The Cruel Angel's Thesis

Written by: Golan and Mario Tye Dobre

The First Impact

In the beginning was the trauma: that Race from whom all galactic life proceeded. Disaster struck their civillization down from Eden, and the vessels were broken; yet they desperately wanted to live. They took refuge in Guf, and seven of them chose to be the seeds of life. One of them was encased in the White Moon, bearing the Fruit of Life: an inexhaustible heart of power. His name was Adam, which in Hebrew means "earth" and "mankind". He is that angel of light, and he is coming on Earth; his target: the South Pole.

But as Adam had just recently come on Earth, another one of his kind would come too. She was encased in the Black Moon, bearing the Lance of Longinus and the Fruit of Knowledge. Her name was Lilith, which in Hebrew means "the creature of the night". She crashes on the earth, and mortally wounds Adam, taking his place. She traumatized the Earth, tilting its axis, enabling seasons and causing the formation of the Moon. The First Impact.

But why were the seeds Moons? The Moon has historically symbolized fertility, the possibility of life (by way of the menstrual cycle which used to be predicted with the moon phases). In Alchemy, it was also used as a symbol for woman and femininity.

The First Impact was based on a real, hypothesized event from the Earth's Hadean history. The Giant Impact Hypothesis claims that about 4.5 billion years ago, a planet the size of Mars hit the Earth, leading to the formation of the Moon and the Earth's axial tilt.

From that orange undifferentiated primordial soup secreted by Lilith (LCL), life on Earth would be born. The crashing of the Moons on the Earth was an act of geo-cosmic insemination, fertilization. The life that was born from Lilith would inherit her attribute of the Fruit of Knowledge. They would come to be increasingly stratified by systems of representation and symbols, and they would desire to know everything, to speak everything. They wanted the finite word to capture infinity.

The original sin of the Lilin is that they were never supposed to exist on the Earth. As the will to know more and more began manifesting in living organisms, their evolution would eventually bring about the Homo Sapiens. The humans have developed by far the most complex systems of symbols for synthesizing information, as well as for the purpose of communication.

Knowledge, Stratification and Experience

What is knowledge? How does it work? It implies a practical familiarity with things internal or external, helping with solving problems. This implies knowledge is less something engraved in stone as it is a process, an experience. But then, doesn't knowledge also imply a kind of memory? The ability to remember (to put back together stuff from your mind)? How does memory work?

Memory works by way of an event that alters a physical surface. An information imprinted upon a material plane, be it a stone, a wall, a brain, a genetic chemical marker or a hard disk. This implies representation, signification and symbols. Humans are not the first to have used them, but they have developed the most ellaborate systems and chains of signifiers. The brain had developed for it in a runaway process of subjectification. As the signifier was being proliferated in this process, experience (symbolically comprehensible experience, that is) would come to be subsumed by it. The encountering of the self image, together with the emergence of proper names unifies the experience of the body. In this the ego, the AT field, has its origin as the territory of semiotic life.

But if signification depends on the material, and any given piece of material and any given piece of space is limited, then signification too is limited. The world is vast, and life's signifying capacity is limited. But even though life is limited, it still wills to know everything, to speak everything. We are then facing a dialectic between the will to know everything and the material limitation of life. It is precisely from this tension that the subject arises. The subject's nature is that it is split between its conscious, signified experience, and the deeper machinations that mediate this experience.

It is this symbolic stratification that prohibits the drive and replaces it with desire. The partial object which enables the flow of the drive becomes the object-cause of desire. This object is what the Other (as the subject's experience of the Symbolic Order) desires. As such, the subject's desire is the desire of the Other not just by desiring the Other but also by desiring what the Other desires. But outside of signification, the natural state is the drive, the rush towards Jouissance as a an excess-of-life and into death, to become a Body-without-Organs. LCL is this original, unorganized state.

Of course, once stratified like this it would be next to impossible to willingly come back to that state of old. It is for this reason that analysis arose: to traverse the fantasy (the image of desire) and achieve a different position in the neurotic condition. But there would be some people who would rather skip this part, avoid taking a new position relative to subjectivity, and unite the Lilin in a sea of LCL to abolish suffering and all the flaws associated with split subjectivity.

The Second Impact

Those who bear the fantasy of Instrumentality: of collapsing the signifier, would gather in a sort of religious order, an esoteric secret society all the way back in medieval times as per the Classified Information. They would come to be known as SEELE, from the German word meaning "soul". These would slowly but surely consolidate power over the powers that be and that would be, following the goal of Adam Kadmon with zeal. They had in their possession the Dead Sea Scrolls: a series of instructions and prophecies regarding the Seeds of Life which were created by the First Ancestral Race. In real history, the Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish manuscripts found in the Qumran caves, being the oldest copies of biblical text ever discovered.

