A teenage boy finds himself recruited as a member of an elite team of pilots by his father. In 2015, 15 years after the enormous catastrophe that killed half of the world population, another crisis has come - the unidentified invaders called "Angels" begin to attack human-kind. Any of their weapons are useless against the so-called "Absolute Terror Field". But now human-kind had created an exception;the ultimate all-purpose humanoid weapon "Evangelion". To operate this exception needs the minds of "Children", 14-year-old juveniles. Shinji Ikari, the only son of the commander-in-chief of the team that administered Evangelion, is selected as the third of the "Children"…! This is a great show and definitely an anime ahead of its time.<br/><br/>First I want to clarify something: This show is not about religion or religious beliefs, even through the name sounds like it. I am Christian and find nothing offensive on the show.<br/><br/>Hideaki Anno, the creator of Evangelion stated he used Judeo-Christian symbols and names because they sounded cool and because Christianity is little known in Japan, so it would give an air of mystery to the show. Christian names and symbols in the show have little to do with their real meaning and the Bible. For example in the show: Eva (Evangelion)= A giant biomechanical mecha.<br/><br/>Angel= Monster that attacks Japan.<br/><br/>Casper, Melchior and Balthazar (Magi)= 3 supercomputers.<br/><br/>There other names and symbols used in the show but they have nothing to do with the Biblical use of them.<br/><br/>With that clarified, the show is great. At first it seems like your run of the mill anime: "young kid has to pilot a mecha to save japan from giant monsters." But after a while tings get interesting, there are many plot twists and nothing is at it seems. Characters are developed to a great extend and their complex psychology becomes the main plot of the anime and not the mecha.<br/><br/>All in all a must see, even for non anime fans. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of my top series of all time. It has all the things any successful sci fi anime should have: giant robots, crazy action, interesting main and secondary characters, a great story set in the future and a good ending (even if it spanned two movies, kinda). Death and rebirth was sort of an over view of the series with crazy editing and some new segments at the end that lead up to the End of evangelion movie) When initially approaching this series way back in '96 i thought it was just going to be another giant robot explosion-fest. I mean it had all the elements (those i mentioned before) plus others like, the dedicated team of technicians who man the base in which the mecha are deployed, and a young boy who must pilot a huge machine to save the earth… but then i actually watched it and found it to be much deeper. Everyone is hiding something and all the characters have some sort of deep psychological significance, and the Evangelion themselves (the giant robots) weren't even robots they were like giant human/giants covered in mechanical parts. All the enemies are based off of archetypal angels from Christian mythology as are the three super computers that run NERV's base of operations…… i have said too much, its great, its deep and the ending is nuts… this review stinks.
Frorem replied
346 weeks ago