Neon Genesis Evangelion is an infamous series for its ending--actually, for both its endings. The Rebuild of Evangelion movies have approached things very differently, and that meant its bold ending choices were no longer a good fit.

For nearly a decade, the last piece of new Evangelion media that anyone had consumed was the film End of Evangelion, which offered an alternative take on the ending seen in the series proper. That gave End of Evangelion a serious sense of finality and authority, even though it is compatible with the original ending. End of Evangelion was a dark film, featuring the deaths of many characters and no happy ending for Shinji. However, when Hideaki Anno, creator of Evangelion, began working on the Rebuild of Evangelion films, it was quickly apparent that this was a different story from the original anime.

End of Evangelion Painted a Dark Picture of Shinji's Life

The Film Ending Leaves Shinji In a Hopeless Situation

The original ending of Evangelion is regarded as very confusing, being more conceptual than literal, and features Shinji coming around to accept himself, ending the series on a weirdly upbeat note. End of Evangelion, however, went in the exact opposite direction. Showing the very literal course of events, End of Evangelion had fans watching their favorite characters get killed off one by one, as the situation grew increasingly desperate. Shinji's inability to help anyone weighs heavily upon him, and as Instrumentality begins to take place, there's little hope left.

While Shinji does eventually make the decision to stop Instrumentality, everyone has already been transformed into LCL, and they can only emerge from the LCL sea as an individual again if they desire it. That leaves Shinji and Asuka alone, with Shinji brutally choking her for reasons that are never fully clear, and the film ends with Asuka expressing her disgust at him. It's a truly bleak scenario, and not what anyone would've expected from the series when it first began airing. This dark ending became controversial, almost feeling mean-spirited in a way that few works do.

I can certainly watching the movie for the first time and being left in total shock by what I'd seen. Never before had I witnessed a series kill off so many characters in such a short period of time, much less effectively doom humanity and leave the Earth a destroyed mess. It's a nihilistic expression of Shinji's depression, a feeling of not just ambivalence, but a condemnation of humanity as a whole. As an ending to the series, it essentially makes Shinji backslide in his struggles with depression, giving in to despair and creating a dark new world.

The Rebuild Movies Completely Flip End of Evangelion's Bleakness

The New Movies Show a Shinji Who's More Proactive

In 2007, the first new piece of Evangelion media in years was released: Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone. The film mostly retold the first few episodes of the series, with some minor differences, such as an early appearance by Kaworu. Little did fans know at the time that this would be the beginning of a 14-year journey, retelling the story of Evangelion over again from the beginning, with each installment seeing more and more changes until finally the third and fourth movies deviated from the original entirely. In short, the Rebuild films showed a very different sort of story than End of Evangelion did.

In these films, Shinji is a much more active character, rather than the ive Shinji who was pushed around and bullied throughout the original Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is perhaps clearest at the end of the second movie, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, when Shinji makes the active choice to save Rei, even knowing this could be disastrous. Shinji activates special elements of the EVA and is able to rescue Rei, thanking her for her efforts in trying to reconnect him with his father. These actions are strongly indicative that this new version of Shinji is not the pushover he was originally.

The Rebuild version of Shinji doesn't always make good choices, but he does make choices, which the original Shinji would do his best to avoid. It shows that in this timeline, Shinji is in a far better place mentally, unlikely to give in to despair the way his counterpart did. It was the first hint that things weren't going to end the way they did in End of Evangelion this time around.

Contrasting the Rebuild Ending with End of Evangelion

Rebuild's Fourth Movie is Far Happier than End of Evangelion

Finally, the fourth and last Rebuild of Evangelion film was released in 2021, and fans got to see the ending of the story yet again, but quite different this time. The final film is somewhat controversial itself, especially to fans who have preferred the End of Evangelion ending. Shinji ends the film happy, in a relationship with Mari--a far cry from the desolation that laid at the end of the original series' film. The movie even reveals that the cast has been trapped in a cyclical series of events, implying that the events of the original series and End of Evangelion still happened in other alternate worlds.

In both films, it's ultimately Shinji's decision which starts the birth of a new era, but in End of Evangelion, it's an era of despair, a revelation that's come too late. In Rebuild, it's a new world without EVAs at all, one that frees not only Shinji, but everyone from having to relive the mistakes of the story again and again. It's well-known that the original Evangelion was the result of Anno's own struggles with depression, and the nihilistic conclusion of End of Evangelion seems to bear that out. Rebuild feels like a story from someone who has conquered their depression, and is capable of seeing hope again.

Is Evangelion better off with a happier ending, like that seen in the Rebuild films, or was its original, despair-fueled ending superior? It's a debate that may not ever truly end, but after watching Shinji struggle from 1995 to 2021, I can't help but be happy for him, to have finally gotten an ending that he deserved--more than that, an ending he earned. Neon Genesis Evangelion's changes to its controversial End of Evangelion ending may never be conclusively proven better, but if you ask me, these characters have suffered enough.