STORY OF EVANGELION
In 1999, humanity found some sort of entity in Antarctica. The facts were
covered up, but the entity may have been the First Angel, or Adam, or God
Itself (if in fact these are not all one and the same). It was probably the entity
called Adam, supposedly the first human being and possibly the First Angel as
well. A scientific research team, including Gendo Ikari and the scientist father
of Katsuragi Misato, sought to use science to understand the entity and
reproduce its power on behalf of the human race. Misato was present as a
young child. The "Second Impact," a tremendous explosion, resulted from
their research. (The "First Impact" had occurred in the distant past, and was
probably the explosion which killed off the dinosaurs and paved the way for
the ascendancy of homo sapiens.) The most likely cause for the explosion is
that an Angel showed up and came into contact with the first entity, turning
Antarctica into a hellish ocean of poison and killing over half the human race.
Gendo had left for Japan the day before the Impact, carrying much of the data
they had so far collected; Misato's father saved her by placing her in a
protective floating escape pod. In the aftermath of the Second Impact, an
ultra-secret committee called Seele (a word meaning "Throne of the Soul")
arranged for the creation of NERV, a United Nations agency dedicated to the
Human Completion Project, to push the human race into the next stage of its
evolution, possibly the attainment of Godhood itself. The true facts of the
Impact were hidden from the survivors of humanity, who were told that the
Second Impact had resulted from the collision of a comet. NERV was
headquartered in the GeoFront, a perfectly spherical cyst-like cavern
discovered in the Earth under Japan. Over the GeoFront was constructed the
fortress city of Tokyo-3; the skyscrapers of this city were designed to retract
into the ground, becoming suspended from the roof of the GeoFront, making
them all but invulnerable to attack from above. NERV's headquarters was
called the Central Dogma, located at the bottom of the GeoFront's sphere.
Ikari Gendo was made Commander of NERV. Seele was apparently guided
in its actions by predictions/prophecies that had been found in the Dead Sea
Scrolls but had been suppressed from public knowledge. The Scrolls
predicted the advent of "17" Angels that humanity would have to defeat in
order to achieve Human Completion. Gendo's wife, Ikari Yui, was a brilliant
geneticist who gave birth to a son, Shinji Ikari, less than a year after the
Second Impact. Yui was instrumental in the creation of the "Evangelions" and
was in fact an early if not the first test pilot of them. Evangelions are huge
artificial biological organisms engineered from tissue collected from an entity
named "Adam." They apparently have some form of rudimentary mind but no
soul or willpower of their own. These elements are provided by human pilots,
who are inserted in mechanical "entry plugs" into the beasts. An Evangelion
with a human pilot synchronized within can generate an AT Field, making it
nigh-invulnerable. The Evangelions are clad in metal "armor" which looks
protective but is really intended more as a method of restraining and
controlling the creatures. An Evangelion requires a constant feed of electrical
power to move; its internal batteries die out within five minutes of unaided use,
immobilizing the creatures. Ikari Yui was "erased from the world" as a result
of her experiments. There is an extremely strong implication that, while
attempting to synchronize with an Evangelion, she lost her "ego boundaries"
and her body liquefied into an undefined, primordial organic soup (this same
fate happens to her son Shinji in one episode, but his soul manages to resist
the call of merging with his Evangelion and redefine himself as a human,
apparently largely due to his personal connection with Misato.) Shinji, aged 4,
was present at his mother's "erasure" but later suppressed the memory. There
is an unconfirmed implication that Shinji may have somehow been instrumental
in the accident, leading to Gendo's estrangement from him. After Yui's death,
Gendo, who was always an unlikable sort, withdrew and became almost
inhumanly cold and aloof, though brilliant. He abandoned his son to a private
tutor and ignored him for the next ten years. Gendo became "romantically"
involved with Akagi Naoko, mother of Akagi Ritsuko. Naoko was the
leading computer engineer with NERV; it seems Gendo was dispassionately
interested in meaningless sex while the elder Dr. Akagi was hopelessly in love
with him. Naoko introduced Ritsuko, then a college student, to Misato, who
was of similar age. Misato, who had been aphasic (withdrawn into her own
head) for two years following the Impact, had become an extroverted motor
mouth thereafter, almost as if to make up for the lost time (as Ritsuko's
mother observed). Misato took up with a young man named Kaji Ryoji, with
whom she cut a whole week of college classes to do nothing but make love.
