The 'Impact' of Neon Genesis Evangelion

First of all, I would like to tell you, go watch it for yourself! Learn your own lessons, take your own essence out of it. Ignore the fact that it's animated. It's worth it.

Second of all, I need to get out all of the thoughts about this series. I have nobody to talk to about it and it's frickin' killing me! (Subtle hint...WATCH IT)

So if you decide on watching for yourself, stop right here. (Spoiler Alert!)

To outline all of my thoughts, I basically need to tell the whole story. 

Watching this series started with the melancholia that overcame me as I discovered the sequel of Digimon Adventure, called Digimon Adventure Tri. This anime taught me so, so much about friendship when I was a kid. So I rewatched ALL the digimon series. (Yes, I'm aware of the fact that I'm 25. Yes, I regret nothing. It actually refreshed my japanese-skills)

The melancholia continued with the other handful of anime series which had a huge impact on me. I have no idea if it is coincidence or a certain kind of storytelling which caused the fact that it was only these few anime series which actually changed my way of thinking and acting. (As you may know, I even have a character from one of these series tattooed on my leg.)

Whatever, when I finished rewatching "The Candidate For Goddess", I wanted to watch another series about huge robots flown by humans to save the world because I never got over the fact that this series was canceled in the middle of the story, so I needed a substitute. So I stumbled over Evangelion and I can tell you, I had NO idea what kind of journey I started with this decision. Silly me.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most influential animes of the last 20 years. It changed the classic "Mecha" genre (huge robots fighting) completely and director Hideaki Anno left a HUGE impact on the creation of anime-characters. His new definition of the classic "anime-hero" changed the game completely.

And now we are already in the middle of this journey. Yeah, because Evangelion is a huge, life-changing journey. At least that's what it was for me. It is really really hard for me to put into words why Evangelion is such an experience, but I'm gonna try.

The Story

Neon Genesis Evangelion starts with the young boy called Shinji Ikaru who is called to Tokyo-III by his father Gendo Ikari. Tokyo-III was built after the Second Impact, a huge catastrophy which killed most of the human population. It's the year 2015. His father is the director of an organisation called "NERV", which was founded for the purpose of fighting a new threat to humanity called Angels. 

The Angels appear in various forms, mostly geometric and abstract and everyone of them is completely different. After the appearance of an Angel, Shinji is summoned to fly a huge human-like machine called EVA. (short term for "Evangelion") He doesn't understand why, nobody is telling him anything, his father is standing in front of him, glaring with complete indifference. He doesn't want to do it, he's scared. So they order another pilot, Rei. She is severly injured, she can barely move, but Gendo says "she's not dead.". Shinji can't stand the view of the young girl suffering, so he agrees on piloting EVA-01. 

"I mustn't run away" he keeps saying to himself.

You're 5 minutes into this series and you're already unbearably confused. Why the heck does he have to do it? Why the heck do they lay the future of humanity in the hands of a teenager? What is this thing? They don't even tell him what to do! WHAT THE F? So he gets out, faces this Angel-thing and of course, he messes up horrendously. He almost dies. Of course! Boom, first episode over. Left with a gazillion of questions.

The next episodes bring a lot of reality into the plot. Cleaning up the mess after the fight, rebuilding the city, Shinji moving in with his commander Misato Katsuragi and her pet-pengiun PenPen, going to school, learning what the (official) purpose of NERV is, learning to pilot EVA-01 properly.

It's a pretty scaring reality. Creator Hideaki Anno takes away every loophole of fantasy and creates a real world where humans have to adapt to a new environment. The EVA's run on electricity, they hurt people, destroy infrastructure when they fight and everything needs to be fixed again. No magic, no flying, no fantasy. Blunt dealing with life. 

Once you're thrown into this alternative concept of reality, you start to adapt into the story. The characters, which are as blunt as this reality is. 

And this is the part where it get's really heavy. This is the Impact of Evangelion.

But wait, he survived the fight? How did he do that? We learn that EVA-01, with Shinji almost dead in it, went completely berserk and killed the Angel. A gadget that runs on electricity runs berserk? That's the moment you realize, that this is not about the heroic journey of NERV, Shinji and the others to save the world, it is much much more than that. It is about humanity playing god, about vulnerability, family, love and hope.

Character Shinji

He is the most important part of my Evangelion 'Impact'.
To me, Shinji is the personification of all the lessons Evangelion bears.

Shinji has a bad relationship with his dad – he was left alone and lived with his teacher for years and now, out of the blue, he is being summoned to pilot this EVA thing. The answer to Shinjis question why he has to do it, is "because no one else can" – but not in the "you-are-our-only-hope-and-we-believe-in-you" way, no. Shinji is the only one who is physically able to control EVA-01.

