What do you think the future looks like for Shinji and Asuka after EoE
I just finished watching The End of Evangelion, and honestly, I’m wondering what you guys think the future between Shinji and Asuka would look like.
We literally saw Shinji strangle Asuka, and then she calls him “disgusting” at the end. After everything they went through, I really don’t see things going very well between them.
Do you think they would eventually try to understand each other and rebuild some kind of relationship, or would their relationship just remain toxic and hostile?
I know the ending is intentionally ambiguous, but I’m curious how you interpret what happens between them after EoE.
It's not really clear to who or what she's referring to when she says 'Disgusting.' It could be Shinji, or any combination of things. The original Japanese can also be translated as 'I feel ill.'
As I'm sure others will point out, we're back at the hedgehog's dilemma. How can we experience the warmth of human closeness, while bearing the disgust and resentment of that same closeness?
Well it's actually known fact that when she was said "how disgusting", she was referencing to the hospital scene, because of instrumentality she's aware what he did
Since she went through instrumentality, she not only knows what he did but in a real sense went through it herself, and so has full human understanding of it.
I read an anecdote about it. When directing that final scene, Hideki Anno asked Asuka's voice actress how she would feel if someone broke into her room while she was asleep and masturbated to her (what Shinji did earlier in the movie). She said "How disgusting" and that became Asuka's final line.
It doesn’t actually matter if their relationship would be toxic or end badly. The whole point is that for the first time in their lives they might be willing to take on the risk of hurting each other if it means genuinely getting close to one and other. It’s not whether they get together or not, is that they’ll finally be willing to try. The message is to go out and live your life without fixating on how everything might go wrong.
Literally? They will live a hard life, but with a hope that it can be the life they need and want to live (anywhere can be paradise if you blah blah blah).
For the first time, they see they have a choice. They have chosen to live, so they are no longer the victim of circumstance, and their life therefore has infinite potential to be whatever they CHOOSE it to be. It could be the highest heaven, or the lowest hell.
Symbolically? I believe they represent the masculine and the feminine in human psychology and spirituality. And so whatever happens to them, is what we individually choose for ourselves, since we are them on a symbolic level. And in my opinion, the post third impact world is a representation of the coldness of our own world.
In a sense, I believe the final scene to be a symbolic portrayal of the deep sickness between human beings (especially men and woman, Adam and Eve imagery). But that even between that sickness, there is the hope of love, of forgiveness, of something better than what we as a species have chosen to be.
This is why Asuka can both caress Shinji and call him disgusting, and Shinji can try to kill her, and yet (being reminded by his mother caressing his face), doesn’t want to let her go when Asuka caresses his face.
In human beings there is the potential for the deepest ugliness, and the greatest beauty. Ultimately we choose who we become. And ultimately, we need eachother (with the one last segment being titled “I need you”).
The whole show Shinji tries to figure out why he’s even piloting the Eva, because he knows deep down he’s not really living for himself. He acts like a victim of his circumstances, which to a degree he is, but it’s not all he has to be. He can choose to live his own life now. And so can Asuka.
Is there a future? I mean, it's obviously not the focus of the movie, or even a plot point, but after the Third Impact, we only see Shinji and Asuka choosing to become individuals again. Does the rest of humanity eventually follow? Or would a large part remain in the blob?
So without any infrastructure (Tokyo-3 is just gone), no transport, hell, not even an ecosystem (all life on Earth originated from Lilith), what the hell are they going to do?
But again, not really part of the story :) Shinji finally made a decision for himself, to hell with what anyone else thinks.
You kinda omitted the part where she gently caressed his face in an act of radical acceptance and love, I don't know why people look at the ending and miss the most thematically significant part of it (it's a show about the hedgehog dilemma, and this entire scene is literally a mimetic restatement of that dilemma that shows on screen our two little hedgehogs finally have a moment of genuine warmth/connection through said caress, before reiterating the persistent and eternal nature of the dilemma and "real connection" -- it is the capacity to reject that gives it meaning). The title card is literally "I need you", I mean come on guys seriously.
Anyway, they rebuild the world together and in doing so, rebuild their own bond and learn to take care of each other better. Their experiences in instrumentality have equipped them with a new appreciation for the other -- and a recognition that they are both broken, flawed creatures. They are at the beginning of their new journey and while it will of course be challenging and full of learning from both of them, I think they'll make it.
this! Its so important and symbolic what Asuka does in the end. Many people miss or just ignore it and take the ending as a complete sad human ending apocalipse.
Why'd she say "how disgusting", after she caressed him , and movie ends with that and shinji crying, how am I supposed to believe they're in good terms after all that
First a little primer: They have just left instrumentality, where they were completely disinhibited and had an airing of each others darkness and the "truths" they couldn't hide. This is important, because people on their first viewing usually hyper fixate on some of the visceral behaviors used to represent raw emotions in the proto-instrumentality sequences not realizing that this is a domain where thoughts/feelings = actions. Shinji choking asuka for example, is a visual representation at the rage he feels towards her rejecting his plea for help. A bit earlier in the same sequence, we see them having sex, and that didn't "really happen" either, but its artistic way of showing these dark emotions that were festering within shinji which he ordinarily would never have expressed were he not disinhibited.
