Imaginary Worlds - Ends of Evangelion

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

One of the most popular anime series just became widely available when Netflix started streaming Neon Genesis Evangelion. Evangelion is also infamous for having several different endings -- and a fandom that has a contentious relationship with the series creator Hideaki Anno. Nate Ming, Vrai Kaiser, Aaron Clark, Gene Park, and Heather Anne Campbell discuss how Evangelion tackled important issues like anxiety, depression, masculinity and sexuality while finding time for kids to get inside giant robots and fight giant aliens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Eric Malinsky. If you know anything about anime, you probably know about Ghost in the Shell, or Akira, or the movies by Miyazaki, like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. But one of the biggest anime franchises in Japan was not widely available in the West until this past summer, when Netflix started to stream Neon Genesis Evangelion. The show was broadcast in Japan for just one year, from 1995 to 1996. And after the show ended, there was a 90-minute movie that wrapped up the story. But more than 20 years later, Evangelion is still having an impact on pop culture around the world. Heather Ann Campbell is a TV writer in Los Angeles. She discovered the show as a teenager, and she watches the entire series again every year.

She likes to watch it with new people to gauge their reactions. I've shown it to people who cry. I've shown it to people who, like one of the last times I watched it with some friends, one of my friends, his name is Alex Berg. He like went out on the deck and had a whiskey and like had his eyes narrow and like sipped at the whiskey for a while and was like, that's the craziest thing I've ever seen. That felt satisfying to me. The fandom for Evangelion is intense. There is a lot of disagreement among the fans. And lately it's been about Netflix because Netflix redubbed and resubtitled the show.

A lot of fans didn't like the way that Netflix subtitled the Japanese dialogue. And Netflix hired new voice actors for the English language dub, even though the voice actors from the 1990s dub were very well loved by the fans. But I will be playing scenes from the English language dub on Netflix because that's what's available to me. Also, the most fascinating thing about Evangelion is the story itself, with all of its shocking plot twists. So this episode will be full of spoilers. If you want to experience Evangelion without any preconceptions, it's a quick binge. I consumed the whole thing in a few weeks. You could probably do it much quicker. But back to the story,

because I'm sure you're wondering, what is this thing about? Well, when I first started watching Evangelion, I didn't get why it was such a big deal. It seemed to be full of typical anime cliches because it's about people who get inside giant robots to fight giant aliens because those aliens are landing on Earth and stomping on cities. And we don't know why the aliens are doing this, but clearly they need to be stopped. It reminded me of Power Rangers or Pacific Rim, but they were influenced by Evangelion. Actually, a lot of pop culture was, especially in Japan. And the show deviates from that kind

of genre in a lot of ways. It wrestles with really weighty themes like destiny versus free will or individualism versus collectivism. There's a lot of Judeo-Christian imagery. And those giant robots, which are called Eva units, are not really robots. They're bioengineered creatures with primal minds of their own. And for some reason, only 14-year-olds are able to get inside and pilot them. I mean, on one hand, that makes sense. If the show is going to appeal to a younger audience, it needs young heroes. But the main character, Shinji, is not really a hero. He doesn't want to get into the bioengineered robot. All he wants is the love of his father, Gendo,

who, not so coincidentally, designed the Eva units. But Gendo is cold and distant. In this scene, Shinji speaks first. Father, why did you send for me? We just told you why. and distant. In this scene, Shinji speaks first. And for the rest of the series, Shinji is beyond reluctant to do his job. Stop wasting time. Either get in the Evo or get out. In fact, the phrase, get in the fucking robot, Shinji, became such a popular meme it's on t-shirts. And none of the characters actually say, get in the fucking robot. That's what fans like Gene Park were saying out loud when they first watched the show.

