TV Review – Neon Genesis Evangelion: Episodes 1 thru 6

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Episodes 1-6
Written by Hideaki Anno, Yōji Enokido, and Akio Satsukawa
Directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hiroyuki Ishidō, Tsuyoshi Kaga, and Keiichi Sugiyama

My track record with anime has not been fantastic. I find I more often prefer anime films over long-form series. Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue) has become a favorite, though I have yet to see Paprika. Hayao Miyazaki is a genre of animation unto himself, so if anything, that’s an entire branch of anime separate from the rest. Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) is a visionary whose work staggers me every time I see it. While I haven’t done a deep dive into it yet, Mamoru Oshii’s work, like Ghost in the Shell, is fascinating. When it comes to anime shows, my most significant exposure was being in the room during college while friends watched Dragonball Z on Toonami every afternoon. I was not a fan. I had other friends who were into things like Inuyasha, and I watched films like Vampire Hunter D. A few years ago, I took in a couple of Attack on Titan episodes, but it just wasn’t for me. 

Part of it is some cultural aspects in Japanese media that I miss the references to, so I feel a little lost. During those college days, someone rented a VHS tape with the first few episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I can’t say I was a fan, and I felt like I was missing something the whole time. Jump to over twenty years later, and I see Wes Anderson proclaiming his love for Evangelion in a YouTube interview. Perhaps it is time, I told myself, and so it is. I am reviewing all of the initial Evangelion TV series in batches of six episodes at a time and reviewing them here. I don’t know if I will discover a love for the show, end up as lukewarm as I was before I started, or actively hate it. Regardless, join me on this journey, won’t you?

With these reviews, I’ll share my thoughts on the episodes I watched and my predictions on where I think the story is going. Prepare for those predictions to be completely wrong; I know they likely will be incorrect. I also might not get some aspects of the show. That doesn’t mean I dislike them; I don’t understand their context or what they add to the narrative. I will get this out of the way now; I don’t get why Pen Pen is in this show. I understand it’s for some comedy relief, but it’s such a strange juxtaposition between this penguin fucking around in Misato’s apartment and then the cosmic horror of an Angel showing up and devastating the city. 

The basic premise of Evangelion is that the world was forever changed fifteen years prior when a worldwide cataclysm called The Second Impact occurred. Mysterious alien beings nicknamed Angels attacked the Earth, which led to the militarization of the remaining cities across the planet. An Angel returns to the fortified metropolis of Tokyo-3, but humanity has been preparing for this. A massive scientific complex beneath the surface houses Evangelion or Eva. They aren’t simply robot mechs but appear to have biological components and have only been successfully piloted by teenagers. 

Shinji Ikari is a fourteen-year-old boy recruited by his father, Gendo, the creator of Eva. The opening episode, set in 2000, sees Shinji arrive in the city just as an Angel strikes. The boy is tossed into Unit 01 and pitted against this creature, an experience that quickly teaches him that while piloting the Eva, he creates a psychic/physical bond with it. Captain Misato Katsuragi, head of operations in the NERV facility, is made Shinji’s guardian, and he rooms at her apartment while attending school during the day and training with Eva after. 

School proves challenging as some classmates see Shinji as a celebrity, and others view him as the cause of wanton destruction. At first, he’s bullied by Toji and Kensuke, but after they witness him in battle and even come to Shinji’s aid, they become friends. Shinji isn’t the only pilot in training; there’s Rei, a mysterious girl whom he develops a crush on. Rei appears to have a father-daughter dynamic with Gendo, and I felt there was a bit of rivalry between these two. By the end of the sixth episode, Shinji and Rei have a bonding moment that implies they are beginning a more profound friendship going forward.

The boy & his giant robot, along with the kaiju genre, seems like an evergreen concept in Japanese media. I do like that Evangelion is taking that premise and twisting it. Early on, the show hints that Evas are more alive than they might look on the outside, and that is a hook that intrigues me. If I had to guess, NERV is repurposing biological components of previously defeated Angels to make these mechs. Perhaps the show already stated that in the first six episodes, and it went over my head, or that could be a mystery we will explore later.

I also wonder how many tropes Evangelion invented versus the ones it used. Because I don’t have a strong context for where it fits in shaping the Japanese canon, I find myself only mildly impressed with certain things. It’s like watching Citizen Kane and not understanding what it did that was completely new. All you know is that you’ve seen those techniques and ideas used perpetually ever since. As the show progresses and the characters are developed, I’ll better understand why the series is so beloved. Right now, it feels like what I would call “standard.”

High school drama appears to be at least a part of the show, and that’s one aspect of manga/anime that has never appealed to me. I think the closest I got to enjoying it is the gritty & bleak portrayal in Akira. I’ve seen that film several times and read the first couple of parts of the manga (something I should go back to and review one of these days), and I enjoyed it. I felt Akira’s high school moments didn’t try to brighten a bleak story. I get the sense Evangelion will not be so grim; I could be totally wrong, though. Right now, the high school stuff feels too cutesy for my tastes.

The episodes I’ve seen thus far have me curious about the Angels. They have come in a wide variety of shapes and designs, three incredibly distinct ones, to be exact. If this is what we’ve seen so far, I expect the show will get even more creative. Ramiel, the floating metal diamond angel, was entirely unexpected and posited that these invaders would not always have organic aspects to their presentation. Perhaps we’ll see an Angel that is a virus, so it cannot even be seen? Maybe an Angel that can pose as a human and infiltrate NERV? Perhaps I am totally off on this, and they will always be Kaiju-sized city destroyers. But I like the possibility of Angels appearing as anything on the table.

It’s clear to me we’re going to learn some dark secrets about how the Evas are built, which will be tied to the Angel cores that keep getting extracted. I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned Gendo used some of Shenji’s DNA in constructing Unit 01, which is why he could pilot it so effortlessly and explains his deep connection with the machine. Gendo has a lot of backstory to come, particularly why he is so fixated on these machines as the solution to the problem. I think it will also be important that the Angels last attacked fifteen years ago, and the two pilots of the Evas are both fourteen. Were Shinji and Rei engineered after a catastrophe to serve this purpose if the enemy returned?

All the technical aspects are great, and the animation is very well done. I’m not a fan of the character designs; I like Satoshi Kon’s style better, for example. That’s just personal taste, though. I’m still on board and hoping something picks up. These first six episodes don’t feel like they’ve introduced anything too wild and mindfuckery, which is what I am hoping I get from Evangelion. I’ll return in a month to review the next six episodes.

My thoughts on episodes seven through twelve are here