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1Ep1: Great, fun, angel is horrifying and menacing, brief moments of levity, there are subtle character moments to reveal personalities, like Gendo's unrelenting smugness, Misato's photograph bearing her lipstick as a signature, Shinji having torn up his father's letter, Rei having no objections to her orders even though she's half dead, stuff like that gives us little clues as to the deeper aspects of these character's personalities, Shinji's reluctance is understandable, ending without the fight is an interesting choice and signals to the viewer that this isn't a traditional mecha anime
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3Ep2: Great, splitting up the angel battle keeps us guessing as to what actually happened throughout the episode, lending an air of unease to the seemingly happy victory, showing the true conclusion as Shinji relieving the trauma is also a great idea, great moments of worldbuilding as we see how NERV and Tokyo-3 operate and respond to the aftermath of the angel attack, but it also shows that there are things about the Evas that both we and NERV don't fully understand or know about yet, slice of life stuff with Misato is kinda cringe but ultimately serves to start to undo some of the preconceived notions both Shinji and the audience may have come to regarding her personality, but builds on her personality in a way that doesn't necessarily undo what's already established
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5Ep3: Great, we get to see how the angel attack has effected the little people in life, Shinji's difficulties in reconciling the hero worship he's receiving with the reality of Eva piloting and Toji's anger at his failures in the previous battle is great, as is the sort of broken, robotic personality he assumes when given orders and piloting the Eva.  You can tell he's really only doing it because he thinks he has to.  Fight with the Fourth Angel is pretty good too as the orders fail completely and Shinji flounders around still dealing the the trauma of the previous fight.  When everything in this episode comes to a head, his reluctance to pilot, his previous failures, and his struggles to care about the orders he's given, and he just loses it and goes fucking nuts on the Angel it's great.  Those screams are the stuff of fucking nightmares christ.
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7Ep4: A lot slower compared to previous episodes, not quite as much happens here as its largely focused on Shinji running away.  It serves as an important point of development for both Shinji and Misato with both failing to understand each other.  Shinji is unable to comprehend Misato's self-contradictory criticism of his inability to follow orders and his inability to think for himself while Misato is likewise at a loss for this disparity.  It gets resolved, but subtly, when Shinji ultimately makes the choice to stay and Misato makes the choice to try and bring him back.
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9Ep5: The start of the Ramiel two parter, usually acclaimed by SUGP as the best part of the show and certainly holding up in the first half as one of the best episodes so far.  Whereas the previous episode was a big slowdown in terms of pacing, this one picks up at full speed and throws a lot at the viewer at once, but most of it isn't necessarily new information, it's building upon what's already been briefly established through little glimpses here and there.  We finally see the full Unit 00 incident after only seeing brief hints at what happened with injured Rei and frozen Unit 00.  We start to see the full extent of Gendo and Rei's relationship with each other and I think in a way it sort of contrasts Shinji's relationships with those around him.  Shinji is so desperate to just have someone love and care for him at all in any way possible.  He especially lacks his father's love.  But meanwhile we see Rei and Gendo clearly have a friendly relationship.  Gendo cares about Rei and shows zero hesitation with attempting to save her during the Unit 00 Incident.  Rei likewise obeys everything Gendo says, has his broken glasses as a keepsake, and chooses to defend him when given the chance.  Unlike Shinji, Rei does not need to earn this affection, nor does she really want it, and this is partly where the contrast between Shinji and her lies.  She merely has it by virtue of her origins which of course won't be revealed until much later.  It adds to the aura of mystery around her character, why exactly are her and Gendo so close?  What's really smart though is how the show handles Rei's character development up to this point.  The first four episodes are centered almost entirely around establishing and developing Shinji and Misato.  We get a frame of reference from these two characters through which we see the world and events surrounding it.  They serve as a point from which we can compare and contrast everything to.  Rather than clutter itself through trying to develop three people at a time, the show takes its time and focuses on Shinji, Misato, and their relationship before injecting Rei into the mix.  We only get very brief flashes of who Rei is as a person, the show waits until this point to really start developing her as a character and building on what we've seen.  She's an empty person, visually displayed by her largely empty apartment.  She has seemingly no concern for her own well-being, seemingly her only purpose in life is to obey Gendo, which really shows itself when she slaps Shinji for insulting him, but not for groping her or breaking into her apartment.  And again, this is all things we've seen in flashes with her character but it's here that they're really brought out into the open as the focus. There's other little things in this episode too that I like, how they mention the DNA/Composition similarities between the Angels and Humans that hints at a similar origin and how Ramiel's threat is displayed very apparently with the spawncamping.
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11Ep6: The closer to the Ramiel arc isn't quite as strong as the first part I feel, but still stands out as one of the best episodes.  The cliffhanger from the ending of the last episode is very quickly resolved, but the threat still remains.  Ramiel forces NERV, and the show, to change the pace of battle.  Before when the Third and Fourth angels attacked, they were dispatched fairly quickly before they became a real threat.  Now NERV is forced to race against time in order to figure out how to beat Ramiel.  Having Misato and the others have to figure out its weaknesses and come up with a real strategy to beat it is a nice change of pace from the other angels thus far and ensures that the fights don't quickly become stale.  It also gives some time for character development.  Rei's visit to Shinji in the hospital is brief but important since it reveals a lot regarding how Shinji thinks about her.  It feels as if he's mistaking her lack of fear in regards to piloting as bravery rather than a lack of emotions all together.  It goes to show that even if we think we've been able to figure out Rei from the last episode, Shinji has not and is still confused in regards to her motives and personality.  Him lashing out at her because she hasn't been through the same experiences he has is also an important moment because it reveals how self-centered Shinji can be.  We've seen him caring about his well being to an understandable degree so far.  It's all been self preservation, but that changes here.  He knows how injured Rei was and yet he still doesn't think that's as bad as what he went through.  Is that true?  It's hard to compare the psychological damage Shinji's been through to the physical damage Rei went through, especially since Rei didn't seem psychologically scarred from the Unit 00 incident.Later on before the fight with Ramiel there's another great moment where Shinj just flat out asks Rei why she pilots.  It's a very blunt and in character question for him to ask.  Her response that it's a bond she feels with all of humanity is a very vague and mysterious response, but knowing where it leads with her being a Lilith Clone it's made more meaningful.  It implies a sort of motherly bond between Lilith and her progeny, which is added to by the fact that she's a clone of Shinji's mother.  This is also an important moment for Shinji as I think this is where he starts to understand Rei a bit more when she says she has nothing else aside from this bond.  I think this is the part where he realizes the similarities between the two of them and starts to feel genuine empathy, rather than curiosity, for her.  The Ramiel fight proper is a nice departure from the previous two fights in the series, being a more slow paced but tense sniper duel between the angel and Unit-01.  The ending is heartwarming, but it betrays a darker underlying nature.  Shinji is acting more like his father with his concern for Rei.  There are obvious parallels in shot composition with how Gendo broke into Rei's entry pod in the previous episode and Shinji doing the same here.  Shinji wants her to have something more to fight for, just as he wants something more to fight for.  I think this is also an important moment where Shinji gains something to fight for, he wants to fight for Rei rather than because he is being told to.  Perhaps it's not empathy, but rather him projecting himself on her.  In any case, Rei shows emotion for the first time here with her smile, but I question if it's genuine.  The moment makes it clear that Rei is seeing Gendo in Shinji and I question if she's simply obeying his order to smile like she would with Gendo, or if she feels genuinely happy either that Shinji shows care for her just like Gendo, or that Shinji shows care for anyone.
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13Im getting way too fucking into this and I hope the show really does drop off as hard as i remember it after these episodes
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15Ep7: A bit of a slowdown and dropoff in enjoyment compared to the Ramiel arc, this episode drops the ball as a followup to it but is otherwise alright overall.  It makes the mistake of focusing on Misato over Rei, and while what we get is still good it feels like a bump in the overall flow of the show thus far.  There's this real sense that Shinji is finally starting to feel a bit at ease with things in the wake of the Ramiel arc, shown to us visually through the repetitive morning routine cycled throughout the episode.  Things are becoming exactly that, routine.  Both Shinji and the audience are starting to question what's really going on.  It's made clear that NERV is up to some shady shit, they're lying to the public about a lot of stuff, doing secret ops, and obfuscating the true nature of the angels.  It's also made clear at the end of this episode that there's a steep divide between who knows what, since Ritsuko knew what was going on the entire time and Misato didn't, and on a repeat viewing you know that even Ritsuko doesn't know everything NERV is up to exactly.  NERV just does not give a damn about consequences.  The Jet-Alone guys are calling up like 50 people to get approval for a plan to solve things meanwhile NERV is causing a controlled nuclar meltdown without a single care in the world.  They're unbeholden to anyone, loose cannons almost.  I liked the little back and forth between Ritsuko and the Jet-Alone guy as they criticized each other's designs.  Realistically speaking they were both right, and the criticism of NERV fits with the suspicious image this episode gives them.  This also served to create a nice contrast between Ritsuko and Misato's personalities as Ritsuko approaches the situation with logic, intelligence, and pride, whereas Misato approaches it with public lackadasicalness followed by venting her anger behind closed doors.  This episode really cements the divide between Misato's work life and home life.  At home she's a drunken slob, but when it comes down to it she takes charge of the situation and does what needs to be done, beureaucrats be damned.  She shows zero hesitation in plunging into a nuclear reactor headfirst.  Jet-Alone itself is an interesting design, it's stiff robotical nature contrasting with the Eva's more organic forms.  This episode also focuses a bit on a running theme throughout Evangelion, the struggle between how one is perceived by others and how one truly is.  It's a very existentialist type thing.  I like the insight Shinji's buddies offer him at the end, Misato cares enough about him to show him who she really is, but on rewatch we know this isn't truly the case.
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17Ep8: Asuka's appearance in this show can be likened to throwing a live grenade into a crowded school.  Her appearance has been foreshadowed several times before this but all we really know about her is that she exists.  We have no idea what she's like.  She shows up and virtually the entire tone of the show changes around her.  This is an episode largely centered around loud, brash spectacle and comedic levity over the more subdued, character focused episodes so far.  This tonal whiplash complements her personality, arrogant, self-assured, reckless, generally sort of bitchy, and serving to lighten the mood surrounding what's been a very dark show so far.  The fight scene in this episode also serves to complement Asuka in comparison to what we've seen so far.  Everything we've seen so far has been very subdued in comparison to this, Third Angel getting punched a bunch, Fourth Angel getting stabbed once, Fifth Angel getting sniped, and here we have Asuka jumping across Battleships with reckless abandon crashing battleships into whale mouths.  It's completely nuts and is important both for establishing that she really is as good as she says she is, and for further establishing the hectic, almost cartoonish, tone of this episode.  This is generally where people say the show starts to fall off, and I think it does start to falter here definitely.  Episodes 1-6 were very tight and flowed into each other and built on each other incredibly well.  Jet-Alone disrupts that flow then Asuka smashes it over her head and sets it on fire, which is the whole point of course, she's meant to be a disruption.  Nobody Shinji has dealt with so far has really challenged him in the aggressive sense.  Misato and Rei have served to challenge and change his behavior and worldview, but neither of them have really confronted him directly, gotten in his face about how much he sucks, quite as Asuka does here.  I criticized the Misato focus of the previous episode, and this episode has it make more sense with the appearance of Turbochad Kaji, but I still stand by the rest of my criticism of the previous episode in that regard.  Misato completely loses her composure around him, confirming that even though Misato is showing more of herself to Shinji as they get closer, he still doesn't really know the true Misato.  How well can anyone ever really know someone afterall?  The Adam Embryo at the end is also very important.  We know that NERV is up to some shady shit, built on in the last episode, but this little scene at the end sets off all sorts of red flags.
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19Ep9: Much like how the effects of throwing a live grenade into a school don't really stop after its exploded, Asuka's disruptive prescence continues to be felt in the show.  It's not quite as jarring as the last episode, partly because I feel the writers had a better handle on things, and partly because we already know what to expect from the last episode.  We've sort of cleared the speedbump, things are picking up again and are a lot more enjoyable, things are flowing well again, but the tone of the show has changed completely in accordance with the last episode.  Things are more chaotic and more comedic, and a lot of what made those first six episodes great has been lost, but not entirely.  There are great little moments of development throughout the episode.  Asuka trying to make herself the center of Rei's attention and failing completely because she doesn't give a fuck and Asuka and Shinji arguing after their defeat are particular standouts.  Shinji doesn't feel as passive here in response to Asuka's continued button pushing.  She knows how to fuck with him and she does it because she gets a kick out of it.  We also see this mirrored with CHADJI who's doing the same thing to Misato, partly because he also gets a kick out of it, and partly because he wants to smash.  Indirectly, I feel this reveals something about Asuka's character too.  She's doing the same thing with Shinji, though not quite as overtly sexual though there is that element to it.  Much like Shinji, she wants to be wanted but also doesn't want to grow too close to others.  So the core of this episode of course centers around Asuka and Shinji having to train endlessly with each other to get in sync enough to perform a synchronized dance routine to kill an Angel.  One of the best parts of the show by far is how wildly inventive and creative the Angels, and by extension the fights surrounding them, end up being.  After five angels the fights still don't feel stale because they're all so completely different from each other.  The fight in this episode is probably the most iconic in the series, it holds up well and I'd say it's my favorite so far.  But the action surrounding it and building up to it is the meat of the show of course, and I'd say it's alright.  You get a scenario similar to Ramiel where they've slowed down the angel but still have to strategize and figure out how exactly to beat the angel.  Asuka and Shinji get on each other's nerves to an extreme degree, and Misato knows this, which is exactly why she chooses to have those two fight the angel the way they do.  The moment where Misato has Rei do the practice routine with Shinji is a very subtly genius one.  It underscores just how clever Misato really is.  If she really wanted things to go off with a hitch she'd just have Rei do it and it'd be done with, but Misato needs Asuka and Shinji to get along with each other if they're going to work with each other and purposefully elects to force them to learn to get along in a condensed timeframe.  Showing us that Rei can do the routine better than Asuka signals this to the audience, but Misato's choice in having Rei demonstrate her abilities is also a purposeful one.  She knows that it's the motivation Asuka needs to get her act together, because she needs to be the best and won't let Rei beat her.  It's such a comparatively small momentthat speaks volumes about these characters.  Asuka's disruption is leaking everwhere, and the small stuff like establishing a routine in Episode 7 suddenly comes back as her moving in with Shinji completely breaks that routine that both the viewer and Shinji were falling into.  It's a solid episode, though I'm not a big fan of the tonal shifts.  The comedy is a bit hit or miss, largely a cultural thing.
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21Ep10: To sort of continue the grenade in a school allegory, at this point the school has now caught fire as a result of the previous explosion.  The exact problem is sort of hard to describe, the last episode flows into this one fine.  It doesn't feel jerky or tonally inconsistent but I think the problem is the complete change in tone toward a more traditional mecha anime.  This episode frankly isn't very good, especially compared to the previous episode which had some problems but managed to rise above them.  Asuka as a character is acting more overtly sexual towards both Kaji and Shinji since she wants virtually any attention from anyone.  I don't necessarily see this as a problem itself, she's going through adolescence it's in character for her to be acting this way, no see the issue is how the show handles it.  The audience is seeing things through Shinji's perspective so as Asuka flaunts her sexuality towards him and we see it through his eyes we end up getting a sexualized teen and a lot of Hebephile Anno memes that are probably dangerously accurate.  It's sort of offputting and can only really be excused as character development up to a point, which is probably around the end of the episode where Shinji pops a boner imagining Asuka and Misato naked and it's like ok haha stop I don't want to go to jail.  This is played for laughs but it's still really uncomfortable.  Of course the other problem is the different cultural views that Americans and Japanese share on sexual stuff like this, over there well this shit is probably a lot more normalized.  There's also like weird semi-fetishy stuff like Asuka's inflation suit and all the talk about how sweaty she is.  I think the former is played more for comedy than the later, which is definitely a sex thing because I've read enough hentai and watched enough JAV to know Japs love that shit.  And again, it would be fine if it wasn't presented in such a creepily sexual manner but fucking Japan god.  So let's move away from talking about the stuff that the FBI is gonna use against me at the trial, and instead talk about the other big thing in this episode, the Eighth Angel fight.  I'm not a huge fan of it.  It's interesting in concept but falls apart due to two reasons.  The first is that the overly red blurry color palette of the magma lake where this takes place just looks kinda ugly.  The second is that the fight itself is meant to rely heavily on the tension behind it, much like the Ramiel fight was.  The episode establishes higher stakes than the previous episodes to this effect, warning us that another Second Impact type event could occur if our heroes fail in their capture mission.  The reason that this ultimately doesn't work is that the tone of the Ramiel arc and the tone of this episode are completely different.  The Ramiel arc is gravely serious whereas this is more lighthearted so I never really feel like Asuka is in danger, even as Misato pushes her deeper into the volcano and even as the coolant cables sever.  The tonal shift that took place where Asuka showed up is starting to overstay its welcome and will continue to do so as the "Monster of the Week" section of Eva continues.  There are a few good moments in it all though.  During the bit where Asuka is refusing to pilot because of the Dobson suit and Rei steps up and volunteers, and Asuka spergs out and decides to go through with it anyways, I think we see a bit more of Rei here.  It feels, to me at least, she's doing the same thing that Misato did in the previous episode, that she's sort of learned from that moment and is employing it again, not necessarily to get under Asuka's skin like Asuka does to her though.  I'm probably reading into it a bit too much though because I don't like how they virtually drop all of her development to focus on Asuka's introduction and this bad stretch of episodes.  Another nice little tease at the end hinting that Asuka has some sort of tragic backstory.  We won't learn what exactly until much later but I like this moment because in contrast to everything else it harkens back to the way earlier episodes handled things and serves to establish in the back of the viewer's mind that even if we're annoyed with Asuka, she's still a real person with some vague problems we don't quite understand yet.  Misato revealing her past with her scar and the Second Impact is also going to become very relevant soon.    
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23Ep11: Eva is sort of in a weird pattern at this point.  Everytime there's a dip in quality with an episode it's almost immediately followed by a really great episode, and this time is no exception.  Episode 11 serves to address a lot of the criticisms I've had since the end of the Ramiel arc, and while the quality of the episode  isn't quite at 1-6 episodes, it's pretty damn close just like 9 was.  So you see Jay, this reminds me a lot of the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Diaster.  They follow very similar plotlines.  The Enterprise is disabled from space stuff, the crew is all seperated out into different sections and then has to deal with stuff as most of the ship is disabled.  Similarly, NERV loses power in this episode and everyone is in different locations and has to deal with different stuff to get operational with an angel bearing down on them.  It was a great episode for Star Trek and it works well here too.  The improbability of the power outage is never really addressed and to be quite honest I don't remember if it ever was.  They just sort of leave it at "We don't know who could've done it" so that goes in the shitty theory bin for the time being I suppose.  I haven't talked about it much but now's a good time to, I love the control room shit in Eva.  This episode starts out with a little vignette with them doing chores and stuff and we've gradually started to get ahold of the control room dudes' personalities.  I love all the autistic technobabble and tech screens and readouts in this show and I love the Control Room's design.  The operational side of NERV gets a lot of focus in this episode with the power outage and all.  This episode really improves on the humor.  Over the past few episodes it felt sort of annoying more than anything but in this episode the setup and delivery works a lot better and it got a few chuckles out of me.  Character development wasn't a huge focus in this episode but little moments still take up a lot of time.  We see very early on that Shinji and Gendo's relationship hasn't changed at all in spite of Shinji's actions from the start of the show.  They still don't get each other, and the audience doesn't really get Gendo either yet.  With Misato trapped in an elevator with CHADJI, who spends the entire time trying to fuck her, Gendo takes more the center stage in directing operations.Seeing Gendo go downstairs to help with the backbreaking manual labor needed to get the Evas operational without power comes as sort of a shock since it's not really something you'd expect this smug, calculating schemer to do, but I guess a dead schemer can't scheme now can he?  Gendo wearing his glasses the entire time even though it's pitch black is also kinda funny though I imagine it was an oversight.  He also has this really great line where he notes that the greatest enemy of man is still man.  It's a foreshadowing that really the central confict of the show isn't being driven by the Angels, but rather by attempts to implement instrumentality.  Rei and Asuka get a great little moment while they're trying to break into NERV.  Asuka's taking charge and being bitchy as usual and she starts bitching out Rei for no reason.  For the first time Rei acknowledges this and tells her to fuck off in not so many words.  But importantly here, she notes that she is in no way "favored" by Gendo.  To us this doesn't make sense since the opposite would seem to be true, but this serves as more foreshadowing that she is ultimately expendable.  The fight scene against Spiderangel is simple, but good.  All three Evas participate for the first time, and we get to see Blue Unit-00, which is the SUPERIOR version fuck you Orangefags get out.  It's not quite as bombastic as previous fights, but it's still fun to watch. Another great moment comes at the end of the episode.  Shinji is sort of starting to question what the angels are really doing and what they're all about, Asuka doesn't give a shit, Rei has sort of vague answers and stays silent, and this here shows that even though these characters have grown a bit since we first met them and have learned more about them, some underlying fundamentals haven't changed.  Shinji is still indecisive and unsure ofhimself, Asuka is still absolutely confident and focused on nothing else but being the best, and Rei is still an enigma, though her silence during to Shinji's questions feels a lot more telling on rewatch.  More things change, the more they stay the same.          