Gendo's indifference towards his son is made clear. And Shinji is a weak, sissy, whiny boy who is 100 % dependent on being told what to do by others. His purpose in life is to fit in so he doesn't get hurt. Not that much of a hero-material, to be honest. So why is he the chosen one? And what is with his mother, anyway? We'll get to that later.

Despite the fact that Shinji couldn't take the injured girl fighting the Angel – Shinji is piloting the EVA because he is desperate for the approval of his father. He gets a chance to show his dad, that he is worth something, in this case worth piloting EVA-01. He suffers a lot under fighting the Angels, he hates it, at some point his weakness even takes over and he quits. 

But it didn't matter to anyone, neither to his dad nor to Misato, who was taking care of him - and it is made very clear how much this tears Shinji apart. But of course he doesn't have the guts to really quit and Misato also wants to give him another chance - Shinji's hope of his dad's approval is still desperately alive.

Right before he attempts to leave, his two classmates Toji and Kensuke show up and Toji wants to apologize for punching Shinji in the face. Tojis little sister got hurt during EVA-01's first battle and he blames Pilot Shinji for it. 

In the second battle, Toji and Kensuke accidentally got lost in the battlefield and found shelter in the cockpit of EVA-01. Shinji kept fighting and they saw Shinji's endless pain during the battle with their own eyes, which changed their view on him. 

Toji says, he could punch him in the face for revenge and after some hesitation, Shinji does. He is glad, but he also admits that he is a whiny coward and not a hero. 

He knows about his weaknesses. He knows about his desperate wish for approval. He knows.

Yet he keeps going. You keep asking yourself, if he is actually getting stronger and that the role of piloting EVA-01 benefits him in building his own character. It seems like he's growing. 

When the third Pilot, Asuka, appears, you see him getting kind of confident, also a bit sassy, even if Asuka is making use of every opportunity to point out how stupid and whiny Shinji is ("Baka Shinji" is her nickname for him - "Idiot-Shinji")

Asuka is a very striking character - a pretty, loud, cocky, over-confident girl. But you learn very, very quickly, that this is her way of hiding her deep vulnerability and weakness. He develops feelings for her (and I'm pretty sure she does for him, too) and gets so confident, that he even attempts to kiss her. (while she's asleep, and he also does other things, so he's basically still a whiny coward)

She mumbles "Mama" in her sleep, which makes Asuka vulnerable for the first time. Yeah, you get the impression, Shinji is growing. But of course, it's his father who destroys all of this in one blink of the eye.

There are three EVA Units. Prototype EVA-00, Pilot Rei. EVA-01, Pilot Shinji. And the first proper combat Unit, EVA-02, Pilot Asuka. 

The government decides on sending another Unit to Japan, EVA-03. Toji is chosen as the pilot for the  EVA-03, but everybody misses the chance to tell Shinji. During the synchronization process, the NERV team detects that Unit 03 is possessed by an Angel. 

It is immediately declared the enemy, so Shinji has to fight. The moment he spots his enemy, he realizes he has to fight an EVA with an actual human pilot in it and refuses to fight. He is almost killed by the Angel and still refuses. He would rather die himself than kill another human on purpose, he says.

So his father activates a system called the "Dummy Plug", an artificial intelligence which mimics the behaviour of a Pilot. The Dummy Plug fulfills the order of annihilating the Angel and it does. Shinji  tries desperately to stop it but he can't, he can't control EVA-01 anymore. He is forced to watch how  EVA-03 is brutally torn apart, how the pilot capsule is crushed into pieces by his own hands. He spots Toji inside.

Shinjis reaction afterwards is very childish, irrational and aggressive. He refuses to leave EVA-01 and threatens his own father with destroying the NERV headquarters, which he is definitely capable of.

He is unbearably angry at his father, all his hate and anger hidden behind his weakness and inability to stand up for himself is canalized into this desperate act. Of course Gendo manages to deactivate the Unit and get Shinji out. 

He is paralysed in his pain and pledges that he will never pilot an EVA again. His father doesn't care, he even accuses him of committing a crime with the misuse of Unit 01. He despises his son for acting childish and irrational, for not being able to see the bigger picture of saving humanity.

I shared feelings with Shinji 100%. I was so shocked by this plot twist, Shinji being forced to almost (he luckily survived) kill his friend Toji. This weak, desperate character who took the first steps towards confidence, ripped apart, AGAIN. By his father, AGAIN. It broke my heart and I was like "Yeah, you go Shinji! Stand up for yourself! F*ck that stupid EVA bullshit!" 

Of course, you as a viewer get slapped in the face with a development in the story which leaves you no other choice but admitting:

"Am I as childish as Shinji was? Is the cruel Gendo actually right?"

