Plot[]
The Prologue[]
This episode begins with Maya giving report to Fuyutsuki about Shin, who stays inside of Unicorn in aftermath of accident with Unit-03. Makoto gives Shin reasonable explanation about using Dummy Plug System to kill 13th Angel, but he refuses to listen and threatens to destroy Central Dogma. The exact reason why you shouldn’t handle control over apocalyptic giant cyborg monsters to idiotic teenagers. Shin continues to whine about Gen wanting to kill Toji using Unicorn’s own hands. But he didn’t, and that’s that matters.
Just as Shin commands Gen to say something in his defense, his father gives command of his own to maximize LCL pressure in his Entry Plug. See? That’s how you handle overpowered imbeciles! By installing knockout button in their machine of doom beforehand. Shin in subsequently knocked out and send to the hospital. I wonder how NERV is gonna clean up that ocean of gore they did in the city. As if they couldn’t just use Spear of Longinus. It would definitely go without smashing all those houses and contaminating everything.
Hospital[]
After two filler scenes, Toji awakens at the hospital right next to Shin, questioning his presence. Believe me, you should be glad you’ve awoken first, given what he will do to As in the finale of the series. He then notices this is the same hospital his sister lays dormant. I wonder, if NERV had to cut off all electricity in Japan just to fuel Positron Riffle in episode 6, did Toji’s sister survive? Or rather, during that blackout at Tokyo-III in episode 9? She’s not really plot-important character, so I don’t think so. Yeah, she’s definitely dead and they just don’t inform Toji about it since he wouldn’t have signed for being a pilot on the first place.
Speaking of being dead, how is Toji still alive? His entry plug got crushed by mind-controlled Unicorn in her hands last episode, which have squished him like a Caviar in episode 24. Apparently, Toji ends up in the dream Shin is having by being in the same room, where he notices him talking to Ayanami. Blueberry-haired girl questions Shin’s nonsensical actions which he tries to weasel out from, but unsuccessfully. And I thought only Rei-III had superpowers to communicate telepathically. Toji is then visited by Class Representative. Unfortunately for her, Toji recovers before she can extract body fluids at his sight. What a shame. This would certainly give Class Representative more depth as a character, beyond just being conventionally nice girl. Toji immediately suspects her of hydrating herself in mayonnaise in front of his unconscious form, which she nervously shoots down. Toji with smile on his face sees through her lies and tells her to inform his sister about him being alive.
Shinji gets fired[]
Meanwhile, Shin gets imprisoned in NERV’s private dungeon before being taken before Gen’s being. Unlike his manga counterpart, Gen is smart enough to handcuff Shin behind his back with multiple layers. For a commander of immensely rich paramilitary organization funded by multiple governments across the planet, Gen is pretty poor when it comes to his furniture. His private office is ridiculously large and ridiculously empty. Just like his skull, since he simply lets Shin go because he gently asked to get fired.
Imbecile, you’ve just fired the most competent one of your pilots and one of few people capable of operating humanity’s last hope of standing against the Angels. Whatever, he tells Shin they will never meet again, maybe until Instrumentality comes along, after which 3rd Child leaves. Okay, just don’t just run crying to Shin, begging him to pilot Unicorn because female pilots of this series are absolutely unreliable and incompetent.
We cut to Shin laying on his bed, too lazy to pick up the phone. After he finally answers, Kensuke tells him he always admired him and wanted to like him, be Eva pilot that is. Pff, dude just saw his friend’s kaiju get taken over and ripped apart, then had his closest friend send to the hospital, yet the only thing he’s worried about is Shin leaving. Congratulations, you sociopath. Have you even visited Toji once? Or at least thought about him? Probably not, maybe except jealously envying him getting ripped apart by your favorite superhero.
At the train station, Misato reveals to Shin about his entire class being potential material for Eva pilots. What? You had an entire classroom full of idiots who could pilot Evangelions, yet you choose to have your whiny emo son go all the way to Tokyo-III at last possible moment just so he can pilot Eva with no training. Congratulations. This series never had any logic to begin with. Also, conversation ends with Shin stating he will never pilot Unicorn again and Misato saying he never talked like this before. Completely ignoring the fact that he attempted to quit several times already, like in episode 4.
