Yes, and Shinji rejects the hard realities of life and chooses to go with the false reality of the Instrumentality, a cheap cop-out. Coward.Yogi wrote:Eh?Durran Korr wrote:Because within the TV ending, Shinji is still within the Human Instrumentality - that is, the bullshit reality he rejected in the End of Evangelion. It's an empty reality, because it is humanity dehumanized - the desire to want to be our own individual selves, which often involves rejecting others, is what makes us human. There is no happiness in the movie ending because it's actually realistic, and it wants to drive home the message of the series - life sucks sometimes, people will reject you, but that's just an inevitable part of the human experience and it's up to you to overcome that and live with it. When contrasted with the surreal, virtually drug-induced happiness of the TV ending, it's clear that the movie ending is the proper one, and the most in sync with the series as a whole.
TV Ending: Shinji sees how everyone thinks of him. He is then shown three worlds, one in which he is completely alone but has ultimate control, a porld in which he has almost ultimate control but his father has decided which way was down, an a world much like his own in which is is with everyone else, but has comparatively little control over his life. He is then given a choice, reject instrumtality and be apart from everyone else, but omnipotent in his world, or accept it, accept the fact that you have to deal with others, but live with them anyway. In addition, in the TV ending, there was NO evidence that Shinji was deciding the fate of humankind, just his own fate.
Consider what Shinji has just been through; he crushed the body of the only person to ever say "I like you" to him, and Asuka, the one person who he thinks can help him, is in a coma. Cut the kid some slack.Movie: Throughout the first half of the movie, Shinji is more deserving of a slap than at any other point in the series. Instead of Shinji the confused, lost, and hurt child, we have Shinji the doll, completely unwilling to interact with the world around him. During Instrumentality, Shinji is shown scenes from his past which shows how he is. Various forms of Misato, Rei, and Asuka try to communicate with him. His only reaction is to reject and/or strangle them. In the end, he decides that he would rather suffer with his AT field up than have to interact with the rest of humanity, so he destroys instrumentality good, and sends his mother to orbit Earth alone for the next how many millions of years. He then strangles Asuka, or rather, a cold lifeless copy of Asuka who ultimatly would be completely passive and won't hurt him like the real Asuka would.
As I said, Instrumentality is just a cheap way for Shinji to run away from reality; it frees him from actually having to make attempts to interact people and risk rejection, because everything is one. The existence of the individual self is basically denied; how can you interact with people if you aren't really there?
Shinji strangles Asuka not out of hatred, but to make sure he is not still within the Complementation. He wanted to feel the sting of rejection of again, and she does reject him in disgust ("I feel sick.") This is confirmed by the Eva collectible trading card game, which is relatively high-level Eva canon.
He doesn't really kill Rei, that giant wasn't exactly Rei, it merely took the form of Rei. And yes, the TV ending is all peachy and happy, what with all Shinji's "friends" congratulating and praising him even though he didn't really deserve it. But that's what Shinji always wanted; love and acceptance without having to give back anything thing in return. That's what Kaoru gave him, and that's what the Instrumentality gave him. And that's why he ultimately rejects it, in the movie. Because ultimately, false happiness was less important to Shinji than not running away.So to summerise, the ending of the TV series had Shinji's friends congratulating him, while the ending of the Movie has him both "killing" Rei (the giant half-broken smiling face in the background) and Asuka (strangulation). This is why I think the Movie ending was just Anno turning the nhilism knob to "overdrive".
) discusses this on his website here:
