soundtrack since Galaxy Express 999 had achieved, and which remained the case for another ten years. The soundtrack sold about 400,000 units, together with 600,000 copies of the single "Thanatos". According to a 2015 estimate by Merumo.ne.jp, The End of Evangelion grossed two-and-a-half billion yen in total, or over since 1997. Manga Entertainment's English edition was also successful, taking the twentieth spot among the best-selling DVDs of its debut week in the US. In 1998, The End of Evangelion reached number one in the Anime Grand Prix, an annual survey of the best anime of the moment by the Japanese magazine Animage. The song "Thanatos - If I Can't Be Yours" emerged fourth in the category related to the best music tracks. Time Out New York polled animators and directors about the best animated movies; The End of Evangelion eventually reached 65th place. According to Comic Book Resources, The End of Evangelion was with 8.51 points one of the anime purchased by Netflix with the highest deck on the MyAnimeList platform in 2020, and with a score of 8.1 among the most-popular Japanese animated films on the Internet Movie Database in 2021. Critical response The End of Evangelion received critical praise and since its release it was frequently rated as one of the best animated features of all time. Paste listed it in 46th place, praising its surrealism and experimentalism, while Japanese film magazine Cut named it third. According to Legit.ng, it is among the best fifteen action films in Japanese animation history. Writer Patrick Macias named it the third-best film in history, describing it as the most important anime films of the 1990s, while Slant Magazine ranked it 42nd among the best one hundred science-fiction films ever produced. Anime News Network's Nick Creamer decreed it the best ending in Japanese animation history, praising Asuka's strangulation scene as one of the most cathartic images in any medium. The battle between Asuka and the nine units of the Eva Series, on the other hand, was described by Real Live as a scene that "probably left a mark on the history of Japanese animation", and as "the beating heart of the film" by Comic Book Resources. Anime News Network's Mike Crandol also praised the battle against the Eva Series as qualitatively superior to all of the fights in the classic series. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating