Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96), NGE, or simply Evangelion, is a show created by Hideaki Anno and Studio Gainax. Having a very low budget to work with, the creators never thought that the 26-episode long series would later become one of the icons of japanese animation worldwide. Even less, they never could’ve known that not only the show would later become a multimillionare franchise, but that it would generate such an impact on the audience and spurr a still-ongoing debate over the alternate interpretations of the series. It, of course, also generated a lot of controversy.

The question with Neon Genesis Evangelion is: where to begin?

In 2000, planet Earth underwent a global cataclysm known as “Second Impact”. It completely anhililated Antartica, shifted the Earth’s axis, and wiped out half its population. The public belief is that this catastrophe was caused by a meteorite impact in the antartic area, which caused general unrest for the remaining global population during the following years; radical climate change, devastating tsunamis, economic distress, and a nuclear conflict, not to mention the emotional and psychological traumas of the survivors.

Fourteen years later, Shinji Ikari is summoned by his estranged father, Gendo, to the fortress city of Tokyo-3 for reasons he does not know. He is brought by Captain Misato Katsuragi – who would later become his guardian – to Nerv HQ in the GeoFront, where he is told his mission: to pilot a humongous, hundred-and-something feet tall robot called Evangelion Unit 01 and fight against an anthropomorphic lifeform of the same dimensions called Angel that is currently attacking Tokyo-3.

Shinji, being a 14 year old boy whose life had been quite simple and uneventful so far, obviously freaks out. He refuses to do the job until Gendo summons the pilot Rei Ayanami (the First Child) to do it instead. When Shinji sees the girl’s condition – bandaged, coughing up blood, and barely able to stand up – he accepts to pilot the Eva, and thus becomes the Third Child.

So from then on the premise seems pretty simple: the beings called Angels attack the city, and Nerv sends the pilots (called “Children”) in the Evangelion Units to destroy them. Shinji and Rei are later joined by the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, who is brought from Germany along with Evangelion Unit 02 to help destroy the Angels. And so the mecha genre of the series is settled.

But what was so bewildering about NGE, and still is until today, is the fact that it isn’t just a standard mecha story.

As the series go on, the truth behind the Second Impact, the nature of both the Angels and the Evangelions, and plans for the future of humanity that Nerv, Seele, and Gendo himself are trying to carry, are revealed. Not only that, but the story starts delving into a psychological analysis of each of the characters and how they are affected by their pasts and by what they are going through as the series progresses.

The characters undergo depression, societal alienation, and basically a very human pain that can be partially attributed to what they’ve been forced to deal with and go through. The show explores all these issues in a quite realistic way; the characters react to the situation they’ve been thrown into as real human beings probably would. 

Add to all of this religious symbolism and references. That this addition carried some kind of meaning behind it is still an ongoing debate between fans and the general audience of the show.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is actually my second favorite anime show of all time. Even though it belongs to the mecha genre, the show combines a dramatic character study and psychological analysis with touches of symbolism: the result is a complicated show that arises many, many questions. But that’s part of watching NGE, and in my opinion, it is a fascinating experience.