The Real End Of Evangelion

this video is brought to you by morning brew what's up guys michael here nine years after the previous film and over 20 years since the show first aired the story of neon genesis evangelion seems to have finally come to an end for real this time thrice upon a time rounds out the rebuild of the evangelion saga and apparently brings shinji's long story to a close after taking part in countless giant robot battles merging with the spiritual essence of his mother and watching the whole of humanity get reduced to primordial soup only to be spat back up again it's safe to say that this kid's been put through the ringer but what did it all mean no matter which version of neon genesis evangelion you're most familiar with you'll find that it's less about giant robots or apocalyptic angels and more about the struggles of a lonely damaged teenage boy so to understand the show we have to understand shinji and to understand shinji we have to learn about one of history's most revered sad boys sauron kierkegaard we'll explain why in this wisecrack edition on neon genesis evangelion and spoilers ahead for the whole evangelion cannon but before we get into it i wanted to give a shout out to this week's sponsor morning brew now i don't know what you do as soon as you wake up in the morning but i don't waste much time before i'm on my phone furiously scrolling across multiple apps trying to catch up with what's going on in the world and as soon as i'm out of bed it's a matter of minutes before i've opened up 10 new browser tabs with articles i'm likely never going to actually read it's not the most efficient way to get caught up with what's happening in the world and that's why morningbrew is such a game changer it's a free daily newsletter delivered right to your inbox monday through sunday it gets you up to speed on everything going on in business finance and tech in about five minutes and unlike traditional news sources which let's be honest can sometimes feel a bit dry and boring morning brews articles are written in a relevant witty and informative way whether you're trying to keep up with the ever-changing world of cryptocurrencies tracking the continued economic impacts of coven 19 or even learning about what's going on in the world of sports memorabilia morning brew has got you covered if you're interested in business finance or tech there is no good reason not to subscribe to morning brew today it's absolutely free and takes about 15 seconds to subscribe so click the link in the description to subscribe to morningbrew today now back to the show and now a quick recap both the original evangelion and the subsequent rebuild follow a pretty similar plotline young shinji is recruited by a shadowy organization run by his father to pilot an eva i.e an enormous robot in order to fend off the angels i.e some apocalypse-inducing monsters threatening what remains of the world shinji and his fellow eva pilots oscar and rey work together to protect their world from these monsters their confrontations with the angels escalate and that's where the rebuild diverges that and swapping out the greatest theme song ever with whatever this is [Music] see mid-fight shinji accidentally causes an almost apocalypse and then almost does it again though this time his friends stop him the latest film thrice upon a time opens with a catatonic shinji whom nobody really wants to deal with shinji's friends try to stop his dad from fulfilling his evil plan which we'll get to later but they all lose so shinji rallies takes on his dad and after a major therapy session proves victorious now throughout the evangelion show and its various cinematic iterations shinji is going through it particularly in the fourth film of the rebuild where he's almost comatose with despair and much like me in seventh grade he doesn't really want to exist anymore seriously seventh grade it's it's the worst and here's where the influence of danish philosopher soren kierkegaard crops up fun fact one of the show's original episodes is even named after his text the sickness unto death now it may be a story involving skyscraper sized sniper rifles and penguins named pen pen but the evangelion extended universe really gets right to the heart of some of kierkegaard's greatest concerns primarily it investigates his idea that the main source of our existential angst is the fact that we are inherently fractured individuals that is to say we're always caught between who we are and who we want to be between the feeling of freedom and the force of necessity where ephemeral minds inside meat and bone bodies that's really gross and worst of all we're finite limited beings with the capacity to contemplate the infinite and all of this leaves us feeling miserable and hopeless in short we're kind of a mess and this is certainly true for shinji an individual who is forced to continually connect and disconnect from a giant metal body that both is and isn't his own and it doesn't get better when he's in the outside world he lacks a real identity and is constantly conflicted by the various whims of those around him throughout the story creator hideaki anno has spun shinji seems to prefer taking orders from others rather than making choices for himself in response he shrinks into himself minimizing his existence as much as possible with no solid grasp on who he is he ends up wishing not to be at all i don't even want to be around anymore throughout evangelion we see other characters dealing with this same sort of separation from self shinji's fellow pilot ray is the most literal embodiment of this crisis she's a clone within a series of clones created from someone else's memory and to serve someone else's purpose in response she also tries to remove any sense of her own individuality emotionlessly following the order she is given oscar on the other hand goes on the offensive aggressive in all areas of her life she tries to run from the damage of her own sense of disconnect by asserting herself onto the world as forcefully as possible