I was absolutely the kid who was yelling at the screen, like, do something, you know? Like, just get off your ass and do something. Today, Gene works for The Washington Post, and he wrote two articles about what the series meant to him as a kid and as an Asian American. Now, as an adult, I realize, like, how paralyzed he must have felt. And as an adult, I realize like how paralyzed he must have felt. And as an adult, I actually look back at him like I look back at my own younger self, you know,

after having been through therapy and still going through therapy myself. So the way I look at Shinji is like a like encapsulation of how I used to feel. And it's just empathy and sympathy for him. But there's more to Gendo than we realize. He is still grieving from the death of Shinji's mother. And we learn he has a crazy apocalyptic plan to merge all of humanity into one formless consciousness. He thinks that's the only way he can see his dead wife again. And as fantastical as that sounds,

Gene's still related to the central conflict between Shinji and Gendo. I have a complicated relationship with my parents, definitely my father, where he was so absorbed in his work. He had expectations of me that I didn't really understand or were never really clearly vocalized.

And Gendo Ikari definitely does that. Shinji has no idea, even until the end, what he's doing. There's no real mission other than just do this because you have to. So that alienation, that misunderstanding, that miscommunication from his father really spoke to me. Shinji is really the personification of the show's creator, Hideaki Anno. At the time, Anno was a real up-and-comer in the anime industry. He was actually a protege of Miyazaki. But privately, Anno was struggling. And while he was making the series, somebody gave him a book on psychology that made him realize he was clinically depressed. It was a huge revelation for him.

And from that point on, the show delved even deeper into the psychology of the characters. Gene also has clinical depression. That's another reason why he felt such a strong connection with Shinji. It made me realize maybe I should be a little bit more vocal about how I feel. Maybe I should be a little louder in what I'm thinking. After I attempted my own life, I changed. I thought I need to stop forcing this inside me. I need to let it out. I need to be a little bit more open.

I need to be a little bit happier. And I need to be a little bit more expressive in the disorder of my own mind. And that just made me become a little bit more social. And that was absolutely after I had watched Evangelion. But Shinji isn't just depressed. He is considered to be part of a subset of Japanese men and boys who can't cope with social pressures. There's a Japanese word for this. It's hikikomori. And a hikikomori is someone who completely detaches from society. And they're basically, I think the best translation is like a shut-in. And Shinji is kind of like that, but with his emotions.

Nate Ming was an editor at Crunchyroll, which is a really popular site for watching anime. He also lived in Japan as a kid. And he says if Shinji is a hikikomori, the way that Anno, the showrunner, portrayed him was groundbreaking. And that's probably because Anno identifies as an otaku, which is similar to a hikikomori, except otaku find escape through fantasy worlds like anime. Ikimori, except otaku, find escape through fantasy worlds like anime. Usually when an otaku, you see an otaku in anime or manga, they're played up as like a comedic character. There's someone who's like, haha, look at the nerd. Then you move to the other side and you see someone who is withdrawn, who is not very socially capable, someone who has difficulty relating to the people in their

lives and kind of withdraw into media or just anything in their life. But a lot of fandom and a lot of the otaku mindset comes from feeling ownership over something without creating or adding to that zeitgeist. Now, Anno, the showrunner, eventually got married. And his wife, Miyoko Anno, actually created a manga series about the challenges of being married to an otaku. And like many otaku or hikikomori, the character of Shinji struggles to understand the girls and women in his life. At the beginning of the series, Shinji is sent to live with an officer at the secret government agency where he works,

named Misato Katsuragi. Well, come on in. Thanks for having me. At work, she's a badass warrior. At home, she's kind of a party girl who screams with joy after she has her first sip of beer. After a long day at work, this is what makes it all worthwhile. She tries to get Shinji to talk about his feelings, but he never does.

He's intimidated by her, attracted to her, and repulsed by her slovenliness. Meanwhile, he has a crush on a girl on the pilot program named Ray, who is quiet and mysterious. And then there's a third pilot, a German girl named Aschke, who is brash and sexually precocious. I wonder if my breasts would get bigger if I warmed them up. You think thermal expansion would make a difference? How would I know? Why do you have to be so weird all the time?