But could the signifier once established really be abolished? Moreover, is the signifier by itself a problem? SEELE has made its central dogma the path to an ego-less life, one that borders on the divine. But could limited beings really become unlimited? Or is this a lie of the Serpent; a false goal that would spell disaster?

They eventually realized the place where Adam lay dormant as in a tomb: Antarctica. It would only be a matter of time before they got too close for their own good.

09/13/00: SEELE sends Dr Katsuragi and his research team for a Contact Experiment with the sleeping Adam. They removed the Lance of Longinus, which led to Adam awakening and a great explosion known as the Second Impact. The Earth's water broke and gave birth to a Lilin child bearing Adam's soul.
Survivors: Misato Katsuragi. Age: 14. State at retrieval: non-verbal.

Let all Lilin flesh fall silent, and all of Terra tremble.
A great tribulation broke loose as the Bottomless Pit of geotrauma opened. The Horsemen were sent out into the world to strike down half of the population. The Second Impact caused the Antarctic Ice Cap to melt, flooding the land in the Southern Hemisphere. A large portion of the oceans turned red like blood, a reference to Revelation. It also led to the Earth's axis shifting back into an upright position, putting an end to seasons and most likely causing deep imbalance within ecosystems. It bled into geopolitics too as nuclear war broke out between India and Pakistan, and a nuke destroyed Tokyo taking 500 thousand lives with it. This moment was perfect for SEELE, through the United Nations, to consolidate their control over the world and be able to use violence against anyone who dared standing in their path.

Even though the angels have already been born from Adam, and have just been waiting for the moment to strike, SEELE managed to take Adam's body apart. They also crucified Lilith within the Black Moon and impaled her with the Lance of Longinus to prevent her from regenerating. After consolidating their control and offering the official explanation for the Second Impact as an asteroid having hit Antarctica, SEELE wished to continue their pursuit of Instrumentality. Yui Ikari, the daughter of an important member of SEELE and masterful researcher in bio-engineering, together with her newly-wed husband Gendo Ikari, Professor Kozo Fuyutsuki, Dr Naoko Akagi and other unnamed associates have been appointed by SEELE to create a research institute called Gehirn (from the German word meaning "brain"). Its headquarters are called the GeoFront, and it was built inside the Black Moon. While Tokyo-2 had been built as the new capital of Japan, Tokyo-3 would be built around the Black Moon/GeoFront. It was supposed to be the new capital after Tokyo-2, but in actuality this was just a justification for the high costs of the infrastructure of the city that was essentially a modern-day fortress guarded by tanks, turrets, rockets, soldiers, and being equipped with bunkers and buildings that could retreat into the ground.

They used LCL from Lilith, together with parts from Adam's body to try and resurrect Adam, but instead they created EVANGELION Units (from the Greek word for "Gospel" or "good news"), sometimes shortened as EVA, from Adam's body. This is a reference to how Eve the foremother was made from Adam's rib. Two of them were made from Adam, while one was made from Lilith's body. These robot-like cybernetic organisms with metallic armor and intricate mechanisms could, no, needed to house souls. They attempted to make new Contact Experiments with them, the first test subject being Gehirn researcher Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu. During the subject, a part of her soul got trapped in the used EVA unit, leading to her becoming psychologically unstable and unfit to live in society. She committed suicide and attempted to kill her 3 year old daughter Asuka Langley Soryu, but she mistook her for a doll and thus never killed her.

The second Contact Experiment was with Yui Ikari herself. Unlike Soryu, she disappeared completely, her soul becoming fully embedded in EVA unit 01. After this, Gendo abandoned their son Shinji Ikari. In the meantime, Dr Naoko Akagi worked tirelessly on three supercomputers that would aid in the research of Gehirn and in monitoring the EVA Units. These supercomputers were collectively refered to as the MAGI, and individually as Casper, Melchior and Balthasar after the Three Wise Men who brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Lord Jesus Christ when He was born. They were made in the image and likeness of Dr Akagi, symbolizing her aspects as Mother, Woman and Scientist. Though if you were to ask us, the fourth aspect (lover) was conveniently forgotten by her. After Yui's death, Dr Akagi had an affair with Commander Gendo Ikari. At this time, Gehirn also used DNA from Yui to create a multitude of new bodies that would come to be known as Rei Ayanami, and they would be kept in the Reiquarium deep in the GeoFront as the basis of the Dummy Plug System, for autopiloting in case of emergency. The Ayanami series also housed the soul of Lilith, the foremother of all terrestrial life.