but in some ways the most dangerous form of disconnect we see comes from shinji's father gendo because even though he's a grown-up he is every bit as disjointed still unable to fully accept the loss of his wife rather than working to cope with his grief he works with the very creepy organization sela to execute in objectively bonkers plan the human instrumentality project which will attempt to combine all human beings into a single entity this would obliterate the entire concept of personhood we'd thus avoid the pain of dealing with other people and nobody would ever feel lonely again cool plan but uh i'll stick with therapy anyway here gendo is trying to avoid what kierkegaard believed to be the greatest pain of human existence dealing with having a self which he characterized as a state of despair aka the sickness unto death and this state of despair doesn't just keep us from understanding ourselves but also from relating to others which for kierkegaard makes organized society kind of a bummer we see this reality manifest throughout both the original series and the rebuild the shinji is plagued by intense social anxiety indeed he'll often retreat from the world entirely rather than reach out for the care and compassion he so desperately desires similar to our guy kierkegaard who would spend days alone inside his copenhagen apartment furiously riding and drinking way too much coffee he even broke off an engagement with a woman he loved simply because he thought he wouldn't be able to live up to her expectations similarly rey numbs herself to the entire idea of emotional contact while oscar variously tries to take command of her relationships or eschews them entirely to because they can't reconcile their own identities trying to forge any kind of connection with others is a messy and potentially painful process two fractured individuals aren't the best match for a healthy friendship evangelion literalizes this conflict by invoking german philosopher arthur schopenhauer's term the hedgehog's dilemma [Music] human relationships as being akin to a bunch of hedgehogs trying to huddle together for warmth we desperately long for the comforts of intimacy but when we get too close we prick each other with our dumb quills fearing the pain of human connection the characters all find different ways of closing themselves off from others whether they're entering evas hiding in their rooms or listening to their walkmans and in the most recent installment we find characters still grappling with these issues shinji is always unable to express himself or comfortably interact with others meanwhile rey has to be taught even the most basic of human interactions and of course oscar remains as condescending and antagonistic as ever healthy relationships seem to be in short supply for our animated friends so the big question that evangelion and especially the rebuild poses is how do we overcome this crushing sense of isolation both from ourselves and those around us the answer according to both kierkegaard and 70's rock phenomenon journey is simple [Music] indeed kierkegaard argued that the only way to combat the despair of being human is simply to have faith that is choose to fully believe in something that you can't necessarily prove through logic with any mathematical certainty his top pick for thing to have faith in was god but he also thought people could find meaning by having faith in more human type stuff too like love or art faith he said was the only way to ever come to a meaningful understanding of the world or our own place within it and more importantly it's the only way out of the cycle of despair that we see so many of our characters caught in to this end kierkegaard cautioned against relying on cold hard logic which while it can produce loads of useful practical information about math and physics and stuff will never lead us to any greater existential truth about ourselves that's because we're not logical propositions we're weird animals that get excited about happy hour at our local applebees and evangelion is in some ways a dystopian testament to that idea while humanity has used its empirical know-how to craft towering superweapons and do battle with huge kaiju the only place any of it leads is towards annihilation science and technology has not made for a happy world rather one filled with empty streets lonely children broken homes and shattered infrastructure in fact the closest thing we get to a real community is the refugee town and thrice upon a time a place with far less technological prowess than any other setting in the series the limitations of science is exemplified in the character of gendo who rather than coping with the pain of losing his wife attempts to science himself out of that pain and this is one of kierkegaard's main concerns namely that an emphasis on rationality which was all the rage in 19th century european philosophy ends up slowly destroying our own individual humanity trying to solve existential human problems like grieving for a dead spouse with rational logic is a bit like trying to fix the carburetor on your 72 camaro with poems and this is why for kierkegaard human despair can't be solved with reason but rather with faith now for most of the latest film and indeed most of the series shinji is not what you would call a believer he seems conflicted about the basics of morality and is in a state of constant doubt and this pretty much remains his whole ass deal until the climax of the final battle and thrice upon a time with asuka out of commission and mari overwhelmed shinji finally does what kierkegaard wants us all to do he takes a leap of faith kierkegaard loves to talk about leaps and moments of decision because these aren't logical deliberations they're acts of freedom in which one takes a risk and these decisive actions help us break the cycle of despair because rather than keeping us at our desks rationally reflecting on our lives they forced us to get our asses out of the door and actually live them after spending most of the third and