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HighOctaneNightmareFuel: Neon Genesis Evangelion |
Insert Powerman 5000's "Last Night on Earth" here. *Did - did the menu options just ask me why I exist? At 0:19, the menu options questioned my existence. I - I'm afraid to watch this movie. It's not even a horror movie and this thing's freaking me out. Hell, it's the damn dvd MENU and it's freaking me out! I'm gonna go curl up in the fetal position and sob quietly to myself now.
A week ago, I was in the beautiful forested area outside the Borghese Mansion in Rome, and a piper player was playing this song along the main road through the forest. It was a beautiful moment, but you know what I first thought when I heard this song being played? Asuka getting her FUCKING ARM SPLIT IN HALF. Thanks, Hideki Anno, for completely mentally scarring me.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is such a great source of High Octane Nightmare Fuel, it deserves its own space. This is what is supposed to strike fear into your heart, according to Studio Gainax.
- Let's face it: the entirety of The End of Evangelion is a Tear Jerker where the tears are made of 100% High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
- One scene that comes to mind is when the mass-produced EVAs devour EVA-02. With Asuka inside it, literally feeling the pain and agony through the mind-link.
- Said EVAs are disturbing enough with those creepy eyeless, smiling faces alone....pictured here
 ◊.
- IF you look carefully, you will notice that in the scene immediately after the fake Lance hits Unit-02's head, Asuka's left eye socket is bleeding profusely into her lap. Additionally, after she almost-berserks and the rest of the fake Lances hit her, the first one very obviously splits her right arm in half through the link. One can only imagine what the effects of Unit-02 being eaten must have been....
- That's the effect of the Lance, not her sync rate. You see her after they finish eating and before they stab her, and she's still physically intact. Except for her eye.
- But they're fake lances... the real one is on the damn moon- wait, is this another Your Mind Makes It Real deal?
- Maybe the Lances are also clonable biological entities.
- They are. The Lance is actually a biological weapon created by the same beings that made Adam and Lilith to act as a restraiment device for them.
- Actually, if you look close when they're eating 02, it's hard to see because of the lighting, but there is an obvious, very-rapidly-spreading bloodstain on Asuka's midsection underneath her suit. So when Eva-02 got its torso ripped open, so, likely, did Asuka.
- Wasn't Unit 02's face also ripped apart? Unit 02 was completely ripped, but Asuka's face is still intact. It is probably because of the sync ratio that is produced mostly when the Eva is powered. For example, the Lance of Longinus strikes Unit 02 just before it runs out of power, causing Asuka to feel the pain of the Lance but not the disembowelment. Berserker extracts power from the human, causing Asuka to feel the pain again.
- There's also the fact that Shinji is physically incapable of accessing Unit 01 due to the hardened bakelite surrounding the entry plug. So he's pretty much FORCED TO SIT THERE AND DO NOTHING the entire time.
- The scene when the sight of a 50-mile tall nude Lilith/Rei Ayanami reduces Shinji to a fit of shrieking insanity. And the scene about a minute earlier where Shinji sees Asuka's torn-apart remains...
- How about the part after the mass-produced EVAs mangle EVA-02 when Asuka refuses to give up and, while holding a hand over her bleeding left eye socket, tries to go into berserker mode and stretches her right hand out to Grasp The Sun while repeating "I'll kill you..."? Along with her◊ utterly◊ furious◊ and◊ murderously◊ insane◊ facial◊ expression◊. Sure it was pretty much her ultimate Crowning Moment Of Awesome but tell me that wasn't incredibly creepy...
- Don't forget the Horrifying◊ Flash◊ Frames◊ of Unit 02 post-carnage.
- The horrifying DVD menu, watch and behold!
- And you know those things that look like spinal cords in the beginning of the DVD menu? They ARE spinal cords. Of the aborted Eva prototypes.
- The subtle addition of the letters of the menu options decaying and falling apart was what creeped this troper out this most.
- It Gets Worse in the DVD menu for Death and Rebirth, which I own but I know few others do. It starts off with lots of Big Damn Letters asking questions like, "What do I exist for?" then the menu options appear. As crazy goes down in the red-tinted background, occasionally the menu options change to something you can't quite catch. While you're asking yourself, "did the menu options just change?" the entire menu goes away for an extreme close-up of Shinji screaming in the cockpit. Then the menu comes back at the opposite side of the screen. Words like "I HATE YOU" show up on screen and all the while the music is violins with some kind of demonic Vader Breath noises going on. You can view it here. Sweet Dreams. P.S. That was Unit 01 going berserk and devouring an Angel. *shudders*
- The Rebuild Lilith is scarier!◊
- For this troper, the creepier part is that you can now clearly see that the little things protruding from Lilith's lower area look like human legs. They even shake around a bit.