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25Ep12: The good momentum built up by Episode 11 carries over into this one and it's just as quality as the previous one in spite of shifting the focus largely to Misato and Shinji whereas the previous episode was more of an ensemble focus.  There's still just something about it I can't really put my finger on though.  It's like all of the right pieces are there but it still just doesn't quite measure up to 1-6.  I think that the changes in character dynamics and interplay as a result of Asuka's introduction are really to blame, but at the same time there are some good moments with her throughout these episodes so I do think the show benefits in a sense from her inclusion.  If it had been handled better without all the bumps in the road from 8-10, her prescence now wouldn't be as glaring.  So yeah, lots and lots of good shit in this episode.  We get to see the Second Impact for the first time, if only briefly, and it's horrifying.  We've heard about it before, but seeing it really puts the horror of the near apocalypse into perspective.  It's so desolate and ethereal, like something out of Lovecraft with how those wings spread into space.  This show consistently nails atmosphere and visuals if nothing else.  There's both a lot of parallels and differences in Misato and Shinji throughout the episode.  They both don't react positively to praise, but for different reasons.  Misato sees no reason why she should receive praise, whereas Shinji doesn't want praise because he knows others will be angry at him for it.  Misato herself points out that he cares too much what others think, which will continue to be both a motivator for his actions and a major character flaw throughout the show.  It will also lead to a very important moment later but we'll table that for now.  As hinted at before, Misato doesn't really truly trust Shinji enough to completely open up to him.  Though she does eventually reveal a huge part of her backstory and underlying motivations to him.  Misato's backstory of course parallels Shinji's own paternal troubles, but again we see the differences between the two.  They both want to be free from their fathers, but each in a different sense.  Misato wants to avenge him and be free of his memory, Shinji wants to be free from him in a literal sense, because he feels completely incapable of earning what he wants from Gendo.  Shinji is still looking for some kind of purpose out of piloting, his previous attempts at finding one having failed him.  He asks Asuka the same question he did to Rei in Episode 6 and her answer serves to both confirm what we already know about her character, she wants to show she's the best, and also to hint at the real underlying motivation behind everything she does, that she wants to "prove she exists to the world", she wants to be noticed, she doesn't want to be forgotten or abandoned.  This is immediately followed by one of the most KINO visuals in the series as they're on the elevator, great shit.  The angel in this episode is probably the craziest shit yet, god damn orbital eyeball thing that decides it's gonna use itself as a living bomb.  How fucking crazy is that shit?  This is like the eighth one and they still never fail to surprise.  This episode also roughly follows the Ramiel formula where they've got time to plan and strategize before they go and fight the angel and Misato comes up with a crazy whacky plan.  This time it's the craziest shit yet, to catch the fucking angel with an AT field, which is understandably worrying.  Misato doesn't break a swear over it though.  As Ritsuko chews her out over her recklessness though, it starts to become apparent that what we've been mistaking as self-assuredness from Misato is really more, it's an unquenchable, unstoppable thirst for blood against the Angels.  It makes one start to wonder how well we really know other character traits in people so far or if we're misinterpreting them as well.  The fight proper against the angel is pretty short and not particularly interesting, but it's still a cool idea to see implemented.  And it's right here at the end of the episode that we get a really great moment where for the first time in 12 episodes, Gendo praises Shinji.  It's such a small moment in comparison to so many others, but it's such a big deal for the character, and for the audience as pay off to what was set up in the previous episode and this one.  The oddest thing about it is that compared to the other things Shinji has done so far, what he does in this episode doesn't feel particularly praiseworthy.  Gendo isn't even present to say it to his face, he does it over the phone, but it still means the world to Shinji.  The cynic in me thinks that Gendo is just being patronizing, and even though I'm probably right it's a feel good moment for Shinji who hasn't really been in desperate need of one but deserves it nonetheless.  The episode ends on this really comfy, intimate and personal little scene in this noodle stand where Shinji settles on his motivation for piloting being that he wants more fatherly praise.  We as an audience have known for awhile that this is a big motivation for him, but seeing him come to this conclusion at last is a satisfying moment that closes out a real good episode.
26
27Ep13: Sort of an odd one.  We're exactly halfway through the series proper, though the inclusion of EoE sort of muddles that a bit, and we get this episode that has zero focus on any of the main characters and instead chooses to focus on Ritsuko, someone who can be regarded as an important secondary character at best.  Now don't get me wrong, I like Ritsuko, and this episode is filled with the same Star Trek-esque control room technobabble autism that Episode 11 was too, and I love it here too, but it still feels like a very odd choice in pacing.  I suppose that it's meant to serve as a bookend between this stretch of episodes and the next one, a breather from the developments over the past two episodes and from 7-13 right here.  This is further reinforced by Episode 7 having a lot of Ritsuko as well, though not nearly as much as this episode.  The plot largely centers around the most unique angel in the series thus far, this sort of corrosive microbe angel that infiltrates NERV's computer systems.  It's fucking genius and I love it.  It feels as if the Angels are evolving to counter NERV even if that isn't necessarily the case.  Consequently, there's very little traditional action in this episode, even though it's largely "action" focused.  There is no big battle, as the Evas are useless against the Angel.  Instead the pilots are taken out of the episode pretty quickly.  They head off to do a Synchro test while naked and get ejected and are offscreen most of the time.  The naked stuff is mostly played for laughs and to explain why this test is taking place under special circumstances, but it's still made really awkward thanks to Asuka.  So instead of a big battle most of the action revolves around trying to stop the Angel from breaking further into HQ and counter-hacking the MAGI computers that the Angel is trying to break into.  Truth be told, the show nails these sequences.  Even though they aren't traditional action sequences, they are presented in such a way that makes them exciting, rather than boring, to watch.  There's heavy uses of quick cuts between operators and screens, fast zooms, and extreme angles to heighten the tension as the frantic techs scream out technobabble that indicates that the situation is absolutely fucked and keeps getting more fucked.  Most of Ritsuko's characterization in this episode focuses around her relationship with her mother, and by extension, the MAGI computers that now each carry an aspect of her personality.  What they do here is really brilliant for a variety of reasons.  Not only do we get to know Ritsuko better, but we get world building on the creation of the MAGI and how they operates, and we also get this really small bit of foreshadowing that becomes a lot more apparent on rewatch.  Ritsuko mentions how the MAGI and the Evas both use the same personality imprint technology, therefore, the Evas must get a personality from someone else.  On repeat viewing, we know that the Evas carry the literal soul of a pilot's mother, and this little line furthers the mystery surrounding what exactly the Evas are for first time viewers, who are probably already beginning to piece things together.  Ritsuko's relationship with her mother largely mirrors Misato's relationship with her father and Shinji's relationship with Gendo.  We never really get the specifics of their relationship, but Ritsuko notes that while she respects her mother as a professional, she can't respect her as a mother or a woman.  Ritsuko also has a really great line here where she notes that her mother wanted the system to be purposefully flawed, that she wanted the computer to experience the human dillema.  It's a really nice nod to the overarching themes of the series, accepting flaws and choosing to live in spite of them because that is life, that is humanity.  It's also probably the most blunt statement of such yet up until the finale/EoE.  Speaking of EoE, Gendo has a line about halfway through as they're discussing how to defeat the angel that really activated my almonds.  They're talking about accelerating the angel's evolution to cause it to self destruct and Gendo states sort of the obvious, that "the end of evolution is self destruction, death itself".  This line is incredibly on the nose given how the series ends, though there's no way for the viewer to know it yet.  Humanity evolving via instrumentality is the end of their evolution, it is self destruction, and it is the death of the world.  Also very very interesting how End of Evolution is also abbreviated as EoE.  More likely coincidence given that EoE was never really "meant" to happen, but I wonder if the naming choice of EoE was delibrate because of this line.  So yeah, pretty good episode, not the best though.    
28 
29Ep14: A pretty rough one tbh.  Most of this episode is comprised of clipshow and recycled animation.  It's pretty pointless in the overall flow of things, especially when Episode 13 already bookended the previous "action arc".  Overall I think it's fair to say that it's the worst episode so far, even more so than Episode 10, but there's still some good stuff here.  A lot of this episode's problems are caused by the complete lack of original footage and having to tell a story around this, most likely due to the clusterfuck of a production schedule Eva went through.  They don't pull it off here, it's not so good.  The entire first half is nothing but a clipshow recap of all the previous angel attacks.  It's framed as a meeting between Gendo and SEELE as they discuss the dangers and risks of the previous angel's infiltration.  We know that both NERV and SEELE are up to shady shit, but here it starts to become really apparent that there is a divide between the two and even though they're working towards he same goal, there's more to both sides' visions of that goal.  The second half is also mostly reused animation but changed in slightly different ways and used to tell a different story than it was originally.  It starts out with this abstract sequence in Rei's thoughts.  We start to get a really good feel on how she views the world, which is nice since I feel she's been neglected since the Ramiel arc even though she's gotten a few moments here and there.  The way she views everything is like one giant out of body experience, like she's completely detached from everything around her, including her own body.  Whereas someone like Shinji is incapable of forming bonds with others due to his own anxieties, fears, and difficulties embracing and acknowledging his true self and the true selves of others, Rei struggles to form bonds because she's emotionally detached from everything.  Even Gendo, who we know she has a fondness for, is distant and abstract in her thoughts.  This, alongside a few lines here and there and this shot of multiple Reis serves as a big hint towards her true origins as a series of clones.  A lot of this episode could be said to focus around Rei and her origins.  A clearer picture is starting to form even though it's not concrete yet.  The plot of this episode revolves around a boring series of Eva-interchangeability tests.  It's not very interesting but it serves as the foundation for the Dummy System, which we learn about for the first time here.  We don't get specifics though, but it's established as a thing that exists, involves a different piloting system, and is seen as almost unethical.  Not good news, for sure.  Unit-00 eventually spergs out again with Shinji inside and we get a repeat of the exact same sequence from Episode 5 but with some minor variations.  Importantly, there's a lot here to indicate that Unit-00 has Rei's imprint in it.  Repeat viewers know that the Evas have a soul but first time viewers are under the impression that it's simply a mental imprint.  Ritsuko is 100% certain that Unit-00 was after her both times, and given that repeat viewers know that Ritsuko's mom killed the first Rei, who's soul is almost certainly a part of Unit-00, it would seem to be a case of mistaken identity.  Also very important at the end of this episode we see the Lance of Longinus for the first time and a very ominious shot of Rei carrying it down a hall in Unit-00 on Gendo's orders.  If the first part of this episode didn't make it clear enough, the accompanying conversation with him and Fuyutsuki does, NERV and SEELE are at odds.  
30 
31Ep15: So much to talk about here, maybe the most to talk about so far since all my notes are as long as these paragraphs.  Seems like the final episode of the session always ends up getting the most attention.  Episode 15 marks where the show starts to enter a new phase that focuses heavily on the psychological aspects and really tearing these characters apart in the violent suffering sense and in the sense of dissecting their personalities.  There's a big shift away from the action, monster of the week type stories as for the first time in awhile, we get an episode where there is no angel.  Episode 14 doesn't count since it's barely even a real episode.  This is an episode largely based around the intepersonal relationships of a lot of characters.  Everyone gets a bit of focus here, even characters that have largely flown under the radar.  Kaji has been this really smooth and suave chad so far but this episode takes some time to flesch him out more clearly.  He's always had this air of suspicion around him but here it starts to become abundantly clear that he's investigating NERV from the inside, which builds up to a big moment at the end of the episode.  The episode wastes no time in establishing that the bulk of it will focus around Misato's romantic life, and by extension Kaji.  Asuka will end up going on a date with some rando and Shinji is going to have a meeting with his father, which seems like it will build on what we got from them in Episodes 11-12.  Shinji and Rei have some development together.  They discuss Gendo and the way Rei acts and responds suggests that she doesn't know Gendo very well despite being so close to him.  It's the great tragedy of her character that she has this bond with Gendo but feels no emotions towards him and is incapable of connecting with anyone and by extension, is incapble of understanding them.  Shinji notes that the way Rei was wringing out a towel was motherly in nature, which gets an incredibly rare emotional reaction out of her.  She seems flustered by the comparison.  Now I don't quite remember if she knows that she's a Yui clone or not so it's hard to say if this is because she's reminded of this either consciously or unconsciously or if it's because she's unsure of how to respond to such a deeply intimate complement like "you'd be a good housewife", but it's an intriguing moment nonetheless.  So everyone is getting ready to go off on their own respective little adventures, Misato to the wedding, Shinji with his father, and Asuka with her date.  Misato gives Shinji this little pep talk to try and motivate him to keep moving forward in spite of life's challenges, but it doesn't really seem to get through to him.  This itself is interesting because in the past her pep talks have.  I think the reason for this can be pinpointed to Shinji's persistent anxieties surrounding his father, but subtextually I think it's also because both Shinji and the audience are realizing that Misato isn't being fully honest about a lot of things, which is confirmed later in this very episode.  Gendo and Shinji's outing doesn't prove to be as satisfying as anticipated but ultimately shows how these characters have dealt with the grief over losing Yui.  Shinji has little memory of her, but hurts because he can't remember the mother he never had.  This is why his comments to Rei earlier are important, he's hurting over the mother he never had.  Of course Rei is a clone of his mom but he doesn't know that, nor can he discern that since he doesn't even remember what she looked like.  Meanwhile Gendo remains cool and aloof throughout the entire thing.  He says he keeps the memory of Yui alive in his heart, which seems innocuous but it's one of those things on repeat viewing where this is meant to hint that he hasn't let go and has done all of these objectively evil things as a result of his grief.  His emotional distance during this scene overshadows his previous praise of Shinji.  The two of them still aren't any closer despite that nice little moment between the two of them.  Gendo largely feels like he's doing all of this out of obligation towards Yui more than care towards Shinji.  We get another very interesting moment from Shinji immediately afterwards with him playing the Cello.  We've seen no indication of any musical talent from him so far, but this is a nice little moment that reveals something new.  Asuka comes home and her date didn't go well.  Shinji reveals that his interest in the Cello is largely passive.  Like so many other things, he simply did it because he was told to and was never told to stop.  I think that underneath this though, there's anothe reason why he plays.  He may have started because he was told to, but I think that he's also seeking purpose through creation.  The importance of creation is underscored all throughout the show, the creation of man, the creation of the Evas, the creation of the MAGI, man's ability to create is his greatest gift.  Pursuing creation, creating music in this case, is often how people find purpose and I think that's really what Shinji is doing here even if it's not outright stated as such.  While Shinji and Asuka's outings are over, Misato's is still going on.  There's a lot of discussion regarding how the two have changed since their previous relationship.  Kaji points out how Misato never used to wear heels, Misato criticizes Kaji's stubble.  These seem inconsequential, but the focus on both of them indicates the symbolism behind them that further underscores the personalities of these two and how similar they are.  Outwardly they both act very mature, but deep down we know that there's still quite a bit of immaturity, especially in Misato.  This all builds up to this moment where Misato basically lays her soul bare to Kaji, venting all of these insecurities about her personality.  She has this great fear of intimacy with him because he reminds her too much of her father who as we know she's still deeply hurt by and can't reconcile with.  There's a lot of Freudian elements here with the Electra complex that Misato has for Kaji and the Oedipus complex Shinji has towards Rei though neither he nor the audience truly know it yet even if we might suspect it.  Misato's tirade on her own failings as a person is really great and is executed well.  It doesn't really feel heavy handed, it feels like someone just having an emotional breakdown as a result of all these little things just building up at once.  It's really just serving to confirm what we already know about her, she's very similar to Shinji in the issues she deals with and how she deals with them by running away, even if the two have vastly different outward personalities.  Misato is a very assertive take charge type person, Shinji is a very passive type person, but at the end of the day this doesn't change that they struggle with the same things in the same way.  Some things are just too painful to confront head on, or can't be confronted in that manner due to the circumstances surrounding them.  But I also think that this scene shows us that Kaji really does care about Misato on some level.  Even if they are just using each other on another level.  He listens to all that she has to say, and nothing changes for him, he still feels the same.  To me, that is love.  We see this scene sort of reflected via a broken clownhouse mirror with Shinji and Asuka.  Asuka is coming on hard to Shinji.  Her need for emotional fulfilment is going unfulfilled by her date and Kaji's continued rejection.  Kaji obviously represents the idealized male to her, he's the ultimate chad.  She's not necessarily attracted to him, but to the idea of him.  Shinji and Asuka's respective reactions to their kiss both reveal different things about them.  Asuka finds herself disgusted by Shinji and this is sort of played for laughs, but I think it's really a disgust for herself, that she would sink this low and not meet her own overidealized standards.  The frustration with Shinji is there too of course, in his total lack of reaction that can be difficult to blame entirely on him.  Shinji is baffled entirely at the proposition, it's a foreign experience to him, he has no idea how to react and by and large his feelings for Asuka are also mired in confusion, as are Asuka's feelings for Shinji.  And so this relatively quiet episode ends on two massive notes. The first is Rei deep in NERV HQ in this strange tube thing with Gendo overlooking her.  If everything up to this point wasn't enough the show is beating the audience over the head with the very obvious implications that Rei is not natural by any means.  This is immediately followed by an even bigger reveal.  Kaji's duplicity gets discovered by Misato, which is a testament to how smart she is that she figured this out presumably on her own.  Maybe she had help from Ritsuko but idk.  And then bam Kaji opens up the doors and pretty much completely out of left field is "Adam", who repeat viewers know is really Lillith, nailed to a cross.  We know that NERV and SEELE are doing some crazy shit but this is completely unprecedented.  It's a great visual too and a really disturbing and unsettling design.  Fantastic episode all around and the best possible followup to the shitty clipshow episode.  It's good to see all the little character moments from 7-13 that didn't get huge development on their own become the subsequent focus of this episode.