fourth movies in passive despair shinji finally decides to believe in himself and more importantly to believe in the people around him see for a long time shinji has ignored flashy neon signs that his friends give a about him and think he's capable it is only when he actually believes what they're saying that he can live up to the monumental tasks before [Music] and that's when he steps up and chooses to pilot even number one for a final time this invokes philosopher elon bedchu who builds off kierkegaard to argue for a type of collective subjectivity that's the idea that when people rally together around a shared cause they necessarily form deep bonds and can achieve things which previously seemed impossible think the peasants who started the french revolution or the mighty ducks winning that hockey tournament and like kierkegaard this happens when people have the faith to commit to an idea or cause at its most extreme that you argues we can become immortal as we relate to others through an idea or cause in doing so we can participate in something bigger than ourselves and our own measly lives it's fitting that shinji's come to jesus moment disproves the hedgehog effect finding that being close to and caring for others actually makes your life less painful and more meaningful though it does not to be clear mean you should go hug a hedgehog of course this all leads up to the final confrontation between father and son when they first collide they're evenly matched in identical armor wielding identical weapons even making identical fight moves it isn't until a newly socially intelligent shinji breaks the cycle of combat and tries to connect with his father that they make any progress here shinji finally understands the motivations behind his dad's extremely ambitious and impractical plan that is the pain of losing his wife shinji's mom the pain caused by this emotional fracture leads gendo to try and annihilate something that's essentially human his selfhood and that of every other human on earth rather than taking a note from kierkegaard and bravely accepting his internal fractures and trying to live a meaningful life he's simply trying to kill that difference it's both kind of rational and also completely bad and ultimately it's not the ambition of his project that stops gendo it's finally connecting with another human ironically the man who was fighting to artificially connect all of humanity really just needed to go to therapy with his emo son after connecting with shinji and achieving closure he can finally die and rejoin shinji's mom in some weird ether world and what about shinji he's confronted his internal demons and defeated frida's dad so what more could a whiny teenage boy ask for a girlfriend obviously after mari appears to rescue him we jump into a future where shinji for the first time ever is an adult not only an adult but one who can talk and even flirt with mari his apparent partner here he's done what kierkegaard never could namely finding happiness and of course a girlfriend once shinji took the leap of faith and found a truth he could care about he grew up and moved on to the next stage of his life which brings us to one last element of the story you might have noticed there's an evil pilot we haven't mentioned yet kaoru he plays many roles in the story help and shinji start to learn to be confident introducing him to music functioning as a homoerotic love interest and accidentally almost bringing about the end of the world this happens a lot but for us his most important moment in the new movies is this line see at the end of the reveal that is revealed that there have been many kaurus and it is heavily implied many shinji's rays and oscars it looks like everyone's been stuck in a good old-fashioned time loop however at the end of thrice upon a time shinji has clearly moved on to a whole new world of mari one free of evas so what are we to make of this well there's a lot of ways to look at it but we think there's something meta going on here hideaki anno has long talked about how the ending of evangelion wasn't satisfying to him after the show and subsequent movies ran out of money not only that but since the release of the original series he's been largely known as the guy who did evangelion that's in part because it was a great artistic achievement but also because it was a deeply personal piece of work through which anno worked through his own feelings of depression and isolation like a modern version of a certain sad dane with both shinji and gendo each breaking through the loop at the end of this film we can interpret this as anno finally putting the series to bed and being ready just like them to move on to something new that's also why it's fitting that as mari and shinji run out of the train station the movie concludes with some straight up live action shots of the very town where anno grew up much like how shinji finally escaped from the spirals of teenage depression it seems that anno can finally move on from the magnificent project that was neon genesis evangelion but what do you guys think this shinji a kierkegaardian hero is loving people just like hugging a hedgehog let us know what you think in the comments smash that like button like you're preventing a third fourth seven fifty nine sixteen i don't know however many impacts we're not sure and don't forget to ring that bell and as always thanks for watching later [Music] you

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 293,101

Keywords: evangelion explained, evangelion ending, evangelion opening, evangelion 3.0+1.0 ending, evangelion amv, evangelion 3.0+1.0, shinji, asuka, kaworu, eva, evangelion, hideaki anno, anime, anime movie, evangelion ost, evangelion fly me to the moon, evangelion congratulations, wisecrack, philosophy, video essay, anime analysis, deep or dumb, what went wrong, wisecrack michael burns, wisecrack evangelion, end of evangelion, neon genesis evangelion, the real end of evangelion

Id: -jCEZInbN5w

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021