Ending Credits: Evangelion Ended Four Times, and One Card Prints the Math

Evangelion did not run out of money and then get angry. Both stories are popular, both are partly true, and neither is the whole account. It also did not end three times. It ended four, and in 2001 a Gainax game ended it as many ways as you could raise one girl. The card is a PSA 9 from that game, it is called ENDING, it is $300, and the back of it is a lesson in how endings get decided.

The card first

Card H19 from the 2001 Ayanami Raising Project trading cards, printed by Amada Printing under Gainax license, sealed in a PSA slab. The back says ENDING 028 and, in a black bar, SM女王. That is the SM Queen ending. The front art is Rei in a bondage-style outfit holding a riding crop. The back also prints four conditions, and this is the part worth reading: delinquency index 150 or above, moral sense 100 or below, 50 or more delinquent days, and pheromone secretion higher than sensitivity. Under that is a line of flavor text. My translation: Rei calls the player out for staring, then the card says the banquet of the Queen and her servant goes on without end.

Those four numbers are the rule, not the joke. The game decides which ending you get by what the stats read when the year is up.

The game

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Ayanami Raising Project, made by Gainax and published with Broccoli. Windows on May 18, 2001. Dreamcast on April 18, 2002, ported by Westone. PlayStation 2 on December 11, 2003, with an Asuka route added. Nintendo DS in 2008. You play a NERV lieutenant in Tokyo-3 assigned to look after Rei for about a year while the series happens in the background. You schedule her education, her NERV work and her free time, week by week, in the same shape as Gainax's own Princess Maker. The Angel fights are mostly scripted. The endings are not. Rei's documented ones include violinist, policewoman, maid, a relationship with you or with Shinji, and this one. I could not find an official count of how many there are, so this post will not print one.

A franchise with a famous problem ending, and a game where the ending is a spreadsheet.

Ending one: the TV series

It aired on TV Tokyo from October 4, 1995 to March 27, 1996, 26 episodes. Gainax had about 12 of them finished when broadcast started. The other 14 were made in roughly six months, and episode 24 in about three weeks. The script for episode 25 was a planned climax on the Moon, titled "Arqa, the Promised Land." It was thrown out and the episode was rebuilt in about two weeks. Episode 25 aired March 20, 1996 at a 7.7 percent rating. Episode 26 aired a week later and ends with the cast applauding Shinji, who thanks them. In Japanese the word on screen is omedeto, congratulations.

The common misreading: Gainax ran out of money, so the ending is a mess. That is the popular version, and some critics did blame budget cuts. Gainax has said the style came from the schedule plus Anno's own choice. Toshio Okada, a Gainax co-founder, said Anno could not decide the ending until the time came. Anno has called the last two episodes a live performance, said he could not have made them any other way, and that his life was transferred onto film. Money, schedule and intent are three different claims. All three are on the record, and nobody on the record picks just one.

Viewers did not take it well. Mainichi wrote that nearly all viewers felt betrayed, and critic Eiji Otsuka's letter to the Yomiuri made the argument national. Death threats to Anno are reported. The page that carries that claim is tagged for a better source, and I could not find one, so it stays at reported.

Ending two: the films

Gainax announced a theatrical ending in May 1996, described at the time as a response to fan dissatisfaction. Staff have also said a film version was in the plan from the beginning. Both are on the record. Death & Rebirth came March 15, 1997, a recap plus the first part of a film that was not finished. The End of Evangelion came July 19, 1997, 87 minutes in two parts, "Air" and "Sincerely Yours," and took about 2.47 billion yen at the box office. It won the Animage Grand Prix for 1997.

It ends on a beach, with Shinji, Asuka, a hand at her throat, and a line subtitled as "how disgusting." Anno has said he wanted to purify viewers and send them back to reality, and that he wanted to bury Evangelion. Kazuya Tsurumaki has said the film has bitter endings but not bitterness toward the fans. The official booklets call the TV ending and the film ending identical twins that split after episode 24. That is the phrase worth keeping: not a fix, and not a rejection. Two versions of one ending.

Ending three: the manga

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto wrote and drew it alone. It started in Monthly Shonen Ace in December 1994 (one source gives the February 1995 issue), ten months before the anime aired, so it was the first Evangelion the public saw and the last one to end. It moved to Young Ace in 2009. The final chapter ran June 4, 2013. Fourteen volumes, with volume 14 out November 20, 2014, and about 25 million copies in print. Sadamoto has said he decided every difference from the anime himself.

The ending: humanity comes back from the LCL with no memory of the Evas, the Angels or Third Impact. Snow-covered Mass Production Evas stand around as relics nobody can explain. Shinji moves to Tokyo for school, with Kensuke prepping for exams alongside him, and he meets Asuka for the first time and feels like he already knows her. A world with no Evas in it, and two people who do not remember why they would be sad. There is no manga volume in the store right now, so no link.

Ending four: Rebuild

Four films, 2007 to 2021. The last, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, opened March 8, 2021 after COVID delays, with the tagline "Bye-bye, all of EVANGELION." It took about 10.28 billion yen, the highest of any Evangelion release. It ends with a world rebuilt without Evas and a train station scene set in Ube, Anno's hometown. Anno calls it his final Evangelion work. He has also said other parts of the franchise might be revisited, which is the most Evangelion thing about it. The 2.22 Blu-ray is here, if you want the middle of the four.

Back to the slab

PSA 9, certified, in the original holder. PSA's registry shows two graded copies of this card, both 9s, and no recorded sales (checked October 2026). That is graded copies only. Ungraded ones exist and I have no way to count them. I could not find a comp, so $300 is a position, not a quote.

On the desk

I asked for this one. "Seems like a dope storytelling." And: "I think I own one of the only ones." PSA's numbers back that for graded copies, which is as far as the claim goes.

Evangelion ended on TV, in theaters, in a magazine and in theaters again, and in 2001 someone printed the rules for one more ending on the back of a trading card. The card is here. Read the stats.

More from the same ending

The End of Evangelion telecas, unused, $40 each: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, First Children and Rei, black collage. A 1997 Shinji NTT card at $40. The Death and Rebirth movic card at $50.