32
33Ep16: A very strange episode that starts to really veer off into the surrealist psychological stuff that the show becomes at the end, but I thought it was still alright.  The art and animation seems a bit, shoddier? in this episode.  Can't quite put my finger on it but it's just off.  Maybe the result of this copy of the episode, also likely a result of rushed production, especially since this episode is so weird it's most likely that Anno dreamed it up on a coke binge and rushed it out in place of something else.  This episode's got a big focus on Shinji though some other characters and other stuff get some focus as well.  Things start out pretty normal, pilots on a Synchro test and to the surprise of pretty much everyone, Shinji does the best on his.  Shinji seems genuinely happy to have succeeded in this regard.  His entire self worth is tied to how happy he can make other people and therefore feels good when Misato praises him.  Asuka is fucking livid, so when the next Angel shows up she takes this opportunity to fuck with Shinji.  I keep saying it but I have to say it again, that every new angel is just so completely bonkers and it's great.  This one is just a big fucking shadow blob thing, this endless nebulous void that consumes things in its path.  It works great on a visual and narrative level, but there's also this symbolism behind it as Shinji literally gets swallowed by a shadow and also has to deal with the shadow of his continually troubled childhood and psychological issues swallowing him up and weighing on him.  So as I said, Asuka decides to fuck with Shinji and prods him into taking point against Shadowangel66.  Shinji does so and pushes back against Asuka as well.  Everything from the past several episodes and the beginning of this one is starting to go to his head.  He's becoming oveconfident and self-assured, but this is all a false confidence.  He doesn't truly have this confidence or faith in himself, he thinks he does because his entire self-worth is based upon the praise of others.  So when things inevitably go wrong because this angel is so bonkers, it's a huge blow to his self-esteem and psyche.  It's a very little thing, but it's a big deal that the person who immediately shows concern for Shinji is Rei of all people.  She maintains this constant worry about him throughout the whole episode, though she doesn't really express it emotionally.  When Asuka is being a bitch, Rei sort of calls her out on it by noting that she's criticizing Shinji for doing the same thing that she herself already does.  Asuka is in denial over her own personality flaws and how her self worth is tied to piloting the Eva.  I'd like to believe that Shinji's continued attempts to get Rei to open up are really working and that she is showing genuine concern for him.  At this point it doesn't feel like obligation, but at the same time we know how Rei views the world and stuff through that detatched unemotional lens.  There's this sort of conflict going on in the viewer's own perception of the character that keeps them guessing regarding her.  Misato is flipping out over the whole thing and for once we get Ritsuko coming up with the whacky plan to beat the Angel, though it's pretty much just throw a bunch of bombs at it.  Ritsuko doesn't give a single fuck about Shinji which incurs Misato's wrath.  The revelations of the previous episode are starting to push against Misato's loyalty to NERV, which is less loyalty to the organization and more loyalty to their angel killing mission.  The biggest part of this episode though is Shinji's hallucinatory journey within his own pscyhe as he's stuck in Unit-01, basically waiting to die.  It seems like there is no hope for him, he's just stuck waiting for the life support to die out and himself along with it.  Shinji ends up arguing with his own mind over his existence.  There's some great stuff here I won't lie.  They tackle one of the big running themes in Eva, that's been touched upon briefly in Episodes like 7 and 13, and that is the fundamentally existentialist issue of how one is perceived by the self and others and how this is at odds with how we want to be perceived and our actions to that effect.  Everyone sees Shinji differently, Asuka sees him as self-depreciating, Misato ses him as too stuck in his own head, Rei sees him as not really caring about Gendo.  Or at least, this is how Shinji thinks they think of him.  The trick to all of this is that you don't really know what other people think about you either, even if they tell you flat out there's still all this stuff underneath.  It's some real food for thought, the type of stuff to sink your teeth into.  I'm reminded of the Jean-Paul Sartre play, No Exit.  In it, three characters are sent to Hell for their misdeeds, but it's not Hell in the normal torture devices and fire sense.  No, they are sent to a personal Hell of being continually judged and misjudged by others, incapable of ever measuring up to the expectations they hold towards themselves and each others.  It's very similar to Evangelion, and this sequence in particular.  This all culiminates in Shinji attempting to reject his own criticism of his self, this is also a big Existentialist type thing, Shinji is acting in bad faith, refusing to accept responsibility for his own actions of escapism, refusing to admit that he is running away from life's problems instead of trying to find a way to solve them.  This thread is left open ended, intentionally so because it's what the entire end of the show centers around.  He's ready to give up and die before we get another bit that all but confirms that his mother's soul is in some way a part of Unit-01.  Given all that we know about the Evas, along with Gendo and Ritsuko's continued attempts to protect Unit-01, but not necessarily Shinji, this sequence doesn't need to say outright that his Mom's soul is in the Eva.  It can be inferred from all of this even if we do later get confirmation, or maybe we don't I can't remember a lot of 15-26 tbh.  The penultimate action of the episode is Unit-01 sperging out and tearing its way out of the angel to the horror of everyone else, who were about to act.  Everyone, even Ritsuko, is terrified by the raw, monstrous, animalistic power on display.  It's a brutal, graphic, visceral sequence that's the perfect end to the conflict.  There's a final touching moment where Misato shows this real maternal concern for Shinji.  He's been looking for someone to fill that void, but we know that nobody really can.      
34 
35Ep17: Largely an intemediary episode to bridge the events of the previous episode and set up the next one, 17 does this well enough.  Things start out pretty normal.  SEELE interrogates Misato over Unit-01 getting vored by Shadowcon, Rei and Gendo have a little chat about how Rei is doing, there's a little scene at school, and then bam out of fucking nowhere absolute chaos at NERV.  We get a ton of information thrown at us all at once as this major event happens completely offscreen.  There's a second branch of NERV, they were putting together Unit-04 with some kind of new engine, and now the entire thing has been wiped out presumably into another dimension.  It also throws a big wrench into NERV and SEELE's still vague plans.  The S2 engine, whatever it is since we don't really know yet, is very important to them and by extension, Instrumentality.  The unexpectedness of the event and the chaotic nature of the exposition first explaining it puts us in the shoes of the main NERV branch as they find out about it and its a great setup for the whole thing.  Misato is starting to be more vocally critical of the Evas themselves following the ends of Episodes 15 and 16.  If Ritsuko still had any concerns after Unit-01's last spergout, she sure isn't showing them now, preferring to remain calm and professional as usual.  Dummy Plugs have been mentioned a few times but it's here that they're finally explained.  Using Rei data they allow for control of an Eva without an actual pilot.  This raises a lot of questions, not necessarily about the plugs but about why it had to be Rei's data.  She's far from the best pilot afterall.  If you've been paying attention to all the things the show is beating you over the head with, it should be clear that this is because Rei is not human, or at least isn't natural.  The big underlying plot of this episode is Unit-03 being done and shipped off to Japan and the Fourth Child being selected to pilot it.  Misato is very suspicious about events surrounding it and the selction process and Ritsuko is flat out lying to her face, though she gives Misato no indication of this.  It ultimately falls on Kaji to inform her of what's going on.  He's being kinda flirty with a Control Room tech.  This along with Misato's attitude towards him suggests that the reveal that he's a double agent has put a strain on their relationship.  Regardless, he doesn't tell her everything she knows, but reveals that NERV is picking out kids directly from Shinji's school.  Out of all the weird things we know NERV is doing, this seems the most mundane, but there's definitely a sinister undertone since we all but know for certain that Evas have souls.  This episode flows well with Shinji's stuff in the previous episode and the series as a whole, as well as sort of expanding on Rei's almost uncharacteristic concern over Shinji in the last episode.  Rei's home is very disheveled, almost not lived in it feels, when Shinji and Toji come over to deliver some school stuff.  Shinji cleans and as Toji himself notes, this is a change in both his and our initial impressions of Shinji as he seems to actually care about Rei's living conditions.  Perhaps it's a side effect from having to live with Misato.  When Rei comes home she's again completely flustered by Shinji's actions, giving us that same almost embarassed emotional reaction from Episode 15.  She thanks him for it, which is another thing that seems very small and mundane but as Rei is reflecting on it, she notes that she has never, ever done that for anyone, not even Gendo.  Shinji's kindness and outreach to her is completely different from Gendo's.  Shinji cares about her as a person, Gendo cares about her as a means to an end and as a surrogate Yui.  Shinji also sort of wants a surrogate mother, but the difference lies in the fact that his desire is more subconscious whereas Gendo's substitution is more blatant and overt.  Shinji doesn't realize he's doing it, Gendo does and doesn't care.  Their attitudes towards Rei show in their respective actions and it's why Shinji is provoking more of an emotional reaction and intimate bond with her.  Rei herself doesn't understand any of it because she has no emotional perspective from which to view the emotions she's now feeling.  It's a very odd but interesting to watch situation where she lacks any emotional maturity since she has no emotions and doesn't know how to handle the ones she's developing, but is herself a very mature, serious person.  There's another great moment involving Shinji and Kaji later on in the episode that I liked.  The comedy of Kaji being a melon farmer shouldn't be lost on anyone and intentional or not it's a funny little joke.  This whole scene ties back to Shinji's Cello playing in Episode 15.  Kaji notes that growing the melons, creating something, gives him joy and happiness and shit, but when asked if he feels the same about something, Shinji can't really answer Kaji.  This suggests that while his Cello playing is intended to create purpose it's ultimately a hollow pursuit.  He's trying to find meaning in it, but cannot.  Throughout their discussion, Shinji is still pretty rattled from the revelations of the last episode and they're weighing pretty heavy on him.  In spite of this, Kaji is really supportive and encouraging of Shinji, trying to get him to open up to others and himself.  It makes me wish these two got more time together throughout the show because it's a very interesting scene and it feels like Kaji works well as a male role model towards Shinji, but alas, it's just what you'd expect from the Master Anno.  Misato keeps Shinji out of the no on the entire Branch 2 incident, as well as the identity of the Fourth Child.  It's never really stated or shown, but I think this frustrates him a lot since every time Misato and he grow closer, it feels like she does something that closes him off somehow, even if it's a minor thing.  Even if the Fouth Child isn't revealed, there are pretty strong implications regarding his identity.  If the heavy focus on Toji and the matching color schemes between his outfit and Unit-03 aren't a dead giveaway, I don't know what is.  After the point in the episode where he's clearly told offscreen that it's him though, he doesn't seem particularly enthused.
36 
37Ep18: I swear to god I always take more notes on these final third episodes I don't know why but whatever.  Episode 18 is largely a continuation of the events setup in the previous episode surrounding the Fourth Child, confirmed to be Toji here, and Unit-03, which is hinted early on to have something wrong with it.  The plane carrying it flies through a cloud with some lightning and you just get this gut instinct that something is going to go wrong though it may just be a rewatch thing.  I noted previously that Misato keeping Shinji out of the know is another thing which forces their relationship backwards, but here she seems willing to tell him everything he wants to know about Branch 2, Unit-04, and so on.  Well, almost everything, since she doesn't tell him about the Fourth Child, partly because she's interrupted.  This isn't done out of malicious intent though, it's done out of genuine concern for how she thinks he'll react to the news.  She doesn't fully understand Shinji just as Shinji doesn't fully understand her.  With the horrific experiences Shinji has been through, especially the last one, there is a real concern that he'll be overworried over his friend being the new pilot.  It's never really stated outright, but Toji also seems to have his own worried about piloting.  His moments in this episode are sort of brief and he spends most of them sort of brooding.  There's this flashback to where he punched Shinji after his sister gets hurt and if it hasn't already then that's where it really clicks that he has his own concerns over piloting.  He's seen what the Evas can do firsthand, he's seen the collateral damage they can cause, and it scares him to think that he could end up doing the same.  Of course what he doesn't know is that this time he's going to end up being the collateral.  I noted in the last episode that I wanted more of Kaji and Shinji and surprisingly this episode actually delivers on that, which I wasn't expecting at all.  I think the real reason they work so well together is because they're polar opposites.  Shinji is so unsure of himself and his actions and his feelings whereas Kaji is very confident in himself and his charms.  In spite of this, Kaji is still capable of understanding and offering insight into the very real, very human problems that Shinji is having.  Shinji asks Kaji about Gendo and they have a really relevant, pertinent conversation that basically repeats a lot of what I've said so far, that you can never really truly know a person, not even yourself.  But as Kaji, and in a broader sense the overarching themes of the show point out, this is ultimately what makes life interesting, what makes it worth living.  It is that action of self discovery and discovery of other individuals that makes the human experience well, the human experience.  Without it you lose a big part of what it essentially is to be human.  This is why Rei initially seems so foreign and alien in her actions.  She initially makes no greater effort of self discovery of emotional discovery of other people.  Then the Unit-03 activation test starts and the oh shit oh fuck music follows and with the earlier cloud bit you know shit is about to get really bad.  It's tense despite not really being tense through direction or dialogue, it's all from what the audience knows, the little cues.  This angel is maybe one of my favorites so far in its purpose.  It harkens back to the angel in Episode 13 that got into the MAGI computers where it's like the angels are evolving around trying to counter NERV.  Here the angel takes control of an Eva, it turns NERV's strongest weapon against them and subverts its immense destructive power for its own goals.  It's very clever.  There's a big ass explosion and we don't really know what happens to Misato and Ritsuko, who were on site when this happened, for awhile.  On rewatch you know they're fine, but it's still pretty tense to see this explosion and not know if they're ok.  In any case with Misato down for the count, that means that now Gendo is in charge of directing operations against Unit-03, now designated the Thirteenth Angel.  Probably not coincidence that 13 is an unlucky number and this angel causes so many problems.  Gendo's leadership style reflects his personality and is accordingly completely different from Misato's.  Gendo has a complete lack of empathy or care for the wellbeing of the pilots, including Toji trapped inside Unit-03.  Unit-03 fucks shit up pretty hard.  Asuka gets completely curbstomped offscreen even though she's arguably the best pilot.  Gendo orders Unit-00's arm get cut off to avoid infection, completely disregarding the painful effects it has on Rei.  It further goes to show that his care for her is just a means to an end.  She isn't the real Yui afterall.  Now Misato puts the pilots at risk quite a bit with her crazy schemes as well for sure, but she still cares about them and their wellbeing and only does so in the best way possible for them when it's absolutely necessary.  But as illustrated, Gendo just doesn't give a single fuck.  Now granted, Unit-03 is a bigger threat than they've ever faced before, the Evas are immensely powerful on their own but angel infected Unit-03 proves to be a huge threat.  Still, one has to wonder how Misato would've handled this situation, she certainly wouldn't have done what Gendo does to Shinji.  Shinji is completely incapable of bringing himself to kill Unit-03, he sees the entry plug, he knows that he would be killing another person just like him, though he still doesn't know who it is.  There is a big divide between killing an angel, a big ass monster, and purposefully killing another completely innocent human being.  It's a decision that anyone would struggle with and a terrified pubescent teen with severe psychological issues is of course going to struggle with it even more.  But Gendo doesn't care.  As Unit-01 gets strangled by Unit-03 he fires up the Dummy system and Unit-01 goes on autokill, tearing apart Unit-03 and crushing the entry plug.  It's a genuinely horrific moment.  Blood is flying everywhere as Unit-01 goes wild, Shinji is screaming endlessly at the horror and his inability to stop it, further accented by the sickening squelching noise from Unit-03's blood and guts.  Everyone in the control room is just looking on in horror except for Gendo, who is his usual self even in the face of what he's just done.  He has zero sympathy, zero empathy, zero remorse, just a complete psychopath in his actions and reaction.  The carnage ends and Misato is alright.  Shinji is completely fucking broken and Misato rings him up to try and reassure him that everything is fine.  Alas, Misato's own earlier indecisveness is her downfall here as she tells Shinji just barely too late that Unit-03's pilot was Toji.  Things were bad enough for him before, but now?  Fucking hell man.  16 and 18 don't just put him through a fucking ringer, they put him through a meat grinder into a blender then flush him down the fucking toilet, it's god damn brutal.  Toji is alive though, which actually bothers me.  I think this would've had a lot more impact if he had actually died, granted there still is an impact.  I'm pretty sure he was scripted to die but they had to change it but I'm not sure. 
38 Good episode though that's really my only gripe with it.
39
40Ep19: It's the followup to the carnage of the previous episode.  The pacing from 16-19 has flowed really well into each other in terms of event and character progression and I'm hoping this momentum continues because it's hitting all those sweet spots that 1-6 did.  I've got a few problems with this one but truth be told it's probably my favorite episode in the series so far.  When I say a few problems what I really mean is that there's not enough interaction between Shinji and his peers in this episode.  We never really get a good handle on how Toji feels about getting fucked to death by Unit-01 since he spends all of this time in this episode pretty out of it in the hospital.  The only person that really lays into Shinji for what happened is Kensuke and even then that's over the phone so it doesn't really feel as impactful as it should.  Kensuke's been completely disillusioned by the whole thing and who can blame him.  Fuck, who can even blame Shinji at this point?  Yeah yeah it's another >Shinji runs away episode but we haven't had one of those since Episode 4 and the underlying motivations and reasoning behind him running away are completely different this time, and to be quite frank, I can somewhat agree with his thoughts on the matter.  This isn't a character regression no, I reject that entirely.  Shinji is mad, fucking furious, he has this pure, unbridled rage inside him that he's having difficulties expressing and coming to terms with.  While we've seen him sort of angry in the middling sense, this is something that we haven't really seen before at all.  Shinji has evolved this very strong refusal to kill, which I feel is an extension of the existing aspects of his personality.  We've seen a very caring side to him in his interactions with Rei and even Misato at times.  At heart, he is, or at least tries to be, a good person.  To take another life, even in self-defense, is a violation of that principle to him.  Was it a necessary measure?  I suppose so, but would it have been necessary had Gendo handled the previous fight better?  Once again I'm left wondering if Misato's direction could've changed the direction all of this takes.  But as I said Shinji is mad, real mad, ready to shoot up NERV mad before they yank him out of the entry plug by force.  Even as the Control Room techs try to calm him down they still seem sort of shocked and apalled by Gendo's reaction to the situation.  Gendo doesn't care at all what he's done to Shinji, like everyone else around him he's a means to an end even in spite of Shinji's attempts to grow closer to him.  Shinji and Toji are both in the hospital now.  The only thing that really comes from it is another Hallucinogen Train sequence like the ones in Episode 16, but this time Toji is looking in on Shinji's own introspection?  It's presented really weirdly and is another one of my problems with the episode even if I like the scene itself.
