I feel like I've experienced it before,
as if the shape of my body is melting away.
It feels so good.
I feel like I'm growing, expanding outward...
On and on...”
Dr. Nick: If you're into tracking event concurrency between the two endings, it seems pretty clear that episode 25 ends with tangification, and this earlier scene marks the beginning of the pre-Instrumentality mind-meld, starting from Yui's question "What do you wish for?". One scene in both endings - Shinji seeing Misato and Kaji's college sexy times - confirms that actual mind-melding is happening, because Shinji wouldn't know of that particular memory otherwise.