- This movie did get an NC-17 rating by the way. You know, the one beyond R-Rated! At least according to Amazon.com
- Not according to the MPAA's website, though. Then again, if Perfect Blue had to be edited to receive an R rating, one can only imagine..
- Perfect Blue is High Octane Nightmare Fuel in and of itself. Really, though, the only things that were severely trimmed were a couple gore shots and the rape scene; the full-frontal nudity was also zoomed in a bit. EoE has exactly one scene that wouldn't fit under an R rating, going by current standards; namely, Shinji in the hospital.
- In this lurkers library, End is rated NC-17.
- The Zone 4 DVD is only M (15/16+, depending on which of the labels you read).
- Asuka chanting "I don't want to die... I don't want to die," as the viewer is treated with several flashing images (like Event Horizon) including a picture of a decaying Asuka with a sewn-up mouth and maggots crawling out of her hollow eye sockets◊.
- Gets even creepier during Asuka's "I don't want to die" bit when her mother's "You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone" gets piled over it.
- Oh! And how about the icing on the cake: The climax of the movie where Shinji begins Instrumentality and absorbs the souls of everyone on Earth as Komm Susser Tod plays (complete with creepy childish drawings of killings, violence, dead animals, and angry people).
- According to the commentary, those drawings were made by abused children.
- Also: "Nobody needs me, so it's fine with me if everybody dies." Picture having reached such a level of despair at fourteen.
- When Instrumentality begins, and the camera pans over Earth as everyone screams in terror then get turned to LCL. And according to a Toonami fan-site, this movie was available for download, uncut, on the Cartoon Network site during the Giant Robot Week. Animation Age Ghetto indeed...
- The Eva-Series opening their mouths and out pops long white blobs with human heads sprouting from the sides, and it having a happy human face at the end of the blob.
- Possibly the scariest thing is the Eva-Series stabbing themselves in their exposed glowing hearts, WHILE SMILING! WHO SMILES WHEN THEY'RE STABBING THEMSELVES?
- Werner Forssmann does.
- You forgot that they were climaxing, too.
- The unsettling warning that the Anti-AT Field is becoming so big that "individual entities will be unable to maintain their separate forms" — in other words, we explode into giant masses of LCL. And just how does this happen? Being hugged by the image of someone you loved. I'm sure at least one person developed a temporary fear of hugs after this scene.
- Therefore it explains the meme: Everybody gets hugged and turns into Tang!
- Shigeru is "hugged" by a large quantity of naked Reis. He didn't love anyone enough for instrumentality to use that, so instead it beat his mental defenses into submission and tanged him anyways.
- Yeah... even the resident borderline sociopath, Gendou, had someone to be happy about...
- Word of God says that was because he was an atheist/nihilist, hence Shigeru's lack of beliefs made it impossible for Instrumentality to give him something happy to hug. Which is completely depressing.
- Kiele's appearance is quite freaky too. That, and the fact he's so happy about the whole thing.
- How 'bout after that mind calming pep-talk Shinji has with his mom, Yui, EVA-Unit 01 pops out of Giant Naked Rei's eye!
- The one scene where toddler Shinji is left alone in the park and starts crying helplessly after destroying the sand pyramid he built because his parents won't come for him. Then a creepy tune starts and Asuka yells "Enough already! Even just the sight of you pisses me off!" at him with a murderously insane look.
- And finally the greatest amount of Gorn in the movie: the GNR's neck tearing from the body, with spurts of blood coming from the neck. And then, the head falls off, with the neck muscles and SPINE exposed. And finally, the head SPLITS IN HALF AS HER LIMBS FALL APART AND THE ENTIRE BODY MELTS INTO A POOL OF BLOOD!