How are you so boring? And for a TV show that's supposed to appeal to kids, I was shocked by how much it focuses on the characters' bodies. I mean, the 14-year-old kids are practically naked sometimes. But Vrykaiser doesn't have an issue with that. They're an editor on the site Anime Feminist. I think the series has always had a really good grasp on kind of differentiating when we're in Shinji's POV, horny vision, I sometimes call it. And you have like, you know, these very lurid POV shots of like looking down Asuka or Misato's shirt or what have you.

And then sort of using nudity from a more third person, you know, quote unquote, objective camera angle as this very alienating, vulnerable thing. Again, Heather Ann Campbell. Being a teenager is a very sexual time and it's overwhelming, but that's because that's what your body is doing. So at the time I was like, yeah, I get this. But then now I think that I don't want to say that it's problematic because I don't think it's problematic. I think that people acting on and thinking about kids in a way that I don't think Evangelion intends for adults to think about kids. think about kids. I think it's only weird when adults enter into that space and feel like they are also participating in that space or that they have authority over that space. Except adults were participating in that space. In fact, the show inspired a term you might be

familiar with, fan service. Now in Western pop culture, fan service usually means a filmmaker has added an obscure reference that only hardcore fans would get, like a comic book reference in a Marvel film. Or the filmmakers know the fans want certain characters to get together, so they'll give them what they want. But in Japan, fan service is specifically about sexy images of female anime characters. And Vry says that really kicked off with Evangelion. You don't get it watching the Netflix version because they cut the next episode previews. But the next episode previews were usually read by Misato.

And she'd always close with promising more fan service in the next episode. Because what she says in Japanese is sabisu. And that is a loan word. It literally means service. And it could be like, oh, at a maid cafe or a soap land or something. They're giving you something extra. They're giving you the good stuff. In fact, the studio behind the show, Gainax, became so synonymous with fan service,

the fans started to refer to the, quote, Gainax bounce. The Gainax bounce, you know, the boob bounce that you'll find in, like, almost every single Gainax work. Aaron Clark runs the fan site AvaMonkey. But I start to notice, like, in the past couple years, I think the fan base has aged and to some degree matured.

And there's been more, not necessarily backlash, but pushback on fan art and things like that that sexualize the female characters in the show, particularly the younger characters. But the show subverts our expectations because towards the end, Shinji becomes attracted to a boy named Kaoru. I'd like to keep talking some more. Do you mind if I go with you? To the shower. You're headed there, right?

There's a really intimate scene as they're sitting naked in a bathhouse, hands touching. In the original English translation from 25 years ago, Kaoru tells Shinji that he loves him. The translation on Netflix is different, which has been controversial, although Netflix claims this is more accurate. Their hearts are delicate like glass, yours especially. You think so? Yes, you're worthy of my grace. Your grace?

I'm saying I like you. Either way, the subtext of that scene was pretty obvious to Vrykaiser. Shinji is definitely a queer icon, as it were, of just being scared and queer and not sure what's going on with your life. It's a big mess. This very anxious and depressed young kid who, you know, really wants to connect to other people and feels alienated and sort of crushed by all these gender expectations. I think a lot of trans kids can get kind of this nebulous feeling from Shinji of being that age and just knowing something is wrong or being told something is wrong with how you are and how society expects you to project gendered behavior. Evangelion is very much about the teenage experience.

