Critics at the 1997 Tokyo International Film Festival were polarized. Some walked out. Others wept. Over time, The End of Evangelion has ascended from "scandal" to "sacred text." Roger Ebert, who rarely reviewed anime, called it "a film that refuses to comfort the audience," placing it alongside Persona and 8½.
Why does it endure? Because it refuses to lie. In an era of manufactured happy endings, The End of Evangelion argues that human connection is agonizing, messy, and often unrequited—but it is still better than the silence of oblivion.
For Hideaki Anno, the film was a farewell. He would go on to direct the Shin Godzilla and the Rebuild of Evangelion films, but he has never again made anything so nakedly personal. "I made The End for the people who were in the same dark place I was," he later said. "If you hated it, you’re probably doing fine. If it destroyed you… then you understood."
Twenty-six years later, that orange sea still laps at the shores of cinema. And somewhere, Shinji is still crying. Asuka is still furious. And we are still watching, unable to look away. neon genesis evangelion the end of evangelion 1997 exclusive
The End of Evangelion is available on Blu-ray and streaming via GKIDS/Amazon Prime. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
For 29 years, we’ve debated that line. Here’s the definitive read:
Asuka understands. She saw everything Shinji did—the hospital, the fantasy, the cowardice. She also saw his pain. The caress is not forgiveness. It’s acknowledgment. She is saying, “I see you. All of you. And I’m still here.” Critics at the 1997 Tokyo International Film Festival
The “sick” feeling isn’t disgust at Shinji. It’s the vertigo of real human connection. Real intimacy is messy, ugly, and boundary-violating. The Fanta-sea was clean. This beach is filthy.
Anno’s final message: There is no happy ending. There is no magical fix. There is only two broken people on a ruined planet, choosing to be alone together. That’s love. That’s the opposite of Instrumentality. That’s the most hopeful thing he could imagine.
From there, the film abandons linear storytelling. Rei, the enigmatic clone, betrays Gendo and merges with the alien angel Lilith, triggering Third Impact. All human life dissolves into LCL—a primordial orange soup. The boundaries between self and other collapse. The End of Evangelion is available on Blu-ray
This is where The End of Evangelion becomes a thesis statement. As Shinji experiences "Human Instrumentality," Anno plunges the audience into a nightmare of psychoanalysis. Characters are stripped naked (literally and figuratively), forced to confront their deepest traumas. Misato’s unresolved father complex. Ritsuko’s hatred for her mother. Rei’s existential emptiness.
And then, the most infamous sequence in anime history: Shinji, alone in a void with Asuka. She refuses him. He begins to masturbate over her comatose body—not for arousal, but to confirm his own existence through degradation. It is repulsive, deliberate, and utterly without catharsis. Anno later said he included it to mirror the "darkest corners of a shut-in’s mind."