Profound, moving, and just wacky enough to make you go WTF. This is anime at it’s best. This episode will probably haunt me for a while now.
I am serious when I say this, do yourself a favor and skip the last two episodes of the series. After watching the complete EOA I can honestly tell you that they are inessential. Episode 26 covers the Shinji’s internal struggle during the instrumentality event quite well. And this time, his monologue is much more real, and tangible. You can relate to him, and feel his fear, pain and etc…
That, and you get to see what is going on in the outside world. This is possibly one of the most vivid, disturbing and mind boggling apocalyptic scenarios ever depicted on the screen. This is a perfect ending for the series. Creepy, disturbing and bizarre – and but much more comprehensible than the abstract mind fuck we saw on TV.
I really liked this ending. The movie was extremely stupid, IMHO, and I consider it non-canonical :P
Anyways, nice review. I watched Evangelion last year, and it was indeed an excellent series, that lives up to his name.
And next year we will see more non-canonical movies… damn Gainax and their hunger for yens.