Ritsuko, by contrast, was quiet and shy, and avoided contact with boys. It is
likely Ritsuko had a crush on Gendo and was jealous of her mother. Misato,
Kaji and Ritsuko all become good friends and all later joined NERV in
various capacities. Akagi Naoko designed and built the supercomputer
system called MAGI, which consisted of artificial organic brains
supplemented by electronic circuitry. MAGI was a triple system composed of
three separate processors named after the Eastern wise men from the New
Testament: Balthasar, Melchior and Casper. The core programming of each
processor was a separate replicated portion of the older Dr. Akagi's own
personality: her own thinking was replicated as mother, scientist, and woman.
At some point, Gendo Ikari began taking care of a strange, quiet little girl he
called Ayanami Rei, claiming she was an acquaintance's daughter whom he
was acting as guardian for. Rei looked exactly like a child version of Ikari Yui
except that Rei was a white-haired albino, where Yui had been dark-haired.
One night, Rei wandered into Central Dogma (the NERV headquarters) when
Akagi Naoko was there alone. Rei dispassionately called Akagi a hag. When
Akagi said it was rude to say things like that, Rei responded that she was just
repeating what Gendo called her, "a tiresome, useless hag." Akagi, stung and
infuriated, and seeing Yui in Rei, strangled the child, saying that "You are
worthless, because you are replaceable... just like me." She then jumped to
her own death. The events were completely covered up even within NERV;
almost nobody knew of Rei's strangulation or the reason for Dr. Akagi's
suicide. For some reason, it was determined that only certain children born
after the Second Impact could pilot Evangelions, supposedly identified as
such in a report by the "Marduk Institute," an institution which later in the
series is revealed to be a nonexistent front for NERV itself. Why these
children were the only possible pilots is never really explained in the series.
Three children were identified at the outset to the general staff of NERV as
being designated pilots by the Marduk Report: Ayami Rei (who was alive
despite her apparent strangulation), Shinji Ikari (son of Gendo and Ikari Yui),
and Asuka Langley (a Japanese-American who was raised in Germany by a
German stepmother). Only Rei was on hand before the attack of the Third
Angel. In a testing accident in 2015, Rei's Evangelion went berserk and
attacked the control booth holding the command staff. Ritsuko privately
concluded that it was trying to kill her (which later-revealed events suggest
was probably due to a subconscious hostility by Rei, or possibly the
Evangelion itself, against Ritsuko for being Gendo's lover). Rei was ejected,
being badly injured, and in a surprisingly intense display of concern, Gendo
burned his hands severely in rescuing her from her ejected entry plug. Rei
kept and apparently treasured Gendo's eyeglasses, which were broken in the
rescue. By 2015 Ritsuko had taken her mother's place as chief technical
engineer for NERV (and, probably, as Gendo's lover); Misato had long since
broken up with Kaji, and had become NERV's chief tactical officer. The
predicted appearance of the Third Angel and the arrival of Ikari Shinji in
Tokyo-3 ended the "back story" and started the events that were depicted
throughout the television series. Upon arriving in Tokyo-3 during the Third
Angel's attack, Shinji glimpsed a figure identical to Rei, who was then
unknown to him, standing in the street outside the train station. This figure was
uninjured, though at this time the "actual" Rei was still suffering from serious
damage from her earlier accident. Shinji was taken down to the GeoFront and
was instrumental in defeating the Third Angel. Throughout, the children are
assaulted by all seventeen Angels, no two of which were remotely similar to
each except for their unanimous ability to generate an "AT (Absolute Terror)
Field," a defensive shield making each all but invulnerable to any conventional
weapon. AT Fields could apparently only be breached by another AT Field
(such as that generated by an Evangelion), incredibly powerful energy
weapons, or the Lancea Longini ("Longinus' Lance"), a huge metal spear of
unknown origin in NERV's possession. When Kaji and Asuka join with the
Tokyo-3 team, Kaji brings with him a suitcase containing an embryonic entity
he identified as Adam, apparently the living remains of the entity that had been
found in Antarctica. Adam was purportedly scavenged and frozen by NERV
and used as a genetic donor from which the Evangelions were engineered.
