Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Final Messenger   First Watch 
July 20, 2019 10:25 AM - Season 1, Episode 24 - Subscribe

Shinji meets a young boy named Kaworu Nagisa, the one person with whom he feels the most at ease with... and also a dangerous enemy.

Alternative title: The Beginning and the End, or "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

"Fly Me To The Moon" - Episode 24 version


Read more about it (Note: possible spoilers)
TV Tropes recap
EvaGeeks episode page
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit (14 comments total)
 
Shinji’s not having great luck with friends.
posted by rodlymight at 8:14 PM on July 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


:/

can you beat the gay alien who shows up for five minutes to show you unconditional love and then tries to commit a government facility heist

actually, is kaworu reverse area 51 storming
posted by gaybobbie at 8:35 PM on July 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


It's wild how Evangelion just tosses out these characters way later than you think. Asuka doesn't show up until episode 8. Kaworu doesn't show up until episode 24. Kaworu, especially, garnered so much love despite his short time on the show that he was given a much expanded role in the Evangelion Rebuild movies. Just goes to show how desperate fans were to see someone give Shinji a little love grace.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:11 PM on July 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


This whole episode is just so much. When I rewatched it recently, it was a lot more dream-like than I remember. I'm not sure why it felt that way to me. I'd have to rewatch it again to really dig into what it is about the editing or framing or maybe just Kaworu's character or whatever else it is that makes the episode feel like a long dream sequence.

And then Kaworu's thing at the end where he's just like, "No, it's ok Shinji, please kill me. I don't want you to die, so you have to kill me." Wow. Just wow. As if it's not enough of an emotional gut-punch to have this guy say that he loves you and you're worthy of his grace only to find out he's an eldritch abomination who wants to trigger the apocalypse. To then have him willingly submit to death because he thinks you deserve to live? When you're as deep into depression as Shinji is?

It's just so, so much.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:44 AM on July 22, 2019 [9 favorites]


I am only vaguely aware that the show had budget problems towards the end, so when they hold stuff, and hold it, and hold it, and stretch something to the point of breaking and then go a little further, there are constraints resulting in creativity and there are "we literally don't have money for this scene." The line is so blurred.

Some shows would have held that beat for two seconds. Maybe ten. Gainax? A minute and a half.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:26 AM on July 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


"We don't have money for this scene," or "pushing the surreal, dream-like aspect to the point of breaking"? Because I'm pretty sure that hold was kept when the originally aired content was re-done for the Director's Cut (Eva Geeks comparison screenshots, without comments at this point).
posted by filthy light thief at 12:23 PM on July 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Kaworu doesn't show up until episode 24.

If the re-cap episode was any indication, the sequence of Angel attacks is not random. They were predicted in the Dead Sea Scrolls. SEELE has just been riding out the attacks to get to Kaworu, thinking that he'll deliver what they want. And, of course, what SEELE doesn't get is that Gendou has had his own design all along.

Some shows would have held that beat for two seconds. Maybe ten. Gainax? A minute and a half.

The first time I saw this scene, the tension for resolution became unbearable.
posted by SPrintF at 12:45 PM on July 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


Oh, cool link filthy light thief. I just watched the director's cut on the DVDs and couldn't quite put my finger on the differences. (Seen too many EVA versions, clips, movies, etc. to tell them apart anymore...)

I hope everybody keeps on watching and catches Death(True)2 even if just for the better quality 16:9 and some extra scenes and stuff. And The End of Evangelion for the alternate ending. The original 25&26 always left me a bit just unsatisfied but there are those who think it's a masterpiece so...
posted by zengargoyle at 12:55 PM on July 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Apparently the extra scenes added to Death(True)2 were subsequently re-edited back into episodes 21-24 for the Director's Cut versions, and those versions are the ones on Netflix. So you may not need to watch it after all! But also maybe you want to anyways just for the refresher/breather before everything gets turned inside out.