41 Shinji here is outraged by what his father has done and how he's making zero attempts to even understand Shinji's views on the situation.  To the audience, this viewpoint is correct, but we never really get Gendo's real thoughts on things.  The show never takes the time to delve into Gendo's thoughts and motivations about what he's just done, and this is a purposeful decision.  The show wants to keep us in a dark because as the show, Kaji, and myself have been saying, you can never really truly know a person.  And the Hallucinogenic Rei that Shinji is venting this all to says the same thing.  Is Shinji even really trying to understand or is he merely lamenting Gendo's inability to understand, or is he lamenting how it makes him feel?  Does he genuinely care or is it just a convienient excuse for him?  Shinji is angered by this, and quite frankly it's an understandable anger, but again, it shows him running away from the psychological conundrum being presented rather than trying to resolve it one way or another.  Speaking of running away well, that's what this episode is about.  Shinji quits.  He's done, wants no more part in it.  He is sick of being used.  Everyone is putting this massive burden on him but in the aftermath of this severely traumatic event nobody even really seems to care that much, especially not his father.  Any attempts to win his father's love are done, Shinji has reached the conclusion that Gendo doesn't matter anymore because Gendo could not possibly have cared about him.  Even Gendo's expressing his disapproval towards him doesn't rattle or shake him even a bit.  This is a decision being made on his own terms, on his own principles.  We see this reflected further in his discussion with Misato as he's about to leave.  Misato tells him that cutting ties like this is no way to live his life, and Shinji disagrees with her in a very calm, almost anaytical fashion.  Rather than merely accepting someone else's viewpoint, he's expressing his own, that he has to move on from these people in his life because well, they're pretty horrible people to do something like this and not care at all.  Shinji is making a stand for something he believes in, and I think that even though Misato is saddened by this decision, she ultimately accepts that there's nothing she can really do about it.  It's his choice, he's made it on is own.  I think she also blames herself for it, she wasn't there to stop it.  Misato seems very apologetic about things, apologizing for the massive burden placed on Shinji.  She offers him a way back, but Shinji is still very, very adamant in his decision to leave.  And so he goes to leave and then the angel shows up.  And this fucker is strong.  In terms of just raw, sheer strength, this guy is unmatched.  He punches straight into the Geofront and completely trounces Asuka, who is virtually useless against it.  Her failures are really starting to stack up and weigh on her psyche.  She couldn't stop the angels in Episodes 16 and 18 and getting defeated again here is a gut punch to her entire personality, built around piloting the Eva.  Making the angel just this unstoppable force is a great idea to pull Shinji back into things.  He's forced to view everything from the perspective of an onlooker as this angel tears everything apart, including Unit-02's head which he gets front row seats to.  Things in the Geofront are a fucking disaster.  Gendo continues to show no concern for anyone as he orders Rei to sortie in an armless Unit-00 after Unit-01 rejects her prescence.  The weird soul Hallucinogen thing in Episode 16 and the Dummy Plug incident last episode, combined with 01's rejection of Rei, who it synced with just fine in Episode 14, is yet another hint to the true nature of the Evas.  Unit-01 won't even accept a dummy plug anymore, only Shinji, which worries everyone who knows the truth.  Misato protests heavily against all of this, but Rei agrees to pilot crippled Unit-00 anyways and makes a failed suicide charge against the Angel.  It doesn't work, but needless to say seeing Rei do that is another slap to the head for Shinji.  This call comes as Shinji stumbles across Kaji, who is an absolute madman standing there fucking watering his melons while everyone is dying around him.  Absolutely based, dude says is he's gonna die he wants to die doing what he loves.  Fucking madman love this guy.  I love even more that we get more Shinji and Kaji.  His mention that he's probably going to die wakes Shinji up even more, largely due to the bond they've started to develop over thes past two episodes.  But the real kicker, the thing that really gets him to make that final decision, is the mention of the Third Impact, which is new to the viewer as well.  If an angel makes it to Adam in the basement, it's game over for everyone.  We've always known that the angels intend to destroy the world, but given everything we've learned about the Second Impact up to this point, the news that it would be this catastrophic is game changing for everyone, including Shinji.  This is what finally leads Shinji to make the decision, on his own terms, to pilot Unit-01.  Even Kaji doesn't really prod him towards it, he simply tells him the truth of the situation.  He doesn't sit there and say GET IN THE ROBOT SHINJI, he just tells him how it is so he will make the decision on his own.  He respects Shinji as a person and ultimately respects his choices on the matter.  I cannot understate enough how important this is.  Shinji is finally making the decision for himself to pilot, not because someone else told him to, but because it's what must be done for the good of all.  He's not doing it to win approval, he's
42not doing it to show off, he's not doing it because he was ordered to, he is doing it because he realizes it's the right thing to do.  Shinji seems almost defiant in the face of Gendo's button pushing, but there's no time for a real confrontation between the two, it's time to kill the fucking angel.  The fight here is my favorite in the series so far.  Asuka and Rei getting assbeat in the exterior of the Geofront is a cool setting, but Unit-01 and the angel bursting through the control room and breaking through walls and spraying blood all over Gendo is fucking awesome.  The animation here is so fucking good god damn.  Shinji isn't holding back anything he's just beating the shit out of this poor angel fuck, until he runs out of power and then he's really fucked.  All really seems lost as the angel starts tearing Unit-01 apart.  Then the armor plating falls off and exposes an angel core and everyone is like what the fuck.  Ritsuko is the only one watching that isn't shocked because she already knows that the Evas are actually angels of course.  Then things get even crazier when Unit-01 starts to move and act on its own without any power.  They're beating you over the head with all sorts of clues that Yui's soul is inside the angel right here, and the news that Shinji's at 400% Synchro Rate should be very worrying to anyone paying attention to the technobabble thus far.  Unit-01 goes completely nuts, fucking shredding the angel, absorbing its S2 engine, and acting like an animal.  It's fucking scary, and the Evas have been pretty scary so far but fucking nothing like this.  It starts eating the angel for fucks sake like jesus christ man.  The true nature of the Evas is revealed, everyone is terrified, and we know it doesn't spell good news for the next episode.  Just a great episode from start to finish.
43 
44Ep20: The followup to the chaos that occured at the end of the last episode, Episode 20 largely focuses on another hallucinogenic freudian psychological sequence, much like Episode 16.  In the immediate aftermath of Unit-01 devouring the angel, SEELE is now worried as fuck about what the hell is going on.  The Geofront, Central Dogma, and the Evas are all completely trashed and unusuable, forcing everyone to switch to the shitty backup control room that conviently looks the same so the animators save money, oh yeah and also Shinji is trapped in Unit-01.  The latter part of that being the focus of this episode of course.  Not just trapped though, trapped and vanished. The 400% Synchro rate at the end of the last episode should already concern any avid technobabble autist, but here it's confirmed that it's a really, really bad thing for Shinji since he's reverted to primordial soup in the LCL of the entry plug.  Misato is livid, both over Shinji and the true nature of the Evas.  Ritsuko can only give vague answers and inaction, which just serves to piss off Misato even more.  There's an interesting line that Ritsuko has that ties into a few things I've talked about.  The Evas are created by man in man's image.  Talk of creation, the purpose and joy it can bring in life, has been a recurring theme for a few episodes now, but the Evas are far from a benign creation.  They're monsters, designed to fight other monsters, and in spite of this so many characters tie their entire self worth and purpose to these acts of creation.  In any case, they've got to reconstruct Shinji's mind and body, which is going to take a very long time, in fact it takes a whole month for Shinji to finally come back out of the Eva.  Quite convienient the angels took a break during that time.  There's some more foreshadowing with Asuka as her entire room is trashed and she's very clearly on a downward spiral as a result of her continued failings, but we'll pick up on that a few episodes from now.  For now, the focus is on Shinji, with yet another exploration of his psyche while he's trapped inside the Eva.  He's trying to sort through his memories at first, which quickly ends upon associating Gendo with enemy, no coincidence there.  Things take a sharp left turn into his paternal issues yet again.  Most of this animation is recycled much like in Episode 14, which while admittedly annoying, it's executed and used much better here than it was there.  Shinji is blaming himself for all of his shortcomings, which isn't necessarily wrong.  Looking at things from the existentialist perspective, which I've done before here and will continue to do because this is a very existentialist show, Shinji's faults are indeed, his fault.  Even in situations you are forced into without a choice, you still have a choice in how you react to them.  Within his mind, Shinji blames himself for running away from his father, placing the blame on himself rather than on his father's rejection.  Is he right?  It's hard to say since we only get very brief and unreliable flashbacks.  The hallucinogenic Rei debates with him about why he pilots.  The conclusion is that he only does it because he thinks it's the only way to win the kindness and care of others.  Is he right?  Well that's also hard to say.  Answering that requires knowing those around him with absolute certainty, and while we know everyone in this show very well at this point, it's impossible to ever know for certain.  I think that at least in the previous episode, Misato still seemed to care about him even though he was leaving NERV, but whether Shinji realized this at the time and is able to take it into account seems debateable.  I also think the conclusions he reaches are at odds with his decision to pilot at all in the previous episode.  That was not a decision made to win over others, it was a decision made on his own terms to save the people he cared about.  I suppose you could interpret that part as trying to win their love and care, but it's largely a matter of opinion.  Then we get a very odd, sort of uncomfortable sequence with lots of THE MASTER ANNO's hebephilia on display.  Nude, but not full frontal, versions of Misato, Asuka, and Rei beseech Shinji to become one with them.  While there are very obvious sexual undertones to all of this, it takes on a completely different meaning on rewatch knowing what happens in End of Evangelion and knowing what Shinji is going through right now.  He's trapped in a pseudo-instrumentality, in the primordial ooze of LCL but bonded only with his mother's soul rather than all of humanity.  There's this great temptation upon him of this release into a comfortable existence within the LCL for all eternity, endless peace free of the world's problems, free of the world's pain.  It's hinting very, very heavily at Instrumentality in End of Evangelion, though granted EoE didn't even exist as a concept at this point.
45 While this is all going on, NERV is finally putting their plan into action to pull Shinji out.  Their failing attempts at retrieval are juxtaposed with Shinji's indecisiveness over whether he should return to reality or not and his inability to understand what's happening and the full gravity of the situation.  I think it's very clear, on rewatch at least, that Yui's soul wants to keep him within the Eva to protect him from everything else around him, as a mother would, but much like in EoE, she leaves the final choice to him.  A hallucinogenic Misato encouages Shinji to accept his actions and make a choice to move foward.  Misato has a very emotional breakdown over what she believes to be the complete loss of Shinji.  Again, she is showing real maternal concern for him, and this is coupled with a sequence involving Shinji's mother in the past which is another moment of the show beating us over the head with the obvious if the viewer hasn't figured it out already.  Misato is relieved and all's well that ends well.  That's not the end of the episode no, because Kaji and Misato finally fuck each other.  It's noted that it's sort of uncouth and strange that Misato would seek sexual release just as she's gotten Shinji back, but it's not really something she's thinking about.  She's thinking in the moment, but Kaji is thinking ahead.  He's becoming aware his time is running out and says as much in a cryptic fashion which Misato doesn't truly understand.          
46 
47Ep21: There's a lot to unpack in this episode, a lot going on even though a lot of it isn't necessarily characterization.  This episode is heavily focused around the creation of NERV and the backstory of its various employees.  It's sheds new light on a lot of events and changes the way we look at things.  It also reveals a lot of previously unknown things about a lot of characters.  It's not really a huge episode, though some big stuff does happen, but it's important in building up these characters going into the finale.  It's like all the pieces are starting to fall into place and a clearer picture is starting to form, even if it's never completely clear.  It's also sort of an odd followup to the previous episodes in that regard, but I digress.  Episodes 21-24 have Director's Cut versions that change a few things, this review will of course be following those versions.  The tone for this episode is set pretty clearly with it opening on a flashback to the Second Impact.  Whereas before we saw the events that followed it with Misato, here we see this sort of detatched perspective from which it begins and the panic that ensues.  It's nice I like it.  Back in the present, Fuyutsuki has gone missing and Kaji is the prime suspect.  The walls are really starting to close in on him which is something that even he's aware of.  Misato is suspected to have ties with him and gets locked up.  Once again we see another side of her personality where she's very uncomfortable in this dark, enclosed space as a result of her escape from the Second Impact.  We're almost done with this series and still there are things we don't know or understand about these people.  What's really going on is Fuyutsuki has been abducted by SEELE, and is now being interrogated by them regarding Gendo and the S2 powered Unit-01.  SEELE makes it very clear that they are very nervous about Gendo possessing a God in every sense that matters.  It is from this that most of the episode is framed around.  We learn that Fuyutsuki knew Yui and Gendo when they were younger.  Young Gendo is a very different man than he is today.  He's a lot more energetic, brash, and oddly caring.  This is a side of Gendo we've yet to see, which confirms what both Kaji and Shinji's inner psyche have said about him, that Shinji himself doesn't truly understand Gendo.  But even younger Gendo has a sinister aura about him, which Fuyutsuki himself notes.  This is very quickly confirmed when it's revealed that SEELE started the Second Impact on purpose as part of an experiment, and Gendo knew about it.  We've seen Fuyutsuki be nothing but loyal up to this point, but here in the past we see him being very distrustful of Gendo and SEELE and rightfully so.  We get our first glimpse of Adam proper during the Second Impact, and he bears a disturbing resemblance to the Angels of course.  We learn a lot of other stuff about the Second Impact too, like the existence of a Second Geofront at the South Pole alongside Adam.  Why then is there another Geofront in Japan?  A question left unanswered here.  Fuyutsuki in the past is on a quest for the truth.  He knows that SEELE and Gendo were behind the Second Impact, he knows that they lied, and he knows that they're up to more evil shit too.  His quest for the truth mirrors Kaji's own quest for the truth going on in present day, though they'll have vastly different outcomes.  Gendo doesn't even deny that they're doing some sinister shit.  In fact he just straight up takes him down to the basement and shows him all the fucking evil shit they're doing.  Fuyutsuki doesn't seem thrilled about what he's learned by any means, but we don't really know what happens next here.  We know this is where Fuyutsuki starts working for SEELE, but what exactly changed his mind?  The mere existence of the Evangelions couldn't have done it so why did he just up and abandon this righteous anger he had towards SEELE?  I think the real answer is because of Yui.  They're shown to have had a connection, he clearly has feelings towards her.  There's more on this later.  During this bit we also see Ritsuko's mom, Naoko, for the first time.  We also see a young Ritsuko and immediately notice something different about her.  Both her and her mother have dark hair, and yet we know that the present Ritsuko has blonde hair.  It's a very subtle thing, but it indicates to us the divide that will eventually form between them, as Ritsuko elects to dye her hair to distance herself from her mother.  We get some bits with Ritsuko and Misato in college, what's really important here though is the change in Misato from when we saw her during the Second Impact bits.  Following the Second Impact she just didn't talk at here, but by the time we see her in college she's her usual, energetic, talkative self, as Ritsuko points out.  That's not all though since Misato also goes on a week long se binge with Kaji.  This is a sort of unseen side of her, we know that she's a very carnal sort of woman but her actions there seem a bit extreme.  Ritsuko and her mom maintain contact, they talk to each other regularly even though Ritsuko's feelings towards her aren't all that warm.  Then we get maybe one of the most important parts of the episode, there's another bit that's pretty important too.  Fuyutsuki is talking to Yui, specifically about SEELE's goals.  He makes it abundantly clear that he's behind her, not them.  They're both very worried about the possibility of a Third Impact, but Yui reassures him everything will be fine.  There's a sort of ambiguity about Yui's character that I like.  When she goes to do the experiment with Unit-01 and subsequently mysteriously vanishes, you're left wondering what exactly her motives were.  Was it intentional?  That's left open to interpretation.  We never see her death but it's made clear that this is where she dies, with Gendo, Fuyutsuki, and little Shinji watching the entire thing.  Yui makes is pretty clear though that regardless of her intentions, she did what she did for Shinji, that she truly loved him.  It's ironic that it's this event that sets Gendo down the path he does.  Everything he does from this point on is completely against Yui's wishes.  He virtually abandons Shinji and marches steadily down the path of Instrumentality and by extension, the Third Impact Yui never wanted to happen.  This sort of changes our perspective on Gendo's behavior.  He's a fucking dick sure, but the reason he's a fucking dick is because he's grieving and can't deal with the loss of his wife.  Of course, he resorts to objectively evil things in the process though.  While not necessarily evil, he's having an affair with Naoko.  It's a depressing situation all around.  She knows he's using her and she doesn't care, and he is using her because well, he uses everyone.  But now things start to get a lot worse with another big, big revelation regarding Rei.  We see young Rei and Naoko's mom notices that she looks a lot like Yui.  I believe this is the first time it's pointed out in the series actually.  She doesn't know anything about her, nor can she uncover the truth.  The recurring failure in finding the truth seems to be a recurring thing in this episode.  Fuyutsuki finds the truth but ultimately accepts it and has to live with it.  Naoko never finds the truth and it quickly stops mattering because of what she does next.  Then there's Kaji's mission to find the "truth", about what is always vauge.  But back to Naoko, little Rei says some real fucking mean shit to her, but as it turns out she's just repeating what Gendo said oopsie whoopsie.  We get a real demonstration of Rei's complete lack of emotional awareness at this stage in her life.  As a child she's even more clueless than she is now, she'd never say that shit again.  Of course Naoko is completely unstable, having tied virtually her entire self-worth and value to Gendo as we've seen in this episode, so she strangles Rei to death and kills herself.  And this is where the fucking almonds go into activation overdrive.  Rei's continued references to being replaceable aren't metaphorical necessarily.  She doesn't see herself as interchangeable with any other pilot, she herself is literally replaceable.  It's not outright stated but it should be incredibly obvious to first time viewers that she's a clone.  Most of the episode is over at this point.  Kaji shows up and frees the captive Fuyutsuki.  Fuyutsuki questions his reasons, Kaji says he's gotta protect his own interests, though how doing this ties into that I'm not sure.  Kaji is also doing it to get closer to himself.  Back to existentialism, the choices you make and how you react to them ultimately reflect who you are.  I suppose that's what he's really talking about here.  But finally, he's doing it to try and find the truth.  Does he find whatever truth he's looking for?  I guess we'll never really know.  The next time we see him is the last time, as he's shot and killed by an unseen gunman.  He doesn't fight it, he knows what's coming, and he accepts it.  A very noble end, I suppose, and ultimately fitting for his character even though he's not a particularly noble person in his actions.  His sense of nobility comes from his words more than anything.  Misato doesn't learn of Kaji's death directly, rather inferring it from the answering machine, and breaks down.  It's a pretty rough moment made worse by Shinji.  His actions, or rather his complete inaction here is frustrating, but it's important.  He doesn't go to comfort Misato, he thinks there's nothing he can do, but is he right?  Irrelevant, this needs to happen to him because it speaks to how previous events, especially being trapped inside Unit-01 for an entire month, have now affected his personality and his character.  Shinji was a very caring person in the past, but now right here he doesn't know what to say or what to do.  His self-doubt is eating him alive, and that's very important going into these final episodes.