In 2010, the Commander would present Rei I to Dr Akagi and her daughter Ritsuko Akagi. It would not be long until Rei I would confirm Dr Akagi's worst insecurities regarding her relationship with Ikari, and would send her into a dark frenzy causing her to kill the child. Horrified at what she had done, she commits suicide by falling on Balthasar, the altar of motherhood that she had defiled. Following this, Gehirn had been de facto expanded into also being a paramilitary organization and given the name NERV, with the motto "God's in His Heaven. All's right with the world.", which coming from them is like a mocking of God's declaration from the beginning that His creation was very good (Genesis 1:31). Rei II would also be brought to replace the deceased Rei I, whose soul (also, a fragment of Lilith's) had come to inhabit the last uninhabited EVA unit.

Building the Assemblages | Mapping the Machines

Let us take a closer look at the layout of this structure. There is the modern-day fortress city Tokyo-3 that surrounds the GeoFront, which is NERV's headquarters located within the Black Moon. At its highest, this Black Moon rises roughly 1 km above the surface. Underneath the surface there are a lot of rooms and tunnels, but 2 km underneath there is Central Dogma, the space which houses the MAGI and the control panels for monitorization. 1 km below Central Dogma (3 km under the surface) there is Terminal Dogma, a place where only staff of the highest clearance could gain access to. It contained the crucified Lilith with the LCL lake, the graveyard of failed EVA units, as well as Rei's birth place, with the Reiquarium and the Dummy Plug System. This is the anti-temple of NERV. It also resembles the typical neurotic structure: the top, visible part of the GeoFront as the ego/persona, Central Dogma as the Symbolic Order, the node for the unconscious circulation and stratification of signifiers, and Terminal Dogma as the unsignifiable unconscious, the Real, the realm of drives, jouissance and the facts of life and death.

The reason we deemed it necessary to lay out the architecture of the GeoFront is because we wish to create an assemblage, a machine to show how the planet Earth in Eva functions like a giant psychoanalytic clinic. In each such machine, the partial objects are the analyst (the one who guides the process of analysis) and the analysand (the one guided in the process), while the flows and breaks are constituted by discourse and signifier. The clinic machine is also mediated by the Discourse of the Analyst (diagram depicted on the right), which is driven by the analyst's desire and position as Other. Analysis is also a logical process, as it deals with words, signifiers and the way in which they flow and connect, meaning that it has an end/aim. For the purposes of this particular instance, we shall collapse the end-of-analysis with the aim-of-analysis. Also for this analysis, we will modify aspects of concepts, carving them so we can properly plug them in this machine.

Those Pilots Who Longed To Express Their Desire, And Thus Invited Analysis

2015. The Dead Sea Scrolls predicted that in that year the angels born from Adam would awaken one after another. The first one would be Sachiel, the Angel of Water, whose name means "Covering of God". Before he would arrive, they decided to give Unit-00 (in which there was Rei I's soul) a pilot: Rei II. However, upon activation, it would go berserk because of the soul in it, trying to kill Ritsuko Akagi. After this incident, only the pilot was severely injured. When Sachiel did come about, Commander Gendo Ikari summoned his estranged son to pilot Unit-O1 containing Yui's soul. He initially resisted the demands, only being convinced to pilot after seeing the injured Rei Ayanami. In the fight with Sachiel, he accidentally injures (though not severely) his classmate's, Toji Suzuhara, sister. Toji does beat Shinji up for it, but comes to regret it later upon realizing the gravity and difficulty of piloting an EVA. We are also introduced to Asuka Langley Soryu and to Ryoji Kaji, and she together with Shinji come under Misato's care.

In order to start building the assemblage, we must look to fixate the partial objects: the analysts and analysands. The analysands in our case are all the suffering characters: Shinji, Rei, Asuka, Gendo, Ritsuko, Misato and so on. Then who are the analysts? We have deduced, based on the extent of their presence and the magnitude of their impact (pun not intended) to group them into Greater Analysts and Lesser Analysts. There are two Greater Analysts, one of which is Ryoji Kaji. The Lesser Analysts are the angels, which are as follows:

All of these angels, and some which we shall approach later in this analysis, are Lesser Analysts. It was through their actions that they aroused from the analysand characters actions and living forms of expression. Not just a verbal expression of desire, but a show of their desiring-production/will-to-live/will-to-power. Though these would not suffice to end the analysis, nor to definitively make them understand their desire and situate themselves differently relative to their neurotic condition. They were present for a comparatively little time, and had little permanent influence of the characters.

However, we should also give a shot (pun not intended... again) to the first Greater Analyst: Ryoji Kaji. His way of analysis is a cruel one, in that he does not care where it will lead him. He is well aware that, by being a triple agent (for SEELE, NERV and Japanese Intelligence), it would only be a matter of time before he gets killed. Even so, he wishes to find out the truth about everything and to let it be known to everyone. His main clients are Misato Katsuragi and Shinji Ikari. He also managed to bring Adam's embryo to Gendo, which he fused to the palm of his hand.

