>>279953023No. They don't interlock or anything. Episodes 25 and 26 are non-narrative, and abstract. They were made within one work week. I see no reason to interrupt End of Evangelion to watch them. EoE is just outright better in every way.
So, what they would do back then is finish the episode and have a runner take the tape to the tv station and they would broadcast the tape. For most shows of the era it would often be done within an hour of the air time, which means the broadcasting network didn't have time to review the footage. Episode 24 was completed and rushed to the network within like 15 minutes of its schedule air slot. So the network didn't have time to review the episode before airing. After that episode aired the network complained about its violence, and thematic elements, so they demanded Gainax show them what they had planned for Episode 25 and 26 - which was a ton of material that would end up in EoE. They didn't like this, so Gainax had to start over on 25/26, and they had no schedule or budget left to do scheduling issues. Thats why some of the frames of 25/26 are just pictures of stuff they had around their office building with color grading.