48
49Ep22: I was trying to think of a funny grenade joke because of the previous ones in the Asuka episodes but I don't got much.  I guess this episode is like shoving a grenade in her fucking head because that's pretty much what happens.  This isn't really just an Asuka episode, it's THE Asuka episode.  One of the things that's bothered me the most about Eva is that the secondary main characters sort of fall by the wayside after their big arcs and such.  Rei and Asuka don't get as much development as I would've liked them to get over the course of the series.  Asuka herself has remained largely static since her introduction, save for a few moments here and there that haven't really changed the core of her character.  This episode is a huge part of development for her but part of me wonders if it's too little too late.  By this point, a lot of people hate Asuka.  Will that really change learning what they do in this episode?  I guess that depends on the individual.  I'm not a huge Asuka fan, she's a bitch, but like everyone else in the show she's a bitch with severe psychological issues that needs help and isn't getting it.  I don't think I necessarily hate anyone in this show, if anything I just feel pity for them because jesus fucking christ man, how can you not?  So the Director's Cut version of this episode opens with a flashback to before Episode 8 with Asuka and Kaji on the Aircraft Carrier on their way to Japan at night.  It's sort of a nice idea to follow up Kaji's death with him being very calm and reserved here.  Asuka wants to jump in his pants but Kaji is BASED and says no because she's a child and that's pedophilia.  Once again he has words of wisdom, that she needs to wait and grow up for stuff like that.  Man I'm gonna fucking miss this bastard, but we get a flashback to bits of Asuka's past next.  We see her mother's mental breakdown after a "contact experiment" which is presumably the same event that Yui went through in the previous episode.  It can be inferred that Unit-02 probably has Asuka's mother's soul in it.  Regardless, Asuka isn't holding up very well with her mother completely broken like this.  She doesn't even recognize Asuka as her daughter, fawning over a doll instead.  This doll represents a few things, as shown throughout the episode.  Youthfulness, innocence, and of course, Rei.  Asuka isn't holding up too well in the present either, with her Synch rate dropping as a result of her continuted failures and her inability to cope with them.  Even though at least a month has passed since Episode 19, NERV is just now starting to get the damaged Evas fully operational again.  There's more stuff going on too, as Misato learns that NERV is pumping out a bunch of Mass Production Evas.  Misato doesn't trust anything NERV is doing at this point and is immediately suspicious of their purpose here.  Outwardly, she doesn't seem affected by Kaji's death, but there are very brief flashes here and there, like when she snaps at Ritsuko after she makes an innocuous, but snide, comment, throughout the episode that strongly hint that she is not doing well at all.  She's putting up this facade to try and deal with it and while she may be keeping up appearances, her mental state is degrading.  Asuka meanwhile is still completely in the dark over Kaji's death, either that or she's lying to herself.  She's becoming incredibly jealous of the friendship between Rei and Shinji, wanting Shinji to herself for reasons she doesn't understand and hating Rei because she poses a threat towards Shinji's affections.  Her hatred doesn't just extend to them though, she just hates everyone at this point, lashing out at everyone and everything during a scene in the bathroom.  There's nudity here but it doesn't feel sexual, it's meant to present her as vulnerable as she lashes out at these people.  All of this culminates in the infamous ELEVATOR SCENE, the incredibly long autism elevator ride featuring Rei and Asuka.  The intended long take autism sort of works, sort of doesn't.  I think it goes on for a bit too long to really be effective at what it wants to do.  Rei, uncharacteristically, initiates the conversation here.  Her comments are fairly innocuous and are helpful in nature.  She means well, and I think she's picking up on this kindness towards others thing from Shinji, but just like in the last episode her lack of emotional awareness bites her here.  She can't read a room, and therefore can't tell that Asuka is fucking SEETHING over her before she even opens her mouth.  When Asuka accused her of being a puppet though and Rei denies it, it sort of rings hollow when she immediately follows it up with yeah she'd die if ordered to.  It shows that even if Rei has changed, she still has the same problems she always had.  She also flat out says the Evas have souls here as the show throws its entire body against your head to make sure your really really get it.  Asuka has been an angry and violent person since her introduction, but it's really potent here when she hits Rei really for just trying to help.  But anyways, the next angel finally shows up, another orbital fucker.  Unit-00 is supposed to take point but Asuka demands to take point because she simply cannot allow herself to lose or be upstaged again.  Misato makes the strange decision to give into these demands even though it's probably not a good idea.  She sells it as Asuka's final chance to get her shit together, but I don't think she's thinking clearly following Kaji's death.  Unit-01 is still on lockdown on Gendo's orders because of the S2 incident so Shinji can be of no help to anyone.  I love this angel so much, it's an evolution of the first Orbital Angel in Episode 12, now being clever enough to orbit too far to be hurt by conventional weapons.  But it's also the most brilliant angel evolution yet, an angel designed to prey on the emotional instabilities of psychologically damaged teen pilots.  The angels get an A+ for strategy if nothing else.  What ensues is one of the most iconic moments of the series, and one that's still pretty fucking incredible, the HALLELUJAH mindrape.  The fucking beam of light and that chorus are god damnned genius.  Everyone freaking out with the shouting in the control room and all the fucking crazy shit on the monitors with Asuka writhing in pain via Unit-02 even though she's buried her head in her hands in the cockpit.  God it's fucking brilliant.  Nobody can stop it either.  Rei's weapons have no effect at all.  Shinji wants to go out and fight, he demands it in fact, which is further proof of his character development.  He cannot bear to see Asuka in this agony, this same kind of agony he's had to endure numerous times now.  But ultimately his protests are in vain.  It's kind of funny that someone, Fuyutsuki, points out that Shinji of all people is the worst choice to fight the Psychological Mindrape angel, and Shinji still doesn't care.  He's willing to go through another mindbreak just to save Asuka, god damn man that's a far cry from the opening of the series and that's with all the shit he's just been through.  Gendo ultimately says no though, not because he cares about Shinji, but because of Unit-01.  No, he has much bigger plans but we'll table that for now and back to the mindrape sequence.  It's disturbing to say the least.  If you don't have even a little bit of sympathy for Asuka after this then I don't know what to tell you man.  There's a big looping footage sequence that much like the elevator sceene, sort of overstays its welcome.  If they had cut it down a bit it would've been fine but it's like beating a dead horse after awhile.  A lot of it is retreading the same childhood trauma from the beginning of the episode, accentuated by the fact that her mindbroken mother also tried to kill her which is just jesus fuck man.  As a result we see a hatred and rejection of her innocence and her childhood, they're both things she's avoided talking about so far.  She's desperate to shed her innocence and become more adultlike because being treated like a child reminds her too much of her painful childhood.  But this is a self-defeating mindset because she cannot mature by acting the way she does.  She's acting how she thinks an adult acts, not how a mature adult really acts.  We see a lot of doll imagery, symbolically representative of childhood innocence and her rejection of the doll is the rejection of innocence, but note how her hatred of dolls caries over into Rei.  She hates Rei because she is both innocent and mature at the same time.  She holds the emotional innocence from lack of experience, and the emotional maturity from being able to keep feelings in check by virtue of having none.  Asuka hates this because this is what Asuka wants but cannot achieve, of course, Asuka doesn't realize that Rei is like this because of Rei's own issues and that the grass isn't always greener so to speak.  Asuka has these very confused feelings over Shinji in this sequence.  She cannot understand that his lack of action is driven by his lack of understanding in he rown behavior and his own insecurities.  As has been repeated several times over the course of Shinji's arc, Asuka thinks she knows him but she doesn't understand him at all.  And of course, she's in denial about all of this and she has been since the start of the series with all those little moments I've noted.  Back in reality though, Gendo has rejected the offer of Shinji's help and orders Rei to get the Lance of Longinus.  This earns him a lot of flak.  Fuyutsuki objects, and so does Misato, for different reasons.  Misato thinks that contact with Adam, who isn't really Adam but we don't know this yet, will cause another Second Impact.  But then she realizes this is wrong and just like that neither we, nor her, know what the truth is anymore.  If only Kaji was here to hunt for it then get shot to death.  Fuyutsuki's objections though relate to Gendo's intentions.  He means to accelerate the timetable for the Third Impact and Instrumentality, which he thinks is too risky at this time.  Gendo wants an excuse and he's got one.  He ignores the criticism and Rei yeets the Lance into the angel.  The raw power of the Lance is on full display and comes as a surprise as it blows out of the atmosphere, shaking the clouds and obliterating the angel.  It's unlike anything seen so far but it gets stuck on the moon so RIP lol.  The episode ends on Shinji trying to comfort Asuka, but it isn't working at all.  Asuka feels nothing but hatred towards him and Rei after her experiences and Shinji is powerless once again.  It's a really good episode but the rushed production is really starting to show on the continued footage loops and such.
50 
51Ep23: This episode is kind of a mess.  It has some things I like, but most of it is handled very sloppily and messily and could've and should've been done much better.  There's a lot of revelations at the end of the episode that the show has been building up to forever, but the way that they're officially revealed is very rushed and lackluster, and is made more frustrating by revelations that have little to no buildup behind them coming at the same time.  This is a Rei episode that ironically doesn't really focus on Rei all that much compared to the previous Asuka focused episode at least.  It starts out by confirming that the previous episode was alreadyhinting at regarding Misato's mental state, she is barely coping with what's going on.  Asuka isn't coping well either, as she's devolved into a NEET holed up in Hikari's house playing video games all day.  One of Eva's multiple recurring themes is that escapism is not a good thing, and accordingly this is not helping Asuka at all.  Hikari means well and she's trying to help Asuka, who is completely broken and shattered over her inability to win against the angels.  Hikari tries to comfort her and tells her she did her best, but that's not what Asuka wants to hear, nor is it what she needs to hear either.  Meanwhile SEELE, as predicted, is pretty fucking pissed off over Gendo using the Lance of Longinus.  They're chewing him out but they don't get to finish because another angel has shown up.  Once he's gone though, they come to the conclusion he is going to betray them and they need to deal with him quickly.  I like this angel, it's a big fucking ring that turns into a big jump rope.  It combines the mindrape abilities of the previous angel with the corruption and takeover powers of the angels from episodes 13 and 18.  With Unit-01 still on lockdown and Asuka struggling to pilot at all though, it means that Rei in Unit-00 is the next to get fucked.  The angel is breaking into Unit-00's body and Rei's mind, shifting and changing both as it probes deeper.  It's forcing emotions out of her, stuff that she's completely unaware of and incapable of controlling.  She starts crying for the first time in her life as she realizes that she is ultimately lonely.  The abscence of emotions within heris causing this loneliness.  She cannot feel or reach out to others and the only one making an effort to feel or reach out to her is Shinji, the only person she's expressed strong emotions for so far in the show.  Eventually Gendo realizes shit is fucked and Unit-01 needs to launch.  This is the first time we see Unit-01 sortied under the power of the S2 engine and really it's nothing that special.
52 Asuka is pissed that Unit-01 wasn't launched for her, presumably unaware that Shinji was desperately trying to get it launched and was denied this by Gendo.  The angel, fully entrenched in Unit-00 and Rei's mind, immediately beelines for Shinji trying to corrupt him too.  There's a lot more Pseudo-Instrumentality talk here as the angel tries to corrupt Unit-01 and Shinji.  There's a lot to take away from this.  Rei's desire for Shinji, the incestual implications of which neither understand, is manifesting itself through the angel begging him to become one with it.  There's also the angel morphing into the Lilith-Rei that we see later on in End of Evangelion.  I think that this is very strong hint that Lilith, and by extension the Lilith Soul Fragment inside Rei, desires Instrumentality on some level to become united with her offspring.  In ay case, Rei refuses to allow this to happen to Shinji and makes the conscious choice on her own to self-destruct Unit-00 and destroy the angel.  Before she dies, she sees Gendo, and while it may seem as if she's thinking about him in death I think that really what's happening is she's thinking back to some of her first memories and how they relate to Gendo.  In any case, we think Rei is dead, and all of the evidence seems to support it.  Misato is fucking shaking in anger at Ritsuko's implications that there would be nothing left of Rei to recover and it's a real shock she hasn't fucking strangled her to death at this point.  Shinji is in a complete depression over it.  He's sad but cannot cry.  There's a juxtaposition there, between Rei crying over a loneliness she doesn't understand but Shinji being unable to cry over a sorrow he does understand.  It contrasts the raw emotion vs depression that the two of them were feeling in the moment.  Misato is barely holding together as is, and tries to comfort Shinji with implications of intimacy, but he rejects her and seems angry at her for even trying to do so.  Misato has no idea what to do.  She's left craving intimacy and emotional closness to fill the void of Kaji's death but cannot substitute it with Shinji on any level, leading to her own isolation and fragile mental state.  She understands that Shinji has problems growing emotionally intimate with others, but what she doesn't understand is how to solve them, and neither does Shinji.  But as it turns out, Rei is alive!  Or is she?  Something is very, very off.  Rei was definitely dead, and this Rei isn't right.  Her memories are confused and muddled.  She makes vague allusions to being a "third one".  By an astute viewers count, that would certainly add up with the two Rei deaths we've seen in the series so far.  There's a very interesting scene where she goes home and starts crying again after seeing and failing to break Gendo's glasses.  I feel that the mere act of seeing the glasses, and being reminded of her relationship with Gendo and how he's treated her vs. Shinji, in addition to the loneliness being provoked by growing closer to Shinji and the confused flow of her memories, is ultimately what causes this sadness here.  Now we start to get a lot of buildup towards the climax of this episode where we're hit with a million reveals at once.  Ritsuko is sent to be humiliated and degraded in front of SEELE in order to get himself and Rei III off the hook.  The pilots are placed on lockdown, but Ritsuko, enraged by Gendo's actions, calls up Shinji to take him down to the bowels of NERV.  But then it's revealed that as it turns out, Kaji did find the truth he was looking for, or at least a part of it, and now it's in Misato's possession.  Misato converges on Ritsuko and Shinji and what follows is a sort of clunky exposition dump.  In the past, I feel the show has actually handled its exposition very well.  We've had whole episodes throwing massive amounts of information at us, but it's usually spread out throughout the episode so that there's time to focus on each event instead of overwhelming the viewer and failing to convey the information accurately, which is what ultimately happens here.  It should work a lot better than it does, especially since most of the information being divulged here has already been built up over the show and is pretty much all but confirmed at this point.  Basically yep, Rei is a clone, though it's not stated outright that she's Yui's clone yet, Rei clones are the basis of the Dummy Plug system, the Evas have souls, and all of this comes from Adam(Lilith) except for the Evas, which come from Adam(Adam), except Unit-01, which comes from Adam(Lilith) and none of this is really explained and it's just a god damn mess.  It's kept so vauge and it doesn't give enough attention or explanation to anything so even though we know all this information already it's reveal is botched pretty hard.  It's made wose by two things.  First the nudity details on the Rei clones are more detailed with nipples for virutally no reason except for THE MASTER ANNO being a Hebephile.  And secondly, it's also revealed that Ritsuko was having an affair with Gendo, but this is handled really fucking shittily.  There's no buildup towards it at all, there's not even really any hints at it or foreshadowing.  It's a left field reveal that needed buildup and got none and feels cheap as a result.  In any case, Ritsuko uses Gendo choosing Rei over her to genocide the Rei clones and that's that.
53 
54As mentioned in this episode, there's one final angel left as prophecised in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it's sure to be the strongest of them all.
55 
56Ep24: The final episode before the very controversial finale.  Like the entire stretch of 21-24, it meets a lot of expectations, gives a lot of satisfaction, but falters on a lot of levels too.  These episodes are so god damn messy and so god damn sloppy but there's so much good shit here too.  It frustrates me immensely that we will never get a truly polished version of these episodes that make sense and follow Anno's confused and unfocused vision at the same time and instead we get the gay Rebuilds that just fuck everything.  This episode is basically one final kick in the balls for everyone before going into the finale.  Everyone is just getting fucked left and right.  The entire show just feels miserable and depressing, largely because everyone is miserable and depressed as a result of the psychological cock and ball torture taking place.  Truth be told, the more depressing the show gets the more draining it is to watch and write about it.  It just all feels so futile knowing that this ends in the worst way possible for everyone involved and all they had to do was just do a few things differently.  But I digress.  This episode starts out with a moment that sort of feels like it would've been better suited for Episode 22, a surrealist, abstract flashback in which Asuka witnesses her mother's suicide.  Like this feels like it should've been a crucial piece of the puzzle in that episode but it's here instead and that just feels off.  To use another Asuka grenade analogy, it's like a grenade that's gone off and derailed the train of pacing that's been all over the god damn place throughout this show.  Sometimes you get really tight shit like 1-6 and 15-20, and then you get shit like 7-13 and 21-24 that's just aurgh.  But whatever, Asuka is basically completely gone mentally at this point.  She's more detatched from things than Rei.  She's naked in a bathtub but given the tone of the preceeding scene and even the tone of this one in this house completely wrecked from Unit-00's suicide it just feels dirty and vulnerable more than anything.  It's just fucking depressing.  There's also this bit where she yells at Shinji over Kaji's death but it feels too short to have the needed effect.  Was this an addition in the Director's Cut?  idk, whatever we've got a lot of shit to cover let's get going.  Lots of people in lots of different places.  Gendo is pissed at Ritsuko for the events of the last episode and has her locked up.  She is lashing out at him over being humiliated and he doesn't care.  Ritsuko, like everyone else in his life, is a tool to be used and thrown away. Shinji is putting two and two together that Rei is a Yui clone.  This leads to a moment where he is reflecting on how emotionally empty and distant he feels from everyone, and he is.  Misato is dealing with so much shit and doesn't know how to reach him, Asuka is basically fucking gone, he can't even bring himself to talk to Rei after what he's found out, and all of his school friends are gone.  It's a huge mistake to do this bit offscreen though.  Toji and Kensuke stop existing after Episode 19 and that's a big fucking mistake given everything they've been involved in.  They don't even get a goodbye, what the fuck?  Hikari is gone too leaving Asuka's NEET status with her confused too.  Really dumb they didn't get anything.  And as Shinji is at one of his emotional lowpoints, if not his lowest emotional point so far, he meets Kaworu, brought in to pilot Unit-02 since Asuka cannot.  He has this very mysterious aura around him, much like when we first met Rei, and intentionally so due to the similarities between them.  He makes vague allusions to the civilization of the Lilim, something we've never heard so far but clearly refers to humanity.  He also starts right away with the gay shit of course.  I will complain about this later don't worry.  Things become even more suspicious when it's revealed that his records are wiped like Rei, his birthday is the same day as the Second Impact, and he has incredible Synch Rates with Unit-02.  None of this is particularly sublte on SEELE or his part, good work fellas.  The control room dude with the glasses helps Misato uncover all of this and a bunch of other secret shit, not just in this episode but in a few previous ones as well.  It's a nice little pairing that expands on his personality a bit.  Rei and Kaworu have a few encounters throughout this episode, and he notes the similarities between the two of them.  They are both angels given human form, in vastly different ways.  Kaworu is born from the soul of Adam, yet inhabits a Lilim-like form, not the real thing because that would cause Third Impact, would it not?  That's never really explained.  Rei is born from the soul of Lilith, and inhabits te body of Yui.  Two different cases, yet many similarities.  Kaworu possesses a natural control over the Evas, born from Adam, from him, just as Rei possessed a natural affinity with Unit-01 since it's born from Lilith.  His words, alongside the revelations of the past episode, lead to Rei questioning her own existence, which is vital going into EoE.  Of course, Kaworu serves a major role in everything in this episode, and his advances towards Shinji are important for both characters, but I reject that it's a meaningful relationship in any sense of the word.  The past two episodes have been mind-probing to better understand humans, and Kaworu is no exception, he's just going about it differently.  When you think about it, he's the perfect angel, he has all the intelligence, willpower, and cunning of a human, can get inside people's heads with ease, and infiltrate NERV perfectly.  It's no surprise that he ends up being the most successful angel accordingly.  It's brilliant that after becoming so increasingly foreign, abstract, and strange, the final angel is simply human, the most foreign, abstract, and strange thing there is even if we don't realize it.  But as human as he is, Kaworu is still an angel nonetheless.  He understand humanity to a point.  He talks about all of these things, and he's right about all of them, but his actions betray his words.  He's telling Shinji all of the things he wants to hear, and is then presenting a solution to them all in the form of himself.  He is showing this extreme unconditional kindness to Shinji that doesn't exist in the real world.  Real world relationships are messy and complicated as everyone brings their respective baggage into things and inevitably hurts the other, but that is how they work, it's an essential part of the human experience that we learn to love both in spite of, and because of this.  That is what this show is all about, among other things, it's about learning to recognize and accept this as a vital part of life.  This is something that even Kaworu himself realizes and tells Shinji, but he does not do it to offer him insight, but rather to lure him away from the pain he would inevitably feel from it and towards himself.  He knows the pain that humans feel in their hearts, but doesn't understand that that same pain is what fundamentally makes us human. It's not about what we're made of physically, in this case Adam or Lilith, it's about what we're made of psychologically, the experiences, the love, and the pain, that makes us human.  And Kaworu cannot understand this, because he isn't human, and that is why he manipulates Shinji in this fashion.  And of course, Shinji falls for it hook, line, and sinker, because Kaworu represents an escape from having to deal with any of that pain, it's the relationship, the love he craves with none of the baggage he fears and it's being presented at a time when he is at THE LOWEST OF THE LOW.  It's not love, not true love, it's Kaworu and Shinji both using each other to get what they want.  So back to the rest of the episode, Gendo has implanted the Adam Embryo from much earlier in the series into his hand and is in full "FUCK NIGGERS AND FUCK THE JANNIES" mode against SEELE.  SEELE is also in that same mode against Gendo, and the Director's Cut at least reveals that Kaworu is part of their plans against him.  Kaworu circles back to the continued discussion over creation and reveals just how little he knows of humanity.  He speaks of the futility of their creation, how they are incapable of creation from nothing.  This reveals how little he really understands of humanity, how arrogant he really is even though he never really seems like it.  We get a lot of lore revolving around Adam and Lilith from this conversation.  Gendo seeks to create from nothing, which concerns Kaworu.  Welearn that Lilith and the Black Moon created humanity, Adam and the White Moon created the angels.  This builds upon a few of the things implied back in Episode 21.  If they discovered a Geofront alongside Adam, and another Geofront in Japan where Lilith just've been, then the Geofront must be Lilith's black moon, and Adam's "Geofront" must've been the white moon.  It is here that we also learn that Kaworu carries Adam's soul within him, and from his comments it can be inferred that Rei therefore carries Lilith's soul, or at least a fragment of it, but it's not really explained all that well.  Misato, knowing that some shit is up with Kaworu is spying on him, but it doesn't get very far since Kaworu hijacks Unit 02 to go raid the basement and make contact with Adam.  This is a great fucking sequence.  You've got Ode to Joy blaring in the background as everyone loses their shit in the control room and Unit-01 races to descend and battle Unit-02 to stop Kaworu.  Interestingly, even though SEELE intends to fuck with Gendo through Kaworu, they know very well that Unit-01 will prevail.  From start to finish this whole climax feels very apocalyptic in nature, with the music and the visuals and the general chaos and panic of it all as everyone realizes they are completely and totally fucked.  Shinji cannot handle the revelations presented here.  Kaworu, the only person to show him the unconditional love and kindness he so craves has betrayed him.  How can he even react to this?  Imagine the doubts running through his mind.  Was Kaworu even genuine?  How could he fall for it?  There's no time to even think about it as he gets in brutal fight with Unit-02.  It's pretty simple, not real flashy, but I like it.  Kaworu is generating his own AT fields and reveals that it's the power of the soul, of the heart, that generates them and keeps all living beings separate from each other.  No sooner than he does this then Rei shows up to generate her own AT Field to help Shinji.  Very telling of her character that in spite of all this self doubt she still cares enough for Shinji to do this.  After all of this though they all fail.  Shinji can't stop Kaworu in time and he reaches Adam.  Misato is ready to give the self-destruct order and if you didn't know any better, you'd think this was probably the end.  But it isn't, as Kaworu realizes he's been duped, lied to, and so has the viewer.  It isn't Adam in the basement, it's Lilith, and Lilith is pointless to him.  Shinji finally grabs him and he's got him right where he wants him for the kill.  Kaworu waxes philosophical, claiming it's better for humanity to live on now, that they deserve it and appealing to Shinji's emotions and their brief relationship together.  Does he really mean it?  Given that just a few seconds ago he was planning on wiping out all human life, I really really doubt it.  A lot of his character is shrouded in so much mystery.  I had to give a very condensed version of things here. Truth be told, even I'm not sure in my analysis, but it doesn't matter because his death is an inevitability.  Shinji can't do it.  They hold for a very long time on Unit-01 to really hammer this home.  Like a lot of the other long shots so far, they kind of overdo it and it diminishes the effects it's supposed to have.  The death itself is done very well though, along with the immediate cut to washing the blood off of Unit-01.  Shinji is very guilty, he cannot come to terms with what he's done.  It's a very similar situation to Episode 18. He doesn't want to kill other human beings.  Kaworu was an angel, not a human, and yet to Shinji at least, he was human in every way that counted.  He was an idealized human, the best at everything, the best of everything.  He was everything Shinji wants and everything he wants to be.  Misato tries to comfort him, but there's nothing she can say or do at all to help in this kind of situation, especially when she's barely coping with the grief of Kaji.          
