding the films in general, let alone the anime I usually watch
2. I just don't give two f*cks. This is a rant and I intend to enjoy it. So buckle up and prepare to go!
As the opening scene plainly shows, Anno's single most important objective in this film is pissing the fanbase off as much as possible, and he accomplishes this superbly and in numerous ways.
First of them; making the already unlikeable and despised Shinji as appalling and disgusting as possible. There isn't a single person with a sane mind that doesn't loathe and hate Shinji and doesn't want to torture him in the most gruesome, most painful ways possible. If you thought he was spineless and whiny in the series, just wait to see how he acts during the film, and in particular during the first half of the series, when instead of fighting off the enemy in his Eva, he sits under the staircase, weeps and cries for the unconscious Asuka to come and help him. After he gave himself a wank over her just two minutes earlier. OUR PROTAGONIST LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
What he does in the face of an impending apocalypse is even more admirable, but I shall discuss that later.
Sadly ( well, for me, fortunately! ), other characters aren't spared either.
Remember Major Misato Katsuragi ( which reminds me that Masamune Shirow and Mamoru Oshii should sue someone ) and how she was turning into Anno towards the series finale ( along with the rest of the cast )? You know, becoming all depressed and upset and stuff? Well, mr. Anno clearly doesn't, for she's all tough and fiery at the beginning of the movie. Hell, she basically bitch-slaps Shinji for being such a whiny, spineless bitch, and practically embodies the feelings of the audience in doing so. Shame she doesn't put a bullet in his head, not only would she make the viewers happy, she'd save the whole of mankind from turning into a stale orange juice. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyways, her character in the movie, while awesome, is inconsistent with the series, and seeing how this movie is supposed to replace episodes 25&26 as the proper ending for Evangelion, that's a minus I can't overlook.
Asuka starts off as being unconscious, then wakes up to be catatonic and scared and depressed - just like she was at the end of ep 24. Then, in literally 20 seconds during which she has a vision of her mother, she makes a 180 degrees turn and proceeds to kick some evil-Eva arse. Great writing there, Anno!
It doesn't at all negate and spit on what was arguably the best about NGE!
Immediately afterwards, though, as soon as she fulfills her role of a plot device, she's cast aside until the very last scene of the movie.
Same with Rei, who is barely present for the first half of the movie ( albeit it's understandable why that is so ), only to saturate the screen for the most of the second half. She's also ripped of her previous personality, uncompromisingly sticking it to Gendo and accepting her destiny as Anno's final plot device in the quest to piss the fans so much you can cover the entire Earth in piss.
Even though there was hardly anyone really likeable in the NGE's cast of characters, and even though they were all deeply flawed as people, they were believable and good characters ( until the last third of the series at least ) and End of Evangelion stripped them of everything, disregarding continuity and only making Shinji the most hated fictional character of all time after Jar Jar Binks.
Well, the first batch of turds, in form of handling character development, is done with. Onwards, to the plot!
Plot-wise, End of Evangelion is rather similar to the preceding TV series; it starts off decently enough ( not counting the opening wank scene ), only to collapse spectacularly in the second half, falling so hard it destroyed the world and liquified all living things in the process.
But while decent, the first part was still not very good, and in retrospect, it falls apart together with the rest of the movie. It's riddled with the aforementioned character inconsistency, plot holes, contrivances, repetition of ad-hoc resolutions from the original series ( namely, when Ritsuko stops a massive hack of the Magi supercomputers... AGAIN, and in the exact same way, only much, much faster ), and much more. There's also some ridiculous no brainers like this one: the Japanese military are assaulting the NERV HQ. While their forces are still inside the facility, trying to retrieve the Evas, their own forces DETONATE AN N2 MINE OVER THEIR HEADS, blasting the Geofront into pieces. I don't care if it doesn't have any radioactive fallout, a nuke is still a nuke and you don't shoot it at a target when your own men are inside!
While entertaining, the first half is convoluted, full of contrived plot points and generally a fine example of lazy writing that's only done in the first place to prepare the setting for the ultimate mind-fucking-wank-fest-epically-pretentious-mind-numbing metaphisical clusterf*ck that is the second half of "End of Evangelion".
