I remember watching the final episode of Evangelion several years ago. A few minutes into it, it's as if they simply ran out of animation budget and it went full slide show. And that was their greatest success.
In a sense, the original ending is the purest one, where the audience realizes the show is not really about teenagers in mecha fighting kabbalistic space aliens, but rather about the clinical depression suffered by an anime studio runner as he deals with loneliness and a need to make connections to other humans!
omedetou