57 
58So that's it.  No more angels left.  Not many hurdles left.  Just the series finale then End of Evangelion.
59
60Ep25: Christ where to fucking start with this one.  The final two episodes of Evangelion are often criticized for being incomprehensible, completely dropping the narrative, and feeling very very rushed.  All of this is true, to a point.  I get what Anno was going for here and I like it, but where he fucks up the most I think is just in the sheer incomprehensibility.  Most of this is going to go over a first time viewer's head without seeing EoE and knowing what any of the shit they're talking about is.  Even knowing what happens in EoE and what all of this shit means it's still a bit of a mess.  The rushed production schedule is really starting to show as it's pretty clear that not a lot of work went into this particular episode.  I wouldn't call it bad, but it's just very obvious that it was rushed.  There's a lot of footage loops that start to overstay their welcome very quickly as in the past, along with some recycled footage used differently.  As I was saying, there's almost a complete lack of narrative ties to the actual story that was going on, and what we do get is very vauge and impossible to understand without having seen EoE.  Virtually the entire episode is comprised of the same sort of hallucinogenic surrealist sequences that Episodes 16 and 20 had a lot of, and I liked that stuff there but the problem is that there it had narrative grounding.  You could connect what was going on in those sequences to what was going on the background narrative of the episode and the show as a whole.  Here you really can't and that is where the TV finale falls apart.  So we open about where we'd expect to, on Shinji's extreme guilt and self loathing over having killed Kaworu.  There's this very deep conflict within him as various aspects of this personality contradict themselves over the events of the previous episode.  He refuses to kill other human beings, yet he killed Kaworu.  Yet Kaworu wasn't human, he was an angel.  Kaworu wanted to destroy all of humanity just like the other angels and Shinji cannot stand by and watch that happen.  He needs to protect humanity because it's within his nature.  But Kaworu is also the only one to show Shinji the unconditional human kindness and love that he so craves.  He wants to believe Kaworu is human because he represents the idealized human that Shinji wants and wants to be, but to acknowledge Kaworu as human would be to acknowledge that he killed a human, which contradicts the other part of his personality.  It causes this great internal turmoil within him.  As a result of this turmoil over Kaworu we see his inability to grasp and come to terms with the possibility of being hated and this intense need to be loved, especially in the wake of Kaworu's death, that's going unfulfilled because it's an unrealistically extreme desire that simply cannot be filled no matter how much he desires it.  His pain is isolating him from others in this strange dreamlike landscape he finds himself inhabiting, and indeed as we find out later, he is isolating himself from others to block out the pain.  All of this conflict over his motives, needs, and desires stemming from Kaworu leads to a debate with himself over his motives for piloting the Eva.  We've seen him use multiple reasons throughout the entire show.  Firstly because he was ordered to, then because he desired the praise of others, then because he wanted to help humanity, but as this mental projection of Asuka points out, or is it the real her?, all of these reasons still stem from selfishness in some way.  His desire to gain love by following orders, his struggle for affection via praise, his need to protect others and gain their affections that way, it's all manifesting itself through his motivations for piloting.  But then Rei shows up and simultaneously whips and nae naes on Asuka by pointing out that she literally does the same thing and her entire motivation behind piloting is selfish.  We then get a very long section of Rei questioning her own existence and struggling to do so.  She debates the falseness of her soul and her body, how her soul isn't truly hers since it's Liliths, and how her body isn't really hers since it's Yui's.  They're two seperate parts being forced together to create her, an artifical being, a fake being.  Despite this, she rejects that she is fake and asserts that because of her experiences with others, she has become her own person with her own personality and her own emotions.  Given what we have seen throughout the series, this is hard to deny.  But there's still so much she doesn't understand, especially about herself.  She can barely comprehend her own loneliness, nor can she understand her own fears over lack of existence.  She, or at least the Lilith parts of her, want to return to nonexistence, outside of form, back for a formless existence.  She can't do it though, there's something holding her back, and it's that human emotion of fear.  A fear of being erased from the hearts and minds of the people she now cares about, as we've seen so far, that person is Shinji.  This event no longer seems unavoidable though, it's going to happen though we don't really know why yet.  It's after this point that the show tries to start to string together a very loose narrative but it isn't framed well enough to have the effect it wants.  Gendo tells Rei that she exists for one reason today, and according to title cards, this is where Instrumentality starts.  As we learn in EoE, Rei is vital for Gendo's vision of Instrumentality, but watching the show we still don't truly comprehend what SEELE and Gendo's versions of Instrumentality are.  We have vague notions of both and we know that they have completely different visions of implementing it, but that's not really enough to go on.  We can make some inferrences though, SEELE wants to become Gods and evolve humanity, Gendo wants to be reunited with Yui.  We get a lot of talk about Instrumentality that having seen EoE makes sense but without it is much more muddled.  Shinji describes his body feeling like it's melting away and expanding outward, this draws some obvious connections to him turning to LCL in Episode 20, and how everyone else is turning to LCL during the Third Impact.  Gendo practically addresses the viewer directly, explaining that Instrumentality isn't a destruction and it's not really a return to nothingness either.  It's a return to the original state of things, a return to Mother, in this case, the Primordial LCL soup and Lilith.  We get shots of both Ritsuko and Misato shot dead and without EoE are left to only grasp at how this could've happened.  This leads into the two characters, still alive, and now arguing over Instrumentality.  Ritsuko finally gives us a slightly more concrete explanation of things though it's still kinda confusing.  It's souls being freed from the body, joining together in a single existence, each soul filling the weaknesses in the other, the voids that exist in our souls.  We seek to fill these voids through various means in life, often seeking love, but Instrumentality rejects that paradigm, the voids, our weaknesses, are filled with the strengths of others directly.  Misato reacts in horror and anger, outraged that Ritsuko would suggest such things and angered that such a thing would ever happen.  Ritsuko points out that even Misato feels these voids in her soul, and even though Misato denies this, we as a viewer who have seen her struggles throughout the show know that this is a denial.  She is lying to herself, she does not want to acknowledge her own pain.  Once again she is running away from the problem, just like Shinji does with his own.  The sequences that follow, exploring Misato's mind, confirm this even further.  There's more discussion on major existentialist themes.  A mental projection of Shinji, and the real Shinji? discuss this.  We explore ourselves through others to determine who we are.  How we act in the face of others, the choices we make even in situations we're forced into, are what determines who we are.  We all have these mental images that we build up of each other, that we judge against the real person and also our perceptions of ourselves in an attempt to determine who the other is and who we are.  This isn't the first time we've dived into Misato's psyche but back into the abyss I suppose.  This whole outwardly pristine nature, this whole professional attitude we've seen her put on throughout the show is a front, or at least it's at odds with her inner desires.  There's this inner rebellion towards being good that she goes through, wanting to rebel against the goodness she has to pretend to put on.  And this manifests itself in several aspects of her private life, her slobbiness as well as in her sex life.  She's horrified to show Shinji, or is it the mental projection?, the carnal side of her.  We see both the good and the ugly parts of her fighting over what's right.  She's still beholden to that same attitude of pretending to be good from her childhood, she doesn't want Shinji to see this bad side of her even though it is a fundamental part of her all the same.  But her psyche argues that really she does want Shinji to see it, that doing so is a rebellion against the good parts of her and that is why she's doing these things afterall.  The psyche says she wants Shinji to see all sides of her because she loves him and needs to show him all of herself accordingly.  The biggest question that surrounds this entire episode is who exactly is thinking, who exactly is talking, who exactly is suggesting these things?  It seems like such a simple question to answer, but it's made infinitely more complicated by the nature of Instrumentality and the blending of everyone's souls and minds together into a single existence.  Is that really Shinji talking to her?  Is it a mental projection of Shinji?  Is it both?  There's no way to tell, it could go either way.  Does it even matter though?  If everyone's minds and souls are one then aren't the mental images held of individuals existing alongside those same individuals?  Trying to understand this shit is enough to drive anyone mad.  Misato's dissection continues as we get into how she uses men and sexual relationships as a means of escapism from her actual life and the struggles and pains she has to deal with.  We know this is true, we've seen it, and yet she tries her damndest to deny it, especially when confronted with the possibility she didn't really love Kaji.  I think she did though, based largely on what we see here in this sequence.  If her reasoning for showing every side of herself to Shinji, good and bad, is that she loves him, then she must've loved Kaji as well since she showed him every side of herself.  We got to Asuka next, not quite as long or in depth as some of the other shit being covered here.  We're retreading her parental issues, her Stepmother and Father seeming completely detached from her issues, as if they can't, or don't, want to put in the effort to understand, and likewise Asuka isn't really putting in any effort due to her own trauma.  To a degree, it parallels the relationship we've seen in Shinji and Gendo so far.  Asuka is struggling with this crippling fear of loneliness and abandonment caused by her mother's mental breakdown and subsequent suicide.  If it wasn't apparent already, the show kind of takes the time to beat you with the fact that everyone is really dealing with the same fundamental problems, depression, abandonment, and loneliness, just manifesting themselves in vastly different forms.  Nobody can really help anyone else because they're so wrapped up in their own problems and their own perspectives that they can't understand anyone else, even though they're suffering from the same problems.  We're left with this sort of reveal at the end of the episode where everyone, or their mental projections again it's hard to tell or know the difference, tells Shinji that he has isolated himself in a world of death and destruction.  He makes all the decisions, he is closed off from everyone, but this means he is isolated from the pain.  He has rejected the world, he has rejected reality, and has seemingly set up this bubble from which he can avoid being hurt.  It's an interesting note to leave off on to say the least, especially with all the previous talk of how Instrumentality involves union and becoming one in a single existence.  
61 
62Ep26: Fucking christ what a mess.  If Episode 25 was a clusterfuck then Episoe 26 is a clusterfuck inside a clusterfuck inside an asshole alongside a grenade that's exploding.  Episode 26 was the official finale of the show, one that's been praised and ridiculed to hell and back, the origin of several death threads and the infamous CONGRATULATIONS! scene.  It's not a great ending, it's kinda shitty, I like the thematic stuff going on, but much like in the previous episode, a lot of the pyschological and philosophical stuff gets really muddled and confused by the surrealist presentation.  It undermines what the show is trying to do and leaves viewers even more frustrated.  The production schedule for this one is absolutely fucked and it really shows.  You've got rough sketches, black and white stock photos, reused footage, all being used here to try an piece together this psychological exploration of Shinji.  Some of it works, most of it doesn't and it ends up feeling distracted and rushed more than anything, which I guess it was.  Right away the episode basically gives you a huge fuck you with this title card that's going on about Instrumentality and souls and shit but THERE IS FAR TOO LITTLE TIME TO MAKE MENTION OF IT ALL.  Seriously fuck off fucking hell setting up all this shit then lol.  God this show is infuriating sometimes, it really is.  So instead they're focusing on Shinji's soul, his journey.  And that's fine I guess, he's the main character, he's the focus of the show, the finale should fous heavily on him, but it still feels like everyone else's journey is incomplete.  What was the point of setting up all the other characters in the previous episode to push them aside here?  We get too little observation of them, they don't really get a conclusion to their psychological arcs, it doesn't work.  So into Shinji's mind we go, starting with the fears.  We see his fears as being similar to those of his peers expressed in the previous episode.  He's afraid of no longer existing like Rei, of being unwanted like Asuka, and this is underscored by them being present here.  Misato lectures him, telling him that he is running away from these fears, but Shinji very angrily notes her hypocrisy in her accusation.  What should be a powerful, frustrating moment here is further confused by the who and what of Instrumentality going on here that complicates whether he's talking to the real versions of these characters, his mental image of them, or some combination of the two existing at the same time.  Misato agrees with him though, they are the same.  And that is the point of this scene, to highlight what I was talking about at the end of the last episode, that all of these characters are fundamentally the same in their problems and their failed solutions to them.  This is why everyone around Shinji here sees Instrumentality as a good thing.  There is only one of you as an individual, this is where our loneliness comes from, our inability to find another one of ourselves.  Under Instrumentality our weaknesses go away as they become one, filling the weaknesses in each other and the void of loneliness by a united existence.  As the show notes, there is a need for one another.  Humans are inherently social, we need each other to survive.  Instrumentality is the ultimate realization of this, all of the socialization we need to fill the pain of loneliness but with none of the pain that comes with growing close to others and showing your true self to them.  But this is dishonest, this is a mistake, but the show never really goes into that here at least.  Shinji is presented with a series of questions from Rei that he struggles to find the answer to, why he's alive, what he's living for, and Shinji cannot find an answer to them.  Anything he thought he knew for certain has been shattered by the events of the previous episode.  Meanwhile Asuka and Misato answer handily in the form of herself and pleasure respectively.  But the inclusion of their answers raises so many questions that go unanswered.  Who's really in control here if they're being asked the same questions and answering?  Perhaps it's Shinji's perceptions of them giving an answer?  But it's so god damned confused fuck.  Shinji and whatever the hell form of Misato this is supposed to be struggle to understand what exactly is wrong with running away.  It's Shinji that realizes that it's wrong, it hurts, it hurts more than facing reality and it hurts others as well.  Shinji again demonstrates that he cares about others even if it's just on some superficial level, but he also demonstrates his own lack of understanding regarding others here.  He is incapable of understanding that they go through pain too, just as much, or more than he does.  We've seen this foreshadowed and hinted at a few times earlier in the show.  He said or thought that Asuka and Rei hadn't gone through the same experiences he had.  He showed it to Kaji when they were talking about Gendo.  And we see it again a final time when he didn't go to comfort Misato after Kaji's death.  For someone who seemingly cares about people, again and again we see that Shinji doesn't understand their emotions too.  He's a very self centered person, though not outwardly so.  But he's filled with self hatred too.  This inability to understand the emotional viewpoints of others means that Shinji projects his own feelings onto them.  His hatred of himself manifests itself as the view that everyone must also hate him.  This is why he's so desperate to gain the approval and love of others, since he doesn't understand that they don't really hate him as much as he hates himself.  They may grow frustrated with him, they may grow angry with him, but this is a natural part of any relationship with anyone.  They all have their ups and downs and it's about continuing in spite of that.  His attempts to gain approval from piloting vary in their outward cause, but the same underlying need for approval in some form still exists, firstly in obeying orders to pilot to please anyone, then piloting to specifically gain Gendo's approval, then piloting to keep the people he cares about safe to gain their approval, it's all the same thing deep down.  Just like Asuka, he's hiding behind the Eva, using it as a tool to escape from his problems rather than finding a real solution to them.  He's going down the same path she is, tied to nothing but his Eva.  He cannot find purpose elsewhere.  His failure to find solace in creative endeavours like Kaji is exhibited when his psyche criticizes him for his lack of initiative in the Cello.  He cannot find worth in others, he cannot find worth in creation, so he's now trying to find worth in piloting.  However, we as an audience know that he can't do that.  Asuka did that and she failed, and Shinji will fail too if he keeps going down that same path.  And yet, Shinji needs to find worth, his entire journey throughout the show is centers around, among other things, his need to find self worth.  The kind Shinji seeks though is unhealthy.  He wants to be worthy enough to never be abandoned again, but such a thing is impossible.  It's an unrealistic and unhealthy worldview that's creating too much pressure on him to be perfect.  As the show points out his efforts are also doomed to failure because he cannot get others to understand and value him until he understands and values himself first.  Notions of a world without others are presented, Shinji is introduced to the idea that true freedom cannot exist, that we are always restricted by something no matter how seemingly insignificant it is.  Our restriction in the world is that we must exist through seeing other people and comparing ourselves to them to find out who we really are, to discover the core of our being.  This is another big existentialist point, present in a lot of other philosophy as well.  One cannot exist if they are truly alone, without any outside contact.  Without any outside contact, you cannot see yourself through the lens of others, this important comparison and reflection cannot take place, and therefore one does not truly exist.  They may exist in the physical sense, but in the philosophical and psychological sense, they are not there.  Much like the Rei clones sitting in the vat in NERV's basement, they are a soulless vessel, just flesh and bones with no true personality.  This is why Rei's character evolution is important, by viewing herself through the lens of others, she is able to develop a personality and an existence that can be called her own.  Now I'm gonna take a break here from all the psychology and philosophy and analysis because the show does the same at this point and I'll get to that in a minute.  I really want to stress what an absolute clusterfuck, an absolute mindfuck, all of this being thrown at the viewer really is.  Episode 25 was really already dense and merciless with this shit throwing it at you without mercy or pause, save for looping footage and extended little moments of quiet reflection.  But here in Episode 26 it's just a constant barrage of confused psychological and philosophical ramblings that are just fucking overload on the viewer.  There's some interesting stuff here sure but fuck me it's Cock and Brain Torture.  It's so jumbled and disjointed even beginning to try and sort through it to write this gave me a fucking stroke.  It doesn't help that the animation is so abstract at this point with all the fucking stock photos and sketches and shit.  But it finally lets up, this just fucking psychological assault ends incredibly suddenly and into this weird goofy Highschool Slice of Life anime sequence.  I actually kinda like this.  It's dumb yeah, but it's pretty funny and it's a welcome relief from the utter fucking chaos that preceeded it.  It's hard to describe just how much of a release it is to go from that to this funny stuff.  But this sequence has an actual purpose beyond that, it's to get Shinji realize that the life he lives is not the only one.  There are more possibilities out there that Shinji need only dedicate himself to.  His self worth doesn't need to be tied to others, it doesn't need to be tied to the Eva, he can find his own path.  By learning to love himself, accept and grow past his flaws, and accept life's ups and downs, he can become a better person.  By accepting the perspectives of others and learning to understand them, he can become a better person both for himself and for him.  The life he lives can be changed.  CONGRATULATIONS!  It's cheesy as hell, it really is.  This resolution feels incredibly rushed and it handled super fucking sloppily.  After the Psychological Cock and Brain torture in 25 and most of this episode, to just have him see this slightly different life and realize that everyone was right and he can change feels like a bit of an asspull.  The Congratulations moment doesn't really feel earned in the sense that it feels like the journey is missing a step from LOWEST OF THE LOW to understanding and changing for the better.  But I have to say, the Congratulations put a smile on my face.  Maybe it's just the silliness of it and how it's been memed to death, but it is nice to see Shinji get a sort of happy ending here, especially because EoE is not a happy ending by any means.  But even this ending has a lot of fucking problems.  The narrative is completely abandoned.  Instrumentality is being implemented and?  Who won?  SEELE or Gendo?  What does any of it really mean?  They explain Instrumentality as a concept but don't go beyond that what the fuck?  Really, the series ending is like fucking yourself in the ass with a cactus.  You'll get some enjoyment out of it but it's just a painful and messy affair that could've been done so much better.
