Evangelion was created in 1995 during Anno's period of deep depression certainly reflecting into the shows character development, causing the show to become extremely dark and psychologically depressing for most viewers. All of the main characters from the show (Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami, and Asuka Langely Sorhu) are children who have the mentality capable of piloting humanity's ultimate weapon, the Evangelion units. The main characters also have issues regarding their past lives and how they interact with everyone else around them.
The TV seiries lasted up to it's final episodes, (26 is the usual number of episodes in a anime seires), unfortunately Gainax (The producers of Evangelion) ran out of their budget for the show before episode 25 and 26 causing them to fill the last two episodes with a more in-depth look at each main character leaving out the true ending of the series. After the airing of the last two episodes, Anno recieved many threat letters from fans saying that the last two episodeds ruined the series for them.
Later in 1999 Anno and Gainax company released the final episodes of Neon genesis Evangelion within a full length feature film known as "The End of Evangelion". The movie is based on what the last two episodes were suposed to end, making it what fans should have seen before the budget collapse. The movie itself was so traumatizing that many fans of the series threatened Anno and Gainax, even going as far as damaging Gainax studio property out of anger towards the movie. What exaclty could be so bad about this movie? I asked myself. Finally after waiting to watch all the episodes, I decided to sit down and watch the real conclusion to the most popular seires in anime culture.
After watchig the movie I sat there with a huge gape in my mouth still trying to get over exactly what I just watched. I then came to a realization of what Anno was trying to get across to us with the last two episodes (or at least my interpretation of it). Anno was in a state of depression which can explain why the show took such a turn from being about giant Mechas protecting the world from Angels, into a show that went into the abused minds of the main characters giving the show a more depressing and mind-boggling atmosphere. He had the show aired on children's programming saying that people should be exposed to the real world as young as possible. Certainly this show does show a significant view on what we see as "reality". The minds of each chratcer can explain their actions and their behaviors towards others. This is how personality and personality disorders come about. How we interact with others is how we see others in the "reality" of our minds. We all don't see the same "reality" although we may all percieve something as "true". For example one might see that a desk is square, where another may see the same desk as round. Yet many can agree that "blue" and "red" are examples of colors right? Anno's thoery of reality mostly exists with the main charater Shinji where he tries to understand the people around him and why they see what they see in him, where he might see himself differently.
In The End of Evangelion the main character's reality and mind become more struggled as more catastrophic events keep occurring around him and his mind seems to be jumping from one conclusion to another. He wants to be close but he believes that everyone else feel indifferent towards him, giving him more reasons to become self-conscious and closed off from the world (Remind you of someone?)
For me the movie was intense and brought up many unanswered questions that I came up for what reality may be to us humans. In any case Anno's theories of reality may be what many people expect to see in others giving the sense that everything they see as a reality can be true. The only way to find out for certain though is to go see for yourself if what you see as an interpretation of reality is a reality to others and to trust that God has all the answers for you when you meet him.
