Why does Evangelion end every episode with Fly Me to the Moon?

The ending theme of the 1995 series is not an anime song at all. It is Fly Me to the Moon, written by Bart Howard in 1954 and long since a standard, arranged for Evangelion by Toshiyuki Ohmori and sung first by Claire Littley, credited as CLAIRE. The production then refused to let the song sit still. Episode by episode the arrangement changes hands and shapes: bossa nova and acid bossa versions, four beat versions, solo piano, full orchestra, and versions sung by Yoko Takahashi and by the show's own voice actors in character as Rei, Asuka and Misato. The EvaGeeks commentary project's episode by episode documentation counts the variants across the broadcast and Renewal editions, and franchise tallies put the total at more than thirty distinct versions of the same closing song.

The rest of the series' music works the same way, borrowed grandeur against original dread. Series composer Shiro Sagisu wrote the original score, and the soundtracks sold at the top of the Japanese charts, Evangelion III reaching number one on Oricon in 1997, the year Sagisu won the Kobe Animation Award for best music score. Around his music the series threads canonical classical works as emotional counterweights: Beethoven's Ninth, whose Ode to Joy Kaworu calls the pinnacle of human expression, plays into the series' most terrible choice; Handel's Hallelujah chorus sounds over Asuka's mental violation; Bach's Air accompanies the film's cruelest battle.

The song's later history proves how load bearing it was. When the series was reissued for international streaming in 2019, Fly Me to the Moon was absent from most versions outside Japan, replaced by an instrumental piano piece, and the removal was reported and mourned as the loss of a piece of the work itself. A standard the production borrowed for twenty six endings had become, by repetition and variation, Evangelion's own music.