To put it simply, if the infamous live-pudding-scene from "Akira" and the Eclipse episodes from "Berserk" had an s&m orgy during a black mass and conceived a baby, which in turn were to be raised by David Cronenberg, than the second half of the movie would be that baby.
There's just no point in explaining it, you have to see it to believe it. If the episodes 25 and 26 were mindfuck. then this is an all-out gang-bang orgy of Anno randomly throwing around epically grotesque and random scenes filled with pointless and shameless religious symbolism that very unsubtly screams "ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS! ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS!" What does all that symbolism mean? Fuck all, that's what, and it's so painfully obvious, that the endless and futile attempts by the rabid fans to read some deeper meaning into it causes me, and the creator, that big troll, to laugh my arse off because they've taken the bait and allowed Anno to win.
Also, if I may quote from Roger Ebert's movie glossary: "If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didnt." Albeit the quote goes a bit too far, the point still stands.
We also get some of the trademark navel-gazing too, because ep 25 and 26 just weren't enough. What a joy!
Anyways, all the spectacular mind-fuckery and endless nudity of the second half aside, there's one remaining and pretty major flaw of the story. Guess what it is. If your answer was: it's not conclusive, then CONGRATULATIONS!
Yes, despite being promoted as a proper and cohesive conclusion of the series that's supposed to tie up all the loose ends and provide answers to countless questions that were raised over the course of the series, it fails to achieve that.
As previously mentioned, many of the "resolutions" were either contrived and unsatisfying, or were drowned in the sea of random grotesqueness and symbolism of the second half of the movie. And to top it all, the ending only raises some more questions, leaving the story without a proper and complete conclusion once more. Well done Anno, there aren't many people with the ( lack of ) skill to do that. I'd take my hat off for you if I had one.
Now, the few good things about the movie. I gave it 3/10 not 1/10 after all.
The visuals are very good throughout the movie, with the exception of a short period of live-action stock footage near the end of the film.
In that one scene, a person with a low budget camcorder randomly wanders around town, filming things like empty movie theatres or city streets. This comes as quite a shock midway through and manages to come across as exceedingly ugly. The point? A pretentious and futile attempt to make the movie relevant to the real world and probably further connect with the audience. Well, it failed.
Again towards the end of the movie, there is a horrendously long sequence in which thousands of still frames are flashed across the screen at a mind-numbing rate. People suffering from epileptic seizures are warned. This warning also applies to the people without such medical conditions. It's very tiresome.
The music does a pretty good job of setting the mood even as the story is falling apart, and voice acting is still excellent. Sound effects, particularly in Asuka's battle, are nicely done. Obligatory pretentious tracks ( namely J. Sebastian Bach's music ) are obligatory. The climactic scenes of apocalypse are played to the sounds of a pop song "Komm, Susser Tod", a bright and upbeat piece that could be played at parties and weddings if its title weren't "Come, Sweet Death!" and if its lyrics weren't about suicide and the end of the world. I'll give you three guesses as to who wrote the lyrics.
Well, that's it! The end of End of Evangelion. And what a steaming pile of dick and cock it was, yet I absolutely loved it! The main reason why I loved is because, unlike NGE, which was an extremely mixed bag with some very good stuff and lots of very bad stuff, End of Evangelion was just plainly horrible and I could just indulge in pure, justified hatred that my rational and objective mind didn't allow me with the original series.
This is the film that turns everything it touches into shit, and yet dances around pompously, demanding attention and critical recognition in the most trollish manner possible. Its story fails at just about every level imaginable - truly, a movie of such epic and total badness only comes around once a while. In every aspect; plot, characters, dialogue, style, themes... it was such absolute rubbish it reached a Nirvana of Bad and moved to a higher plane of existence.
An incredibly entertaining movie if you watch it with a certain mindset. If not, you're either going to smash your TV/computer, or become even more depressed than Anno after pondering the fact that the humanity has been destroyed and turned into a giant orange soup by a character so spineless an disgusting, he makes Werther and Jar Jar look like appealing characters.