- He so totally had it coming, but how about the scene where Gendou gets cannibalized by a surrealistic, apocalyptic vision of berserk Eva-01 after finally expressing his despair and self-hate and getting a collective You Suck from 3+ ghostly entities? It's even worse when you realize that it's 'Yui-sama' he sees and know that, by Word Of God, demonic Eva-01 represents Shinji for him. While it's somewhat reassuring that he actually feels bad about his actions, it's like saying, "I want my son to kill me in the most painful, mutilating and degrading way possible." What's even more depressing is that Shinji isn't actually present and will never know that his father is sorry and didn't
only hate him, that the problem wasn't with him but with Gendou being broken or insane. In other words, Gendou still manages to escape accountability towards Shinji, albeit in a very painful way. This means that if we suppose he's dead, Shinji will probably spend the rest of his life with unanswered questions, the pain of abandonment and the fear of resembling his father in any way (episode 26 of the series did have some abstract -and unrealistic- reconciliation take place). We have some news for you, kiddo... your dad is in Hell because he was a very bad man. Good luck growing into a well-adjusted and decent human being.
- Reading about the ending they had originally planned, with the tombstones and Shinji holding Rei's severed arm, completely alone.
- Also: "Goodbye, mother." It means Shinji can finally mourn Yui, but it's still infinitely sad.
- Let's not forget the And I Must Scream element of being LOCKED INSIDE OF A HUMAN-GROWN REPLICATION OF LILLITH AND BEING FORCED TO SPEND ALL OF ETERNITY FLOATING THROUGH SPACE WITH THE LANCE OF LONGINUS AS A TESTAMENT TO HUMAN EXISTENCE.
- End of Evangelion has such a high quotient of Nightmare Fuel that it loops around into Black Comedy.
- Now let's move on to the main show itself.
- How about the first time you watched the Eva TV show and hit episode 19? The Eva regrowing its arm, which seems bizarrely human, then begins EATING Zeruel, then begins a bloodcurdling howl and pieces of metal fly off it. You, the viewer, realize that the Eva wasn't actually a mecha after all, but a living being with metal "armor" seared onto its skin to allow NERV to control it. "That isn't armor, it's restraints." Not only does that make Eva-01 (by implication, Shinji's mom) a cannibal, she also looks like she's raping Zeruel in the manga.
- How about hitting episode 18 at the tender age of twelve? The mental image of Unit 01 crushing the entry plug of Unit 03 will haunt your brain.
- Let's not forget that punch EVA-01 gives to Unit 03. Its head explodes into an ocean of blood (not to mention that if you look closely, you can see its eye and jaw pop out). I'm just glad Toji made it out alive. He's just been horribly traumatized and mangled and is likely to have flash-backs of this for decades. Welcome to the world of psychic dysfunction, boy. On the other hand, he dies in the manga, which might or might not be worse: on one hand, he gets to avoid the horrors of EoE, on the other hand he's dead.
- The punch to the head was disturbing enough, but when Unit 01 proceeded to rip Unit 03 to pieces with just its bare hands, it's total Nausea Fuel.
- Oh yeah, and there's also Sinji's Blood-Curdiling Scream at the end of the episode.
- How about seeing episode 22 at age 10?
- How the hell does a ten year old get an opportunity to watch NGE?
- What Do You Mean Its Not For Kids? Or, in other words, my parents had no idea what I'd rented.
- And, this, my friends, is the definition of Animation Age Ghetto.
- Episode 22. THAT. IS. ALL.
- The director's cut of ep. 22 is even more horrifying, with Asuka's doll turning round and round at the end of a rope, her stuffed monkey being decapitated and Asuka being confronted with a swarm of Asukas with creepy goo-like colours. By Word Of God, we're also supposed to understand that she literally gets raped.
- There's also the scene in episode 24 where child Asuka runs after her mother, announcing that she's been selected as an Eva pilot and begging her to be proud of her, then discovers her hanged body and stays frozen with an empty smile on her face. "So look, look at me! HEY, MAMA!". Brrr...
- Or the end of episode 23 when Ritsuko destroys the Rei clones? All those soulless little girls, smiling mindlessly, then laughing as their bodies slowly fall apart at the push of a button. And the music. By god, the music. Out of the entire series, this scene is one of the most spine-chilling by far.
- The Eva Graveyard◊ that Ritsuko showed Shinji and Misato before that wasn't much better...
- I didn't realize the sephiroth (no not that one) was filled with monster skeletons. That makes Rei's alone time hobby of standing around in there nude even worse.
