My world is ending.
I wish that i could turn back time,’Cause now the guilt is all mine.
Can’t live without the trust from those you love.I know we can’t forget the past,
You can’t forget love and pride.
Because of that, it’s killing me inside.
As though the mecha anime couldn’t be anymore famous for its Evangelion units, deep philosophical meaning and of course, the memes (just search it. It is everywhere), the ending theme of Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion helped propelled the fame of this franchise with its upbeat yet ironically melancholic song Komm, Süsser Tod.
German for “Come, Sweet Death” (was it deliberately German because Asuka Langley is from Germany?), this 7-minute track is a close resemblance to The Beatles’ Hey Jude – a song written by Paul McCartney to Julian Lennon, the son of fellow band member John Lennon. Was it because of the close similarities the Ikaris and Lennons shared?
I wish that I could turn back time ‘Cause now the guilt is all mine.
Can’t live without the trust from those you love.
The starting of the song does, somehow, make me feel like a character in a movie who is reflecting on the past events, be it good or bad ones, while witnessing the destruction of the universe. True enough, this was the case in The End of Evangelion. As Third Impact occurred, for Shinji, maybe it was those happy times where Yui Ikari was still around before being fused, willingly, to Shinji’s Eva- 01 Unit that he would want to remember from the Evangelion’s world. As for Misato, perhaps she was trying to remember what is remaining of her recollections with her scientist father before he was killed by the disastrous Second Impact.
Regardless, Komm, Süsser Tod has this uncanny ability to make the listener feel so miserable and hopeless yet motivated at the same time. How can one greet an apocalypse with such open arms and calm composure? Maybe that the whole point of the song was to prove that SEELE was right, that Human Instrumentality Project would be a good thing for humankind, the children of Lilith and we should welcome it. By uniting everyone all individual’s AT Fields will be reduced and maybe will there be peace on earth.
Whatever the song really is about, the Neon Genesis Evangelion series has been really great and certainly has left a great impact on the anime industry in Japan as well as on fans worldwide, probably a greater impact than the Third Impact.
To all the fans, good news as the highly-anticipated Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time is finally out in cinemas.
Cinematic Frame of Mind 