This was one of Hideaki Anno's genius moves to make you realize how deeply you identify with the characters of a fictional series. And how easily this construct can be crushed. 

Shinji literally is the only one who can pilot EVA Unit 01. (I'll get to that later, I promise) After his final decision to quit, he is talking to Kaji, the ex-boyfriend of Misato, while they are watering Kaji's watermelon field. He says, if he would be able to do anything for humanity, he would do it. If he had the chance or the capabilities, he would make use of them. Shinji's conviction crumbles. Meanwhile, the next Angel is attacking. Shinji is forced to see the bigger picture. But I'm also pretty convinced Kaji also had his own egoistic reasoning for saying that to Shinji.

He constantly keeps asking himself "Why do I pilot EVA?" He also keeps asking his companions Asuka and Rei. But he can't find a proper answer, except for the fact that he wants to appeal to his father. He starts questioning his worth as human, that he is worth nothing but being a pilot. When he's not a pilot – he is nothing.

He is stuck between his duty to pilot the Evangelion and the deep crisis this duty has caused him. His way to fit in and to do what he is told, caused exactly what he wanted to avoid with it – Pain.

The moment he sees his companions Rei and Asuka suffer under the Angel attack changes the game and he instantly decides to get into EVA-01 again to beat the Angel. But his power cord is cut by the Angel and the five minutes of  battery life were not enough to get rid of the Angel. Shinji is stuck. Asuka and Rei are defeated. 

He tries everything to get EVA-01 running again and his desperate wish to save his companions causes EVA-01 to go berserk again. Unit 01 literally rips the Angel into pieces and even starts eating it up, with the consequence of absorbing the Angels S2 engine, an endless, self-sufficient source of energy. So no wires for Unit 01 anymore. But it also led to Shinji dissolving in LCL, the liquid which connects the pilot nerval system with the EVA Unit.

The Human Instrumentality Project

Here comes the mindfuck-part of this series. Of course there are a lot of hints right from the start, that there are a lot of secrets behind these huge human-like machines but I never ever would have expected THAT. It's completely messing with your mind, but it's the second big part of the brilliancy of this series.

Let's jump right in: EVA-01 is basically Shinji's mother. Well, at least her soul. Ten years ago, during early experiments with EVA-01, Shinji's mother Yui Ikari dissolved into LCL, just like Shinji did now. So she's not dead, but her body could not be "re-materialized" and her soul remained inside the EVA.

This time, they managed to materialize Shinji again, but his mother Yui is still inside EVA-01. Based on a lot of cruel experiments and a lot of dead Evangelions, NERV found out two things: The Evangelions have to be connected with a human body. They have to synchronize through the LCL. But to achieve a "synchronization-level" which makes the pilots able to control the EVA's, both parties have to be deeply connected. And which connection is deeper than the mother-child connection? Right, none. It's based on accidents, but turned out to be extremely efficient.

EVA-02 contains a part of Asuka's mother. She was involved in the experiments with combat Unit 02. She lost the part of her soul which was able to recognize Asuka, she got psychotic and even tried to kill Asuka before she killed herself.

Easy equation: Only the children of these two mothers are able to pilot the EVA's properly. That is why the pilots are called "Children". Of Course, both of them don't know anything about this at the beginning.

But what's with Rei? She is the key to the next mindfuck-part. Rei is actually a clone of the remains  of Yui Ikari (her soul) and the Angel Lilith. Who the f*ck is Lilith you ask?

Let's skip back to the Second Impact. The incident that is taught in school as a huge meteorite which caused the melting of the polar ice caps, consequently a drastic climate change, the dissapearing of landmass and a massive reduction of the human population, wasn't actually a meteroite. (Of course!)

We even have to take another step back. In the universe of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the planets of the galaxy are implanted by the seeds of wisdom (black moon) and the seeds of life (white moon). The seed of wisdom is inherited by Lilith, the seed of life by Adam. There is only either one of the seeds provided for every planet, when the seed of wisdom is planted, humans evolve. When the seed of life is planted, Angels evolve.

Unfortunately, on earth, both of the seeds were planted. Lilith landed on earth after Adam and because Adam was still locked by his Spear of Longinus, Lilith's seed could evolve.

In 2000, humans discovered the body of Adam at the north pole and during a contact-experiment, Adam and the whole north pole blew up, with the Second Impact as the consequence. But a few remains of Adam were found later, in the shape of an embryo. That is the reason why the Angels are attacking earth, they want to get to this embryo to fuse with Adam and destroy the human population, so the Angels could evolve on earth.

But humans have different plans. Adam and Lilith are the essential of a range of experiments to create god-like creatures which could defy the Angels. But the ultimate goal was to create a a real god by the human hand. The Evangelions are the result. All of them are cloned from Adam, except for EVA-01 which was cloned from Lilith.