- The manga can be pretty bad too. One scene that is very bad even for Evangelion: the scene where Shinji, after dissolving in his Entry Plug, nearly gets sexually assaulted by an apparition of Eva-01 under the guise of naked Yui and is too tired/depressed/stoned to realize how terrifying this is. Then a spectral Yui appears and the first one's skin starts peeling off her skull. If this doesn't mess with your head, you might even be able to survive The End Of Evangelion.
- In the same context of being Tanged in Eva-01: toddler Shinji begs Gendou not to abandon him, and Gendou coldly answers that he's being a difficult child and that his mother is dead, then points at a demonic Eva-01 behind him. Then, he announces that he must pilot it and Shinji's entry plug starts filling with LCL as he panics. At the end of the scene, he stabs Gendou in a real bloodbath and freaks out at what he's done. The loneliness, terror and despair of the whole sequence are just terrible.
- More generally: the show's basic message about existential loneliness, alienation and disconnection, the inevitable infliction of pain to each other, terror of oneself and other people, self-destruction, Love Hurts, man's cruelty to man, being incomplete and hollow, the meaninglessness of life, obsession with death and suicide, etc etc etc. The characters are just barely surviving and are almost constantly threatened by madness, there isn't much psychological survival to speak of. Surviving The End Of Evangelion might be the worst thing that happened to Shinji, as we might wonder what kind of future he has and how much Brain Bleach he'll need to stop the horrible images burnt in his head.
- He was stuck in a ruined world with Asuka, traumatised, completely insane, and with no hope left at all. The
most least depressing/terrifying thing is that they probably killed each other or died of starvation after a few days, and finally stopped being mentally tortured. I really hope Rebuild of Evangelion has a happier ending...
- Or, if Yui's final words were correct, the people who have the will to live will return back as well. That is, it won't be just Shinji and Asuka left on the planet.
- There's no way they can make the DVD covers creepy, ri-GAH! What!? GAH!
- Try listening to "Fly Me To The Moon" afterward without an unsettling feeling of horror.
- For a while, this was true for me. However, it's proof to the power of fiction that Bayonetta uses the song as well, and almost as an Evangelion shout-out, seeing as the lead character is beating the piss out of angels the entire time - however, the feel is ENTIRELY different, and completely altered the view of the song in my mind. Personally, it's kind of amazing what the same song can do with a different background.
- Forget that, I'm more worried about how many people can't listen to "The Hallelujah Chorus" and "Ode to Joy."
- You may also get a bit of this from "Jesu bleibet meine Freunde." Or, "Komm, süsser Tod".
- To counter the effect Eo E has on "Jesu Bleibet Meine Freunde", go watch Usavich. Then every time you hear the song, you will laugh! Then cry, and throw up.
- Am I the only one who still thinks 'Jesu Bleibet Meine Freude' is a beatiful song, despite it's use in Evangelion?
- Not to mention most of the last four episodes of Evangelion & the movies, in which each character gets thrown on the emotional rack, many die, one gets eviscerated, and one literally and graphically disintegrates. Oh, and then there's this shot◊ of Rei, which can cause a full-bore freakout all by itself.
- Somewhat related, there's also a scene from the Recap Episode where we see Rei against a black void slowly floating towards the camera... and then her face goes all freaky like in the above and she rapidly zooms towards the screen.◊ Freaky as hell.
- Hmm... you know, it not nearly as ball-shrivelingly terrifying the second time around. Maybe it's the realization that the clone isn't staring at you, but Rei. And that there's really no intelligence or intent behind the gaze, but rather, from the look, a sense of curiosity not too far from an oceanic dolphin. Yes... yes, that's how we'll rationalize it. It's like a dolphin, not a half eldritch abomination with no soul staring with nothing but mindless contempt and childish malice.
- This◊ version from Rebuild is arguably more frightening—mostly the effect of the fish-eye angle. It does not help matters that it brings back memories of the Giant Naked Rei/Lilith from End of Evangelion.
- Seeing Unit 01's true face for the first time was good for a shiver. The Gender Flip has something even more disturbing. Mama Gendo and Chairwoman Lorenz will see you in your nightmares.
- Dear God, you think Gendo is bad? The redone versions of SEELE members...gah!
- The male versions of Rei, Asuka, Misato, and Ritsuko, on the other hand, are actually quite attractive.
