Ep25: Christ where to fucking start with this one.  The final two episodes of Evangelion are often criticized for being incomprehensible, completely dropping the narrative, and feeling very very rushed.  All of this is true, to a point.  I get what Anno was going for here and I like it, but where he fucks up the most I think is just in the sheer incomprehensibility.  Most of this is going to go over a first time viewer's head without seeing EoE and knowing what any of the shit they're talking about is.  Even knowing what happens in EoE and what all of this shit means it's still a bit of a mess.  The rushed production schedule is really starting to show as it's pretty clear that not a lot of work went into this particular episode.  I wouldn't call it bad, but it's just very obvious that it was rushed.  There's a lot of footage loops that start to overstay their welcome very quickly as in the past, along with some recycled footage used differently.  As I was saying, there's almost a complete lack of narrative ties to the actual story that was going on, and what we do get is very vauge and impossible to understand without having seen EoE.  Virtually the entire episode is comprised of the same sort of hallucinogenic surrealist sequences that Episodes 16 and 20 had a lot of, and I liked that stuff there but the problem is that there it had narrative grounding.  You could connect what was going on in those sequences to what was going on the background narrative of the episode and the show as a whole.  Here you really can't and that is where the TV finale falls apart.  So we open about where we'd expect to, on Shinji's extreme guilt and self loathing over having killed Kaworu.  There's this very deep conflict within him as various aspects of this personality contradict themselves over the events of the previous episode.  He refuses to kill other human beings, yet he killed Kaworu.  Yet Kaworu wasn't human, he was an angel.  Kaworu wanted to destroy all of humanity just like the other angels and Shinji cannot stand by and watch that happen.  He needs to protect humanity because it's within his nature.  But Kaworu is also the only one to show Shinji the unconditional human kindness and love that he so craves.  He wants to believe Kaworu is human because he represents the idealized human that Shinji wants and wants to be, but to acknowledge Kaworu as human would be to acknowledge that he killed a human, which contradicts the other part of his personality.  It causes this great internal turmoil within him.  As a result of this turmoil over Kaworu we see his inability to grasp and come to terms with the possibility of being hated and this intense need to be loved, especially in the wake of Kaworu's death, that's going unfulfilled because it's an unrealistically extreme desire that simply cannot be filled no matter how much he desires it.  His pain is isolating him from others in this strange dreamlike landscape he finds himself inhabiting, and indeed as we find out later, he is isolating himself from others to block out the pain.  All of this conflict over his motives, needs, and desires stemming from Kaworu leads to a debate with himself over his motives for piloting the Eva.  We've seen him use multiple reasons throughout the entire show.  Firstly because he was ordered to, then because he desired the praise of others, then because he wanted to help humanity, but as this mental projection of Asuka points out, or is it the real her?, all of these reasons still stem from selfishness in some way.  His desire to gain love by following orders, his struggle for affection via praise, his need to protect others and gain their affections that way, it's all manifesting itself through his motivations for piloting.  But then Rei shows up and simultaneously whips and nae naes on Asuka by pointing out that she literally does the same thing and her entire motivation behind piloting is selfish.  We then get a very long section of Rei questioning her own existence and struggling to do so.  She debates the falseness of her soul and her body, how her soul isn't truly hers since it's Liliths, and how her body isn't really hers since it's Yui's.  They're two seperate parts being forced together to create her, an artifical being, a fake being.  Despite this, she rejects that she is fake and asserts that because of her experiences with others, she has become her own person with her own personality and her own emotions.  Given what we have seen throughout the series, this is hard to deny.  But there's still so much she doesn't understand, especially about herself.  She can barely comprehend her own loneliness, nor can she understand her own fears over lack of existence.  She, or at least the Lilith parts of her, want to return to nonexistence, outside of form, back for a formless existence.  She can't do it though, there's something holding her back, and it's that human emotion of fear.  A fear of being erased from the hearts and minds of the people she now cares about, as we've seen so far, that person is Shinji.  This event no longer seems unavoidable though, it's going to happen though we don't really know why yet.  It's after this point that the show tries to start to string together a very loose narrative but it isn't framed well enough to have the effect it wants.  Gendo tells Rei that she exists for one reason today, and according to title cards, this is where Instrumentality starts.  As we learn in EoE, Rei is vital for Gendo's vision of Instrumentality, but watching the show we still don't truly comprehend what SEELE and Gendo's versions of Instrumentality are.  We have vague notions of both and we know that they have completely different visions of implementing it, but that's not really enough to go on.  We can make some inferrences though, SEELE wants to become Gods and evolve humanity, Gendo wants to be reunited with Yui.  We get a lot of talk about Instrumentality that having seen EoE makes sense but without it is much more muddled.  Shinji describes his body feeling like it's melting away and expanding outward, this draws some obvious connections to him turning to LCL in Episode 20, and how everyone else is turning to LCL during the Third Impact.  