But the great thing about the show is that it ages with you. I mean, Heather has experienced that in real time because she rewatches the show every year. When she was a teenager, she related to the teenage characters. Heather has experienced that in real time because she rewatches the show every year. When she was a teenager, she related to the teenage characters. At some point, I became Misato's age. And then once I was 29, I was like, oh, man, her behavior is is fucked on a lot of different levels. And she needs a therapist that it's not cool that she drinks every day. That that's something that's her processing of PTSD. different levels and she needs a therapist that it's not cool that she drinks every day that that's something that's her processing of ptsd and it's unaddressed and then i don't know what

age gendo is but the last time i saw him saw the show i was like i feel more like gendo than anybody else that feeling of like a life where you've made mistakes that you can't correct but are desperate to correct them. I was like, he's not a bad person. He's just unable to move forward. And that's his coffin. So Evangelion has gone much darker and deeper than just a show about kids getting in giant robots to fight giant aliens. And with two episodes left to go, the showrunner, Anno, needed to wrap up the story. But things had gotten so emotionally messy for the

characters and for Anno himself. As they were heading towards the finale, the crew could tell something was off with Anno. They were genuinely worried about him. And what happened next was unprecedented. And it would change the nature of fandom itself. More fan service after the break. The final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion came out in March of 1996. Now, remember right beforehand, Shinji felt a deep connection with a boy named Karu. But there was a final twist. Karu reveals that he's actually one of those aliens that was sent to destroy the Earth, even though he doesn't look like the giant monsters they've been fighting.

But now that he's gotten to know Shinji, he doesn't want to end humanity. So he tells Shinji to kill him. For me, there is equal value in life and death. Choosing to die is the one and only choice that no one can take away from you. Wait, what? Kaworu. Shinji is confused. He doesn't want to do this, but Karu insists, and eventually Shinji crushes him with his Eva unit. And then came the final two episodes. They are nothing like the rest of the series. Both episodes take place in Shinji's head as if he's had a mental breakdown.

No one would ever understand someone like me. place in Shinji's head as if he's had a mental breakdown. The animation is experimental and unfinished. We actually see storyboards and rough drawings. After two episodes of what feels like a surreal therapy session, we end up seeing all the characters standing around Shinji and clapping because he's finally learned to accept himself. And that's the final scene of the show. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Congratulations. When Gene Park watched that episode. I was blown away. And I was actually not sure whether I loved it or hated it. Obviously from a plot point wise, I hated it, but it really sued afterwards. After sitting on it for about a week, I really appreciated it and it started to make me cry as I thought I wanted more. Now, if Shinji is an avatar for Anno, the showrunner, then Anno must have felt like he had some kind of psychological

breakthrough when he wrote the ending. But Vry says a lot of fans were not feeling it. When you're in the middle of depression, it is hard to look at that TV series ending and be like, ah, yeah, yeah, this speaks to me. Episode 26 is kind of that moment where Anno is speaking from the other side of a breakthrough he's had, and it was so powerful to him. Whereas if you're not on the other side of that, it can come across like this is bullshit. It's not that easy. The fans that hated the ending decided that Anno had been forced to put this half-baked idea on television. And if he had enough time and money, he would have come up with something better. Aaron Clark, who runs the fan site AvaMonkey, says there's actually plenty of evidence to support that theory. It was so chaotic behind the scenes. I asked Takeshi Honda, who is an animation director on all of Evangelion, about what it

was like to work under Anno. He described it as being very frustrating because Anno was constantly changing things and rewriting things. He would visualize how he would animate something and then he would come in the next day to animate it and the whole script would be different. So Anno was basically constantly changing and rewriting things

as they entered the second half of the series. So it was more a matter of them running out of time than money. And many of the fans were furious that Anno didn't resolve the main storyline about alien attackers and the shadow government's secret plan to end humanity. I mean, what happened to that? Anno actually received death threats from some of the fans. And that shook him to the core. In the midst of all this negative press, the studio announced that they were going to make a feature-length film that would be the real ending of Evangelion. In fact, the title of the

movie would be End of Evangelion. And when End of Evangelion came out in the summer of 1997, And when End of Evangelion came out in the summer of 1997, anticipation was huge. The theaters were packed. And when the movie began, we were back in the main storyline again. It was full of action and drama. But then one by one, the characters are all killed off. Some of them are killed in gruesome ways. It's powerful, but hard to watch. some ways. It's powerful, but hard to watch. And Shinji? He's kind of gone down this almost in-cell path of, I have this mental illness. I don't feel supported. I feel, you know, I'm

