I think if you like a movie even a little bit you should see it in a theatre, and the one I’ve always wanted to see most is End of Evangelion, which I did just the other day.
It felt like I had seen it for the first time in its completed form. The scene where the theatre is reflected back at you, you also sitting there with a group of strangers who came here to feel something about Evangelion, the uncomfortable familiarity yet silence between everyone. It was strange--it’s a movie I’ve seen anywhere between thirty to forty times before, yet this time felt like the first. This is a movie I show to friends, family, girlfriends, and so on in an effort to help them understand my own character. Anyone who knows me very well is sure to have sat through 26 episodes of Evangelion and this movie.
I realized, though, that this is not a movie to be watched alone or with your friends, but strangers.
This simple fact turned out to be the most crucially missing piece from my understanding of Evangelion. Some key facts about this movie: it’s split between two halves, “Air” and “Sincerely Yours,” which are meant to act as director’s cut editions of the final two episodes of the television series. The first half ends on a strangely unfitting “To Be Continued,” seeing as it’s about to continue in five minutes--the catch? The credits sequence comes up halfway through the movie instead of at the end.
This is a deliberate move to defeat the Japanese tradition of sitting through the credits. The lights always stay down, and you sit until every name is read. I don’t really mind this--it gives you a chance to appreciate Michael House, the sole foreigner credited as “ENGLISH LANGUAGE ADVISER.” Most foreigners don’t get it; the night before I went to go see the Mario movie and basically everyone left before the lights turned on. But it’s this fact that the lights do not turn on until you’ve seen every minute of the runtime is what makes End of Evangelion impossible to view in any other setting.
Think back to the very first time you saw it. You were a teenager, maybe? The movie ends, and the shady 240p streaming site shows you an ad for single MILFs in your area, or VLC shows you your playlist, or Netflix begins playing some trailer for Demon Slayer or whatever since clearly anime is a catch-all category where one work has no distinction from the other. You’re sitting there in disbelief, perhaps in quite a vulnerable state, or perhaps an angry one, but you are either alone or with friends.
When this movie ends in a Japanese theatre, when Asuka says “気持ち悪い” to Shinji and it cuts to a white screen that says “END,” the lights immediately come up.
You have no choice but to look at their faces, at least the guy sitting next to you. This is your comrade; they came here to feel something about Evangelion the same as you. In 1997, it may have been in search of closure. In 2023 it’s probably something closer to self-mutilation. In any case you are among strangers who feel anything at all about Evangelion, which can be a very personal thing.
That’s why it feels a million times more direct to see a theatre full of Evangelion fans in the movie itself while you sit in a theatre full of Evangelion fans. It’s like Anno is inviting you to take a look at yourself, something felt even more potently when you are viewing in a theatre in Japan, where the scenery right outside is reflected back at you. Soon I will have to walk out and face the same masses I just saw on screen, but for the remaining twenty minutes me and everyone else sitting around me is in a special kind of emotional prison. The camera pans across the audience and the words “Does it feel good?” come up in type on the screen.
Shinji begins to answer--I don’t know. I still don’t understand reality.
Shinji, Rei, and Kaworu talk about dreams and reality. What are dreams? They are the end of your reality. What is reality? It’s at the end of your dream, Rei says, as fan letters and death threats alike flash across the screen in the span of one single second. I’ve always understood this to be a message to otaku: where “dreams” are another word for “fiction,” something born of reality, and reality is necessarily what follows fiction. In other words: fiction is something that should help you face reality, not run from it. What’s more real than staring at reality itself, the same kind of theatre with the same kind of people you’re sitting in right now?
There were times during the film I wanted to cry, as usual, because it would be impossible to resist; the presence of strangers had me withhold, though. But then I thought that was odd--everyone here is supposed to feel something about Eva since this is a showing 25 years on for a premium price. It was the simple fact that they were strangers, and I could feel the AT Field between us. Does it feel good? No, because I don’t know these people, but that’s precisely the uncomfortable feeling it seems Anno is begging us to address, the ever-present looming existence of another person, equally capable of thinking you’re a freak for crying in a theatre as they are kindly sympathizing.