63 
64Well that's it then, just EoE left later tonight.  Truth be told, I'm not sure I want to see it end.  I want more, I want these people to get better without having all of these terrible things happen to them, I want them to solve their problems and get better without the entire world having to end.  I want them to be happy, but alas, it isn't meant to be.
65
66The End of Evangelion: Not sure what to say here.  Not even sure how I really feel here.  End of Evangelion is a really remarkable film. As an ending to the series I'd say it certainly works better than that of the show.  It addresses a lot of the complaints I had about the series finale, but it has its own problems.  The art and animation on display here is incredible.  Nearly every frame in this film is absolute kinograhy in the purest sense.  The visuals are haunting and detailed, the framing is impeccable, it's not just cinematography, it's KINOmatography.  This type of stuff has always been good throughout the show, but it's even better here, especially since they weren't dealing with as much fucked production schedules.  The narrative ties to the psychological  and philosophical exploration going on are much stronger and it serves to actually wrap up the story in addition to exploring Shinji.  Characters that fell by the wayside in the Series Finale get actual conclusions.  The biggest problem still remains from the Series Finale though, and that's the incomprehensibility.  I'd say that the last like, twenty minutes to half hour of this movie are incredibly difficult to understand or even begin to interpret.  It's also a lot less of a "happy ending" when compared to the Series Finale.  It's so unbelieveably bleak and depressing and hopeless it just feels draining to even think about it.  When you really start to get down in the shit and force yourself to walk a mile in these character's shoes and go through the same things they are, and feel the same things they do, it's just a brutal experience.  Where the hell do I even start?  20 minute episodes were already dense enough to take up so many words and this big bastard is 90 minutes long.  Guess I'll just do what I've done so far and start at the beginning which means of course...
67 
68The Comatose Masturbation scene, a perennial favorite of everybody's of course.  It's creepy, and awkward, and sickening, and like, that's the point.  Shinji is completely emotionally broken with everything that's happened over the past several episodes and he has nobody for emotional support.  He is alone, genuinely alone, and really for the first time in the entire show.  So in the depths of this complete emotional isolaton, at the lowest point of his life he does this disgusting, depraved thing.  It's sick, you're supposed to be disgusted by it, you're supposed to hate him for it, much like he hates himself for it.  There's another bit here that sets up the ending and will be very important there, when he begs Asuka to wake up and call him an idiot like she always does.  Really it's important for two things, not just the ending, but also for reinforcing the idea that Shinji doesn't really understand her and only thinks of her in this very muted, archetypal way.  Movie moves pretty fast in setting up what's gonna be the core conflicts from a narrative standpoint.  The fate of NERV is uncertain after Kaworu, the final angel, is now dead.  Kaji found out a lot more truth then we thought since he also seems to have told Misato about the goals of Instrumentality, to force human evolution and ascend past flawed, incomplete beings.  We know from 25+26 that the greater reasoning behind this is the void in our hearts caused by loneliness and our own weaknesses, and that Instrumentality seeks to fill these voids, completing us as beings, or rather, a singular being.  Gendo and SEELE talk for a bit, revealing the crucial information that Unit-01 is born from Lilith, not Adam like other angels.  The importance of this has been mentioned in a few other episode reviews so I won't retread those bits here.  What's very important about this though is that it's going to mean that Unit-01 is involved in Instrumentality somehow.  Gendo repeats his previous views from 25+26 that the death SEELE is planning to cause creates nothing, they tell him to die in response lmao that's not a joke they actually say that absolute madmen.  Gendo and Fuyutsuki talks about how mankind exists because it has the will to live.  It seems like a kinda stupid thought, that mankind lives because it has the will to do so, but when you think about it, it's an interesting observation.  It's the survival instinct, we as a species only exist because we wanted to live hard enough to beat out all the other species.  They also mention how this was Yui's will, inside the Eva.  Yui's motives have always been very vague, as has whether or not she purposefully killed herself to become part of the Eva knowing what SEELE was planning.  It certainly seems convienient that she'd end up becoming a part of the only Eva that's made from Lilith, which SEELE would need as a backup for Instrumentality.  Immediately after they finish talking about Yui we cut to Rei, further reminding us of Rei's origins, which become very important for this film.  Also important here, we see that she's broken Gendo's glasses, something she previously tried to do in Episode 23 before backing down.  On a character level, this represents he complete rejection of Gendo at this point.
69 
70The change between Rei now and Rei from her last real appearance in Episode 24 can only be explained by the events of Episodes 25+26, but then you start to get into this very murky area.  25+26 technically don't happen since this officially surplants them, but at the same time, most of EoE only makes sense with 25+26, and several parts of the Series Finale synchronize to events going on in EoE.  Whether or not the Series Finale still happens, concurrently or otherwise, is left up to the viewer.  Under my interpretation, it must.  Rei's character isn't the only moment where the gaps need to be filled by the Series Finale, we'll get to those when they come.  In the meantime though, Ram Ranch is under siege, under lockdown, as the MAGI computers in all the other NERV branches try to break into the main one.  They fish Ritsuko out of the brig to help them fend off the cyberattack.  We're reminded again that the MAGI carry a piece of her mother in them, and that the third core, Casper, represents Naoko as a woman.  It's all foreshadowing the MAGI's eventual betrayal of Ritsuko, who seems to know exactly where Gendo plans to take things and is none too happy about it.  Unable to take control of the MAGI, SEELE launches an all out assault on NERV via the JSSDF.  As Fuyutsuki says, the real final enemy was man, and it always was.  Even Kaworu took the form of a man.  This all ties into the greater overarching psychological conflicts within the show.  Our greatest enemies are ourselves and our lack of understanding of other individuals, not the nebulous outside forces represented by the angels.
71 
72The battle in the Geofront stuff is fucking great.  I love NERV scrambling to find the pilots and get the Evas launched as the JSSDF starts breaking in, fucking Solid Snaking guards and shit.  It's a slaughter, just a complete, brutal, merciless slaughter.  NERV guys are just getting cut down left and right and they stand zero chance.  Knowing this, Gendo decides it's time for him to start Instrumentality on his terms, not SEELE's, so he goes to get Rei.  Rei is naked for this entire time because Anno is a Hebephile who needs to go to jail.  It isn't even necessary at this point jesus fucking christ man.  Shinji's hiding, but less from the JSSDF and more from everything because he's reached full suicidal depression at this point.  When the JSSDF inevitably does find him, he doesn't even care and is ready to up and die right there.  Then Misato comes running in and kills three dudes like it ain't shit.  It's something we've never seen from her before, largely because there really wasn't any way to showcase it in the past, but fuck if it isn't awesome.  Shinji is completely fucking broken and refusing to pilot the Eva, even to defend NERV and everyone else.  I wouldn't call this character regression so much as just wanting to fucking die.  His character has progressed, just in the complete opposite way that one would expect a character to normally progress.  He's gone past the peak of heroism and is now in a complete downward spiral as a result of his own mistakes and how he's responded to the circumstances he's been forced into.  We also get some great moments with
73Central Dogma under siege and the techs scrambling to try and fend them off here before going back to Shinji and Misato.  Misato gives Shinji and the audience the redpill, that humans are indeed born of Lilith, the reason our genetic material is all the same is because we are virtually the same.  The angels are merely a different path of the same evolution, brought about by Adam rather than Lilith.  It can be reasonably inferred that both are born from LCL, and that it is the prescence of Adam or Lilith and their respective gifts, the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Knowledge, that determines the evolutionary path a race then takes.  This presents all sorts of interesting conundrums.  Firstly of course though, it harkens back to the end of Episode 26 and all of the discussion of limitless possibilities.  But it's also hinting at some deeper stuff here.  The first could sort of be figured out prior to this but never really hit me until this moment, and that is that Angels just also have souls like us.  AT fields come from souls, if angels have AT fields then they must have souls then.  But what kind of soul?  A fragment of Adam's?  Their own?  It's left to interpretation, but if I had to guess it would be fragments of Adam's.  This is why they seek to reunite with Adam, to restore themselves and him.  This is also why all of the angels had to die in order for Instrumentality to work, Adam's soul fragments needed to be released.  The other thing it's hinting at though is a recurring theme throughout Evangelion, but especially in the Series Finale, that fundamentally, we all deal with the same problems in life.  The angels, merely differently evolved humans, are facing the same problems we are with flawed, incomplete souls that are seeking reunification in order to be restored.
74 
75Misato can't get through to Shinji though, and he's still refusing to pilot.  The JSSDF has had just about enough and levels what's left of Tokyo-3 with N2 mines to crack open the Geofront.  The destruction here is beautifully done, I'm going to be repeating stuff like that throughout this but it really can't be said enough.  They outdid themselves with just how visually beautiful this entire film is.  They stick Asuka in Unit-02 then put her in a lake to try and keep the JSSDF from getting to her but it isn't working out and they start dropping mines.  She's in a very similar situation to the brief flashes of her we saw at one point in Episode 25.  She's still having a complete breakdown, made even worse now by the JSSDF trying to kill her.  As she begs not to die we get what's probably the only triumphant moment in the film where her mother's soul in Unit-02 reaches out to her.  It's been sort of kinda implied that Unit-02 had her soul in it, but now we get direct confirmation.  This revelation seems to solve almost all of Asuka's problems as she goes on a bloodthirsty, rage-fueled, killing rampage against the JSSDF alongside her mother.  It's a great fucking scene, the music is fantastic, Unit-02 killing shit left and right looks fantastic, and Asuka seeming truly joyous and happy as she does what she loves feels oddly heartwarming after the emotional and psychological Cock and Ball Torture.  It's a false happiness to be sure, none of the underlying problems she has have been solved, her mother's existence and care in Unit-02 serves as a band-aid solution at best, but still, it's the only "happy" moment in the film.  There's also a big realization from Asuka that the AT fields are more than just fancy forcefields, but rather that they represent her mother's protection.  Seems like a minor revelation but trust me, this is going to be semi-important to understanding some of the crazy shit later.  SEELE is none too happy about the JSSDF getting wiped and decides to send in their Mass Production Evas.  I love these fucking bastards, you can tell so much about them just from their designs and from quick little visual flashes of stuff like the Kaworu Dummy Plugs.  Whereas the other Evas, save for Unit-01, could themselves be seen as neither pure Adam nor Lilith, having been made from Adam with pilots made from Lilith, the MP Evas are pure Adam, made from Adam, and driven by him with the Kaworu Plugs.  The line between Eva and Angel is purposefully blurred.  The MPs themselves are designed to look like classical depictions of angels, wings and all, and behave and fight in a monstrous, angel-like fashion.  The existence of the Kaworu Dummy Plugs further advances that SEELE had Kaworu under lock and key for the right time, but that still raises more questions than it answers.
76 
77Fuyutsuki realizes that the MP Evas mean that SEELE wants to start Instrumentality using them.  The specifics of this, and why the MP Evas are important, are still left vague to the viewer.  I'm fairly certain though that they've mentioned, or heavily implied through other means throughout the show, that the MPs have S2 Engines.  We find this out for certain later, and we also know that S2 Engines are involved in Instrumentality, though why and how will also remain unanswered.  In the meantime, even news of Asuka's recovery can't pick Shinji up.  Perhaps he believes they're doomed no matter what, perhaps he just can't bring himself to care.  In any case, things go from worse to fucked when Misato gets shot trying to get Shinji to Unit-01.  Their final moments together are good, like really good.  She desperately tries to motivate him to get a hold of himself and pilot the Eva, appealing to a lot of the existentialist notions we've been discussing so far, telling him to get over his choices, move on, and learn from them because that is pat of life and the only way to realize one's existence.  It's a great speech as she reaches the apex of her character arc in her final moments.  It's followed by another important moment as she really shows her true self to Shinji, kissing him before pushing him back into the elevator.  This was something also explored in Episode 25, but it's here that it's really truly flesched out and it gives her a much better ending, tragic as it is.  She dies in an ensuing explosion, seeing an apparition of Rei beforehand which is important for other stuff we'll get to it I promise.  Misato's speech doesn't have the full intended impact though, as Shinji breaks down crying over her death.
78 
79Back on the outside, Asuka takes on the MP Evas in what's maybe the best fight sequence in the series.  I'm not sure, I'm still torn between this and the fight in Episode 19 against Zeruel.  There are a lot of similarities between the two.  Unit02 is running on battery power just like Unit-01 was, increasing the tension of the fight.  It's more extreme here with multiple targets to fight.  Both scenes are animated wonderfully, this one even more so.  Both fights are just savage and brutal.  The music throughout the various parts of her rampage are great too.  Asuka is in full blown German holocaust mode screaming that she cannot be defeated as she slaughters her way through the MP Evas.  She's tearing them in half, dismembering them, doing all sorts of just crazy, graphic shit, and it's fucking great to watch.  Shinji makes it to Unit-01 but it's been flooded in bakelite and even if he wanted to, he can't pilot it.  Asuka shouting about her mother's protection over the comms seems to try and spur Shinji to action, but it's still pointless as Unit-01 is still stuck.  While this is all going on, Gendo is finally putting his plans into action.  He's got the Adam Embryo in his hand and naked pedophile Rei down in the basement with Lilith and he plans on merging the three of them.  Ritsuko is down there too and she has much different plans, getting the MAGI to self destruct the base to stop Gendo and SEELE alike from starting Instrumentality.  But Casper, the aspect of the MAGI that represents Naoko as a woman, rejects the command.  Ritsuko believes her mother has betrayed her for Gendo, an interpretation I agree with.  Gendo shoots her, possibly regrettably though Ritsuko doesn't buy it and I'm not sure I do either.  She sees another Rei ghost before she dies.
80 
81Much like the fight against Zeruel, and in spite of Asuka's bloodrage, Unit-02 cannot win in the allotted time.  Nor did it ever have a chance as we quickly discover the defeated MP Evas get back up thanks to their S2 engines.  Surprise, they've also got Lance of Longinus copies and spear Asuka before Unit-02's power runs out.  Asuka regresses into pure, basic instincts to kill even as she bears the wounds of Unit-02's face.  It's sort of odd, given that while we've seen pilots feel their wounds before, but never physically experience them.  Perhaps it's a result of some kind of high Synch Rate type thing. In any case, Unit-02 tries to go berserk as the control room techs look away in horror and despair.  Unit-02 gets speared some more and the MP Evas descend to tear it apart.  For all of the hatred she inspired, I don't think I can say I really hated Asuka, or any character for that matter.  Maybe I said this already idk I can't remember.  They inspire pity more than anything, I just feel bad for them all and wish they could've led better lives free of their problems.  Asuka's final moments are disturbing and horrific, with a generous smattering of gore and body horror as her arm splits in two alongside Unit-02's and the Eva is torn apart.  Hearing that Asuka is in danger finally makes Shinji's pleas heard by Unit-01, who breaks itself out of the bakelite and goes fucking sicko mode, exploding out of the hanger.  The imagery is apocalyptic and destructive and it seems like another big fight is about to happen.  If you actually think this though then you've learned nothing from Eva so far.  Shinji sees Unit-02, torn to pieces, bits dangling everywhere, and screams in horror and despair as the breakdown gets even worse.  This is about the halfway point in the film and we're treated to a credits-sequence set to If I Can't be Yours.  It's a very odd choice to put this here and it sort of breaks up some of the pacing I suppose.  But at the same time I like the song and I'm not going to complain about taking a break between this horrific shit and the mindfuck that comes next because god damn you feel like you need one.
82 
83So the second half of the film is a lot different from the first.  While the first was largely narrative focused, explaining what's going on leading up to Instrumentality and the Third Impact, the Second Half starts to show the effects of those things itself.  There's often a lot of confusing, difficult to understand, never before mentioned concepts and terminology thrown at the viewer.  I feel that Evangelion has handled it's terminological aspects fairly well so far, if not outright explaining things then by giving you enough context and hints to figure it out yourself.  They don't really do a well enough job of the latter option in EoE though, which is in part due to the fact that there's so much new and completely fucking insane shit being thrown at the viewer.  Now to be clear, I'm fine with some things never getting a concrete explantion.  It helps preserve this sense of mystery and this quality that these cosmic beings are sort of beyond the capacity for the human mind to truly comprehend.  The issue is that when understanding these sort of things is vital to understanding what's going on in the film, then it works to its detriment rather than playing to its strengths.  All of this is intersped with a heavy dose of the hallucinogenic psychological sequences as well.  It's simultaneously easier and harder to understand than the Series Finale, which can make it a very frustrating and annoying viewing experience.  The second half begins with showing us the same ending from the first half.  This feels kinda dumb.  Like I would get it if these were, actual episodes, but they aren't.  Even if the film is structured like two seperate episodes, doing this interrupts the pacing and flow of it all.  We go back to Terminal Dogma with Gendo and Rei.  Gendo explains that he is going to acheive Instrumentality through the forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith, joining the two separate, supreme beings together.  Rei is falling apart.  Literally.  Her fucking arm falls off.  Gendo says the AT field sustaining her cannot hold, but why?  AT Fields are generated by the soul, and it's assumed that Rei has a fragment of Lilith's soul.  Is it deteriorating?  Why would it be doing that?  Do souls deteriorate when fragmented?  There's so many questions this raises and none of it is ever addressed.  Maybe it's supposed to symbolically represent the barrier between Rei and other people breaking down, rather than meant to be taken in the literal sense, but it's still frustrating that they would bring this up as an idea this late into the series then never talk about it again.  This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about that the second half of EoE is full of.  
84 
85 
86Unlike SEELE, who wants to use Instrumentality to unify all of humanity into a single, flawless existence, Gendo is planning on using Instrumentality to rejoin Yui specifically.  We get another HEBEPHILE ANNO moment as Gendo plunges the Adam Embryo hand into Rei's naked breasts which then fuses with her womb.  Now I must once again regrettably discuss all of the underaged nudity in EoE, of which there is a lot.  Now I can understand some of the thought process here because most of these scenes are highly symbolic in nature like a lot of other shit throughout the series.  Rei is both Yui and Lilith.  Yui and Lilith are both mothers, the breast is associated with motherhood, as is the womb.  The womb is also associated with creation and birth of course, the fusing of Adam in this location is meant to represent recreation and rebirth of Adam and Lilith together.  The problem here, as with a lot of the other sexual imagery throughout EoE especially, is that there were probably better, more subtle ways to convey this and it just comes across as really creepy and uncomfortable.  I guess those feelings of creepiness and uncomfortability are maybe intentional?  A lot of the stuff surrounding the Third Impact is meant to evoke this body horror, Lovecraftian, eldritch vibe.  It's unsettling, it's meant to disturb you on a visual level, and maybe this is meant to be an extension of this?  The most likely answer is all three, it's symbolic, intentionally disturbing, and Anno is just a fucking pedophile.  In any case please do not send me to jail FBI I disavow these events.
