Today I finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. At first I watched it because I was bored and just wanted to watch something interesting and hopefully be inspired by it some way or another. So I chose Evangelion because it’s very popular and seemed cool. I thought it was gonna be a typical mecha anime (you know, big robots fighting each other) with some drama around it, but oh boy was I wrong. I was very wrong.
At the beginning, it does seem like a typical mecha anime. The protagonist Shinji is told to pilot the Evangelion Unit 01 (which is one of the massive biomechanical creatures) to fight the Angels, massive enemies of varying appearance and power. At first he doesn’t want to, but does so anyway. Then he fails in battle, but the Evangelion (or shortened to Eva) awakens and does the job by itself. So far pretty normal for a plot.
Also the plot is super complex so I’m not gonna write all of it (even though the plot is crucial to the story). I’ll tell the basic plot though. So billions of years ago there was an ancient race that wanted to spread life to other planets, so they sent Seeds of Lifes to planets in the Solar System. There are two types of Seeds, one with a Fruit of Life and one with a Fruit of Knowledge. Only one Seed of Life is supposed to go on one planet, but Earth got two. Two different types. The Fruit of Life, Adam, makes Angels which are creatures with unlimited power but not much consciousness. The Fruit of Knowledge, Lilith, makes humans, which have a lot of knowledge but aren’t as strong as Angels. The reason no planet can have two Seeds are because if an entity gets both Fruits, they essentially become a god. Lilith crashing on Earth is known as the First Impact.
In the year 2000, an expedition team decided to find Adam in Antarctica and reawaken him using human DNA (remember, humans are a child of Lilith and it would be dangerous for a child of Lilith to collide with Adam and vice versa). This resulted in the Second Impact, a massive explosion which wiped out half of humanity.
In the year 2015, Angels started attacking humans, they were children of Adam trying to cause the Third Impact, that would eradicate humanity. So Nerv (an organization whose goal is to stop the Angels) sent out the Evas, which are equal in power to Angels, to destroy the Angels. The first half of the series focuses on killing Angels, almost a new one each episode.
By the second half of the series however, it gets deep. Why do you live? Why do you do the thing you do? What do you desire from doing so? Why are you even doing so? There are so many moments where I just went, “WHAT” loudly. So many confusing moments, all of them so deep in meaning and symbolism.
(this next part will make more sense if you’ve watched Evangelion but I’m gonna write about it anyway) The characters in this anime have incredible depth. Each of them has suffered before, and are trying to cover it up by doing various things. The protagonist Shinji for example, lost his mother at a young age which made his father desert him, leaving Shinji to live with his teacher. The other main character, Rei, who is actually not really human but is also sorta human (idk anymore lol), struggles to socialize with other people and acts like a doll, a puppet to Commander Ikari (who is Shinji’s father btw). She has questioned her own identity several times in the series too, and doesn’t have a lot of dialogue. The other other main character Asuka, had her mother driven insane by work, making her forget her own daughter and later killing herself after finding out she was being cheated on. So Asuka does anything to gain attention of others, to prove that she exists, similar to Shinji who does things for the approval of others.
In short, I really love Neon Genesis Evangelion. I spent hours today finishing it (along with 2 movies that are important to understanding it) along with reading the Wiki and watching videos explaining it. It’s so rich in lore and at the same time, emotionally speaks to you. It doesn’t have the happiest ending, but I’m pretty satisfied with it. All the characters have really good arcs and have grown a lot throughout the series. To sum it up, Evangelion is a kinda depressing anime about what it means to be human disguised as a mecha anime.
I can also say that it is not for kids despite ‘haha cool big robot’
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