With Misato, the most important (productive) session was the one in Episode 15, on the road to her appartment. In it, after she got so drunk she couldn't walk properly, she had a slip where she confesses that she had actually broken up with him because he reminded her of her father. We see that in this, Kaji through his presence manages to provoke speech from Misato, and reveal that she is still living in Dr Katsuragi's shadow and experiences deep frustration. She wills to be a mother figure for Shinji, but still behaves immaturely: not being tidy, drinking a lot etc. A contrast between her and Kaji is the way in which she is associated with beer while he is associated with coffee. Beer can be taken as a symbol for Misato's lack of sobriety, and for her neurotic repressions, while coffee is an opposite symbol, of sobriety and of preparing to face a real day head-on. Episode 15 ends with Kaji more or less accidentally leading Misato into Terminal Dogma, showing her what he believes is the crucified Adam, but in actuality is Lilith.

With Shinji, he has two productive sessions, the one in Episode 18 and the one in Episode 19. The first one begins with Shinji asking Kaji about his father, to which Kaji replies that he'd thought Shinji would ask him about Misato. Then the session shifts into how Shinji only thinks he had come to understand his father, but in actuality people couldn't even understand themselves. He comes to underline how from the perspective of the signifier alone we couldn't fully grasp anything, which leads us into neurotically wanting to understand ourselves and others. But then he also specifies that this is "what makes life interesting", showing how Kaji has finished analysis. He also reveals the topological nature of language, discussing how the kanji used for "she" means literally "a woman far away", illustrating how the symbolic communication between men and women is flawed, how men and women will not be able to understand each other, and topologically iterating the psychoanalytic affirmation that there is no sexual relation (In Lacanian psychoanalysis, sexual difference is given mainly by each subject's relation to the Phallus, castration and jouissance, distinguishing between different types of jouissance. We will not discuss it, however, because we haven't yet grasped this particular concept). The topology of the signifier is given by the fact that it requires material and material requires space, surface, and it works with the architecture of the mind. The signifier is a territory.

Kaji's second and last session with Shinji would be in Episode 19, where Shinji finds him tending to the watermelon patch inside the GeoFront while a battle was being waged between EVAs and the angel Zeruel. Kaji tells Shinji that, unlike himself, he does have the capacity to save humanity from the angel, a latent potentiality, which he can choose to use or not to use. This instance is different from the others where Shinji has been demanded to pilot, because while everyone was telling him that he may pilot if he wants, that was secretly a demand for him to want to pilot. Kaji's pseudo-demand was different in that he simply presented Shinji with a latent potentiality within himself, which he could actualize if he wanted to, and told him about what would happen to the world if he chooses not to. The choice Shinji makes feels more "his own" than the others.

Even though a SEELE agent would shoot Kaji dead following the disclosure of Terminal Dogma, he did inspire Misato to keep looking for the truth, even though she would not achieve the analytical success he did.

The rest of the Lesser Analysts were as follows:

Leliel

The angel Leliel appears as a sphere with numerous black and white strips, floating ominously above Tokyo-3. He possesses an inverted AT field, giving him the ability to invert his body into the shadow on the ground called the Dirac Sea (named after the theoretical model regarding the electron vacuum in quantum mechanics), which accesses a pocket dimension. This Dirac Sea is the angel's real body, much like how the analyst embodies the Other of desire, and the assumed lack behind it. Shinji and his EVA are swallowed by this pocket dimension, moment in which Leliel begins his analytical session by presenting Shinji with his familial trauma: the death of his mother and the abandonment of his father. During this, a contact is also established with his mother's soul that inhabits the EVA, helping him survive despite the conditions of no energy or oxygen. EVA Unit-01 goes berserk and rips its wait out of the Leliel sphere, illustrating a bloody birth-like scene. Soon enough, through efforts by NERV, Shinji also comes out of the EVA completely naked, another shot which repeats birth.

The EVAs are instantiations of the mother archetype. Not only are they call-backs to how Eve, who is the foremother, was made from Adam's rib (The EVAs, except for Unit-01, are made from Adam's body), they also exhibit other traits. They have the soul of a mother, or a mother figure. The entry plug is also both a phallic and an yonic symbol. By being a womb, the LCL which is the primordial soup of Lilith's blood serves the role of the amniotic fluid. And the way in which the EVAs can go berserk in order to fight the angel and protect the pilot invokes the image of the feral mothers of nature and the violence they are capable of in order to protect their cubs.

Episode 16, the episode in which Leliel's session takes place, is called in Japanese "The Sickness Unto Death" as a reference to the eponymous concept of Soren Kierkegaard. In English, it is titled "Splitting of the Breast". "Splitting" here can have multiple facets. In regular psychology, it refers to black and white (like Leliel) thinking, being a way to create sense through contrast, of opposing certain elements. In this way, universes of discourse are created. In Lacan's psychoanalysis, it refers to the emergence of subjectivity and thus the birth of the split subject.