Angel Attack[]
Shin plans to leave, but his plans are interrupted by another Angel’s arrival. Because evil never sleeps, or rather good. Considering these idiots’ characterization in EOE, I’m leaning towards latter option. Coming back to the plot, our new monster of the week looks utterly ridiculous and impractical. Stubby feet, elongated torso, tiny head with no neck, oversized core and apparently no arms. All he’s capable of doing is creating explosions with his vision and flying around. By the way, how does that explosion inducement work?
Nevertheless, Nerve decides to send Mrs R in Unicorn to take care of 14th Angel - who from this point forward will be called "bandage baby" - as Cyclops has one hand unavailable since Unit-03 accident. Synchronization proves unsuccessful because Yui is total cow who doesn’t care if the whole planet gets blown up before she will even have chance to become petrified rock in space. Meanwhile, Ritz apparently puts on lipstick she didn’t have on moment earlier, since looking good is more important than dealing with super destructive kaiju.
Bandage baby blows up entire city and then drills a hole to GeoFront with his lasers. I wonder why 5th Angel aka laser-shooting diamond never blew a hole into GeoFront instead of wasting ten hours on drilling to it. Nevertheless, he has Four Eyes already waiting for him with entire arsenal of machine guns and rocket launchers. None of which proving successful. Obviously, As is too stupid to realize that her weaponry is useless against 14th Angel and continues to waste NERV’s budget. Apparently, she never took lessons from Shin and his encounter with 4th Angel.
Speaking of 4th Angel, bandage baby proves to be completely unoriginal with his attacks copies Shamshel’s tentacle whips. Except instead throwing around and stabbing through Evas, they completely dismember and decapitate them. This might just be me being too whiny about tiniest details, but is it really that hard for As to just dodge or jump over those tendrils? She just stands completely still when Four Eyes’ arms are getting ripped off.
You know, it would be cool if As just got killed at that exact moment. That’s what you get by being whiny incompetent emo. Plus we wouldn’t need this bootleg Holy Spirit with plot device beam and pigeons to assassinate her later on. Not to mention that godawful hospital scene wouldn’t have happened.
Sure, Four Eyes’ head conveniently crashes to the shelter Shin’s in, conveniently not crushing him. Bridge trio states that Four Eyes is incapable of combat and that the Angel is moving. What a discovery, I’d never guess something like this, especially when I have giant screen hanging in front of my eyeballs on that giant wall next to me. Also, Angel is not moving, it’s floating while having his entire body completely stiff.
As any attempts to utilize Dummy Plug System prove to be in vain, eyeless Gen orders Mr F to take command. Why did they even bother to introduce that pointless plot device on the first place? Unicorn went berserk on 3rd and 12th Angels already, ripped them apart in exactly the same way as 13th Angel, plus it didn’t need an unstable technology to be activated. Also, here my old college teacher, take command over a mission where entire world is at stake.
Kaji and his watermelons[]
As military fruitlessly tries to shoot bandage baby to death with their conventional weaponry, Shin randomly encounters Kaji, who proceeds to babble around about watermelons. And all this time, our little Angel didn’t just completely blow this place apart. Bandage baby blows up GeoFront, Kaji continues to babble around. Because that’s the most logistical thing to do when gigantic monster starts exploding everything around him with his vision, attempting to trigger extinction of all life on Earth.
Conversation ends with Kaji stating that the contact of Angel with Adam lying dormant in Terminal Dogma would trigger the 3rd Impact. Before Shin has a chance to reconsider his life choices, Rei decides to use a nuclear bomb to blow up the Angel. Not only is it utterly stupid, given the fact that 3rd Angel was completely unaffected by nuclear explosion, but also pointless devastation of the GeoFront. Um, Spear of Longinus? Why don’t you just throw it at bandage baby, break his AT-Field and kill him instantly? Lilith doesn’t need to be contained by it, given she never run off after it was removed from her in episode 22.
