End of Evangelion: Asuka's Last Stand [EoE Explained]

At the bottom of the lake, we find Eva 02, in a fetal position. Yet again another reference for returning to a mother’s womb, and another connection to the original TV ending. At this point of the story, Asuka underwent on a series of loses. First, against Bardiel… then against Zeruel… to finally be defeated for a third time in a row by Arael. In the aftermath, and while suffering some physical changes, Asuka find herself in a depression. She never completely opens up to anyone, she just closed

herself in a bubble. One moment she was undergoing an intense emotional distress to the point that she ended up on a hospital bed… on the next one, after regaining consciousness, she is again wearing a plug suit within unit 02, the same one that rejected her. Asuka realizes that she is still alive. Then the military start an attack on unit 02, launching all kind of explosives to it. Asuka doesn’t fully understand what is going on, all that she knows is that it hurts… a lot. Then… an epiphany. Sh

e doesn’t want to die. She is not ready. She is not willing to die because of a depression no more. She is terrified. This will lead her for the first time on her story, to open up her heart, being honest to herself, she feels lonely and scare. Rei told Asuka in episode 22, something truly revealing for her, Evangelion units have souls, and it won’t move unless she opens up her heart to it. Because Asuka was so enclosed in her bubble, she was not able to hear the soul within unit 2, she was unab

le to open up to it. But now, because she is completely vulnerable, she opens up, and starts to feel, hear, the soul within. That voice becomes louder and louder. The soul is Kyoko’s, her mother. The same mother that went insane, asked her to die with her, and then replaced her for a doll. Now, plays a new role, the protective mother, that won’t allow her daughter to die. As Asuka’s heart opens up more and more, she starts to feel and hear her mother closer and closer. We then see Asuka as a chi

ld, that tiny one that lost herself because of the absence of her mother, and with a big smile hugging her doll she can finally see her, who appears as a bean of light, Asuka is ready to tear the wall around her heart, and forgive her mother, reaching out to her and embrace her. And because of that, the synchronization with the unit starts again. Now, all of this is beautiful and very artistic, but we should not forget that there is a war going on, and what Evangelion units are… killing machines

. And according to the lore, a higher synchronization rate means the pilot is closer is to the core, and the outcome will result in the same to what happened to Shinji while fighting Zeruel. So, bare that in mind. Asuka makes her return to a battlefield as a mistress of war, lifting a warship above her. Asuka was introduced into the story aboard of a warship, and she will begin her last stand with one above her head. The whole sequence is epic. Asuka the warrior is back. However, this time Asuka

is not fighting Angels, this time Asuka is killing human beings, and this is what is hidden in this sequence. The heroine of the story has become a murderer. She doesn’t see it that way, because she is lost in her emotions for her mother, and we as an audience, after all of the distress we have been put on since the beginning of the film, overlook it. Because of that, Asuka doesn’t see the consequences of her action, actions that will have a high price to pay. Asuka uses the AT field as a weapo

n, something that only angels have done in the story. It can be argued that unit 1 also used it, most noticeable against Sahaquiel, but it was on defense, not offense. And then again when it went Berserk, which means that wasn’t Shinji using it either, but his mother. In Asuka’s case, it is in fact Asuka who is actively using it to kill and destroy, that is how she understands the AT field, her mother protecting her. When Asuka rises from the fire of destruction, we are let known that a monster

has awaken, a child fending her mother and herself at all cost. At this point we can ask ourselves… is there any difference between an evangelion unit and an angel? It is all very similar to the first episode, when Sachiel invaded the city and this only defended itself from human beings. At this point, unit 2 seems indestructible. But it isn’t, thus the military destroy her power cord, or umbilical cord. Now has become a race against the clock, for Unit 2 doesn’t have an internal S2 engine. Now