Sort of mirroring a previous post of mine, I found the image that stuck with me the most during my recent first watch is half-starved Asuka in the dilapidated bathtub having lost the will to live but being unwilling to actually commit suicide. I guess on some level it's an easy emotional manipulation to take your most headstrong character (or one of them, anyways) and cut them down, but I really felt it. You can watch the process of her almost literally running out of gas as the pride and anger that fuels her dissipates. It's frightening in a way that Shinji's despair isn't for some reason. Shinji wears his emotional and psychological issues on his sleeve. Asuka carefully walls them in.

About Kaworu and the localization change in the Netflix version: I didn't really know much going into this episode about what the controversy was except that someone had apparently been made much more ambiguously gay and this was a letdown for viewers who felt like Netflix/Studio Khara was straightwashing the show. Having never seen the series before, I do kind of see the point, not because the straightwashing was successful but because it seems so utterly pointless. No one will be fooled by changing "love" to "like" in the English localization. The Kaworu/Shinji scenes are absolutely gay, the message is clear, and removing overt references to love (whether intended as straightwashing or just as an attempt to skew more literal) almost feels insulting to the viewer.

That still cut at the end: I don't know if that was forced by budget pressures or intentional. Either way, it absolutely worked for me.
posted by chrominance at 5:55 PM on July 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


Having never seen the series before, I do kind of see the point, not because the straightwashing was successful but because it seems so utterly pointless. No one will be fooled by changing "love" to "like" in the English localization. The Kaworu/Shinji scenes are absolutely gay, the message is clear, and removing overt references to love (whether intended as straightwashing or just as an attempt to skew more literal) almost feels insulting to the viewer.

chrominance, I'm really glad to hear that the original intention was clear to you. Having watched the ADV dub a million times, I was one of those really bothered by the change in the Netflix dub. I feel like not only is it straightwashing, it waters a really powerful point down for no reason. Shinji has never felt loved. Kaworu tells him he loves him. It's so important. "Worthy of my love" is so much more weighty than "worthy of my grace."
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:02 AM on July 23, 2019 [5 favorites]


It's definitely an attempt at straightwashing, even though I think it failed for most people. Dan Kanemitsu is, by all accounts, a total creep, and for all his bullshit about being devoted to "literal" translation (which doesn't even exist) he clearly editorialises here and in a couple of other places.

I wouldn't be surprised if Anno's original intention was some kind of Freudian shit rather than exploring a possible queer identity for Shinji. But even if that's true "love" is still the appropriate translation for what's going on in that scene unless you're a reactionary creep trying to pull some "no homo" bullshit, which is full-on what Kanemitsu is trying to do here. "Love" is the right verb even for a strictly platonic reading of this scene.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:53 AM on July 23, 2019 [8 favorites]


They mentioned something on the Waypoint podcast about how the new translation says they are now "leftist terrorists" instead of "cult members."

Can't wait for this all to be fixed in a new, new translation in 2029.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:27 AM on July 23, 2019 [5 favorites]


Also, saying "worthy of my grace" makes him sound so Christ-like that even idiot Shinji should be able to tell he's an Angel.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 3:36 AM on July 24, 2019 [5 favorites]


Here is an alternate take, from a linguistic standpoint! Gainax demanded a very literal re-translation for this series after some unfortunate events at a con some years back (long story short: Japanese movie audiences tend to remain respectfully silent during movies, whereas con audiences, even for brand new stuff, love to shout dumb memery, and the Gainax representative was mortified and blamed the reaction on the English localization).

Consequently, it is important to note that, while the word 好き is correctly idiomatically translated as "love" when used to refer to a person, it has a dictionary definition of "like," and there is a very good chance that someone at Gainax who knows just enough English to mangle a native speaker's work into a hideous unnatural beast that only vaguely resembles how English speakers actually talk decided that "love" was not the “““correct””” translation of the word. Why, the dictionary says so right there!
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:01 PM on August 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


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