The one criticism of EVA I've never been able to dispute.

[Darkwing]

Milage varies hugely for people where Eva is concerned. Even knowing it's supposed to be a hopeful message it doesn't feel that way to everyone. It's like something where someone wins but it doesn't feel like a win to them.

[Blue Monday]

Kendrix and FreakyFilmFan, I love you. You said what I didn't have the energy to say for the hundredth time.

Absolutely. I was writing up a huge post in reply last night but just gave up about half-way through, haha.

[CyberXIII]

Just because Asuka got better later (arguable) it doesn't mean she didn't die horribly along with nearly everyone else or that they won't probably die even more horribly very soon.

Yui is a pie in the sky, ivory tower sort who is on her way out the door as an immortal goddess figgure, not staying to suffer and toil with them in the sad ruins of humanity. Her vague optimism counts for nothing.

Thank you, NemZ, this is what I meant to say but didn't articulate properly. Even if mankind does return, can the barren, ruined planet even sustain life anymore?

More to the point, I get what Anno was shooting for, I really do. NGE's trying to say that life is worth living no matter how bad it gets, and nothing is worse than suicide. "Death creates nothing" and all that. The problem is that between all the horrific imagery, the cast falling to pieces and the fact that everyone in the theater sobs their eyes out midway through, the message gets kinda lost.

Cynicism and darkness have their place. There's no disputing that. But an overdose of it the way NGE had it is as blind and useless as an endless stream of Dragon Ball clones.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in End of Evangelion. For all Yui's preaching about how the cast may be able to return, we still sat through Shinji whacking off to Asuka, Asuka getting brutally slaughtered long before 3I even starts, Reilith blowing up the planet with Shinji's help, and Shinji's mind snapping so powerfully he lets it happen.

By this point the cast has been turned into horrifically twisted parodies of themselves. Even Misato suddenly becomes much, much more hypocritical and screwed up than ever! And please don't bore me with tripe about that being "natural progressions of their character" or some shite like that.

NGE was designed to be representative of the very worst of humanity, but the characters we all grew attached to in the actual series would be horrified at what their replacements in EoE were like. The only ones who actually acted like themselves was Asuka, Rei and Gendo. FRICKIN' GENDO was more in character than Shinji or Misato!

As for the hope, what hope? You mean the Ideon style "Everyone's dead but we could come back" hope? That's just a pipe dream. The world is destroyed, and even if humanity starts crawling out of the LCL ocean they're coming back to a ruined red husk of a planet. The message is lost and pointless because EVERYBODY'S FUCKED. Why should we care about a broken message like this when all we want to do after the movie is sob, scratch our heads and slit our wrists?

[A.T. Fish]

Yeah, sure, it was all fine and dandy for Shinji, overcoming his problems and all, but what about the random people that were already happy and went through unexpected tangification and the apocalypse and, when they decided to come back, found themselves living in a post apocalyptic mess?

Why should we care about a broken message like this when all we want to do after the movie is sob, scratch our heads and slit our wrists?

I'll give you the sob and head scratching, but slitting wrists is in the opposite direction of where the overall message of the show tries to lead you.

[Na7e]

Yeah, sure, it was all fine and dandy for Shinji, overcoming his problems and all, but what about the random people that were already happy and went through unexpected tangification and the apocalypse and, when they decided to come back, found themselves living in a post apocalyptic mess?

Depends where they comeback. Not every place is going to look like OMF.

[A.T. Fish]

There will be clothes lying everywhere, think about a messy room and expand it to global proportions, it's one big mess. Joking aside though, the sea will still be red, the moon will still have blood on it and maybe some GNR pieces will still be visible in the distance.

[Mr. Tines]

Do I have to post that image yet again?

[Blue Monday]

Depends where they comeback. Not every place is going to look like OMF.

Yep - It's not that bad. Seriously. They can still walk down the road, get bottled water out of a ruined "combini" and eat packaged food til everyone else starts washing up on the beaches. There's still oxygen, there's still means to sustain themselves. Everyone's going to be fine. Like people have already posted; hope and the will to go on living are huge themes here.

