"Thanatos" and "Komm, süsser Tod" emphasize the importance of the drive dialectic for the protagonist's path. Fujie and Foster linked Instrumentality Project, in which Shinji wishes for the death of all human beings—including his own—to Thanatos and destrudo. In the final scenes of The End of Evangelion, the boy rejects the process and Yui tells him all living beings have the ability to regain their human form and the desire to continue living, enforcing the life drive. Critics also identified the psychological concept of the return to the womb in the core of Eva-01, in the stigmata and on Lilith's forehead, and in the shape of the sandpit in which Shinji as a child builds a sandcastle. Popular culture and autobiographical inspiration For the plot of Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion, the staff took inspiration from Japanese works such as Devilman by Gō Nagai and Ideon: Be Invoked by Yoshiyuki Tomino, the final chapter of the Space Runaway Ideon series in which the extermination of the human race is proposed in a scenario similar to that of The End of Evangelion. Critics have linked the massacre of Nerv personnel to the slaughter of the Solo Ship, the Tree of Life to the Ide, and the Third Impact to the final Armageddon perpetrated by the Ideon. Anno was also influenced by the mangas Devilman and the final volume of Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Other critics have compared the apocalyptic vision of The End of Evangelion to that of earlier works of science fiction, such as Greg Bear's Blood Music and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. Ex magazine reviewer Scott Rider likened "Air" to the works of Harlan Ellison, while critic Nozomi Oomori and writer Hiroyuki Morioka have compared The End of Evangelion crypticity to that of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as to widescreen baroque science fiction, which is characterized by extravagance, violence, and intricate plots. Takahashi Watanabe of Animage magazine noted an image of a planetary syzygy appears in the second half, as does one in Kubrick's 2001. Other sequences have been interpreted as a tribute to Karel Thole's illustration on the cover of Howard Fast's science-fiction collection The General Zapped an Angel, which depicts the face of a giant being lying on a red sea. The End of Evangelion was written as a reflection of the staff's state of mind—that of