Bardiel

The angel Bardiel appears not by himself, but by seizing infecting and taking control of Unit-03, piloted by Shinji's classmate and friend Toji Suzuhara. Shinji is aware that it is an EVA Unit, however he does not know who it is that is the pilot, he just knows there is somebody in there. He remains paralyzed by the dichotomy between the demand to fight and the realization that he might hurt an innocent person. With this, NERV activates the Dummy Plug System which kills the angel and severely injures the pilot. Only after this does Shinji see who it was. After the injuries, Toji loses his leg. Anno was contractually unable to kill him because of the rules of the TV Network. Following this incident, Shinji no longer wishes to pilot and fight angels.

Zeruel

The angel Zeruel attacked the GeoFront swiftly, before NERV could properly recover from Bardiel's attack. It chopped off the arms of Unit-02 (Asuka's EVA), and Rei in Unit-00 attempted to attack it with an N2 mine, though unsuccessfully. Shinji was convinced by Kaji to fight it, and he came piloting his EVA Unit just as the angel had reached Central Dogma. He managed to take the fight back to the surface, culminating with Unit-01 going berserk and devouring the angel. It even ate the Fruit of Life: the S2 Engine, that is the unlimited source of power. This causes the EVA to mutate: not only do its eyes and teeth become human-like, it re-grows its severed arm, the metallic plates start falling off of it like scales. It has eaten from the Fruit of Life, and has become like God, and this was all secretly part of Gendo's plan. Eventually, NERV manages to rescue Shinji from inside Unit-01.

Arael

The angel Arael arrives on the terrestrial orbit above Japan, and his body is made entirely out of light, uncreated. The light beams that shine over Asuka are, thus, part of the angel's body. Upon being exposed to the light, Asuka experiences great distress. Her attempts at fighting the angel are futile, as the light reveals all that she repressed. Arael carries Asuka through the aerial tollhouses, showing her the worst moment of her life and the catalyst of her trauma and narcissistic neurosis: her mother's suicide. This causes her to have a complete mental breakdown as Handel's Messiah is blasted uncomfortably loud during the scene. Rei descends into Terminal Dogma, pulling out the Spear of Longinus from Lilith, and comes back throwing it towards the angel, killing him. Even with this, Asuka's encounter with the divine light was traumatic. Furthermore, with the Lance of Longinus now in orbit instead of in Lilith, she had started regenerating.

In Eastern Orthodox theology, there is great emphasis on the Uncreated Light of God. According to tradition, Heaven and Hell are not places proper, but rather states and reactions of the soul to the divine light. For the one who was in communion with God, and who partook of His grace and love, that light is bliss and rest. Meanwhile, for the one who is bad, hateful and rejected communion with God, the light of God is torture. The fires of Hell and the light of God are really one and the same, what differs is the soul of man. As such, Asuka passed through the fires of Hell, revealing that which she was unwilling to speak or discuss, and that fed her deep resentment for others, which the others did not deserve.

Armisael

The Angel of the Womb appears as a giant and thin halo of light, which upon closer inspection has the shape of the double helix, the same shape as DNA. The angel penetrates Unit-00, piloted by Rei, and causes bulging veins to appear on both the EVA and Rei's body, as well as hacking into her mind to start his session. He appears to her in the form of herself, most notably standing the LCL lake appearing to be bleeding (menstruating?). They discuss about each other's loneliness. Something in the conversation causes Rei to shed tears, which she is shocked by, having always believed she was not capable of such a thing. As the psychological contact went on, a giant monster emerges from Unit-00's back, bearing the resemblance of all the previously slain angels. In the end, this encounter leads Rei II's soul to merge with Rei I's soul that resided in the EVA. The monstruous monolith vanishes, Unit-00 briefly takes on Rei's resemblance but incredibly luminous and with a halo above her head, before exploding, destroying a large portion of Tokyo-3, leaving a giant crater that was filled by the waters, and killing Rei II in the process.

Following this, Misato attempts to comfort Shinji, but he rejects her. Rei III is brought out, which would be the last Rei Ayanami. Now she was completely changed, no longer so willing to blindly obey orders. In the meantime, Ritsuko decides to reveal the secrets of Terminal Dogma to Misato and Shinji, as revenge on SEELE for having tortured and humiliated her. Ritsuko presents them the graveyard for the failed EVA units, Rei's birthplace, and the Dummy Plug System with the Reiquarium. This is where she lets Shinji know that Rei is actually a clone of his mother. Due to her frustrations with both Gendo and Rei, she does an extreme gesture much like her mother Naoko before her, by destroying the Reiquarium and killing all the other bodies of Rei. This renders Rei III mortal, meaning that if she dies, she could no longer be replaced.