87 
88Unit-01 goes ultimate sicko mode and breaks free from its bindings but is stopped from going all out by the Lance of Longinus, which fucking flies back from the fucking moon and stops just short of spearing Unit-01's own core.  The reasons behind this are also left completely up to the imagination, good luck figuring half this shit out.  If I had to guess, we know that the Lances are used as a failsafe to shut down Gods when they're about to go Sicko Mode.  Given that Unit-01 is a being of Lilith, but the Lance is presumably Adam's, it's possible it sensed that Unit-01 was ascending to Godhood and moved to shut it down, but then the Lances are sentient somehow?  I guess that would sort of make sense if they'd have to work automatically as a failsafe.  Now that the original Lance has returned, SEELE is going to use it to start Instrumentality using Unit-01 as a Lilith substitute.  How does the Lance do this?  A question since Unit-00 tossed it into space and SEELE got pissy and one I can't really answer.  The MP Evas Crucify Unit-01 as preparation for Instrumentality and generate a big ass Anti-AT field that blows apart what little is left of Tokyo-3 to confirm that the Geofront is really Lilith's Black Moon, from which all Human life originated alongside her.  This ties into all of the Adam and the White Moon in the Antarctic stuff from Episode 24.
89 
90It seems like everything is really right and truly fucked as Gendo and SEELE are each about to implement their own conflicting views of Instrumentality.  Rei can feel Shinji's anguish at Asuka's death, the events happening around him, and his inability to stop them as he spirals further into the depths of madness and inaction.  This could be because of any variety of reasons, her connection to Lilith, her connection to Yui, but regardless she decides to fuck over everyone all at once and put a stop to things.  She rejects Gendo's merging, and for the first time in the series, his orders.  She is determined to help Shinji, the only person in the world who has ever been kind to her as a person, not as an object to further goals like how Gendo saw her.  Of course, the form her help takes is very very bad for everyone, but it's caused by her own lack of understanding of humanity and emotions and such.  She merges with Lilith, bringing Adam's embryo with her and creating the forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith.  Lilith morphs into Rei and ascends to giant, godlike proportions under this new power.  The MP Evas morph and distort and contort into parallels of Rei, probably beholden to her under their genetic material or something.  It's some great body horror and strikes me as very Lovecraftian.  The giant Rei is flopping between Rei as Lilith and Kaworu as Adam too.  Shinji is just completely fucking mindbroken by this shit.  If all the suicidal depression and seeing the people he cared about die in brutal fashion wasn't enough, now he's being subjected to inexplicable cosmic horrors that even the audience and the Control Room can't find explanations for.  This is key for Instrumentality though, his Ego Barrier needs to be weakened for it to happen.  What's an Ego Barrier?  I don't fucking know it's never mentioned before and never really gets explained.  I guess you could take it to be a psychological barrier of sanity that holds one together?  
91 
92The crucified Unit-01 is pierced by the Lance of Longinus, transforming into something called the Tree of Life, the source of all souls.  What does this mean?  What's a Tree of Life?  The source of all souls what the fuck?  Again, this is the shit I'm talking about that frustrates me with EoE's second half.  They're throwing all this crazy shit at the audience and none of it has been ever hinted at, or foreshadowed at all so you're left grasping at straws to figure out what the fuck it means.  Before the show was a lot better at this, things never really needed to be explained fully because there was enough there that you could sort through it and come to the proper conclusions yourself.  Here it's just a clusterfuck.  How does the Lance of Longinus even play into creating this Tree of Life?  I do actually have a theory on this one though because see there's enough here that you can actually come up with one instead of throwing up your hands and screaming autistically.  So you have Adam's Seed of Life, the S2 Engines, and Lilith's Seed of Knowledge, who's concrete form is left ambiguous but is most likely the human mind itself.  The forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith doesn't refer to a mere physical fusion of the two, no, it's the Seed of Life and the Seed of Knowledge blended together, merged and fused into one.  This is what we see here with the Lance of Longinus.  Unit-01's S2 Engine is pierced, it bleeds out as the Lance wraps around Unit-01, blending the Seed of Life and Knowledge into a singular existence and creating the Tree of Life, the true forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith.
93 
94The Control Room, somehow still alive and functioning amidst this fucking chaos, looks on in shock.  Fuyutsuki says that the final choice, mankind's ultimate destiny of life or destruction, now rests upon Shinji.  In other words shit's even more fucked than you can imagine.  What exactly Shinji desires though remains unknown.  Within the conglomerate of Lilith, Adam,and Unit-01, Yui's soul asks Shinji just what exactly it is that he wants.  This was of course, a big big mistake.  Now it's psychological hallucinogenic surrealism sequence time, complete with the orange train from a few past episodes.  I actually really like this bit.  It's a lot easier to follow and comprehend than the sequences in the Series Finale, though still a bit obtuse.  This also rectifies one of my biggest problems with the sequences in the Series Finale, that we don't truly know or understand if Shinji is talking to the disembodied souls and minds of his friends, his mental projection of them, or some combination of the two.  Here, it's much more clear, he only sees dead people, they're real, the disembodied souls.  He's talking to people that have already died and been added to the collective existence, Misato, Ritsuko, Asuka, and Rei herself. This is why those Rei apparaitions were important in the deaths of the first two, though it's left unexplained as to how or why Rei traveled back in time to collect them.  If I had to guess, she knew this was coming and wanted them there to bitch at Shinji.  
95 
96We get a bunch of sequences, mostly good shit actually, sort of exploring a lot of the same things that the Series Finale did.  There's a vignette once again exploring the act of creation.  Within his psyche, a young Shinji creates a sandcastle with his friends, but they eventually leave.  He is alone, but tries to continue on his own anyways.  Even though he completes the sandcastle, he cannot see the value in his own creation and destroys it.  His self-worth is too tied to his own loneliness.  He cannot appreciate himself without the appreciation and love of others.  When abandoned by his friends here, his self-worth suffers as a result.  But he's going about it in the opposite way.  You cannot find love from others without first loving yourself.  Your self-worth cannot be based solely on the perceptions of others.  You can determine your own self-worth via the way you see yourself and your choices reflected in others, but basing your entire self-worth on the love of others is Shinji's mistake.  Because he cannot find his own self-worth, he therefore sees no value in his own creations.  If he thinks of himself as a useless, horrible person, then nothing he creates can be good in his own eyes.  There's a parallel running here between this creative discussion throughout the entire show and Anno's own struggles with depression and creativity of course.
97 
98Asuka and Shinji argue between themselves, Shinji suggesting that Asuka's outward aggressiveness towards him is because they're so alike.  It's an interesting thought, and one I can't disagree with.  They're both suffering from similar familial issues, difficulties with self-worth, and an intense need for intimacy with another human being that they cannot attainbecause they push others away through different means.  There's a shifting focus towards motherhood, quick flashes relating to it, and Misato's personal failings to be a mother to Shinji.  Try as she might, she could never truly fill the void in Shinji's heart due to her own personal problems and failings, which she was subsequently trying to fill through a mixture of Shinji, Kaji, and her work towards defeating the angels.  Misato, much like in the Series Finale, but seemingly more willingly here, shows Shinji her sexual nature and how she used it to validate her own existence.  Asuka finds it embarassing, but questions if she'll end up the same as Misato, using the same means to cope and validate her own existence.  Shinji finds it disgusting, he doesn't want to accept this reality of this person he cares about even though it's stared him in the face several times now.  This ties into his inability to understand other people, projecting his own self-views of them onto them rather than trying to truly understand their true personalities, wants, needs, and desires, which is something also discussed throughout this next segment.
99 
100Shinji completely fails to understand Asuka in this state of Pre-Instrumentality, begging her to just tell him how he feels, but she says he hasn't even tried to do so and is furious because of it.  Rei asks if this is true, if he ever really tried, but Shinji insists on blaming Asuka for his own shortcomings.  Asuka angrily accuses Shinji of using her, knowing full well about the Coma Jerkoff session.  The reality is that they've both used each other in different ways, an idea reinforced by repeating the scene from Episode 15 where the two kiss, spurred on by Asuka's own loneliness.  Shinji angrily asks why they cannot be nice to him, but they claim they are, to which he calls them liars.  He believes that they truly loathe him.  This goes back to concepts explored in the Series Finale, that he's projecting his own self-hatred onto others, leading him to believe that they also hate him.  A lot of these scenes are related to the same things discussed in the Series Finale, the issue being that each "half" of the ending, the Series Finale and EoE, can't really exist on its own.  They must exist simultaneously to complement both the concepts being explored and discussed and the personal journey Shinji undergoes while within these hallucinogenic sequences.
101 
102Rei says that the truth can be painful but Shinji claims to hate the ambiguity of not knowing at all more than he would hate the truth.  He needs to be loved, he can't stand the abandonment.  As if challenging his view that he want the truth more than anything, a sequence ensues wherein he argues with Asuka.  He begs her to care for him, claiming to want to help her and stay with her forever.  This is a lie, and Asuka knows it.  She says the same thing that's been evident throughout the entire series, that he doesn't want her, he wants anybody that will care about him.  We've seen this reflected in his actions towards everybody, Rei, Misato, Asuka, even Gendo.  He doesn't care who's approval or love he earns, he just wants it.  Having failed or been otherwise incapable of earning everyone else's love, he now demands Asuka's.  He cannot even love himself though, and is thereby incapable of loving others.  In an ironic twist of fate, Shinji has gotten exactly what he asked for.  He wanted the ambiguities to end, he wanted the truth.  He gave the truth of himself to Asuka and she rejected it in a truthful fashion, the souls of both laid bare to each other within the Pre-Instrumentality state.  Shinji now rejects the truth, the reality of it being far more painful than any ambiguity.  He flies off in a rage, smashing and breaking, demanding the love he needs to feel whole as a person and is rejected again.  In a final action, he strangles Asuka, and the true hell begins.
103 
104The answer to Yui's original question to Shinji at the start of this sequence is finally found.  Shinji desires a world free from the betrayal and pain he feels that he has just experienced.  The world is now at maximum fuckage.  The merging of Rei and Yui unites two people that care wholly and unconditionally about Shinji yet are incapable of expressing it in any meaningful way.  As an act of love, the mother seeks to protect her child.  The talk of AT Fields being an expression of a mother's protection seems especially pertinent as the Lilith Rei expands a worldwide Anti-AT field through which to manifest Shinji's wish.  It is an act born from love, but the action itself is the antithesis of love, binding everyone to a limited existence as protection against their feelings, a world where the individual no longer exists, a world without betrayal and pain.  I feel completely confident in saying that the actual Third Impact is one of the greatest animated sequences of all time.  Everything is perfection, the art and animation itself of course, but the other touches too.  Komm Susser Tod has been memed to death for an eternity now, but it's truly the perfect set of music for the Third Impact, and highlights and underscores this tone of extreme, pure sadness, depression, anger, and loneliness, the tone of Evangelion as a whole as well as this sequence, perfectly.  Everyone sees their loved ones and gets Tanged, some interesting and chilling stuff with the Control Room fellas.
105 
106Gendo's final moments are also great.  In a way, he succeeds in reuniting with Yui as she appears to him during the Third Impact.  He sorrowfully realizes that he's made several mistakes, closing himself off to love out of pain and running away from his problems, much like Shinji.  Instrumentality and reunion with Yui was ultimately a form of escapism from him, escapism from having to deal with the reality of a world without Yui and escapism from having to deal with Shinji's own grief and needs in addition to his own.  His regret and pain over hurting Shinji like this feels very genuine.  For possibly the only time in the entire series, Gendo is being completely honest, his soul and feelings being laid bare to the audience.  It's a great way to wrap up his character, as well as building on Shinji's own character.  The similarities between them are more than coincidental, if Shinji continues down the path he's going, he will ultimately end up just like Gendo, using people for his own ends and incapable of understanding others' love for him and expressing love towards others.  What exactly happens to Gendo though is left feeling sort of strangly ambiguous.  He's eaten by Unit-01 but such a thing is physically impossible, but it also implied to have happened in reality?  It feels like what's going on is that he's simply being rejected from the combined existence of Instrumentality, but truthfully I don't get why it was portrayed this way specifically.  Perhaps Unit-01 biting him in half is meant to represent Yui's specific rejection of him from Instrumentality due to his actions?
107 
108The crucified Unit-01 is absorbed into Lilith, the MP Evas crack open their S2 engines because nothing makes sense anymore, maybe it has to do with releasing the Fruit of Life I don't fucking know.  The visuals here are fucking astounding, it's some haunting, surrealist, Elder God levels of shit and I fucking love it.  It's followed by a barrage of indecipherable flashes of various scenes from the show and varrious lines of hatred spewed at Shinji.  It's an interesting, if epiliptic, visual representation of minds merging together under Instrumentality.  Misato and Rei reassure him, saying that he can stop the pain and run away from it all, an extension of their motherly urges towards Shinji manifesting themselves in a misguided attempt to help him.  Asuka continues to reject him, saying she would rather die than do "it" with him.  Though there are the obvious sexual connotations here, I think it's far more likely she's talking about Instrumentality itself.  I'll talk more about this when we get to the final scene, but it ties into the bath scene in Episode 22 and her disgust at sharing bathwater with Misato and Shinji, likewise she's disgusted with the thought of what Instrumentality entails.
109 
110Suddenly, the film cuts to an empty theater, clearly representative of the film's audience after viewing it.  I kid of course I stole that joke from Jango.  What follows is a discussion between Shinji and Rei on the nature of dreams and reality set to a variety of Live-Action footage.  It's a very odd choice and it doesn't really mesh and flow with the rest of the film in terms of tone and content.  Given the nature of the discussion at hand, I could understand it being meant to reflect our reality as compared to Evangelion, but that feels like a big stretch and I'm not a huge fan of the choice.  Shinji questions the true differences between dream and reality in this state.  Rei explains that a dream cannot truly be used as a means of escape from reality.  Dreaming alone removes the outside figures from which we view ourselves and form our inner selves around.  Shinji therefore cannot truly dream alone, reality must be altered around his wishes and desires, as determined by the combination of Rei and Yui that has now set forth to protect him.  This version of Instrumentality exists as an extension of reality, an alteration of it, brought forth by Shinji's will.  Him questioning this is followed by a scene of the Lilith Rei's head starting to split apart.  This serves as the first sign to the viewer that Shinji is starting to reject the reality he has created for himself as false.
111 
112Once again, the MASTER ANNO strikes again with incredibly overt and unsubtle teenage sex and nudity as Rei is sitting on top of Shinji, melded together, and nude inside the dreamscape of Instrumentality.  And I get what he's trying to symbolize here, the intimacy and openness of the existence of Instrumentality and all that shit but dude fucking STOP this is too far jesus fucking christ I hate Japan.  Like so much else in End of Evangelion, and the series as a whole, there were just better ways to do this that didn't involve this.  Shinji realizes that the reality of Instrumentality is wrong, that what he wanted, a world free from pain, is wrong.  It's a false reality, one constructed out of desperation and pain.  The emotions of peace, happiness, calm, and safety here are false, constructed specifically for him.  Even if separate existence was painful, it was still real, and the feelings he had towards others and they had towards him were still real too.  This is a good moment for him, but my problem with it is that much like in the Series Finale, the journey here also feels incomplete.  The journey towards understanding is realized better here though, through more subtle means.  The implication can be drawn that experiencing Instrumentality simply wasn't as fulfilling as Shinji had hoped it would be, that without the pain and flaws of life, the joys and happiness doesn't feel as good.  But you have to draw purely on implications and context in order to realize this, there's not much to hint at how he comes about this realization, just that he does realize it.  We see Shinji's journey towards rejecting the pain of reality in the Pre-Instrumentality, but his journey away from that mindset after Instrumentality doesn't feel developed enough.  When viewed in tandem with Episode 26, you start to get a marginally better picture, but it still feels under-realized.  It's frustrating because in spite of Shinji's unlikeability, I've enjoyed his continued development as a character, both towards, and away from positive outcomes.
113 
114Anyone can come back, so long as they are willing to remember themselves and the consequences that come from doing so, the pain and ambiguity that comes with individual existence and trying to reach others.  Shinji is still unsure what he will do exactly, but if the Series Finale and his realization of the possibilities in life if he learns to love and accept himself are any indication, he will find it.  Unit-01 breaks free from the Lilith Rei and destroys the MP Evas with the Lance of Longinus as the Lilith Rei starts to fall apart.  Yui says farewell to Shinji as she, along with Unit-01 drift eternally through space.  Flashbacks to Episode 21 hint that Yui was very much aware of SEELE's plan and intended for herself and Unit-01 to survive and life on as a monument to humanity's existence and perserverence as the peak of their achievements.  There's almost an implication here that the cycle of death and rebirth witnessed on Earth with humanity's evolution and destruction will repeat, with Unit-01 drifting off with both its seeds and the Lance of Longinus to worlds unknown.
115 
116And then, there is the ending, the final moments of the entire series.  In a series full of iconic moments that have been ingrained in both Japanese and Internet culture, the ending of End of Evangelion remains arguably the most iconic, in terms of both visuals and events.  The Lilith Rei's body falls apart, her head sinking into the now red sea, a haunting gaze etched permantently on its face.  The crucified and petrified MP Evas float around, aimlessly, defying any reality or explanation.  Shinji lies beside Asuka, both seemingly having chosen the pain and joys of separate existence over the falsehood of Instrumentality.  They're back in the real world, together, and separate, but can they truly ever go back to normal after having seen what they have in Instrumentality?  A ghostly Rei is seen, then vanishes, just like in the show's opening.  The world is now a barren wasteland, or maybe it's just Tokyo-3 that's a barren wasteland because it got leveled a thousand times over earlier.  I wouldn't be concerned about it.  As Fuyutski said, mankind's will to live is strong, and as Yui repeats a few moments earlier, anywhere can be heaven so long as you have the will to live.  Much like the show as a whole, the meaning of EoE's final moments have been the subject of debate, theories, confusion, outrage, acceptance, and praise, for over twenty years now.  Almost as a continuation of their previous interaction in Pre-Instrumentality, Shinji begins strangling Asuka, but this time she caresses his face, Shinji breaks down in tears, says "How disgusting" or "I feel sick", the translation is iffy, and that's the end, white screen, fin.  There are a thousand interpretations, I won't weigh you down with all of them you've read enough as is, especially if you've been reading since Episode 1.  I feel that the most likely, if mundane, answers are the most obvious ones.  In a world without pain and by extension, meaning, the Instrumentality world, Asuka would do nothing against Shinji's murder attempts.  After everything he's been through, he is still unsure of which reality this is.  Yet, Asuka does react, in an unexpectedly compassionate way.  Her time in Instrumentality, seeing everything laid bare, has changed her too.  This cannot be the Instrumentality world.  Shinji weeps at what he's just done to the real Asuka, realizing his pain is very real.  In a culmination of her thoughts on Shinji jerking to her in a coma, his true nature in Instrumentality, the combined disgust of being exposed to everyone else in Instrumentality and seeing everyone else exposed, and Shinji's present actions, she expresses her disgust and sickness.  It also goes back to the opening of the film, with Shinji begging her to call him an idiot as usual.  Perhaps her comment here is meant to be words of comfort towards Shinji in that same fashion?   It's a testament both to the series' vague incomprehensibility and ability to put so much meaning into small moments, and therefore a fitting, if imperfect, final note.  
117 
118But as is often repeated throughout the series, our imperfections, our flaws, and our pain are what makes us unique and is what makes life worth living.  Much like life, Evangelion is a very imperfect creation, riddled with flaws and problems that drag both it, and you, down.  But also like life, Evangelion is full of highs, of great moments, of memorable characters that reflect the worst in all of us and try to motivate us to not be like them, and of incredible art direction, animation, and direction.  As frustrating as Evangelion's flaws are, the shitty pacing, fucked production schedules, incomprehensible nature, and general bad production decision making, it remains a worthwhile viewing experience in spite of them all.  Sometimes, Evangelion is bad, but more often than not, it is good, and that is what makes it worth watching.