That may be a surprising formulation, but for all its mystery and horrors, the Apocalypse is not a story of despair, but one of hope. It is the tale of how everything falls down in the sunset of humanity, and Our Lord comes to rescue. Without it, the Bible, the perspective, would not be complete. I think that there are necessary stories that come when a genre reaches maturity and a talented artist notices it. Something speaks of obturation, of collapse, present from the beginning, in a way.

These are stories that deny or question its premises, show its limitations, play with their tropes to say something deep, and open new paths. They show that the stories and genres that we love cannot be self-contained, and need to go beyond. Some of these stories are realistic, as Don Quixote. Some of them are the epilogue of great works of art, like The Lord of the Rings. Many of them are apocalyptic stories. Evangelion is one of these (this is the meaning of the bombastic title, I think). There is a lot in it that rings so very true. It was fruitful, and brought a lot of new things to anime. And yet…

With Misato, Rei and Asuka, Evangelion took beyond the tsundere, the older beauty, and the ice queen. That was an accomplishment. But in Shinji, Evangelion brought us something new and, I would argue, something necessary. Something that was there from the beginning, at the heart of the mecha and the knights-monsters of the future Japan, the primal fighters which expressed the fears and wonders of the world after the atomic bomb, one way or another—at the heart of most anime, even. He is a different kind of hero, but also a real hero. As our former writer Zeroe4, I like him, and will defend him. A helpless, afraid, broken teenager living in self-disgust and doubt can be much more compelling than a brighter persona that just “gets into the robot.” I like him especially at his worst, maybe (which has to be that disgraceful moment with Asuka at the beginning of End of Evangelion; I’m not going to describe it, but in it he says “I’m the lowest of the low”).

Shinji’s motivations are certainly convoluted. He comes from the same emotional world that can give us, say, a Hachiken. Sometimes he is unlikable, even “a brat,” as Asuka once said. He wants to make his father and others love him, hates himself, gets paralyzed in dangerous and frustrating situations, is afraid, loves to ride the EVA, hates the harm he is causing, and can get into battle only by going berserk, which is a serious handicap. It’s a whole mess. But from time to time, he really tries. And, once in a while, he grows. He (spoilers ahead) defies his father and quits when Gendo tries to make him murder an innocent, even before knowing who the innocent is, saving his classmate’s life. In that moment at the very least, he is a hero, because defying his father and letting everyone down are two of his worst fears. But I think he is even braver when coming back to help, putting aside everything else.

Because the world of Shinji is one in which the scars of the atomic bomb (or, in this case, the Second Great Impact) are real and terrifying. Closeness is real and terrifying. Life can go wrong. Success is not guaranteed. Our own hearts, or others, can lie to us. We cannot predict history. Our points of reference may be out of place. Evangelion is so relevant because I, too, I’m so often Shinji. The doubtful, the fearful, the one who blocks his own path, the disgusting sinner. Anno knows his characters and respects them, and refuses to play it easy.

I liked the rest of the cast, too (the infamous Gainax fanservice aside). “The closer we become, the more deeply we hurt each other,” says Ritsuko. We need others, we can hope to receive help, but there is truth in her statement. I followed the cast with interest and compassion. Kaworu, Ms. Misato, Mr. Kagi’s, Asuka, and even Ritsuko and Gendo, had what I found to be compelling dilemmas and arcs. The EVAs and Angels captured my imagination, and I liked the conspiracy plot. As I said, I even liked it when Anno started going into uncharted territory by changing art styles and using all the resources he could think of to get inside Shinji. I can see how the story certainly demanded that of him, to go beyond. If, despite all I have said, I didn’t like the series as a whole is because I don’t think he succeeded there.

Don’t get me wrong: Anno certainly deals with the issues of anime that Miyazaki once criticized (according to Susan Napier´s “Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art”), a world out of proportion, warped, exaggerated, and sometimes even perverted to fit the demands of the impulse and the appetite and might distance us from the real thing, “inundated with images” from childhood. Look at the episodes; it´s all there. But this is where I believe that something more was needed. The thesis of the EVA (and Shinji) as a cruel angel had been developed. But the good news was never delivered.

Because psychological analysis, understanding, Schopenhauer, the tree of life and accepting that we are wounded is all well and good, but human connections were the heart of this story. So the therapeutic ending of the original series, in which Shinji pictures everybody clapping (or maybe the Human Instrumentality Program works and individuality gives place to a hive mind), rang very hollow for me, like a self-centered fantasy, while the End of Evangelion ending, while suggesting what could be a beginning of that, was still too ambiguous and frustrating. I think I can endure death, suffering, him losing his moral compass, the strangeness of the experience, the frustration, the sins, the Apocalypse, but I wanted to see something more. I wanted the Eagles, the miracle, the eucatastrophe—something from beyond. A message, or the hope of a message. After the thesis of a cruel angel, the thesis of a kind angel.