The Third Impact

In the aftermath of her session with Arael, Asuka would be completely traumatized. She attempted to interact better with Hikari Horaki, but would fail to do so resulting in her further closing off from others and despising herself. She probably attempts to self-harm, and she lies naked in her bathtub waiting to starve to death. She is found in time, however, and hospitalized, placed in an induced coma because of suicide risk.

With Shinji in probably the loneliest state he has ever been, he meets someone. This child presented himself as the Fifth Child, and the new pilot for Unit-02 while Asuka is absent. This is the child born on September 13th 2000, when the research team awakened Adam, when the Earth's water broke. Kaworu Nagisa. He is also the 17th angel, and the second Greater Analyst we have considered, together with Kaji. As the 17th and final angel, he is Tabris, which in Arabic means "The Revealed", and he is the patron of free will. Besides being the final angel, Kaworu is also the first angel because he is the soul of Adam in a Lilin body. As the soul of an angel in a human body, he shares multiple physical similarities with Rei: red irises, pale skin and an unnatural hair color (for Rei blue, for Kaworu white).

He has a conversation with SEELE, to unite his body with Lilith's and trigger the Third Impact. However, this was not a guarantee, because Kaworu already had his own plans and agenda. He understood that Third Impact would mean the end of all Lilin life as we know it, and he had come to love the Lilin, perhaps this is why all those billions of years ago he allowed Lilith to take over as Adam. And this is how he allows himself to be killed by Shinji in Terminal Dogma, Lilith and Rei bearing witness to this sacrifice, a sacrifice that would push Shinji closer to rock-bottom. Kaworu had managed to reveal the deep seated need for connection in Shinji, and his departure was instrumental (pun somewhat intended) for the eventual conclusion of his analysis.

After everything that transpired, with no more angels or analysts to stand in their way, SEELE and Gendo Ikari could finally fulfill the Sacrament of Instrumentality. This came into conflict with the other NERV members, that were still occupying Central Dogma, and for this SEELE sends military forces to invade the NERV HQ and kill everyone. In the meantime, Shinji visits the comatose Asuka in the hospital, begging her to interact with him, until he accidentally reveals more of her skin and he surrenders to his biological impulses. This pushes him further down psychologically because of the post-nut clarity. It has gotten so bad in fact, he did not even react when soldiers were almost going to shoot him. Fortunately for him, Misato was there in time to save him. She attempts to get him to stop feeling sorry for himself and convince him to pilot, to save the world not from angels but from SEELE.

Ritsuko installs a firewall for the MAGI and descends into Terminal Dogma, into Lilith's chamber. There she sees Gendo Ikari and the naked Rei. On the surface, the Battle of Armageddon is still raging as Asuka wakes up and is brought in her EVA to pilot. She experiences an epiphany: the fact that her mother's soul was in the EVA. She almost defeats the military before SEELE releases the Mass Production EVANGELIONS, whose Dummy Plug System is based in Kaworu. These MPEs could not just fight on the ground, they could also shift into bird like mechanical creatures. The Lance of Longinus, together with the Mass Production EVAs kill Asuka and rip Unit-02's body apart.

In Terminal Dogma, Gendo shoots Ritsuko and prepares to play his part in the Sacrament, hoping to re-unite with Yui. Outside, Shinji is finally convinced to pilot after Misato has been mortally wounded. His eyes meet Asuka, or better said what was left of her EVA, and it's the final straw for him as he lets out a scream of horror. The Mass Production EVAs crucify him up in the air, in order to create the Tree of Life. Back in Terminal Dogma, Gendo places Adam's embryo in Rei's uterus, but then she defies him by incorporating his hand in her body. She fuses with Lilith, who is then complete now both body and soul. The now complete Lilith regenerates fully and comes down from the cross, ascending up. The Lilith/Rei/Adam creature meets with Shinji, who is still crucified up in the air, and uses Kaworu's form to calm him down. The Tree of Life was first the kabbalistic diagram, and then the actual tree of life as a red cross with roots made from a similar material to the Lance of Longinus. A call back to Christian doctrine, where the Tree of Life mentioned in both Genesis and Revelation is seen as a type of the Cross. The new Lilith is also a being that bears both the Fruit of Knowledge and the Fruit of Life, a being that is truly god-like, uniting both semiotic life and the pure intensity of unlimited life.

The Mass Production EVAs kill themselves with replicas of the Lance of Longinus, and Rei unites all Lilin life. All of it collapses into LCL, the Anti-AT field as the Body-without-Organs that disorganizes everything. With their bodies and egos completely dissolved, now everyone has access to everyone else's experiences. SEELE's plan has been successfully reached, now humans can finally get along and be happy... right? Individuality has not completely dissolved, as people still experience themselves as individuals. Signification does not seem to have dissolved either. The signifier as flow, break and partial object constituting the mental machinery was not dismantled. And people keep lashing out at each other, judging each other. They sit on the seat of the analysand, being confronted with the reality of their failures, and their signifying blockages and knots. Shinji experiences diverse visions of himself as a child, even of the love of Misato and Kaji. He ends up begging Asuka for help, to which she acidicly retaliates. Shinji overturns the table and strangles her. An act of rage or despair?