- The first quarter of Rebuild of Evangelion copies the first few episodes nearly scene-for-scene,and it's all very familiar... until the
FifthSixth Angel, Ramiel, shows up. Now it's this morphing, singing monstrosity that screams inhumanly as it tries to melt EVA-01's face off. Okay, feeling the impact again. Not to mention that, while the officers are discussing a change of tactics, Shinji is continuously screaming in pain because Ramiel's laser is still boiling him.
- Episode 20 of the original series showed unit 01's face covered in bandages. Behold, IN HIGHER RESOLUTION!◊.
- From three◊ different◊ angles◊!
- ...which make it quite obvious that the exposed eyeball follows the characters as they more around. *shiver*
- The whole concept of Instrumentality and the Sea of LCL.
- EVA-01 is pretty much always at least freaky and often outright disturbing. Eating an Angel was just icing on the gore-splattered cake.
- And how can we forget The death of Kaworu in Episode 24. It's bad enough that he was crushed in the palm of EVA-01, but the fact that HIS HEAD FALLS INTO THE WATER gives the scene horrendous chills (not to mention the sound of Kaworu's bones breaking).
- That Gory Discretion Shot was so traumatic because it may not show us, but it gives us an idea of what would happen to somebody if they were crushed by the grip of a giant. Let me describe you my interpretation: when a giant grabs your body but leaves your head exposed, when it squeezes your body, your bones crack and your limbs are torn from the torso, so you know you'll be spurting out blood. Then, your blood and guts spurt out from its fist. And worst of all is what happens to your unsqueezed head. YOUR HEAD POPS OUT OF YOUR BODY LIKE A PEZ DISPENSER due to all the organs moving upward to escape the pressure of the crushed torso, being clogged at the neck and therfore blowing the neck, causing your head to fall unharmed into a pool of LCL.
- The Mass Production units alone are Nightmare Fuel; bone white bodies, lack of eyes, elongated ever-smiling faces, and the savage mentality of a freakin' vulture.
- Despite the rest of the movie being Lighter And Softer with a heavy emphasis on Character Development, the second Rebuild of Evangelion culminates in a confrontation with Zeruel that results in Rei and Unit 00 being eaten whole by the angel. To top it off, the Angel morphs into something resembling an Uncanny Valley Girl and proceeds to tear shit up stark naked. If it weren't for the subsequent Crowning Moment Of Awesome and Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, the audience would've most likely been driven mad.
- Unit 02's berserker state, seen earlier in the battle, is pretty crazed as well. Watching a Humongous Mecha turn into something that resembles Carnage from Spider Man (complete with gaping mouth, needle-thin teeth, and lolling tongue) and going medieval on Zeruel much have been quite a startling sight to see on the big screen.
- In a recent chapter of the manga: AT-Field!Gendou's raving insanity and his speech to Shinji about never loving him and the world being a desperate, empty place. Seriously, poor kid.
- The destruction of Unit 03: Shinji's sitting their helpless as the dummy plug system destroys the entry plug, right after he learns that there's a living pilot inside. Only to learn later that the pilot was his best friend, Toji
- Good news, tropers! Relief is at hand! (Except some of the Zombie Apocalypse bits.)
- The worst thing for this troper: Even when the series was in the more lighthearted territory, all the drama/nightmarish events to come was heavily foreshadowed in almost every episode and from the very beginning there were distinctly dark moments (be they Gendo's shady, behind-the-curtain dealings or the startling brutality with which the berserk Unit 01 murders Sachiel) that made it clear there was a lot more to the series than readily apparent.
- The real nightmare fuel for this trooper is Rei. Think about it, she is a clone of Yui, but capable of human feelings. In other words she is basically a normal human. A human that was raised by Gendo, that has little to none ability of emphathy, ESPECIALLY towards children he is responsable to. A human that knows that they are several other clones, a human that has seen a pool of clones of herself smiling at herself, a human that knows that in the moment she dies another clone will simply pop out and pretend it was her at the beginning, a human whose concern to maintain his life and ability to be emotionally was slowly crippled because she knows she is not really a human. Now, please imagine being her while standing in front of the Pool of Reis.
- And to think that she actually started off the Moe trend in anime, thanks to the Misaimed Fandom. Do Mikuru and Miyuki really owe their origins to Rei? (Speaking of Haruhi, remember that Yuki is an obvious Expy of Rei.)
- This AMV of PinkFloyd's "Comfortably Numb" sums up both Evangelion and Pink Floyd tragically well.
- Three Words: Massive Forehead Vagina◊
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