Neon Genesis Evangelion: TV Series (1995-96)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96)

Dirs. Hideaki Anno / Masayuki / Kazuya Tsurumaki | 26 episodes, approx 23 mins each

Fourteen-year-old Shinji Ikari arrives in the futuristic Tokyo-3, having been summoned there by a father that he's not seen in over three years.

Shinji's abandonment issues and his father's overbearing (though often silent) judging of the boy's measure puts an excruciating amount of stress upon the youth's inexperienced shoulders.

The emotional tearing that develops from the conflicting hatred of his estranged father and the simultaneous craving for his approval and love is a major defining attribute of the teenager.

But if that wasn't enough to deal with, Shinji is required to take on a task that would challenge even a hardened combat veteran, with nothing less than the fate of humanity on the line if he fails.

It's a situation that puts him directly in his father's line of sight, and increases the fear of failure and sense of worthlessness that the boy nurtures.

- Shinji Ikari, the poster child for emotional fragility and social anxiety. -

Excessive fandom can push some things to an exalted status in the minds of both its fans and in impressionable newcomers. NGE is one such example. It certainly helped change the face of anime — not just the giant mech side of it — and remains hugely influential to this day, but the reasons why it's so lauded are complex and open to debate, like the themes of the series itself.

But before any comment on those, a little more info on the set-up for folks that may not know:

Fifteen years after a global cataclysm known as the Second Impact almost wiped out the human race, bizarre entities named 'Angels' appeared, with an initially undisclosed but singular goal in mind, one that would finish the extinction. The humans had prior knowledge of the Angels, so constructed some equally bizarre bio-machines called Evangelion to fight them off. But the Evangelion units need pilots, which is where Shinji Ikari comes in. His role takes him to NERV headquarters, an underground facility in Tokyo-3 that holds a great many secrets.

It's not unusual in Japanese anime to have children burdened with impossible tasks or involved in combat with fantastical creatures, but teenagers piloting what's essentially mankind's only defence against total destruction from an invading force is a completely ridiculous premise, even for Anno. Likewise, in a series so concerned with psychology, why is there no actual psychologist at NERV HQ? When the reasons for such become known (i.e. the themes are more important than the story, not the other way around, and the psychological trauma is a necessary attribute of piloting), it still seems ridiculous. As things develop further in later episodes, you may be able to overlook it; but expect many other issues with the same agenda to rise in place of it.

- Evangelion Unit-01 (aka, the purple and green one). -

The first five episodes are mostly great, establishing the tone and laying the foundations of multiple plot threads that one feels will get revealed slowly, like the proverbial story onion, but a disruptive element is introduced in Ep 08 that ramps up the things that weren't good, including the level of fan-service and a woeful exploration of youthful sexual awakenings and tensions.

The disruptive element was clearly designed to be brash and egocentric, but she exceeds that role, for me; I class her as damned intolerable. And aside from the application of a certain Freudian-defined complex, the teen angst tensions are particularly bad, especially given that Anno was in his mid-thirties when NGE was released and his writing in that regard is like someone in their early teens. It's a complete contrast to the psychoanalytical study of self and analysis of failure and success that underpins the more mature themes of the onion.

The few episodes that follow are a significant drop in quality, worth watching solely for the crucial plot reveals and the evolving narrative on living conditions and interpersonal relationships, both of which have a direct influence on the characters that share such spaces.

- Gendo Ikari, father of Shinji and commander of NERV. Kinda shifty.-

Things thereafter pendulum back and forth for a while between good and bad. When it keeps its focus and its maturity, it's genuinely excellent. But when it's bad, it's pathetic. The unevenness, however, is a trenchant precursor to a second, more involute derailing of the production.

What's interesting throughout, to me at least, is that while individual characters can be seen to represent facets of a broken whole, there's additional allegory in backgrounds, undercurrents, and controlling organisations. They utilise specific imagery and symbolism, some of which has inspired mankind to reach beyond the norm for millennia, to search for truths hidden and strive to fully understand truths revealed. The most prominent examples to a Western audience will likely be the Christian and/or Judeo-Christian references, but there's many more, including Kabbalistic and Shinto concepts. I don't feel there's any one intended goal behind their use, but their inclusion allows multiple interpretations of the same scene to co-exist side by side, and they add a further element of mystery and intrigue that would otherwise have been missing. It's worth noting here that a literal translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion is New Century Gospel.

- Rei Ayanami, a mysterious, dutiful youth - also the least annoying child in the series. -

Watch it to the very end and you'll witness a harrowing exploration of a tragic mental breakdown being externalised onscreen - an animated refection of a writer's documented struggle with depression. It could be evaluated from a purely clinical point of view, but when actually viewing it may be hard to not get drawn into the maelstrom of what's happening, hard to not feel some kind of grief at how raw and exposed the human psyche can be. And in that feeling is nestled the realisation that the very same thing could happen to any one of us, for the line of happiness and contentment intersects with its opposite on many occasions in the journey that is life. With a kind of unsettling irony, it's arguably the faults and failings in NGE both onscreen and behind the scenes that help make the series so enduring and relevant to new generations of fans. And lest I forget, I applaud it for tackling themes that would've been taboo at the time of release.

The final two episodes, however, are a complete mess. Budget problems compromised the animation, but worse than that they're a self-indulgent, overly cryptic, poorly communicated clusterfuck with horrendous editing that's physically painful on the eyes. So if you're after a satisfying story that feels complete within itself, then you may be very disappointed.

- Alternatively -

You could skip those two episodes (Eps 25 and 26) entirely and try the ending that The End of Evangelion (1997) offered up. See below for why that might be preferable.

The End of Evangelion (1997)

Dir. Hideaki Anno / Kazuya Tsurumaki

It's sometimes referred to as a 'parallel' ending, but I'm not falling for that. I like honesty, and the truth as I see it is that the first two-part ending failed to properly communicate its message, and thus failed to provide a satisfactory conclusion to the story.

The symbolism may have been there before, but the storytelling was a complete shambles. The End of Evangelion turns the failure around completely, being the very best that NGE ever got.

It's still occasionally oblique, but in a good way. It's better paced, makes more sense overall, is properly animated, and has fully developed emotional content (with less screaming and cheap repetition).

It's possible that someone having just read that will now be accusing me of heresy for having written it, but I stand by it 100%. If it helps, as much as I hate the first attempt, I acknowledge that it's kind of fitting that both exist, when their raison d'etre are put into thematic context. But, even though it was essentially an afterthought, TEoE's version of events are what I regard as the true ending.

NOTE: a largely pointless 'film' called Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death + Rebirth was released between the TV series and TEoE. The Death part is a clips-show 're-cap' of first 24 episodes of the series, with some additional animation not in the original broadcast. The Rebirth part is the first third (approx) of TEoE, with some minor differences in editing and score, etc. If you have the series in its Dir. Cut version and TEoE, then you won't need D+R, nor any of the subsequent reissued, re-edited, or retitled versions that further complicated an already existing mess.