Neon Genesis Evangelion

Earth...the shining blue marble of home. Wracked by an explosion of immense proportions, the ice caps melt and cities drown under the raging sea, climactic changes kill millions, and the call comes to protect ourselves from further destruction. When a scientist (Gendou) defines this "Second Impact" as the fault of an attacking alien race called the "Angels," the United Nations forms NERV, a military and scientific organization to protect the Earth. NERV builds prototypes of giant mechas, EVA units, that are based on Angel technology and can only be piloted by gifted children born after the Second Impact (for some unknown reason). One of those children in Gendou's own son, Shinji. And so the series begins, with Shinji being brought to NERV HQ in the rebuilt city of Tokyo-3. There he will meet Rei Ayanami, a very strange girl with a supergenius intellect and strange social skills, and later the outgoing genius Asuka Langley, who torments Shinji with her feminine guile. Shinji's guardian during this time is Misato, a NERV officer whose breakfast is usually a couple of cans of beer, lives with a genetically-engineered penguin, and is a quite attractive woman to boot! As the three children learn how to pilot the EVA units effectively against the Angels, the secrets hidden under NERV and Gendou's ulterior motives begin to be revealed. Soon it is apparent that they are following a biblical prophecy, and that the EVA units are more than just based on Angel technology.
If you haven't heard about this series yet, you probably have been under a rock for the last couple of years. Eva has become a phenomenon in the US (although nothing on the scale it is in Japan... they even have cellphones with the NERV logo on it), earning a popularity that has only been seen before with the (ugh) Ranma 1/2 series. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a strange series indeed. While at first you might think that it's just a story about giant robots and space monsters -- pretty pedestrian fare for Japanese anime -- once you look beneath the exterior a very different type of anime begins to show. There are spiritual undertones to the series, and nothing is black and white. However, the road to getting to the point where the underlying story begins openly is long and I began to loose interest along the way. But then, I'm known for a notoriously short attention span so don't fault me there. The animation is classic Sadamoto (Wings of Honneamise, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water) with clean, expressive faces and characters you can tell apart on more than just hair color. The mecha design is unusual and original; the EVA units move with fluidity and are jointed so that such movement is believable. The design of the Angels is even stranger, as no too are alike and they all have different attack strategies. As mentioned before, biblical themes run throughout the series: NERV's three computer cores are called the Magi, of course the name Angels, and even the name Evangelion seems to come from the term evangelical or evangelist. All in all, NGE is a very detailed and superb anime, but there are some flaws. The show rapidly moves from comedy to tragedy and back between episodes and may be a little disorienting to some (unless you're familiar with Japanese theatre). The storyline and plot progression is very Japanese in style and may be a little inaccessable to some younger viewers (although they will like the battle scenes and such). Depiction of injury to minors (even as far as death) may be too strong for some younger viewers to handle though, and I would recommend a PG-13 rating on it. The movies I have heard get even more bloody and violent (we'll see when they come out over here). I recommend this series to those who have the time and money, but with the caveat that it requires concentrated viewing and it may be several volumes before you start to "get into" it.

Original Story: Gainax
Director: Hideaki Anno
Producer: Noriko Kobayashi, Yutaka Sugiyama
Character Designer: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
Mecha Design: Ikuto Yamshita, Hideaki Anno
Art Director: Hiroshi Kato
Music: Shiroh Sagisu
© GAINAX/Project Eva
TV Series -- 24 minutes each episode

Genre: Science fiction
Format: US release as two episodes per VHS by AD Vision (sub and dub). Several movies have also been made, but status of US acquisition unknown at this time.
Rating: 92 (46/24/22) Contains violence, sexual innuendo, brief nudity and depiction of severe injury to minors.

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Last update 26 May 1998

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