Just cause the internet may not be working post-3I and a lot of buildings got smashed doesn't mean the world is unliveably fucked. Hell, to a lot of people, it sounds almost idyllic being able to cast off the oppressions of our own society, even if only for a little while. It is other people, the ones we love, the ones we care about, and our interactions with them is what makes life worth living, what keeps us going. None of this other shit.

Shinji and Asuka will have each other at the least.

Thank you, NemZ, this is what I meant to say but didn't articulate properly.

User NemZ labels himself a "misanthrope", so he sees what he wants to see in the endings - Just as everyone else is wont to do.

...the message gets kinda lost.

Obviously not if we're still talking about it to this day. Yui's narration has been discussed, and yes; it is very uplifting. Imagine, people would probably have walked out of the cinema brimming if the movie ended on such a note. But nope, that's exactly a point of the final scene 'OMF'. It brings us back down to reality after the head trip in Instrumentality. Life sucks, it can hurt a lot, but we're going to keep on going anyway. Remember why? Because Shinji wanted to see his friends again.

[Rei IV]

Do I have to post that image yet again?

Please do!

I may not agree with your scenario but I find it...intriguing, to say the least. There's also the fact the picture of a bug eyed GNR has become a meme on itself.

[Lucretius]

I don't really get it when fans claim nge is this ultra dark, gritty, nihilistic show. EoE is is dark for the type of genre fiction that it is, sure, but for much of its run nge is basically a children's show. Misato is about as realistic a portrayal of alcoholism as Homer Simpson. Asuka is Daffy Duck with boobs. And so on.

But to return to EoE, the point isn't that Shinji is a tireless champion of justice unfairly punished by the malevolent heavens; he's a cautionary tale, not Otaku Jesus. Granted the series has a strong undercurrent of geek persecution fantasy, but still.

But hey, even if NGE's message were "life sucks and then you die," well, much of the Western Canon arguably boils down to that too. What matters is the presentation.

[chee]

Do I have to post that image yet again?

I doubt that real-world physics applies to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

[Anonymous_Evafan]

I doubt that real-world physics applies to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

They do or don't as the plot demands though I've always found it silly to think Rei's head will magically do more damage than an event orders of magnitude more powerful.

[Darkwing]

They do or don't as the plot demands though I've always found it silly to think Rei's head will magically do more damage than an event orders of magnitude more powerful.

Well that much rotting meat is going to cause some problems. I mean red tide, or disease or something.

[Anonymous_Evafan]

Why would it rot? It doesn't seem to age at all.

[NemZ]

Seriously, we're doing this thread again? Just search for the last dozen times it's happened and give up already.

[Kendrix]

Well, there's some pictures (the trees seen as GNR's head falls) indicating that lowly things like plants who don't even have higher thoughts to doubt their self-preservation drives will be back almost instantly, so starving should't be that much of an issue, as long as Shinji and Asuka are fine with munching reptiles for a while.

There's also those pictures we see during Shinji's last conversation with Rei and Kaworu that seem like indication of what's gonna happen - fields of red sluge becoming forests again, those naked people surfacing one by one, empty streets filling with lots of people again...

[Blue Monday]

That scene really needs to be GIF'd.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Just because Asuka got better later (arguable) it doesn't mean she didn't die horribly along with nearly everyone else or that they won't probably die even more horribly very soon.

Everyone who's still ooze is still alive. In fact, it's even argued that those who did die in the past before Third Impact die are brought back to life by it, like Kaji. I fail to see where the death is in that. It is, as SEELE stated, the next step in Human Evolution.

[A.T. Fish]

I think only people who were alive during third impact can come back, otherwise we'd have to assume that even Jesus himself could come back, again.

[Mr. Tines]

[center][/center]
The important feature to notice is that wall of water higher than mountains, the sort of thing that would make 11-March-11 look like a small puddle overflowing. And that's just one of many such splashdowns.

---

we'd have to assume that even Jesus himself could come back, again.

He's allegedly already made special arrangements on that account, without getting Gendo involved.