If there are, did you understand the ending? It's been bothering me for quite a while now...
>_<

They all died.

Why did they choose the way they did it? Well, there are two different answers for this one.

1. The ending was so deep and profound! - yeah... sense the sarcasm.

There are a lot of catholism elements in the show. Last year in my religion class my teacher said something along the lines of '...in catholism they believe when you die you go into a collective intelligence.' Ok... that isn't an exact quote I've been racking my brain about what she exactly said. She went into more detail and it really made the ending make complete sense - I understood it *gasp*)

It definately made me go, "Oh... like in Eva... ah!...." Now I don't know if it is all catholism, or one of the branches - every religion has their own branches - from more liberal to the more strict, letter of the law type. But this group also thought the world needed to die and be reborn in this collective intelligence, which would = a better place... their thinking was a lot like Shinji's dad..... man I wish I remembered everything... maybe I should go talk to her.... lol

Now that I think about it more it wasn't catholism in general - I believe it was a certain group within catholism..... I probably confused you more - onto #2!

2. They ran out of money.

It's definately a mixture of the two, I'm sure #1 is what they wanted to go for, but in reality it was #2.

They ran out of money so they just recycled clips. And I'm sure their thinking was on this line, "No one will notice - we'll give them some deep and profund ending so they're too busy trying to figure it out than to notice it was all recycled footage. Except the naked girls, we have to draw them. Because it won't be a proper ending without naked girls!"

And that's what happened.

Wow...I just figure Gendou was like "And now we will all become..ORANGE GELATIN!!!"

Admittedly, I've only actually seen maybe the first four episodes, but I figure that from all the AMVs I've watched, I've seen the majority of the series. And I so terribly confused about what so many people like about this show, other than geeky fanboys liking to ogle the three main females. Probably the one thing I have taken from this series is the wonderful line, and I don't even know when it's said, of Shinji's: "I mustn't run away! I mustn't run away!" A friend of mine brought his Eva box set for Spike Spencer to sign at AnimeBanzai and apparently Spike isn't too fond of discussing Eva. He signed the box: "I hate you. Now take me to the circus." Nani?

Well, I went to a catholic private high school, and I don't recall any of my religion teachers mentioning group consciousnesses at all.

It's probably some sect, 'cause I never heard of it.