Shinji experiences the dilemma of whether it would be better for him to die, to no longer exist. Rei communicates to him, talking to him about his fantasy, and how he had used the dream to escape reality. The fantasy was Shinji's way of visualizing his desire, his jouissance, without actually reaching it. And it was this fantasy that structured and stratified him as a subject. Rei and Shinji are now in the LCL ocean, telling him that it is what he wished for. But then he realizes: "This feels wrong...". The fantasy of Instrumentality was what guided SEELE, it was what had caused everything in the plot to move, and it proved paradoxical. Jouissance envelops Shinji's mind: that kind of satisfaction that emerges when satisfaction has been prohibited. Without individuality he could not really love anyone because love implies individuality. The paradoxical wish to both be and not be a subject. Instrumentality did not suffice to break the Hedgehog's Dillema. It is indeed what makes life interesting.

The Lilith/Rei creature's throat is slit open, Unit-01 emerges from her eye, the Black Moon bleeds, and then her body breaks down and falls to upon the Earth. Thus speaks Yui: "Everywhere can be Paradise as long as you have the will-to-live... As long as the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are around, everything will be alright...".

Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Soryu have thus successfully traversed the fantasy. They have successfully reached a new position relative to their neurotic, signified condition, and the architecture of their mind has been successfully shifted. They have come back in the body on the Earth: a deserted landscape with red LCL oceans like the blood seas of Revelation. This is what lies beyond the fantasy. Shinji sees Asuka and attempts to strangle her, but he stops when she finally does a gesture of acceptance: caressing his cheek. He breaks into tears and all she can say is "How disgusting...".

Shinji and Asuka have reached the end of Evangelion analysis.

The Apocalypse according to Anno

Naturally, Neon Genesis Evangelion did not exist in a vacuum. Like any work of creative fiction, it must reflect the creator. This creation is made in the image and likeness of the creator. As such, Evangelion is also made in the image of Hideaki Anno. It also serves as a kind of testimony of his own from his experience as an analysand.

It is perhaps well known at this point that Anno had created Evangelion in a time when he was battling depression. It has supposedly struck him following the creation of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. He was burnt out so bad, he couldn't work on anything for 4 years. However, he knew that he could not run away, and that he had to keep going with his life. He wished to do something to express his deep struggle, and this is how Evangelion was born. Evangelion would be Anno's own self-analysis, occupying the positions of both analysand and analyst, addressing the signifying blockages in his mind.

As such, he sought to insert himself in the many aspects of the show, each of his flows of desire personified as a new desiring-machine in a new system. Instances and examples of this are how characters like Shinji, Asuka and Misato represent conscious aspects of his, while characters like Rei or Kaworu represent his unconscious. But beyond being an exposition of his own analytical process, Evangelion itself invites the audience to their own analysis.

However, EVA suffers from a curse: of becoming the very object of its criticism. While it analyzes and deconstructs the neurotic condition, encouraging viewers to a process of analysis, of untangling themselves from neurosis and viewing their desire from a new perspective, for some it has become the neurotic symptom. One needs not to look any further than Rei Ayanami and how idolized she has become in the fandom. She fulfilled the archetypes of the Mother and of the Daughter, but never that of the lover. From this standpoint, she was an empty signifier waiting to be filled with the fantasy of a neurotic fandom. And many other examples which we shall not discuss in detail in here.

Nevertheless, Anno's creation serves the role of an analysand's testimony, a call to analysis and an object-cause of desire.

Rebuilds and Closing Thoughts

With this, we reach the conclusion of the analysis of the main Eva series+EoE. In the years following the ending, Anno would come to revisit his creation through the four Evangelion movies which are collectively refered to as "Rebuild of Evangelion" or "Rebuild" simply. The Rebuilds, in terms of the early lore, do not seem to differ significantly from the originals. However, certain aspects are elaborated upon: such as the EVA Unit on the Moon, Lances with different names, more organizations and so on. Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone does not have many differences compared with the beginning act of the original, with the exception that the Mark unit is displayed in the ending on the Moon, together with Kaworu.

Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance continues with the introduction of Asuka, but this is not Asuka Langley Soryu, but rather Asuka Shikinami Langley. And she is a different character, because she is a clone as opposed to a naturally born child. A new pilot is also introduced: Mari Makinami Illustrious, and it turns out she is a clone too later. As Unit-04 arrives for testing, Asuka is the one to test it (taking the place of Toji's Unit-03), which ends up being infected with an angel and she ends up injured in the aftermath. Rei comes to fight the angel with Unit-00, but she ends up being engulfed into its body. Shinji attempts to save her, but this leads to his EVA Unit becoming a divine being and triggering the Third Impact. A spear comes from the moon in the post-credits, and puts the event on pause.