we can understand why SEELE is willing to sacrifice unit 2 if cannot control it, Asuka is just way too dangerous. If by any means unit 1 would join the fight, there would be no other choice than to retreat, no matter the amount of MPEs SEELE would deploy, unit 2 has to go, and has to go now. Thus, these nine white unpiloted winged evangelion units are deployed. There is a lot of speculations and essays that have been written over the years regarding on the hidden symbolism behind their design. I

never, ever found one that completely convinced me, so I will leave it up to you as a homework to find out. What I will say is that the community have decided to called them “Harpies”, in both English and Spanish, I don’t like that term either, so I will call them as what they are… “Mass Production Evangelions” or MPEs, as I have mentioned before. Each one of them are controlled by a “Kaworu” model dummy plug. But the name doesn’t imply that is actually Kaworu, but it has, let’s say the essence

of Kaworu that will trick the MPE into believing that there is a pilot that is actually synchronizing. They are, after all, still Evangelion units. Gendo was never able to recreate this with the Rei model, as unit 1 rejected it in episode 19, it only got activated with Shinji in command, in episode 18. The MPEs also have autonomous engines, S2, which were replicated from Samshel’s core, the angel that was defeated by Shinji in episode 3. Thus, they have an unlimited source of power, and as ange

ls, the only way to actually defeat them, is attacking its core… Asuka is not inform of this. She is about to engage in a battle that she simply… can’t win, with the information she has. This upcoming battle is the most epic one of the entire story, a mecha fan fest, one evangelion unit against nine. Anno decided to give Asuka, not Shinji, this privilege. Shinji in the other hand is still being dragged by Misato deep into the facilities. If we take a close look to Asuka’s facial expressions, we

can easily deduct how exhausted she is, its been a wild ride for her. Handling loses after loses, natural physical changes, mood changes, traumas, depressions, sedation… and still fighting, pushing forward, if this is not the characterization of a hero, I frankly don’t know what it is. Her biggest challenge is still ahead, she needs to defeat all of these enemies with the time she has left, is a race against the clock. However, Asuka’s exhaustion, will not let her think straight, she believes sh

e is fighting regular Evangelion units, with actual pilots, her strategy is cause pain, as much as she can, Shinji nor Rei would have done anything of what Asuka is doing right now, she has gone completely unhinged. She is bloodthirsty. Misato has died, but not before putting Shinji into the elevator, hi is sobbing his way to eva 1, while Asuka continues her stand. Conveniently, the MPEs attack one at a time, for now… because time is on their favor, and working against Asuka. Shinji gets finally

to the cage, to finds unit 1 covered in Bakelite, this was because of Misato order when the battle started and everything seemed lost, he cannot find a way to enter into Eva 01, does he have the will though? Well… yes, and in my opinion a STRONG YES! But there are some arguments that have been made in which in this case Shinji is simply quitting on Asuka, based on other storylines, like in Sadamoto’s manga for instance. In there, he did “more” … well in there are also other horrible transgressi

ons to the storyline that I am not going to mention, but what I will say is this, and I don’t know how many times I had said it before in previous videos but here I go again… Anno’s version is the definite version. And giving how events have developed so far into the movie, there is no doubt in my mind, that if Shinji would have found a way to jump directly into the unit and fight alongside Asuka, he would have done it. Why I am so sure? Well, because as soon as he can jump into it, he does, he

doesn’t stay still waiting under some stairs to get killed, this time he is ready to take action. In the meantime, Ritsuko, another character that is depending on her mother will. Is waiting for Gendo Ikari, and reveals to him that she has changed the MAGI’s configuration, this would definitively put a stop to Gendo’s plan. This shot is reminiscence of episode’s 21, when Ritsuko meets Rei for the first time, this should not have been easy to her and all that she went through, as for all the way

to the end, Gendo still prefer Rei over her. And yet again, following her mother’s step, Ritsuko is willing to commit suicide. But Casper, the Woman side of the Magi, denies the self-destruction command that Ritsuko activates. Her own mother, the woman, has chosen her lover over her. At least that is her conclusion. It is beautifully artistic. But, is it true though? The Magi is just a computer, its three main terminals come to conclusions after carefully calculates all of the possible outcomes.