It’s too late, Rei successfully detonates nuke, killing Shin and Kaji in the process since they were right next to her. Which means the rest of this episode, and the series shouldn’t have taken place. Bandage baby survives without any damage and casually kills Rei, before blowing a hole into Central Dogma and descending towards it. Shin magically survives and heroically runs to Central Dogma, skipping the fact that he has no way to get there and no way to outrun 14th Angel.
Final battle[]
As Yui continues to be unreliable cow to her husband, Shin teleports to Central Dogma right in front of Gen and begs him to let him inside of Unicorn. Gen answers by questioning what’s he even doing here. Because two other incompetent pilots can’t live five minutes without him doing all the job for them. Besides, you’re in the situation where the whole world is at stake, stop wasting time and get him in!
Instead of doing logistical thing and self-destructing base to not allow Angels touch Lilith, Misato decides to evacuate staff. Their attempts to leave are halted when our speed-runner burst out of the screen, leans towards them and decides to blow them up. But his tries are interrupted as well when Unicorn makes an entrance of her own and punches him in the mask. Gen abandons his safe office for sake of placing himself in the line of danger and hyperrealistic blood covering his face, which is a result of our hero cutting off Unicorn’s left arm with optic lasers. How come Unicorn bleeds from laser if the sheer heat of the blast should’ve cauterized her wound?
Bandage baby loses all his competency when one-armed skinny Unicorn drags his bulk outside Central Dogma all the way to the GeoFront, not once thinking about defending himself. There, Unicorn attempts to unmask him while laying on top of him, with 14th Angel not once trying to cut off her other arm with tendrils that instantly incapacitated Four Eyes like five minutes ago. Only for Unicorn to run out of the power and having bandage baby throw her off himself.
Berserker[]
Bandage baby gets up and blows off Unicorn’s chest armor before starting to pummel her exposed core. How come her exposed core doesn’t just get splattered from the first strike? Shin continues whining and insulting his mother, which immediately gets her moving, even through Evas CAN’T function without electrical cable/internal batteries. This is so stupid. Oh, and she just stops bandage baby’s blades with her fingers even through they decapitated Four Eyes.
Against all previously established logic, Unicorn drags bandage baby to herself with one hand, shoves her horn to one of his eyes, kicks him a mile away, infuses his tendril to her body and creates a new arm. NERV staff acts completely surprised upon seeing Unicorn go angry chimp mode for billionth time in the row while Unicorn starts to fool around, somehow having white eyes and white teeth despite episode 2 establishing her biological form has red teeth and green eyes with pupils.
Bandage baby tries to counterattack, yet Unicorn with one swipe of her arm breaks his AT-Field, rips off another one of tendrils and mutilates him. She then starts eating him, which doesn’t make any sense since she’s a clone of self-sustaining Lilith, and thus she shouldn’t have any digestive system. Also, it totally makes sense for gentle and caring scientist who shows unconventional love towards her husband to brutally devour a beast that should have destroyed her in one blow.
Unicorn breaks out of her restraints and Ritz babbles about her no longer being in NERV’s control, which is total bull since they manage to control her anyway in subsequent episodes. Gen, Kaji and Fuyutsuki are all excited to see how pissed off SEELE will be when they see this. Episode ends with Unicorn groaning and howling to the Moon, apparently normal Moon and not Black Moon since she howls upside and Black Moon is located below GeoFront.
Final thoughts[]
The plot[]
Plot of this episode is stupid, relies on too many conveniences to happen and is simply too fast-paced. First half of the episode is basically Toji being at the hospital and Shinji trying to leave this city because classmate he barely interacted with got slightly hurt by his father, who essentially saved the whole world right here and wasted billions of dollars that went into construct Unit-03.
Second half is Zeruel massacring everyone with one blow and then getting massacred by Unit-01 while barely even trying to defend himself. Everyone should have died the second Zeruel survived nuclear explosion that should've killed Shinji and Kaji. Everyone should've died the second Unit-01 run out of power and Zeruel shattered her core. Everyone should've died the second Unit-01 obtained S2 Engine and became omnipotent. Bonus minus points for using berserk mode, extremely cheap and horseshoed way of having Unit-01 curb stomp previously invincible Angel against all logic and reason.