Neon Genesis Evangelion
A Cruel Angel’s Thesis
Neon Genesis Evangelion 新世紀 エヴァンゲリオン is an Anime series from 1995 created by Hideaki Anno 庵野 秀明. I know of the Anime since I was in my primary school years. It has been a long time, and I re-watched it on Netflix some time earlier. I think it deserved to write a post about it.
When I was in primary school, the Anime was aired exclusively in Japan. Only some of the “cool kids” can have the privileges to be able to watch and brag about it. I remember I was quite hyped about it when I finally can watch the Anime at home years later. My siblings and I watched the show every Sunday night. Evangelion is probably the most memorable Anime series of all time.
The Anime is very famous for its complex storylines. After you’ve finished the series, it might make you question your own existence, and ask yourselves about what humanity actually means. The background is set in New Tokyo-3, Japan. It’s an Anime where some school kids get involved with a secret organization named NERV. They’re trained for piloting bio-machine mecha called “Evangelion” to fight against “Angels” in order to prevent humans from annihilation. By the look of it—robots fighting monsters. But I’m afraid it’s not that simple. The dark and unusual plot will haunt you and you might not be able to forget. The Anime clearly was not made for children. Don’t let any children watch it yet, if you don’t want them to be polluted.
The show introduced the audience to mental illness, depression, and even suicide attempts. Some of the episodes explore the mind of certain characters. It’s disturbing and frightening at times. Once you watched, you cannot un-see the violence and brutalness in some of the scenes. Despite that, it still holds the most epic fight scenes amongst others even after more than two decades. In my opinion, none of any Anime out there could compete with the grandioseness it achieved.
The most intriguing factor for me is the mecha design of Evangelion by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto 貞本 義行. The design of Evas is kind of Avant Garde that you see nothing like it before. I love the use of fluorescent colors in Unit-01. But my favourite one is Unit-02 弐号機 because of Asuka 明日香 and the color red matches her perfectly. I think I’ve spent quite a fortune on it’s action-figures by Kaiyodo over the years. If you’re into figures/models, I bet you know what Real Grade Model Kits are. I can tell you I’ll get my hands on them if I’ve got the chance. For now, I simply don’t have the time to enjoy playing.
A film series Rebuild of Evangelion was started in 2007 to retell the original story from new perspectives. It’s named Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition ヱヴァンゲリヲン 新劇場版, a four-part animated film. I’ve watched Evangelion 1.0 Prelude (2007), Evangelion 2.0 Break (2009) and Evangelion 3.0 Q (2012). The last one is Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 (2021) that I haven’t watched it yet. It will be in cinemas later this year but I acted too slow and all tickets were sold.
This is a very long-ass Anime series that lasted from childhood to adulthood. I want to write it down, hence this post. I will definitely write more about it in the future. So, until next time.
This is #Day37 of #100DaysToOffload.
Footnotes
- Revoltech Evangelion Evolution by Kaiyodo. I bought a bunch of Evas in 2008 after the first film Evangelion 1.0 was out. I keep all the action-figures like collectables for more than a decade: untouched and some of them were unopened as they’re limited edition. But turns out I sold most of the figures on second-hand market at a price higher than the original. ↩︎
- Real Grade / RG (1:144) via Wikipedia. The scale and the grade is probably come from Gundam. It’s highly detailed model kits that even an amateur could assemble it with zero pressure. ↩︎