The Magi is not an artificial intelligence, never across the story we have seen the Magi making decisions by itself, these decisions were made by humans, not computers. It simply doesn’t make any sense. However, we don’t get a definite answer for that other than the artistic symbolic one, Casper just rejects Ritsuko for Gendo. Then Gendo takes a gun out and points Ritsuko, but the sentence he says is muted, we cannot hear it, to which Ritsuko replies “liar”, before shooting her dead. What did G

endo said though? I always love you? We know that is not true, he only loves Yui, that has been very well stablished already. Perhaps is the second option, one that has been recurrent in the show, and that is “I Need You”, which makes way more sense, because he really needed her. Does Gendo developed some kind of feelings towards Ritsuko? We know they were secret lovers, but we don’t get more details than that. So, is hard to say. I will leave it up to you to decide. Gendo shoot her and her body

flies to the LCL pool, not before seeing Lilith and Rei… a different Rei that the one standing behind Gendo. Also, notice how the first time we are introduced to Ritsuko in the story all the way back to episode one, was rising from a pool of LCL, now, for the last time we see her in the story, she is back into it. And thus all the three friends have died by a gunshot Asuka continues her fight, trying to prove to her mother that she is in fact the good daughter, that she is going to prevail and

her will to live. Shinji in the other hand is sitting on the cage, listening to Asuka’s struggle. He recognizes that she says Mamma, "ocasa", while looking at Eva 01, there is no doubt at this point that Shinji perfectly knows where his mother is at. Remember when I said that the MPEs were attacking one by one across the fight? Notice how when Asuka finally gets to one of them Core, where the S2 engine is at, another one reacts, and threw at her one of them heavy spears that it reveals itself to

be one of Longinus replicas, which are design to traverse anything on their path, no matter the amount of AT fields you put in to stop it. The spear goes impales the Eva’s head and even when the battery ran out of life, and in theory she should be disconnected completely from the Eva, she is so close to the core due to her high synchronization rates, that she can still feel and react to the pain that unit 2 receives. Asuka is bleeding from her injuries non-stop, crying her lungs out while despe

rately trying to make unit 2 react, similar to when she couldn’t make the Eva react in episode 23. What follows is a clear representation of a rape scene. Where the victim is stripped of all of the power over its own body and stripped naked, violating the sanctity of it. Is not a clean kill, the purpose is to humiliate first… and as vultures leaving the victim to experience all of this horror. Asuka, who is in a terrible pain, cannot scream anymore, she only repeats to herself that she is going

to kill them, her sync levels are so high that she doesn’t need the handles to maneuver the Eva anymore, as this one moves its arms replicating the movement of her arms. One of the MPE’s throws one of the spears splitting Eva’s 2 and Asuka’s arm in two before impaling her to death. Shinji has to hear resigned how Maya screams through the intercom about Asuka’s fate, only for his mother to react. Curious on how she only does it when Asuka is gone. Jealousy perhaps? It is pretty clear that Yui was

very well aware of everything that was going on, and still did nothing. She is so in control of Eva 01 that she can make the thing fly, as we are going to see very soon. And once again, Shinji will go into an Eva for the last time, the same way that he did it for the first time. Because it was moved by Yui. The unit explodes to his emergence into the outside world, very reminiscence of how Adam did it on the second impact, wings displayed included. This is definitely the end for the JSSDF troop

s as they see astonished how the Devil has awoke. This first part of the story end with Shinji realizing the fate of his beloved friend, who was massacred in a depictable and unhuman way to her death making her last stand. This will result in Shinji’s definite breakdown. We will retake it from here on my next installment as we take a closer look to the End of Evangelion. I publish Evangelion and other anime content each week, if you don’t want to miss the next episode, be sure to subscribe and h

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