Gendo practically addresses the viewer directly, explaining that Instrumentality isn't a destruction and it's not really a return to nothingness either.  It's a return to the original state of things, a return to Mother, in this case, the Primordial LCL soup and Lilith.  We get shots of both Ritsuko and Misato shot dead and without EoE are left to only grasp at how this could've happened.  This leads into the two characters, still alive, and now arguing over Instrumentality.  Ritsuko finally gives us a slightly more concrete explanation of things though it's still kinda confusing.  It's souls being freed from the body, joining together in a single existence, each soul filling the weaknesses in the other, the voids that exist in our souls.  We seek to fill these voids through various means in life, often seeking love, but Instrumentality rejects that paradigm, the voids, our weaknesses, are filled with the strengths of others directly.  Misato reacts in horror and anger, outraged that Ritsuko would suggest such things and angered that such a thing would ever happen.  Ritsuko points out that even Misato feels these voids in her soul, and even though Misato denies this, we as a viewer who have seen her struggles throughout the show know that this is a denial.  She is lying to herself, she does not want to acknowledge her own pain.  Once again she is running away from the problem, just like Shinji does with his own.  The sequences that follow, exploring Misato's mind, confirm this even further.  There's more discussion on major existentialist themes.  A mental projection of Shinji, and the real Shinji? discuss this.  We explore ourselves through others to determine who we are.  How we act in the face of others, the choices we make even in situations we're forced into, are what determines who we are.  We all have these mental images that we build up of each other, that we judge against the real person and also our perceptions of ourselves in an attempt to determine who the other is and who we are.  This isn't the first time we've dived into Misato's psyche but back into the abyss I suppose.  This whole outwardly pristine nature, this whole professional attitude we've seen her put on throughout the show is a front, or at least it's at odds with her inner desires.  There's this inner rebellion towards being good that she goes through, wanting to rebel against the goodness she has to pretend to put on.  And this manifests itself in several aspects of her private life, her slobbiness as well as in her sex life.  She's horrified to show Shinji, or is it the mental projection?, the carnal side of her.  We see both the good and the ugly parts of her fighting over what's right.  She's still beholden to that same attitude of pretending to be good from her childhood, she doesn't want Shinji to see this bad side of her even though it is a fundamental part of her all the same.  But her psyche argues that really she does want Shinji to see it, that doing so is a rebellion against the good parts of her and that is why she's doing these things afterall.  The psyche says she wants Shinji to see all sides of her because she loves him and needs to show him all of herself accordingly.  The biggest question that surrounds this entire episode is who exactly is thinking, who exactly is talking, who exactly is suggesting these things?  It seems like such a simple question to answer, but it's made infinitely more complicated by the nature of Instrumentality and the blending of everyone's souls and minds together into a single existence.  Is that really Shinji talking to her?  Is it a mental projection of Shinji?  Is it both?  There's no way to tell, it could go either way.  Does it even matter though?  If everyone's minds and souls are one then aren't the mental images held of individuals existing alongside those same individuals?  Trying to understand this shit is enough to drive anyone mad.  Misato's dissection continues as we get into how she uses men and sexual relationships as a means of escapism from her actual life and the struggles and pains she has to deal with.  We know this is true, we've seen it, and yet she tries her damndest to deny it, especially when confronted with the possibility she didn't really love Kaji.  I think she did though, based largely on what we see here in this sequence.  If her reasoning for showing every side of herself to Shinji, good and bad, is that she loves him, then she must've loved Kaji as well since she showed him every side of herself.  We got to Asuka next, not quite as long or in depth as some of the other shit being covered here.  We're retreading her parental issues, her Stepmother and Father seeming completely detached from her issues, as if they can't, or don't, want to put in the effort to understand, and likewise Asuka isn't really putting in any effort due to her own trauma.  To a degree, it parallels the relationship we've seen in Shinji and Gendo so far.  Asuka is struggling with this crippling fear of loneliness and abandonment caused by her mother's mental breakdown and subsequent suicide.  If it wasn't apparent already, the show kind of takes the time to beat you with the fact that everyone is really dealing with the same fundamental problems, depression, abandonment, and loneliness, just manifesting themselves in vastly different forms.  Nobody can really help anyone else because they're so wrapped up in their own problems and their own perspectives that they can't understand anyone else, even though they're suffering from the same problems.  We're left with this sort of reveal at the end of the episode where everyone, or their mental projections again it's hard to tell or know the difference, tells Shinji that he has isolated himself in a world of death and destruction.  He makes all the decisions, he is closed off from everyone, but this means he is isolated from the pain.  He has rejected the world, he has rejected reality, and has seemingly set up this bubble from which he can avoid being hurt.  It's an interesting note to leave off on to say the least, especially with all the previous talk of how Instrumentality involves union and becoming one in a single existence.