Adam was apparently installed in the Terminal Dogma, a vault at the bottom
of the underground NERV headquarters, and the most heavily guarded point
on Earth. One is lead to believe that Adam was unfrozen and allowed to
regenerate in this spot, quickly growing into a giant, leg less white humanoid
with seven eyes, which NERV immobilized by crucifying in the Terminal
Dogma. This is an unclear point; this giant may not have been Adam after all.
At a certain point in Adam's development Ayanami Rei was ordered by
Gendo to impale Adam through the breast with the Lancia Longini, which may
have halted its further regeneration but which did not apparently kill it. Asuka
Langley, the Second Child of the fictitious Marduk Report, was a brash,
egotistical and somewhat nasty adolescent. A child prodigy, at fourteen she
had graduated from college and had mastered several languages. Her
synchronization rate, the measure of a pilot's ability to coordinate an
Evangelion, was the highest of the three initial Children. Unfortunately, Shinji
appeared to have a greater natural aptitude and quickly closed the gap
between them. Shinji eventually surpassed Asuka, who couldn't handle being
second-best very well. The situation deteriorated when Rei saved Asuka's
life, putting Asuka into third place in her own mind. Asuka went into an
emotional tailspin, attempting to dominate her Evangelion instead of merge
with it, and her synchronization rate--and mental state--became progressively
worse. Ritsuko developed and installed a "dummy plug" system of artificial
pilots for the Evangelions. The specifics of the system were not originally
revealed, but the dummy plugs were described as soulless thinking machines
duplicating Ayanami Rei's signal to an Evangelion. However, unlike Rei, the
dummy plugs had no soul, according to Ritsuko. The Lancia Longini was
removed from the breast of "Adam" by Rei in order to kill the Fifteenth Angel,
which attacked from orbit outside of any other weapon's range. Rei's
Evangelion hurled it, javelin-like, into orbit. The Lance destroyed the Angel
but could not be retrieved from orbit. The Fifteenth Angel, which attacked by
some sort of long-range telepathic assault that manifested as a brilliant golden
light and a deafening, imaginary chorus of Handel's "Messiah," had destroyed
the last vestiges of Asuka's ability to synchronize with her Evangelion. Asuka
was removed as an Evangelion pilot and promptly suffered a massive nervous
breakdown. The Sixteenth Angel, which appeared as a giant circle made from
a double helix (resembling a viral gene's DNA, and also resembling a halo),
attacked Rei's Evangelion and integrated itself into the Evangelions biological
parts. Rei was ordered to eject, but for what was apparently the first time in
her life disobeyed an order, so that she could detonate her AT field and
destroy the Angel. Her shattered entry plug was salvaged and its contents
whisked away. Miraculously, Rei appeared again, heavily bandaged but alive,
with gaps in her memories of events. Misato, concerned over the growing
number of inconsistencies in what her superiors were telling her, was
prompted by Kaji (himself a spy for the Japanese government and for Seele
to keep tabs on Gendo Ikari's actions) to question what was really going on.
Kaji revealed the seven-eyed Adam to her; Misato later seduced him into
telling her what he knew of what was going on. Kaji gave her a capsule
containing a data chip inscribed with his knowledge, but its contents was
never revealed to the audience. Shortly thereafter, Seele instructed Kaji to
abduct Gendo's Vice-Commander, Professor Fuyutsuki Kozo, for intensive
questioning; Kaji later released him, at the cost of compromising his own
position within NERV. Misato, who had been suspended from duty due to
her involvement with Kaji, was given back her gun and security card. Maybe
Misato shot Kaji, because he was doomed anyway and by living he
endangered her own position and ability to influence events, just as he himself
was compromised. Then again, maybe she was only crying about Kaji's
getting himself killed by someone else. A good argument could be made either
way. But then, if Misato didn't kill Kaji, who did? Ritsuko, anticipating that
Misato would try to force information from her, arranged for Shinji and
Misato to be present when she entered a restricted area of the Central
Dogma. Ritsuko was disillusioned with her lopsided relationship with Gendo
and was having a severe emotional crisis. She showed Misato and Shinji a
graveyard of Evangelion skeletons from failed experiments and told Shinji
about how he had seen his mother die. Then she revealed one of the secrets
about Rei: a huge tank full of dozens of identical Rei clones. These, it turned
out, were the basis for the "dummy plug" system; each dummy plug contained
a soulless clone. Apparently three of these clones had been successively
released as the living "Ayanami Rei." Only one at a time could have a soul,
however, at least judging from what Ritsuko had to say (this is supported by a
surreal sequence immediately prior to the second Rei's self-destruction, in
which she talked with a duplicate image of herself standing knee-deep in
liquid--apparently, in retrospect, the third clone). The first Rei had been
strangled by Naoko; the second sacrificed herself and the third had recently
been activated. Ritsuko stated that she hated Rei and turned off the life
support for the clone-tank, killing all the remaining dummy-clones. Why?
