My past few months has been a bit of anime binge, mostly supplied by Netflix, starting with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (which was great) and then into Arcane: League of Legends (also great but maybe not technically anime but it did win Best Animated Program in 2021 beating out some seriously good competition). Then the big watch of all 26 episodes of the 25-year-old classic show Neon Genesis Evangelion, along with the finale movie End of Evangelion. And then on Amazon Prime there’s four Evangelion movies that are known as the Rebuild series, which are basically remakes, sorta of the first storyline of Evangelion. At least for the first two Rebuild movies, the first film is basically just a cosmetic update remake of the first four episodes of the TV show, until it goes in a completely different alternate direction for the last two movies. So, basically, this one story has three different endings, depending on what you watch. Also trying to dodge spoilers for a 25+ year old show is pretty much impossible if you’re looking up simple things like viewing order or translation or different voice over redubs, but I sort of managed. So PS – spoilers below.

In super basic terms, as things tend to get incredibly complicated and abstract, the story of Evangelion follows high schooler Shinji who must pilot a giant robot known as an Evangelion to protect Tokyo-3 against frequent attacks by giant Kaiju monsters known as Angels. He meets his fellow pilot Rei and later Asuka. The leader of the group known as NERV is a taskmaster who also turns out to be Shinji’s dad, Gendo. When the show hit Netflix in 2019 they even made their own fancy trailer for it

There’s a whole lot of trauma in the backstory of all of these folks, Shinji is offically depressed, ditto with the mouthy Asuka (there’s a lot of dark flashbacks to her mom and a doll). But the two end up living together with one of their NERV commanders, Misato, who has a penguin as either a pet or a roommate. Rei turns out to be just one of dozens of clones who is basically the lynchpin to cause a worldwide apocalypse that NERV wants to instigate called The Human Instrumentality Project which would merge all the souls of humanity into one. And that’s what the good guys want to happen!

The three endings for the story occur in different ways. The TV show gets very trippy and introspective as humanity’s souls merge and Shinji overcomes his depression and is congratulated by all his friends in the end. The merging of all souls and big final battle basically takes place off screen as the finale episodes are very abstract with some simple line drawings that look like storyboards, characters hollering at spotlights and lots of voiceover on static images. There’s even a brief, but heartwarming, alternate reality moment where Shinji is living with both his parents and Asuka happily and instead of piloting giant robots, the kids are just students at school meeting their new classmate, Rei. There’s a bit of low-key hijinks and misunderstandings. It’s kind of sweet, and the point about a happier existence without Evas gets paid off (decades later!) in the final Rebuild movie.

The movie, End of Evangelion, is the apocalyptic “bad” ending. The first hour is extremely awesome, it’s basically an intense siege movie where everybody gets it. It has Asuka going absolutely ape#$#$ which is totally amazing and cathartic as she overcomes childhood long held trauma by bashing robots. Then it gets even weirder, giant Rei head split in half, everyone explodes into orange goo. Rei becomes a giant bulbous ghost head thingie and ushers everyone into a merged soul world. Shinji and Asuka have a very awkward final scene together in a post-apocalyptic world. At least, I think. And then the final Rebuild movie, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, is an entirely different version. These two videos do a good job of summing up the endings and differences of the first two versions.

The four Rebuild movies on Prime Video are remakes/reimagining/alternate versions of the story. As there are various rights for the show, the Netflix version has a completely different voice cast from the original English dub, but the original cast is used in the Rebuild movies, although both casts sound similar overall. Misato sounds a bit more haggard in the Rebuild movies but can chalk that up to years of hard drinking for the character, I guess.

The first two movies are basically remakes, although it adds a new pilot, Mari, who is just sort of there…but she does bash monsters with the Eiffel tower in the 4^th movie which is badass. Even though the first film is incredibly similar, almost line for line with spruced up animation, there’s a few bits that stand out differently in the first film. When Rei is first shown as a normal pilot, there’s an insert flash cut the big, bulbous world ending Rei from End of Evangelion which is very striking as if End was the last thing you saw that shot definitely stirs some memories.

There’s one moment that is a remake/change that turns out for the better. In the 2^nd film that recreates a bit from the TV show where an Eva gets taken over and becomes an Angel, and Shinji refuses to attack it. In the TV show it was a bully, Toji (who also has a really yeesh introduction to Asuka in the show) and Shinji’s freak out didn’t land exactly because Toji was beating him up all the time. But in Rebuild #2, it turns out the Eva taken over is Asuka, which makes Shinji’s freak out land much more effectively. After that the next two movies are wholly original concepts, they’re sort of more action-packed spectacle versions of the story, although things get abstract and weird in the end. The ultimate (3^rd) ending for the series has Shinji vs. his dad which is a big spectacle ending that was denied in the TV show/movie, but even still ends with both getting over their own psychological issues in a small abstract moment. Ultimately, Shinji gets to wish away all the Evas and the planet is cleansed, which sort of makes sense as the Evas are basically giant trauma machines.

I’d say when Asuka and Shinji have to learn to pilot in synch is probably my favourite scene in the series (it’s also kind of chipper which the show often isn’t), really a big blast, great final scene (The whole episode of Asuka and Shinji bickering is amazing). Also the whole bit about pilots in sync seems like something that Pacific Rim shamelessly ripped off wholesale (if robots versus kaiju is too generic a thing to claim but c’mon, pilot sync c’mon). This is such a great scene I’m surprised it didn’t get a reprise in the Rebuild series (although it kind of does in the third film when Shinji syncs with another pilot Kaworu although it’s much more serious there)

Also, since I avoided googling and youtube-ing Evangelion for months there’s a whole lot of old videos now across my feed. Funny meme videos, Gangster’s Paradise videos and Peni Parker from Spider-Verse inserted into Evangelion!

Anyway, overall Neon Genesis Evangelion is a very cool, at times incredibly dark and disturbing, and very intentionally weird, abstract and apocalyptic viewing. With moments of character and humour and lots of giant robot spectacle. It sometimes intentionally goes so abstract it can be confounding but that is part of its weird charm. Also, for such a dark series there’s a lot of cute Rei plush merch for sale and the theme song is a full on banger!