inundated by this toxic masculinity. And so this sort of depression and anxiety has turned to anger and resentment and starting to lash out in really violent and scary ways at the women in his life. In the movie, we actually see the breasts of the teenage girls. And the fan service is done in a way that's intended to make you feel guilty. And at two points in the story, Shinji chokes one of the girls in the pilot program. And I think it very much does speak to that kind of simmering rage. You know, it takes that branch point from you're a hurting young person just being pummeled by these toxic masculinity social forces. And then you took the turn and made that decision to take it out on other people more marginalized than you.

And remember how Shinji's father was part of a secret cabal that had a plan to merge all of humanity into a single consciousness? Well, that happens. People's bodies explode as their souls are sucked out. And Shinji has the power to stop his father's apocalypse. But he's wrestling with his own demons. That to me is a wonderful metaphor for how the stunted growth of men and how we're not addressing the men's emotional needs

and the dangers and pitfalls of what we go through when we don't address the serious issues that's going on in our head could happen. And then at the climax of the story, we cut to live action shots of Tokyo. We hear Shinji's internal dialogue as he's imagining in his head that he's talking to the other girls about how he's addicted to fantasy worlds. You made a convenient fantasy to take revenge against reality. What's wrong with that? You were avoiding the truth by escaping into a fabricated world. And then we see an audience in a movie theater.

A real audience, not animated. And the death threats that Anna received from the fans flash on screen. Again, Nate Ming. I don't even know how else to describe End of Eva. It's such a smorgasbord of fuckery. Again, Nate Ming. I had read about Hideaki Anno getting death threats about the TV ending of Eva. Even though I wasn't initially a huge fan of the TV ending, I was like, okay, that's too much. He's a creator and this is his ending. It's his ending and his story. It's not yours. And hearing how all those death threats and all that negative press, he took it to heart and made the most beautifully animated fuck you I've ever seen and threw it up

on a screen and forced everybody to watch it. Heather Ann Campbell. I think that what the director is doing there is saying, hey, there's a difference between fandom and death threats, and the death threats that come with a feeling of entitlement and ownership over the characters, that that is different from self-examination and projection that happens when you project yourself into Shinji and when he projects himself into the minds of other characters. The movie eventually switches back to animation.

The imagery is incredible, very surreal. Shinji is still alive, although it's not clear if the rest of humanity survived. And he is in a dark place, physically and emotionally. And he is in a dark place, physically and emotionally. That ending was actually a hit among the fans, but they couldn't agree on what it meant. The people who liked it said, this is the true ending that Anno wanted. That happy, positive, feel-good TV ending, that was a mistake. Let's pretend it never happened. Other people have argued that the two endings go together.

The uplifting TV ending is what was going on in Shinji's mind during the apocalyptic movie ending. But then there's the third argument, that the TV ending was the true ending that Anno wanted. And so the movie was an angry backlash to the fans, some of whom didn't realize they were being trolled by Anno himself. And there are contradictory quotes from people behind the scenes to justify all of those arguments. Meanwhile, it seemed like Anno just wanted to move on. He made other shows and films, animation and live action. Evangelion retired to the shelves of video stores or people's personal DVD collections. And that should have been it for Evangelion.

But something stranger happened. The merchandise started to build a momentum of its own. Aaron Clark says it just kept going and going. sheer volume and variety of evangelion cross promotions like mobile game uh events theme park attractions boutique store licenses like specialty evangelion sunglasses or or there's a cross promotion with godzilla or hello kitty it's just There's an Evangelion racing team. There's the Japan Horse Racing Team Association shorts. There's just so much stuff now. It's unbelievable. Nate Ming. I think Ava's able to have its cake and eat it too, which is kind of weird because Ava itself

is not a very happy or fun series. has its fun moments certainly but i think just getting the chance to see these characters happy for once even if it's like a gillette shaving or shick actually the shick shaving ad there's look up look up the ava shick promo and it was fantastic you see gendo shaving his beard off and and it's a beautiful promo. Speaking of which, okay, I found this commercial. I want to watch this right here with you on. Can you hear it? Yes. It's great.