At the same time: it’s exactly that feeling that makes life worth living. That the possibility of a complete stranger possessing the same depth we perceive in ourselves is felt by the simple fact that they are here as well to enjoy Evangelion, and if only we took the risk of tearing through their AT Field then maybe we might find someone who is kind to us. Nothing is a better example of this gamble than the last scene of the movie, where Shinji’s choice to be cruel to Asuka is met with a kind gesture in return.
Seeing the movie like this taught me the true meaning of the Human Instrumentality Project. I was in a room full of people who are, to some degree, like me. They are people I will never know but for those 90 minutes we were overlapping, complementing each other in a way unlike any other movie. If the Instrumentality Project is Gendo begging the world to understand each other for even a moment then everyone in that theatre is right there with him, some sad strangers in a kind of morbid synchronicity. And yet, we all walk out of it having rejected that instrumentality, otherwise we'd all be sobbing in each other's arms in a nightmarish platonic orgy.
“気持ち、いいの？” No, it feels 気持ち悪い, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on others forever just because at one point they were a stranger.
I waddled out of the theatre in that raw state I’m sure is familiar to anyone who’s seen the movie. The theatre itself is on the 10th floor of a skyscraper in Shinjuku, recently renovated and revitalized with this Evangelion-themed promotion to bring business. There is a lounge with ambient music designed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also oversaw the acoustics of the screens themselves. Disjointed piano sets a mood as more Eva fans come out; this ticket cost 4500 yen as this is what’s called a “premium cinema,” so these have to be the real--or at least rich--fans, and they come out one by one. There are those who came with friends and are talking about the movie, everyone a return viewer. There are people, like me, who are sitting alone in one of the many chairs. In front of me is a nice aerial view of Tokyo, probably also part of the exorbitant ticket price. Soon we will all go our separate ways and empty this place where we all felt the same category of emotion together, all as alone as when we walked in.
I left the building and stumbled through Kabuki-cho, the red light district of Tokyo. This is a place I’ve always felt to be the loneliest area in the city, despite it being the most rowdy and populated. Sexpats aside, it often feels like everyone wandering the streets is seeking that chance meeting that only happens a few times in anyone’s lives, the one where they find the right person and their world changes forever. On the other end are those who prey on that loneliness, businesses that promise a cheap fuck lining Ichiban-gai as common as rickshaw barkers in Asakusa. Everyone here is looking for something, but I don’t think anyone can say for sure what that is.
Flashing lights, trash on the streets, Japanese and Nigerian touts competing to see who can trick you into participating in their scam first. The pachinko hall won’t shut up, some foreigner taking a photo with Godzilla peeking over the Toho cinema behind him, blocking foot traffic for the sake of his 43 Instagram followers. Overpriced yakiniku, beer that would be four hundred yen cheaper two train stops west, ten different massage parlors that promise to change your life. Everyone and everything here is demanding to cash in on that loneliness of yours, and it feels especially surreal having just descended from the 10th floor of late Ryuichi Sakamoto’s acoustic palace with the image of End of Evangelion back loaded into your immediate memory.
I made my way over to Shinjuku 3-chome, some ten minutes east. It’s the fastest way home, but I have other plans: I’m going to stop by 8bitcafe, a video game-themed bar I used to frequent as an exchange student, and whose bartender I’ve paid my cost in drinks to listen to my Evangelion thoughts. Nao-san greets me as usual, noting I am unusually alone. I don’t have many friends who would pay 4500 yen to see End of Evangelion with me, I say, to which he asks “oh, is that the one where Shinji jerks off?” and suddenly my heavy mood is clear. I order a beer, and the guy next to me asks if I’m going to buy Breath of the Wild 2 next month. No, I’m not, I say, but maybe if a friend lends it to me when they’re done. A friend, I think to myself--what a happiness, what a delight!
May 9th, 2023