#The journey is over#
Shin Evangelion is the product of over 60 years of the anime industry, not only the ending for the biggest and most influential anime series in japan but something that can serve as a graduation for otaku.
Striking visuals, a perfected Shiro Sagisu leading the soundtrack and a matured and satisfied Hideaki Anno behind the script and general direction, shin Evangelion is the result of the ideas of 4 directors and a massive staff and it shows, it's filled to the brim with content and references to other anime. It is anime at it's best, it's extremely fun and wacky while still being emotional and relevant. And this movie is self aware, it knows what it has to do and the burden it's carrying, it's not just some cheap and rushed way of ending everything. It's well thought out and crafted with care.
The perfect word to describe the feeling after it is fulfillment.
Visually, it's what you would expect from something this grand, the background art is constantly amazing probably the best I have ever seen in an anime, the character acting is excellent and as expected of something that used real actor rotoscoping and 3d storyboards it's very dynamic and live action like. It's avant-garde and different without being non-sensical and cluttered. As for the action animation, it's incredible for most of the movie with one or two scenes that didn't work, the CG is not preferable over 2D eva action but it's used extremely creatively and they completely nailed it.
The soundtrack is a mix of NGE with EoE, it has a lot of vocal tracks and menacing chorus but it's also full of warm "slice of life" tracks and brings back music from other gainax works. The music timing is genius and there wasn't a single time I felt a track shouldn't be playing or that another one should be used.
As for the story and themes, doing something that works as a sequel to 3 works at the same time is quite hard, but Anno managed to deliver flawlessly, in the literal/action plane of action we follow a sequel of 3.33's story, continuing the whole deal with NERV vs WILLE and etc, but things get weird with the final and additional impact and the META scenes come in and turn the film into something totally different and it is reminiscent of episode 25/6 and end of eva's instrumentality part, it begins to give closure to every character that didn't have it in end of eva, and we basically pick up right after EoE/25/26 thematically since Shinji seems to already have his closure and is now helping the others which was a fucking incredible move to keep things fresh and make the old ending even better. Of course, we got confusing lore as always and a lot of plot twists and a backstory and proper closure for Gendo which had a bleak sad ending in EoE, Kowaru aswell. The cast was at their peak and everyone was extremely satisfying.
The main theme in this movie is quite obvious, moving on. Asuka moves on from Shinji, Shinji moves on from his guilt and becomes genuinely proactive for the first time, Gendo gets a life lesson and changes his ways, Yui is not a "mega mastermind" anymore and helps, Kowaru has an actual ending where moves on from constantly chasing Shinji and acting like a "god", Rei moves on from trying to protect Shinji and her lack of personality, Misato moves on and starts being honest and fixes what she felt guilty of even if she wasn't able to give a mother to her son and Mari is Mari.
The over the top scenes, the emotional moments, the incredible art and soundtrack, everything about it screams instant-classic and for sure will stay forever with me.
only a feeling of peace remained
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