Ep26: Fucking christ what a mess.  If Episode 25 was a clusterfuck then Episoe 26 is a clusterfuck inside a clusterfuck inside an asshole alongside a grenade that's exploding.  Episode 26 was the official finale of the show, one that's been praised and ridiculed to hell and back, the origin of several death threads and the infamous CONGRATULATIONS! scene.  It's not a great ending, it's kinda shitty, I like the thematic stuff going on, but much like in the previous episode, a lot of the pyschological and philosophical stuff gets really muddled and confused by the surrealist presentation.  It undermines what the show is trying to do and leaves viewers even more frustrated.  The production schedule for this one is absolutely fucked and it really shows.  You've got rough sketches, black and white stock photos, reused footage, all being used here to try an piece together this psychological exploration of Shinji.  Some of it works, most of it doesn't and it ends up feeling distracted and rushed more than anything, which I guess it was.  Right away the episode basically gives you a huge fuck you with this title card that's going on about Instrumentality and souls and shit but THERE IS FAR TOO LITTLE TIME TO MAKE MENTION OF IT ALL.  Seriously fuck off fucking hell setting up all this shit then lol.  God this show is infuriating sometimes, it really is.  So instead they're focusing on Shinji's soul, his journey.  And that's fine I guess, he's the main character, he's the focus of the show, the finale should fous heavily on him, but it still feels like everyone else's journey is incomplete.  What was the point of setting up all the other characters in the previous episode to push them aside here?  We get too little observation of them, they don't really get a conclusion to their psychological arcs, it doesn't work.  So into Shinji's mind we go, starting with the fears.  We see his fears as being similar to those of his peers expressed in the previous episode.  He's afraid of no longer existing like Rei, of being unwanted like Asuka, and this is underscored by them being present here.  Misato lectures him, telling him that he is running away from these fears, but Shinji very angrily notes her hypocrisy in her accusation.  What should be a powerful, frustrating moment here is further confused by the who and what of Instrumentality going on here that complicates whether he's talking to the real versions of these characters, his mental image of them, or some combination of the two existing at the same time.  Misato agrees with him though, they are the same.  And that is the point of this scene, to highlight what I was talking about at the end of the last episode, that all of these characters are fundamentally the same in their problems and their failed solutions to them.  This is why everyone around Shinji here sees Instrumentality as a good thing.  There is only one of you as an individual, this is where our loneliness comes from, our inability to find another one of ourselves.  Under Instrumentality our weaknesses go away as they become one, filling the weaknesses in each other and the void of loneliness by a united existence.  As the show notes, there is a need for one another.  Humans are inherently social, we need each other to survive.  Instrumentality is the ultimate realization of this, all of the socialization we need to fill the pain of loneliness but with none of the pain that comes with growing close to others and showing your true self to them.  But this is dishonest, this is a mistake, but the show never really goes into that here at least.  Shinji is presented with a series of questions from Rei that he struggles to find the answer to, why he's alive, what he's living for, and Shinji cannot find an answer to them.  Anything he thought he knew for certain has been shattered by the events of the previous episode.  Meanwhile Asuka and Misato answer handily in the form of herself and pleasure respectively.  But the inclusion of their answers raises so many questions that go unanswered.  Who's really in control here if they're being asked the same questions and answering?  Perhaps it's Shinji's perceptions of them giving an answer?  But it's so god damned confused fuck.  Shinji and whatever the hell form of Misato this is supposed to be struggle to understand what exactly is wrong with running away.  It's Shinji that realizes that it's wrong, it hurts, it hurts more than facing reality and it hurts others as well.  Shinji again demonstrates that he cares about others even if it's just on some superficial level, but he also demonstrates his own lack of understanding regarding others here.  He is incapable of understanding that they go through pain too, just as much, or more than he does.  We've seen this foreshadowed and hinted at a few times earlier in the show.  He said or thought that Asuka and Rei hadn't gone through the same experiences he had.  He showed it to Kaji when they were talking about Gendo.  And we see it again a final time when he didn't go to comfort Misato after Kaji's death.  For someone who seemingly cares about people, again and again we see that Shinji doesn't understand their emotions too.  He's a very self centered person, though not outwardly so.  But he's filled with self hatred too.  This inability to understand the emotional viewpoints of others means that Shinji projects his own feelings onto them.  His hatred of himself manifests itself as the view that everyone must also hate him.  This is why he's so desperate to gain the approval and love of others, since he doesn't understand that they don't really hate him as much as he hates himself.  They may grow frustrated with him, they may grow angry with him, but this is a natural part of any relationship with anyone.  They all have their ups and downs and it's about continuing in spite of that.  His attempts to gain approval from piloting vary in their outward cause, but the same underlying need for approval in some form still exists, firstly in obeying orders to pilot to please anyone, then piloting to specifically gain Gendo's approval, then piloting to keep the people he cares about safe to gain their approval, it's all the same thing deep down.  