Subliminal advertising in The End of Evangelion?

By Aaron Clark on Sunday, May 1st, 2011

After the tree of life descends into a in The End of Evangelion, we’re treated to a minute-long sequence of single frame stills from the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series that are scratched, painted on, distorted, and layered over top of one another in interesting ways. All told, it’s about 1800 frames. Naturally, very few people are willing, or patient enough, to frame through the entire sequence. But, if you do, you’re bound to find something interesting. Username on Eva Geeks pointed out on the forums, that buried within that epileptic mess are several stills of Evangelion figures. Yes, that’s right, inserted into the film are photographs of Evangelion merchandise.

Now, I doubt this was a sincere attempt at subliminal advertising. I think by this point, most reasonably intelligent people are well aware that subliminal messages are not the magic bullet of brain washing that fiction likes to portray. And I’m fairly certain that this was not Gainax or Hideaki Anno’s attempt to get people to buy more Evangelion merchandise. If anything, it’s just an attempt at making a film as experimental and unconventional as possible.

But what I draw most about this is that even after a decade, people are still discovering new and interesting things about this film. I know my mind was kind of blown by this, was yours?

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Posted in: Merchandise, The End of Evangelion.