Hideaki Anno’s four-part reworking of his philosophical 90s anime classic Neon Genesis Evangelion reaches its conclusion with an emotional father-son confrontation

As far as grandiose projections of one man’s psyche go, Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise must be near the top. Not only did he spin this iconic 90s anime series about a messianic mech-fighter blowout from his own clinical depression, but he’s also recently managed to chew over the material a second time, reworking it as a series of four films: the so-called Rebuild of Evangelion. Production on this final one – which roughly retreads the same story material as the highly rated 1997 cinema release End of Evangelion – was apparently slowed by another bout of Anno’s mental illness.

Part of what was reportedly blocking Anno creatively was that he struggled to identify with the protagonist Shinji Ikari, who has a more hopeful perspective on mankind, and instead feels closer these days to Shinji’s father Gendo, the megalomaniacal leader of the Nerv cabal who wants to salve his existential pain by fusing all of humanity into some kind of post-apocalyptic godhead. (Hey, we’ve all been there.) At the start of this film, however, Shinji is himself pulling out of a serious funk following his role in the Third Impact, a cataclysmic event that occurred during previous instalments and that the initial plot-vomit recap is no help whatsoever in elucidating.