In the meantime before Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, after the pausing of the Third Impact and the disappearance of Shinji and Rei, multiple members of NERV including Kaji, Misato, Ritsuko, Aoba, Maya, Hyuga and others, as well as the pilots Asuka and Mari separate from NERV, making a civil war which was the WILLE uprising. WILLE (from the German word meaning "will", in reference to the will-to-live, or even the will-to-power) wishes to defend humanity from NERV and prevent further impacts. Even with this, Third Impact resumes and Kaji has to sacrifice himself to stop it, while Misato is pregnant with his child, and she would come to distance herself from her son after his birth. 14 years after Third Impact, WILLE manages to retrieve Unit-01 with Shinji in it. Misato, and pretty much everyone in WILLE is resentful of him, as they incarcerate him and place an explosive choker on his neck to prevent him from piloting an EVA and triggering another impact. Shinji finds out none of the pilots aged past the age of 14 because of the Curse of the EVA: a statement on the stunted development of the neurotic. He is saved by Rei and brought to NERV, where he is informed by his father that he will be piloting the new Unit 13 with Kaworu. It seems like, from all the characters, the most unchanged one was Kaworu. We have previously seen in Eva 1.0 the lots of coffins on the Moon from which he emerges, implying that he not only reincarnates but also keeps the memories from previous incarnations. He even mentions that his and Shinji's names are written together in the Book of Life, a concept borrowed from Revelation. This points to the fact that Adam/Kaworu is not just the first angel, but also some kind of divine or metaphysical being.

Fuyutsuki reveals to Shinji the true nature of Rei (a physical clone of his mother), that he never managed to actually save her and that the destruction he caused was in fact in vain. Kaworu takes Shinji's choker and wears it himself before they go on to pilot Unit 13 and retrieve the Spears of Cassius and Longinus, believing they will be able to reverse the damage caused by Third Impact. After a bunch of fighting, Kaworu dies and the Fourth Impact is triggered. Asuka manages to save Shinji in the aftermath, scolds him on repressing his problems and drags him through the ruins of Tokyo-3 with Rei following.

In the final film, Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time, Asuka, Rei and a severely depressed Shinji arrive in Village-3, a settlement of survivors. There, they meet Toji Suzuhara, Hikari Horaki and Kensuke Aida who unlike the pilots have grown into adults, Toji and Hikari even having a family. Rei slowly becomes integrated within the rural community, while Shinji slowly comes out of his depression, even coming to meet Kaji and Misato's son, Ryoji Kaji Jr. Rei ends up dissolving in a puddle of LCL, and Wunder (the ship used by WILLE) comes to pick up Asuka and Shinji, where they end up reconciling more or less. Some action later, Misato and Ritsuko confront Gendo, and the latter shoots him to no avail, as Gendo has used the Key of Nebuchadnezzar to become immortal and invulnerable. Misato finally steps in to defend Shinji as his legal guardian, having remembered how she was egging him during the Near Third Impact, and gets shot while shielding him, though not fatally. Some other action later, Shinji and Gendo end up fighting in the anti-universe. He presents Shinji with a new entity: Black Lilith, which he intends on using to provoke the Additional Impact, which would allow him to be with Yui again. In the meantime, Misato sacrifices herself and Wunder to create the Lance of Gaius, giving Shinji the power to re-write reality. Shinji has a conversation with Gendo. He tells Shinji about his past, his issue with loneliness and how the loss of Yui who had previously opened him to human interaction gravely affected him. He then gives Shinji control of Additional Impact, and uses this to provide closure to everyone starting with Asuka and continuing with Kaworu and Kaji. He ends up creating a reality without EVAs, where everyone including himself can lead a normal life.

While for one of us this was not a favorite at all, feeling like it leaned too much into the mainstream, or even that it has become needlessly convoluted without adding much to the original analytical creation, it is nevertheless interesting. Through it we can see how Anno's perspective has shifted over the years, and how much he managed to accomplish in terms of animation and effects now with better financial possibilities.

What this analysis has sought to offer was a psychoanalytic-machinic understanding of Evangelion. It sought to propose the assemblage of the planetary clinic in order to understand the flows of signifiers within the show that drive the narrative and its non-linear influences. The planetary clinic is thus a quasi-geotraumatic model too, approaching concepts like the construction of subjectivity by way of fantasy, to the disastruous analytical sessions carried through planetary trauma and angelic attacks. It revealed how this complex worldbuilding is the map of Anno's psyche, and how it calls even the audience to analysis, successfully or not.

Discussions on this analysis remain open.