Probably Ritsuko, like her mother before her, knew she couldn't compete
with Rei for Gendo's affection, and this was her revenge. Ritsuko said this
wasn't murder because the clones were soulless inhuman machines. She may
have been telling the truth. Only the third Rei survived of all the clones.
Ritsuko was removed from duty and locked up by NERV. The Seventeenth
Angel appeared in the form of a white-haired boy named Kouro, physically
resembling both Shinji and Rei, who was presented by Seele as a new
Evangelion pilot. Shinji was befriended by Kouro, who shortly thereafter told
Shinji that he loved him. Shinji, isolated and desperate for contact, warmed up
to Kouro and apparently loved him back. Soon after, Kouro activated
Asuka's Evangelion without even getting into it; generated the most powerful
AT Field on record, and easily defeated all attempts to prevent him from
reaching the Terminal Dogma, including an attack by the despondent Shinki.
Kouro stopped just short of making contact with the seven-eyed giant,
however. He told Shinji that only one being could survive the annihilation, and
although Kouru was himself immortal it need not be him. He called the giant
Adam then corrected himself and referred to it as "Lilith." Kouro declared that
he preferred the freedom of death over eternal life and said that Shinji was the
one that "needs a future." He asked Shinji to kill him, and, Shinji complied.
The final two episodes of the series are hard to interpret. They represent the
long-awaited Human Completion, but are presented in a very stylistic, and
occasionally downright surrealistic, fashion. There is no entrance segue and
little context to determine what is "really" happening. Essentially, the premise is
this: all humans are incomplete; they have a gaping void in their souls which is
the source of all frustration, anxiety, despair and loneliness. Humans try to fill
this void with the presence of other humans; thus humans are incomplete as
individuals. Furthermore, others are needed in order to define one's own
existence; without others, the self loses all definition and becomes formless
(which may have been what had happened to Ikari Shinji, and maybe Ikari
Yui as well). Human Completion merged all humanity into some sort of
self-sufficient gestalt overmind. Maybe. The form of the Completion is made
manifest by a linking series of vignettes and montages exploring the character
and personalities of the four principal characters, Misato, Asuka, Rei, and
Shinji, as they exist within each other's minds and their own memories.
Although all four have very different personalities, they are all shown to be
acting out of their need for contact with others, which the Completion
apparently supplies. The series ends with the Completion of Shinji, who
surmounts his self-loathing and neurotic need to believe others dislike him; the
ending note has Shinji accepting himself and stating that he likes being himself.
He is then congratulated by the other characters of his acquaintance, who
exist within his mind. What "objective" reality has is left undetermined.
Perhaps with the death of the final Angel there is no such thing anymore. In
the course of the Completion there was displayed a brief alternate continuity
sequence in which the Angels, NERV, and Evangelions did not exist; the
sequence was presented as a decidedly lighthearted adolescent gender
comedy. The significance of all this is up for interpretation. Many plot threads
seem to be left unresolved. At one point in the Completion, images are
momentarily shown of Misato and Ritsuko, both dead, without any
explanation given; however, Misato continues to appear, alive, in the
Completion sequences. Gainax, the Japanese company that produced Neon
Genesis Evangelion, went on to make two theatrically-released sequels as
theatrical releases, Evangelion: Death and Rebirth and The End of
Evangelion. What bearing they have on the above is unknown at this time.
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