Every time I’ve watched Neon Genesis Evangelion I’ve felt that the show is simultaneously chasing perfection and also failing to succeed. It’s both expertly directed yet clearly a failed directorial work due in part to the clear failure of its final episodes. No operation can ever have such catastrophic behind-the-scenes problems without observing there were serious flaws in management. That is not to say the show is worse off for it, as I think what the show is about and what the project means to so many, including its creative team, asserts the intrinsic value of the shoes extremely apparent decline in quality. Part of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s success as a about the necessary acceptance of growing up and maturing in external & internal understanding is challenged overtly, albeit incidentally, by everyone’s combined maturing in both the external & internal experience of watching the show. Everyone has to reconcile what the show is, including those who love the show. Because, even though many people hated the final two episodes of the show – even as far as to mail death threats, graffiti the Gainax office, and create forum threads about killing Hideaki Anno – the success of the show was never stunted. In other words, despite people hating the last two episodes, the impact and importance of the show was wholly solidified: Neon Genesis Evangelion was here to stay.
Neon Genesis Evangelion’s first two episodes set the stage on two fronts: what the show is actually about and the proficiency in awe-inspiring material. The show is most interested in character dynamics, and the science-fiction setting solely exists to introduce curious complicating incidents or actualize metaphysical and emotional aspects of human character. It’s opening episode is undeniably more effective upon a rewatch, a dramatic first-time reunion between father and son where the family dynamics are on full display, even with coworkers, and its second episode starting by showing a brief moment from the mecha fight we were promised only to be cut short immediately by character drama. That fight between a super dope mecha some sort of weird alien kaiju? Won’t see it until you’re 40 minutes into the show. Why? Because a majority of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s narrative thrust is predicated upon character drama. Everything is about how people interact, fail to interact, refuse to interact, and deny one another. It’s awe-inspiring action and absolutely frightening sense of violence is equally as valuable insofar as it contributes entirely to character interactions, and as the narrative unfolds and its themes become more clear, combat quite literally is character interaction.
The mystery of the Eva, the A.T. Field, the Angels, LCL, The Instrumentality Project, Rei; every detail explores an aspect of human connectivity, and clear surrealist imagery used to connect every facet of the fiction together ensures the narrative’s sense of wholeness, of one-ness, keeps hold. And while the sexual imagery is admittedly not too graphic, it is appropriately uncomfortable. We learn what it really means to have an A.T. Field, how LCL makes it possible for Pilot’s to unite with Eva, and ultimately what it is that brings distinction between each individual.
However, there is one primary facet I’ve already alluded to, and that’s the necessary acceptance of growing up and maturing in external and internal understanding. There is a “necessary acceptance of growing” that is required to exist in reality, regardless of whether that reality is the one you preside within right now or it’s one with Eva, Angels, and Asuka Langley Soryu. There is a need to accept that one is both who they are yesterday but not who they were yesterday, and also has the opportunity to make decisions as to who they will be tomorrow, but those decisions can only be made today. This “necessary acceptance of growing” helps us grow “up“, and eventually we will realize we are far more than we had ever been. Even if we are inundated with our past, ashamed of who we are or who we’ve been told we are, we have the opportunity to be someone else, accepting that we will always be who we were.
This I believe permits one to “mature in external and internal understanding“, and by that I mean we become more competent and capable of making decisions that satisfy, within reason, our external world (friends, other humans; reality beyond ourselves) and the internal world (our deepest self, the one who is always with us). Without acceptance of reality, we will be in perpetual turmoil, always pondering what doesn’t exist and seeking to find solutions to problems that do not exist. Problems that do not exist do not have solutions, because solutions only exist for existing problems.
As each character descends into their own individual realities, the show confronts its audience in every way to accept theirs. That is not to say to accept “your truth” but “actual truth”, for each character was already existing in their own truth at the start of the show, and by the end they have become husks, shells, skeletons of their former selves. When one lives in a reality that does not exist, soon their body will catch up with their mind and cease to exist as well. And as the Angel’s mature from brute-force creatures all the way to creatures who invade the mind or unite with their enemies, so to would man do well to mature in their growth, seeking a unity that permits a healthy coexistence not only between the self and others but the self and itself.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a great show that partners its stark, brutal visuals with stark, brutal material. It will aggressively target the mind of those who watch it and demand rent free. It only gets better upon each watch because its a show that’s understood through maturity and acceptance, and its history and subsequent material only asserts its points: acceptance of reality is freeing; living in the past is deadly. It is when each character accepts their path and faces forward that they can face their challenges head on, and each character who fails to do so will face their own self-constructed downfall.
We talk more about the show in our episode, as well as its sequel film Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion, in our podcast episode on the topic. Countless, endless thoughts. What a great show.
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