And you get to see these characters actually, like, enjoying themselves for once. It works. Even if what's truly making them happy, yeah, is shaving. Something as simple as a product. If only they knew that capitalism and shopping could have made them happier. I know, right? The merchandise made the studio

a lot of money. And to everyone's surprise, in the early 2000s, they announced that they were going to remake Evangelion from scratch in a series

of feature-length films. This time, Anno would have free reign, unlimited time and money. But they're not calling them remakes. They're rebuilds. And Vrykaiser says, With the rebuild films, there is that issue of we're now playing to kind of the cultural expectation of what Ava is. cultural expectation of what Ava is. The first two Rebuild movies from 2007 and 2009 followed the plot of the TV show pretty closely, except it's punchier, gets to the point quicker,

the characters are more exaggerated, there's a lot of fan service. There's even the other kind of fan service where the fans get the moments they always wanted, like a bit of a love triangle between Shinji and the girls in the pilot program. And at one point, Shinji actually mans up, gets in the effing robot, and saves the girl. But the third movie from 2012 veered off into a totally different direction, into a brand new dystopian timeline.

So when the final film comes out in the summer of 2020, we're going to have a third ending for Evangelion. And Anno has been asked, well, which ending is the real one for him? Was it the TV ending from 96? Was it the movie from 97 that was called End of Evangelion? Or is it this new movie that's going to close out the story of the rebuilds? or is it this new movie that's going to close out the story of the rebuilds? He has said all endings are equally valid. The fans are not sold on that argument. The people who like the rebuilds have said, this is the real Evangelion Anno always wanted to make,

if he had the wisdom, maturity, time, and money to tell the story he wanted. But the fans who hate the rebuilds have complained that Anno has become a hack. He never should have revisited his previous work. Now he's cashing in, ruining something that used to be perfect. Gene Park thinks that this tension between Anno and the fans, which has been going on now for a quarter century, foreshadowed a lot of what's happening in fandom today. quarter century, foreshadowed a lot of what's happening in fandom today. It's a very early progenitor of this debate that we're now having over author control and gamers getting upset about the story and content in games.

People getting upset about content in movies and wanting things changed. Massive online petitions to get things changed because that's what the fans wanted. And the stories belong to the fans. You know, Star Wars. Look at Star Wars and what happened to The Last Jedi, you know. Or George Lucas and the Star Wars movies too, originally, you know, with the trilogy and with the re-releases, you know. It's such an interesting debate of who really owns the art, you know.

Is it the artist or the audience? And all of that is just happening now. And I feel like Evangelion was really the earliest progenitor of internet and fan outrage. Personally, I've been on both sides of those debates. I mean, I've felt really angry about showrunners who, in my mind, ruined a beloved character and betrayed everything that character stood for. And in other cases, I've thought filmmakers had the right instincts, and the fan outrage was kind of overblown. But I think the great thing about Evangelion is that the multiple endings are like a meta work of art that's about fandom itself,

that embodies the themes of Evangelion writ large onto the very culture that it created. It's like Anno is saying, if you think this world belongs to you instead of me, then take responsibility for it and make it a good one. Agree to disagree, allow each other to embrace your own personal truths, and live with the ambiguity. If it's really yours, then it's up to you. Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Heather Ann Campbell, Frye Kaiser, Gene Park, Nate Ming, and Aaron Clark. By the way, if you live in the New York area and you've always wanted to start your own podcast,

I am teaching a class at NYU called Creating a Narrative Podcast. It runs every Tuesday from October 8th to December 3rd. Enrollment is open now. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emolinski and imagineworldspod the show's website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org you