I had watched the previous series of Evangelion (NGE and EoE) and the first three episode of the rebuild version of Evangelion (RoE) for some time, but hadn’t really have a chance to watch the last episode even it had been released for about two years. After submitting the paper for EMNLP 2023, I finally had a chance to finish watching the final film of RoE - Thrice Upon a Time. When the closing credits came out along with the music “One Last Kiss” by 宇多田ヒカル, I still couldn’t believe that Evangelion had come to an end.
さよなら、全てのエヴァンゲリオン. 再见，所有的新世纪福音战士。Goodbye, all of Evangelion.
Before I finally watched the last episode myself, I heard enough of spoilers of how Shinji and Mari become the final couple. Honestly, I did make preparations to accept this outcome, but I just really wanted to witness this myself and learn how that actually happens. However, I was really confused when I first saw the train station scene. I then went looking up a lot of explanations for the final scene, and I was disappointed to find out most of people did agree that it’s just how Shinji grows up and (romantically&%?) takes the hand of Mari running out of Ubeshinkawa Station.
Wait a minute. Despiting the station scene, Mari and Shinji only had three other encounters (the parachute scene, Asuka’s confession, and the beach’s rescue) throughout the entire series, and they abruptly get together?
I did some more research and replayed the episode many times, reading more of the other theories, and I feel like I really want to summarize what I thought about the ending.
The production team had put a lot of efforts in making the last scene. What most people interpreted that Shinji and Mari get together or something like Shinji finally learns to let go is merely the most apparent (and very likely false) idea, but we should definitely look at the last part more closely. I am not saying that it’s necessarily wrong saying that Shinji and Mari are leaving the others, but maybe there are more subtle details hinting otherwise. If you pull up the street view of Ubeshinkawa Station, you will find that the stairs that Shinji and Mari walking up to are actually leading them to the other side of the tracks - where Asuka and the others are. Remember that there’s a line “Sayonara is a magic word to meet again” that runs through the entire story. At the end, Shinji happens to cast this magic and say “Sayonara” to Asuka while not saying that to anyone else. If Anno deliberately endows this word with magic, there’s no way we shouldn’t believe that Asuka and Shinji will eventually meet again.
Asuka and Shinji confessed their feelings to each other in past tenses doesn’t mean that they don’t like each other anymore. Instead, they did that because they were both heading to a suicide mission. They were both acting as a mature adult and had put their personal feelings aside, unlike what they did in the TV series that they just harmed each other endlessly. In Aug 2021, Anno suggested that “There’s a gap between what people say in real life and what they truly mean. In animation, unless the characters are intentionally lying, they always say what they mean. I wanted to reverse that: When the characters in ‘Evangelion’ speak, they don’t necessarily say what they mean. ” We have reasons to imagine that what Asuka and Shinji said are not what they really meant. Well, “like” is true, but “used to” is a lie. (I mean - who would still remember someone’s bento if she doesn’t like that guy anymore after 14 damn years, and who would keep calling someone she doesn’t like Baka over and over)
At the final scene, Shinji has grown up, and he is ready to meet Asuka as an adult and pursue whatever they want in a world without EVA.