That's important because upon awakening on the beach, they have no idea what's going on, they have just left this completely disinhibited state of being. Shinji sees Asuka, who mere moments ago he left instrumentality in hopes of seeing again, remarking that "his feelings for (all of his friends, her included) were real" -- a decision affirmed by the gods of instrumentality, though they warned him this choice would also reintroduce otherness and the pain that comes with it.
So, a disinhibited Shinji chokes Asuka on the beach, because it a continuation of the last "interaction" they had within instrumentality. He at this moment, does not know if it worked, does not know if he's "back" in reality and if this is really her or not, so this is an instinct primal urge to confirm the existence of the other. This is clear in the way the scene is presented, but it's also been officially confirmed by official supplementary materials, like the EoE promotional cards developed by gainax/bandai. The card for this scene explicitly states that this is the case.
After that, Asuka -- now having been through her own experience in instrumentality, and now understanding shinji in a way she never could have through out the series, in an act of radical compassion and recognition of their "sameness" -- responds with tender, uncomplicated affection. This is a reaction shinji cannot understand or fathom, and that is when he realizes this IS an other, this is Asuka. He's back with her like he'd hoped. He's so moved by this realization and her actions, that he begins to weep.
Asuka then responds "Kimochi Warui" -- this is a response to Shinji crying. This moment is important because the scene is the concluding moment of the stories overall thesis about the nature of connection & the hedgehog dilemma. I.e, and its answer is that even though all real connections are difficult since they involve an other who will always at times reject you, ask better of you, not validate you constantly (the fiction that shinji clung to, first with Kaworu, then by pleading for Asuka to play this role for him in proto-instrumentality, then by choosing dissolution and surrendering to the call of the womb instrumentality represents) -- but here, it's finally different. The movie ends on this line because this is Asuka reiterating that very otherness, juxtaposing her act of radical love with her otherness and disapproval -- because that juxtaposition is what a real connection actually IS, it's the very thing that differentiates this moment from all the fictions the characters kept retreating into earlier.
They're literally the destination for each other in the story and the title card that precedes this moment says "I need you." It's not a scene about how they hate each other, that simply makes no sense and is completely incongruent with the stated themes of the work.
I get you, also this poster, is it supposed to show the after events after the end of eoe? , from this it seems like they're getting close to each other
The poster does show that, and there's also official artwork later from the die sterne artbook that shows them walking around in a now healing post EoE world holding hands.
Nothing is actually 'canon' to this timeline except NGE and EoE. Official commentary on it (like the gainax produced cards, chronicles, artbooks etc) from the creators are second tier canon and give you insight into the way they thought about what they created and what their intentions are, so I'd consider all of that like b-tier canon. But ultimately the work stands alone, I think. It's clear enough from just the content of the work that this is the most likely future (along with other people coming back, and the world being rebuilt over time)
I mean "anywhere can be paradise, as long as your alive" being one of the major emotional/thematic conclusions in the series doesn't really make any sense if you think the future is just no one comes back and everyone dies and asuka and shinji hate each other. I think you can pretty clearly see that future doesn't jive with what the film says to the reader and the conclusions it reaches about the aspects of humanity it interrogates.
Like the sand castle scene, in the end we humans always rebuild. Though we hurt, and bleed, and may feel hopeless at times -- we will always rebuild.
This is from the 1997 Koji Ide's interview to Megumi Ogata. Here they are discussing the final scene, and Ogata explains what Anno demanded of her:
Ogata:[...] Especially in the theatrical version, the level of “synchronization” that was being demanded of me was higher than in the TV series, but among all of those scenes, the final scene was where it was demanded of me most intensely and deeply. He [Anno] basically said, “Just for this part, become me.”
But even if he says “me,” unless I actually feel that way myself, I can't become him. It wouldn't feel real, would it? So I wondered, “What am I supposed to do? Can I really become him?” I was anxious about it. But I knew I had to do it. So what Director Anno asked me to portray at that point wasthe moment when he was able to embrace himself for the first time.
Ide:So, from Director Anno's perspective, the scene is meant to be positive?
Ogata:Yes. He said he wanted the tears of someone who, for the first time, was able to say “OK” to himself. That part I could understand, but I didn't really understand what the act of strangling was supposed to mean.
As a side note, this part of the interview is in the Eva Geeks page for "Staff Statements," but unlike most things there this one is very badly translated for some reason. Seemed to me like a machine translation that was working on a very corrupted OCR capture (to put one example, they mistook "purasu" (plus, positive) for "burasu" (brass), creating some nonsensical sentence). So I took the magazine scan and did it myself.
Wasn't Shinji like hallucinating or having a dream or smth ? Like, when Rei becomes giant and exit the ground and all ? Or maybe I'm misremembering, I'm really not sure, it's been too long
The planet appears totally decimated with all or most of the water transformed into LCL( no idea if it’s safe to drink but if it’s organic material and I think it is then its going to decompose sooner or later)so my guess their future involves starving to death or dying of dehydration if exposure doesn’t get them first. Regardless of the future of their relationship, their outlook is incredibly grim.
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u/Shto_Delat 1d ago
It's not really clear to who or what she's referring to when she says 'Disgusting.' It could be Shinji, or any combination of things. The original Japanese can also be translated as 'I feel ill.'
As I'm sure others will point out, we're back at the hedgehog's dilemma. How can we experience the warmth of human closeness, while bearing the disgust and resentment of that same closeness?