Neon Genesis Evangelion

    The pictures are from an anime story, called Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is not a children's cartoon, but a very deep, emotionally harrowing piece about being human, mental illness, depression and hopelessness. It's a story about the end of the world, in terms of the Christian mythology (and with lots of obscure biblical and spiritual references that are hard to follow - and 100% authentic); very dark, hopeless, terrifying. The cruel angels are coming, huge powerful gruesome beings, to destroy the planet. The first one (Adam, 14 years ago) killed most of humanity, and wiped out the ocean life - there's no way now that the planet can be saved. But with the advanced technology, the few survivors have built underground cities, and constructed synthetic life forms - weapons called Evangelions - to combat the angels, and put off the end for a little while.

    And now the angels have come back.

    The dark-haired boy is Shinji. He's 14, and has been abandoned and abused all his life. Now he's manipulated by his domineering, subtle father (who killed Shinji's mother!) into fighting the cruel angels. He's tortured, and sexually and emotionally victimized by the girls and women (almost no one in this whole damned thing is sane, and the girls are all *stacked*. Shinji's just at the right age and is really curious about girls [ok, horny], and they use that, and use and victimize him in nauseating ways.) in the story. He's frightened of himself and the world, terrified again and again by encounters with death, driven nearly crazy on a continuous basis by the abusive people and the situation he's trapped in. He's almost psychotically withdrawn, and runs away 3 times to be brought back under armed guard and imprisoned.

    He tries, though: tries to be good and wants to be loved. Tries to make his uncaring father notice him. Tries to get along and have friends. He works so hard to kill the angels and save everyone, and is injured again and again, emotionally wracked and hurt and scorned by the others for all his efforts. But meanwhile the world is ending. Nothing really matters. People are dying, and he watches, totally helpless, while his father uses Shinji's own hands to cripple and kill Shinji's friend. NGE is graphic and violent, and terrifying beyond any of the horror movies you've ever seen. Raw, in a way that defies understanding. But there's a reason for that.

    The silver-haired boy is Kaworu. He's 14, too. He only comes in at the end, for some 40 minutes, after 23 full hours of the series. He's rather mysterious; like the other children, he has no mother; and in his case, no past. (He's hot with the girls, too. But frustrates them.) His hands are never seen.

    The two boys become very close. Kaworu's the first one who's ever understood Shinji, his loneliness and weakness, his shame and self-loathing. He's open and caring and kind. Shinji's clearly infatuated, blushing all the time. (Aww!) They shower (naked) together, relax (al nudo, simile) in the spa (it's a best-friend thing, in Japan). They lie around on Shinji's bed in pj's, talking, sharing. There's differences of culture, and problems of translation (and they're only 14), but... Kaworu says, "I love you," to Shinji.

    It looks like maybe they spend the night together, too.

    [It's not blatant. But clear, nevertheless. A brilliantly clever test of the viewer's emotional honesty. If you haven't learned something from the past months and months of watching the story - the helplessness and doom and despair and desolation - if you can't lay aside your self-involvement and fears and prejudices, and be sufficiently open to the human heart - to your own heart - to accept the love between them (however it may happen!), you simply and quietly miss the rest of the story, and you don't even know it. I have the opinion of several other writers on this.]

    And in the morning, it becomes clear. Kaworu is the 17th angel, the last one.

    The angel of death.

    And Shinji has to kill him.

    They struggle. At the end, Kaworu surrenders his immortality, and gives himself up literally into Shinji's hand for execution. He smiles. "I was born to meet you," he says. There is a full minute - sixty precious, tense, endless, seconds of motionlessness. Beethoven's 9th symphony blasts mercilessly, the German choir singing loudly. (Nothing like that has ever been done in animation.) And then it's over.

    Kaworu dies. And Shinji loses his mind.

    The final endings (there are 2 alternate endings: one very intellectual and reflective for TV, one delivered full-strength in the movie theater) are cryptic. Their meanings amount to the same thing, I think.

    The end of the world happens, anyway. In one version, Shinji is stuffed, weak and helpless, into his Evangelion, and is dragged from the atmosphere. He watches as Mankind, the 18th angel (we are our own best destroyer!) consummates the end of all things. As the ultimate angel, a huge glowing giant, rises up, leaving the dying planet below, it comes upon Shinji, helpless in the Eva. It moves to join with the Eva; Adam, life created by God, and Evangelion - Eve, life from man - the end of time itself. Shinji is paralyzed with terror, shrieking mindlessly as he looks his end in the face. And the angel casts off its monstrous appearance.

    "Shinji-kun? Are you ok?"

    Kaworu.

    The whole story has played a cruel trick. Where you thought you'd be seeing a children's cartoon, heroics and hope, naked anime girls and bare breasts, masturbation, sex, violence, gore and huge powerful mecha (it has all that, which is nothing special for a kids' cartoon in Japan) - you get instead something else. People wept openly, men and women, coming out of the theaters in Tokyo. (The man who wrote it, Hideaki Anno, said he seriously doubted if Americans would understand NGE at all.) The whole story experience is months long, and one of the most intensely harrowing things I've ever seen. I cried for two days straight.

    And sharing it with you, I learn something about why I liked it so.