Lilith is locked in the base of the NERV headquarters by the Spear of Longinus, which keeps her under control. The liquid that is leaking from her wound is dripping into a huge lake under her, because it is the basic ingredient for the LCL. It can be defined as some kind of "primeval soup", the base of all human life.

The Organization SEELE, which is standing behind NERV on the other hand, has their own plan of realizing the next step of evolution. For them, the creation of the Evangelions is part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a prophecy which precisely describes the future of the human population and their next step in evolution. 

The next step basically is to let all humas dissolve into LCL, remaining as souls but united as one, so there is no pain, anger, loneliness or other problems caused by human interaction. A huge lake of souls, happily ever after.

The plan is to defeat all the Angels so there's no potential danger for the human population left and the last step of evolution can be accomplished. It was never clearly explained how, but the goal was to intentionally cause a Third Impact with another contact experiment, where Shinji, Adam and Lilith are the most important factors.

Relationships as the ultimate flaw...again.

We need all of this information to go further with my 'Impact'. In the end of the series, it turns out that Gendo is the crucial point of a lot of tragic incidents which endanger the whole project. Let's start with his wife Yui. 

Gendo & Yui

When the story of the two meeting is revealed, you quickly understand that Gendo always has been the way he is in the present of the series – cold, blunt and a scientist with all his heart.

There are a lot of people who still think that he only married Yui to take advantage of her knowledge for his experiments, because she came up with brilliant ideas concerning the progress of the Project Eva. As I thought back to the actions Gendo took throughout the series, I actually thought the same. He married her and made a child with her – two perfect laborary rats for his purposes. 

But there are a lot of hints, that her "death" actually was the hardest thing he had to deal with in his life. When Gendo visits the grave of his wife with Shinji, he says "By forgetting memories, you survive. But there are some things am man should never forget. Yui taught me about those irreplaceable things. I came here to confirm that." – Well. The first time this cruel man is admitting some kind of feelings. The theory of using Yui for his own sake crumbles. 

There were no real answers about Gendo's intentions in the original series, but in the movie "End of Evangelion", we learn that he used the Human Instrumentality Project for his own purpose: To reunite with his wife. 

He implanted Angel Adam into his hand and wants to fuse with Rei and Lilith, so all of them could become one, he and his wife included. If he couldn't be with her in real life, he did everything he could to be with her in another way. Poor guy.

The Tragic Triangle: Gendo, Ritsuko & Naoko

Ritsuko is the brain of NERV. She takes care of all the technology, monitors and analyses all tests and executions concerning the EVA's and the pilots. She is also responsible for the supercomputer "Magi" which was created by her Mother, Naoko Akagi. Naoko created the three parts of the computer on the base of three personalities of herself as a mother, as a scientist and as a woman.

Ritsuko is very reserved and avoids getting too deep into private and emotional conversations, even with her friends. Towards the end of the series, after we learned how Gendo met Yui and how she dissolved in EVA-01, later we learn that Ritsuko has been in a secret sexual relationship with Gendo.

Years before that, her mother Naoko already was sexually involved with Gendo. 

Both of them developed a morbid jealousy towards Rei, as she is kind of a clone of Yui. When Naoko fell in love with Gendo years ago, he ended the relationship because he told her, that because of Yui he will never be able to be in a commited relationship. 

When she meets Rei for the first time, the little child blurts out, that Gendo calls her an annoying old granny. She gets furious and starts strangling Rei until she chokes to death. A few days later, Naoko commits suicide. It's not made clear, but there is no evidence of outside influence.

Years later, her daughter Ritsuko also gets sexually involved with Gendo. 

Ritsuko always wanted to distance herself from her mother, as a woman and as a scientist, but as you can see, she still is in the shadow of her mother, in the most tragic way. When Gendo presents her to SEELE as the new "base" for the Dummy Plug System, she has to stand nude in front of them. 

Rei is not just a clone of Yui and Lilith, she also plays the main role in the production of Dummy Plugs. Her "soul" is transfered into articifial intelligence and a lot of "empty" bodies are produced in case she dies and needs to be revived. Ritsuko stands there and says "So I'm next, huh?". She is devastated about this kind of humiliation and destroys all of the Rei Dummies in revenge, while she explains to Shinji who Rei really is. 

She also attempts to destroy the whole NERV headquarters by programming the Magi to self-destruct. But the woman-part of her mothers AI denies access – so her mother basically chooses her lover over her daughter, even after her death. Gendo takes the opportunity of her shock and kills her. The last sentence he says to her is muted, only Ritsukos answer "LIAR!" is audible. 

This caused a big wave of discussions in the fan community. There is a theory that the title of the final "End of Evangelion" Episode, "I Need You" is a reference to this muted sentence.