Just like Asuka, he's hiding behind the Eva, using it as a tool to escape from his problems rather than finding a real solution to them.  He's going down the same path she is, tied to nothing but his Eva.  He cannot find purpose elsewhere.  His failure to find solace in creative endeavours like Kaji is exhibited when his psyche criticizes him for his lack of initiative in the Cello.  He cannot find worth in others, he cannot find worth in creation, so he's now trying to find worth in piloting.  However, we as an audience know that he can't do that.  Asuka did that and she failed, and Shinji will fail too if he keeps going down that same path.  And yet, Shinji needs to find worth, his entire journey throughout the show is centers around, among other things, his need to find self worth.  The kind Shinji seeks though is unhealthy.  He wants to be worthy enough to never be abandoned again, but such a thing is impossible.  It's an unrealistic and unhealthy worldview that's creating too much pressure on him to be perfect.  As the show points out his efforts are also doomed to failure because he cannot get others to understand and value him until he understands and values himself first.  Notions of a world without others are presented, Shinji is introduced to the idea that true freedom cannot exist, that we are always restricted by something no matter how seemingly insignificant it is.  Our restriction in the world is that we must exist through seeing other people and comparing ourselves to them to find out who we really are, to discover the core of our being.  This is another big existentialist point, present in a lot of other philosophy as well.  One cannot exist if they are truly alone, without any outside contact.  Without any outside contact, you cannot see yourself through the lens of others, this important comparison and reflection cannot take place, and therefore one does not truly exist.  They may exist in the physical sense, but in the philosophical and psychological sense, they are not there.  Much like the Rei clones sitting in the vat in NERV's basement, they are a soulless vessel, just flesh and bones with no true personality.  This is why Rei's character evolution is important, by viewing herself through the lens of others, she is able to develop a personality and an existence that can be called her own.  Now I'm gonna take a break here from all the psychology and philosophy and analysis because the show does the same at this point and I'll get to that in a minute.  I really want to stress what an absolute clusterfuck, an absolute mindfuck, all of this being thrown at the viewer really is.  Episode 25 was really already dense and merciless with this shit throwing it at you without mercy or pause, save for looping footage and extended little moments of quiet reflection.  But here in Episode 26 it's just a constant barrage of confused psychological and philosophical ramblings that are just fucking overload on the viewer.  There's some interesting stuff here sure but fuck me it's Cock and Brain Torture.  It's so jumbled and disjointed even beginning to try and sort through it to write this gave me a fucking stroke.  It doesn't help that the animation is so abstract at this point with all the fucking stock photos and sketches and shit.  But it finally lets up, this just fucking psychological assault ends incredibly suddenly and into this weird goofy Highschool Slice of Life anime sequence.  I actually kinda like this.  It's dumb yeah, but it's pretty funny and it's a welcome relief from the utter fucking chaos that preceeded it.  It's hard to describe just how much of a release it is to go from that to this funny stuff.  But this sequence has an actual purpose beyond that, it's to get Shinji realize that the life he lives is not the only one.  There are more possibilities out there that Shinji need only dedicate himself to.  His self worth doesn't need to be tied to others, it doesn't need to be tied to the Eva, he can find his own path.  By learning to love himself, accept and grow past his flaws, and accept life's ups and downs, he can become a better person.  By accepting the perspectives of others and learning to understand them, he can become a better person both for himself and for him.  The life he lives can be changed.  CONGRATULATIONS!  It's cheesy as hell, it really is.  This resolution feels incredibly rushed and it handled super fucking sloppily.  After the Psychological Cock and Brain torture in 25 and most of this episode, to just have him see this slightly different life and realize that everyone was right and he can change feels like a bit of an asspull.  The Congratulations moment doesn't really feel earned in the sense that it feels like the journey is missing a step from LOWEST OF THE LOW to understanding and changing for the better.  But I have to say, the Congratulations put a smile on my face.  Maybe it's just the silliness of it and how it's been memed to death, but it is nice to see Shinji get a sort of happy ending here, especially because EoE is not a happy ending by any means.  But even this ending has a lot of fucking problems.  The narrative is completely abandoned.  Instrumentality is being implemented and?  Who won?  SEELE or Gendo?  What does any of it really mean?  They explain Instrumentality as a concept but don't go beyond that what the fuck?  Really, the series ending is like fucking yourself in the ass with a cactus.  You'll get some enjoyment out of it but it's just a painful and messy affair that could've been done so much better.

Well that's it then, just EoE left later tonight.  Truth be told, I'm not sure I want to see it end.  I want more, I want these people to get better without having all of these terrible things happen to them, I want them to solve their problems and get better without the entire world having to end.  I want them to be happy, but alas, it isn't meant to be.