is the twenty-fourth episode of the Japanese anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by animation studio Gainax. Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno and Akio Satsukawa wrote the episode, while Masayuki served as its director. The episode centers on Shinji Ikari, the pilot of the giant biomechanical Evangelion for the special agency Nerv. Following the psychological collapse of Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of Eva-02, Kaworu Nagisa arrives to replace her. Shinji and Kaworu quickly develop a close emotional bond, but Kaworu ultimately reveals himself to be the seventeenth and final member of a race of beings that threaten humanity known as the Angels.
Akio Satsukawa's original screenplay featured considerably stronger homoerotic overtones, including a scene in which Shinji and Kaworu would have swum naked together in a river and kissed. Masayuki reportedly threatened to leave the production over the script. Anno revised the original scenario, considering Satsukawa's original draft excessively explicit. Early drafts also included references to Erich Wolfgang Korngold's play Die tote Stadt and the introduction of a mini-Eva. The production was affected by severe scheduling problems and repeated delays, forcing the staff to complete the work within only a few weeks. Critics have identified references to Christianity and earlier Japanese works, including shōjo manga, Dear Brother and Ultraman.
The episode originally aired on TV Tokyo on 13 March 1996, achieving a nationwide television rating of 6.0%. It was well received by Japanese audiences. Both "The Beginning and the End, or 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door'" and Kaworu ranked among the most popular entries in their respective categories in the annual Anime Grand Prix poll conducted by Animage. The episode received generally positive reviews from both critics and audiences among Western audiences, although Kaworu's introduction sparked extensive debate among scholars and fans over the nature of his relationship with Shinji. Critics have also examined the episode's direction, particularly its use of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the prolonged still shot depicting Kaworu in the hand of Eva-01 during one of the episode's final scenes.
Plot
Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of Evangelion Unit-02 for the special agency Nerv to fight mysterious beings named Angels, recalls her mother's suicide. Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, who mistook a doll for her daughter, hanged herself shortly after Asuka had been chosen as Eva-02's pilot. In another flashback, Asuka learns from her fellow pilot Shinji Ikari that her guardian, Ryoji Kaji, has been killed. In the present, Nerv personnel find her catatonic in the ruins of a destroyed house. Meanwhile, Shinji wanders through devastated Tokyo-3 and meets Kaworu Nagisa, Asuka's replacement as Eva-02 pilot. Sent directly by the mysterious Human Instrumentality Committee, Kaworu immediately arouses Nerv's Major Misato Katsuragi's suspicions. Kaworu impresses the Nerv staff with his exceptionally high synchronization rate and tells pilot Rei Ayanami that they are fundamentally alike.
Kaworu and Shinji grow close after meeting at Nerv's public baths, where Kaworu tells Shinji that he deserves affection. The two share a room, and Kaworu says he believes he was born to meet him. Elsewhere, Nerv's Commander Gendo Ikari speaks to Eva-01 as though addressing his late wife, Yui. In the director's cut version, he is shown carrying the embryo of the first Angel, Adam, grafted into his hand. Kaworu secretly contacts Seele, who tells him that humanity has entrusted its hopes to him. Soon afterward, he takes control of Eva-02 without entering its cockpit and descends toward Nerv's headquarters' deepest section, the Terminal Dogma. Realizing that Kaworu is an Angel, Shinji pursues him aboard Eva-01. Reaching Terminal Dogma, Kaworu discovers that the crucified giant beneath Nerv headquarters is the second Angel Lilith rather than Adam. Acknowledging humanity's will to live, he abandons his mission and asks Shinji to kill him. Rei silently watches the encounter, revealing that she too possesses an A.T. Field, the defensive energy barrier shared by humans and Angels. After a long hesitation, Shinji kills Kaworu. That night, Misato tells Shinji that only those who possess the will to live are able to survive.
Production Genesis and staff
In 1994, almost two years before the episode aired, animation studio Gainax outlined an early version of the series in a planning document known as the to present the series to potential sponsors. In this draft, the twenty-fourth episode bore the title . Rei was to suffer a mental collapse, and the story would reveal her secrets. Gainax also planned a giant battle as the ending with a final confrontation with the series' last twelve enemies, then called the Apostolos. Evangelion Chronicle noted that the number twelve reflects the twelve Apostles mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Gainax chose the Moon as the setting for the battle because of its symbolic association with Rei and the series' ending theme, "Fly Me to the Moon". The staff also planned to show a message written across the Moon's surface in the final scenes, in a sequence reminiscent of the ending of the OVA series Gunbuster. The twelve Apostolos would descend from the Moon simultaneously, while the entire American continent and Eva-06 would vanish at the same time. Humanity would realize its own helplessness before the twelve enemies in a story of despair and human drama leading to the "promised time", when people would have to "return to nothingness". Gainax ultimately abandoned most of these ideas during production. Evangelion Chronicle compared the initial scenario to Zeruel, the twelfth and strongest Angel to appear in the final version of the series in "Introjection", and the battle between Eva-02 and the Mass Production Models in the movie The End of Evangelion (1997).
