Neon Genesis Evangelion

From The Encyclopedia of Pointless

You didn't see the real ending

His statement took me aback. I had definitely just watched the last episode. Granted it was via adult swim, but it was certainly the last one in the TV series, or one of em' anyways. It was the end of the show.

No, You didn't see the real ending, you saw the fake ending.

I was vaguely familiar with the concept of a fake ending. I knew that you got one In Castlevania DS if you failed to beat a secret boss, that you got one in Sonic 3 and Knuckles if you didn't get all the Emeralds, and that they basically meant you hadn't done the right thing at the right time.

"Did I miss a secret episode?" I asked my enigmatic colleague. "Do I have to backtrack through episode 5 to get the secret item that gets me the good ending?"

I figured something like this had to be the case. Everybody raved about this series like it was the best thing since the delicious turkey sandwich. Honestly though I wasn't really feeling it like so many of my nerd peers were. Granted, I was usually paying more attention to handheld video games while the show was on, and on most nights I just went to bed early and missed the show, meaning I had only sort of half-seen about 40% of the episodes, but I had the gist of it down pretty well.

It seemed to center around the original emo kid. A young man who, in spite of being authorized to smash things with a Giant robot, didn't seem to enjoy life at all. It made no sense to me. Had I had such power at that young age, every moment of my life would have been spent either running around in my personal doom machine (probably while singing my own theme song titled "Lookit me I'm in a giant robot") or lording said antics over my friends. This guy, on the other hand, spent his time feeling complicated emotions about his father and stuff. It just didn't add up.

The other characters were easier to understand, as they pretty much just went down the generic anime checklist. In order, we've got.

• Screaming harpy young woman.
• Young woman that only speaks in enigmatic short sentences.
• Computer lady.
• Bad parent dude with sinister motives.
• Whorish surrogate mother figure.
• Whorish surrogate mother figure's stoner boyfriend who is really a secret agent or something.
• A penguin.

Out of the bunch the penguin made the most sense. I mean, he's a penguin. Penguins are awesome.

"So how do I get the super secret good ending?" I asked. I was hoping it didn't involve too much backtracking through the earlier levels.

You buy the End of Eva DVD.

And what makes the DVD different from the TV ending?

The guys destroying humanity win.

I sat down and thought on that for a moment. No more humanity would mean no more god-awful emo brats or screaming demon brats, but in all the other movies I've seen humanity is considered a good thing. Maybe I didn't really want to see humanity destroyed by things from space while kid-emo mopes about. Further investigation was required.

Is it any good?

Yeah it's great, except for the partial nudity.

What now? Partial nudity? But this is a cartoon! Okay, fine, an "Anime" but still an animated feature and therefore a cartoon. What the heck kind of cartoon comes with partial nudity?

Partial nudity?

Yeah, it's their culture.

There was a long uncomfortable pause as I contemplated the place of cultural relativity in our modern world. Finally, at long last, I delivered my answer.

Then screw it.

-- Beat

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