by Leo Comerford on Fri Sep 19, 2003 11:38 pm
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a masterpiece of angst, weirdness and giant robots.
In the year 2000, a meteorite strike destroys Antarctica and causes a worldwide environmental and humanitarian catastrophe - this is dubbed "Second Impact". Fifteen years later, the earth is threatened by a series of mysterious alien beings, the Angels, whose aim is to bring about Third Impact. Nerv, a special body under the control of the UN, is created to defeat the Angels and prevent Third Impact. To do so it develops the Evas, giant robots with the ability to penetrate the forcefield which makes the Angels nigh-invulnerable. The Evas can only be piloted by children born exactly nine months after Second Impact.
That's the premise of Evangelion. As the plot of Evangelion progresses, you discover that every sentence in the paragraph above is a lie. Getting there takes a while: around the middle, the series settles into a cozy monster-of-the-week pattern, before everything starts to go horribly wrong. But then that's at least partly deliberate: Evangelion adopts just about every cliche of the old giant-robots-defend-the-Earth genre of anime, and then twists them.
If you want more information, you'll find plenty of Evangelion websites out there. If you intend to watch the series, however, I strongly advise you to keep away from spoilers. (Such as the plot summary linked above.) I would also advise you to watch the two Evangelion films after you've completed the series, especially End of Evangelion, which retells the events of the last two episodes more explicitly. Among other things, seeing End of Eva will help you understand What It's All About.
Q: What is It All About, then?
A: Neon Genesis Evangelion is all about director ANNO Hideaki's depression and problems with women.
So be prepared for a certain amount (no, lots) of psychodrama about the leading characters' inner torment, especially that of Our (Anti-?)Hero IKARI Shinji, all through the series. I don't want to explain or discuss too much more here about the series' ending and the truth behind all those lies, mainly because I don't want to spoil things before we show Evangelion in the coming year (plug, plug).