The staff had already planned to introduce Kaworu Nagisa during the earliest stages of development. For that reason, they included him for two brief frames in the opening sequence of "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" as a pencil sketch against a red background, alongside images of Rei Ayanami and the caption "Angels". Gainax had nothing more than a character sketch of Kaworu at the time, drawn by the series' character designer, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The series' director Hideaki Anno intended to introduce an enemy in the form of a young human since the early stages of production, and Kaworu's role remained largely unchanged in the final version of the series. According to Sadamoto, however, Kaworu was not originally meant to be the last Angel. Instead, the staff simply envisioned that, after presenting Angels with widely different forms and abilities, one of them would eventually assume a human appearance. In the sixteenth episode, "Splitting of the Breast", the Angel Leliel comes into contact with Shinji Ikari. In the original screenplay, after experimenting with various human voices and languages, Leliel would ultimately have chosen Japanese to communicate with Shinji. Because Anno had already planned to introduce a human-looking enemy in the form of Kaworu Nagisa, however, he revised the script so that Kaworu, rather than Leliel, became the first Angel to speak a human language. Gainax also did not originally plan to introduce Lilith. The staff added the character only later, after further research into Christianity. According to Sadamoto, the decision stemmed from Anno's personal pride, as the director could not accept leaving Lilith out of the story.
In the Proposal, the twenty-second episode, , would have introduced the first humanoid Angel, an attractive young man, known as bishōnen in Japanese, constantly accompanied by a cat that Nerv would inadvertently allow into its headquarters. Shinji would then have faced the dilemma of confronting an anthropomorphic enemy, and the episode would ultimately have revealed Nerv's greatest secret. In this early draft, the young man was merely a puppet controlled by the cat, which was meant to be the true Angel. Sadamoto identified the Return of Ultraman episode "The Monster Tamer and the Boy" as a possible source of inspiration, since it features a lonely, ostracized boy named Ryō who shares a connection with a monster called Muruchi. Anno later considered Kaworu's introduction at Tokyo-3's school setting out of place for the twenty-fourth episode, as the story had by then moved beyond its original school-based premise. To avoid drawing complex scenes of the cat walking alongside him, the staff instead planned for Kaworu to carry it under his arm. Other proposals envisioned the Angel as the boy himself, while others portrayed it as a shapeshifter capable of assuming the form of either the boy or the cat, like a bakeneko, a shape-shifting cat yōkai from Japanese folklore. The staff ultimately abandoned the concept for practical reasons, since animating the cat would still have proved difficult. They also felt that the idea of a cat Angel manipulating a human puppet too closely resembled earlier works, like in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). The ideas surrounding the bishōnen eventually evolved into Kaworu. The version ultimately broadcast on TV Tokyo diverged substantially from the project's initial outline. As production progressed, Anno and Gainax moved away from the Proposal original plans roughly from the thirteenth episode onward in favor of a more introspective, darker, and less linear story.
Hideaki Anno wrote the episode with screenwriter Akio Satsukawa. Anno also collaborated with Masayuki, the series' assistant director, on the storyboards. Masayuki additionally directed the episode, handled the layouts, and served as chief animation director. Masahiko Ohtsuka and Ken Ando assisted him with the episode's direction. The production involved, among others, Yō Yoshinari, Shinya Hasegawa, as well as the studios Neox, Marsa Inc., Anime Spot, and Tatsunoko Color Center. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto also contributed to the animation and supervised the layouts. Satsukawa chose both Kaworu's name and the episode's Japanese title. The production staff asked him to use something related to water or the sea. He opted for the surname as a homage to Japanese director Nagisa Ōshima and to create a link with in the surname of Rei Ayanami. The name Kaworu was not written with the contemporary spelling , but with the archaic character . was chosen to connect with the episode's Japanese title, . Satsukawa then created a pun with the phoneme shisha, which can mean or at the same time. Carl Gustav Horn, editor of the North American edition of the manga, recalled that, during the production of the last episodes, a Gainax staff member contacted him to verify the biblical source of the phrase "I am the Alpha and the Omega", which also appears in the episode's English title; Horn replied that the phrase appears three times in different forms in the Bible and provided the corresponding quotations.
Writing and early drafts