Neon Genesis Evangelion, directed by Hideaki Anno, is one of the most critically acclaimed anime series. Released in 1995, the show continues to be relevant in today's age.
Set in a futuristic Tokyo, the series hints that humanity has figured out how to interface with machines. There are giant robots, a la Transformers, with humans inside them that can wear the robot as a second skin and command it by the force of their will. The show centers around this power.
A boy is called to battle by his father, and placed inside a robot named EVA-01 for the first battle against an alien race, the "Angels". The Angels are monsters that attack humans, and the EVAs are humanity's iron-and-fire reply. The origin of the Angels is unknown, as are their ultimate motives; all of humanity is too engaged in the motions of war to begin to uncover deeper questions seriously.
The boy does not respond well to the machine that envelops him. Still, he is dropped onto Ground Zero like a baby giraffe in wild savannah. The monster he fights watches him from a distance as he figures out walking and proceeds to break his robot completely when he stumbles. Damage to the robot translates to damage to the boy's body and mind, pushing him to death's edge. The Angel seems like a being much further along technologically than the blocky robot. It behaves fluidly in combat, learns as it goes, and strides on like a Goliath as it tramples human cities. Right when it seems that all is lost, something primal triggers inside the man-machine, and he kills the Angel in one sweeping motion of his weaponized arm.
We do not know, before this battle, of the boy's history. Anything we learn about him is through his reconstructions and visualizations of his memories, as they are gradually triggered by coming into contact with the people around him. He harbors hate for his father, believing he was responsible for his mother's death and abandoning him. As he is given time to rest between battles, he lies alone in bed staring up at ceilings, trying to piece together the bits and pieces.
Action.
A second Angel appears, and we are introduced to the second bot, EVA-0. This one is handled by a 14-year-old girl, Rei Anayami. She is a small figure, frail shoulders that carry a big head. Her eyes are empty, and her hair is blue. Ikari tries reaching out to her in the grasping, awkward ways teenagers do. Through her, he tries to find out what they fight against and who his father is. They team up to fight the second Angel.
Each Angel that subsequently shows up improves on the attack of the previous one and commits an attack against the Human security system with greater depth and force. Each Angel learns from the mistakes of the previous ones, attempts to understand the victims' minds and bodies, and exploits vulnerabilities ruthlessly.
Ikari's father is a battle-hardened man who stands in charge of NERV. NERV is an organization that is in de-facto control of Human resources, as all countries around the world scramble to make their EVAs. NERV is the only one who can fight against the Angels, somehow throwing an EVA into battle every time an Angel turns up and saving humanity time and time again. All of humanity's modern weaponry is rendered antique by new technology. Missiles that were capable of blowing up entire cities pop with a perfunctory whimper against the machines 'AT fields'.
The teenaged EVA pilots move into a residence with Captain Katsuragi, who is in charge of keeping them running. A home to come home to after the grisly work of gouging alien eyes is over and done, a room to sleep in, a breakfast table to wake up to, and a routine to stick to. The young ones spend their time learning the ropes, figuring out how to get in sync with their new machine bodies, and fighting together as one unit. Ikari is placed into the regular run of human life: school, teenage romance, self-discovery, etc.
Humanity has finally shunned outdated political systems, and is now effectively run by a system of AIs, billed to the public as 'scientific democracy'. The AI system runs in an underground facility deep inside Earth. A small group of humans officially 'sign off' on the 'recommendations made by the AIs. A front organization run by NERV 'selects' young men and women to pilot the EVAs. Life carries on as normal wherever there is peace, and people are evacuated whenever there is trouble. There is a hint of the fascination for true Outsideness inside the minds of the people in power; they see human cities as congregations of cowardly baboons crouching around a fire in the darkness, holding the outside at bay. No one protests any of this, and nothing is off-limits. There is an implicit acknowledgment in every mind of how close humanity has come to the powers of a God: the power to disembody spirit from matter, the power to shape life, and the power to exercise top-down control at a level high enough that no human alive could reasonably expect to challenge as a commoner.
As the teenagers' stormy lives play on in the theater of NERV HQ and Captain Katsuragi's home, we see the shadowy side of the business. Ikari's father, as expected, does not bear the force of arms sufficient to control all of Earth free-handed. He answers to a council of men, who in turn answer to another council of disembodied personalities floating around in giant monoliths of steel, collectively called "SEELE." They have larger motives of their own: The Human Instrumentality Project. He is not only responsible for saving humanity by building and running EVAs, he is also to take care of 'Adam', and come up with the sacrifices the new Gods in silicon demanded.
Glimpses of humanity's descent into madness are shown: a meteorite impact in Antarctica melted all the ice shelves, killed most of life on Earth, and planted the first Angel deep inside ice and rock. From this mummified 'Adam', the 'EVA's were copied and conjured up by humans. We do not know the roots of the conflict between humans and Angels. We, as Ikari, are only told to fight back against our enemies, as is natural when on the defense against a powerful foe, and reserve the talking and the thinking for later.
As the Angels are dispatched one by one, NERV grows in confidence. They find an Angel incubating in the womb of a volcano and bring in EVA-03, piloted by a teenager from Germany. Asuka demands that people see her; she harbors pride over her abilities with her robot. She steps into Ikari's life like a loud cicada in an empty parking lot.
The producers have the good sense to recap things often because they realize that these things tend to happen fast and feel even faster. We are given time to drink in and consider the implications of everything we see. There are a number of enticing mysteries that hang up in the air at all times: are the Angels a means to an end? For whom? What is the endgame of the Human Instrumentality Project? Where does Katsuragi come from?
The Angels are quick to discover the proper method of attack: from the inside. They swarm in packs of nanobots and convert the EVAs to their own kind. Biological material turns into a living computer, hacking its way into the DNA of humans. They eat their way through to NERV HQ, and access the data banks and take over the AIs. They invade Rei's body and invade Asuka's mind. It takes a second 'Berserk' moment for Ikari to rise up against the invasions and power his EVA beyond its normal limits. This time, it does something different: it becomes animal, hypertrophies out of control, and takes over a personality of its own. Ikari, trapped inside a metal capsule, is turned into soup. His persona floats in a primordial soup. The man literally melts into the machine as it peaks on a burst of energy right after its batteries run out and kills the Angel.
With his body dissolved into the LCL solution, his ego dissolves as well. He sees things from the 'Outside In.' He sees everything clearly: the voices that talk inside him, the images of his life, other personas, his drives, his animality, and his naked, screaming calls for acknowledgment. He sees all of it and wonders what remains at the center of the hollow void that is his subjectivity. He wishes to relinquish control, but something always calls him back. Someone who loves him deeply always uses the miracle of science to reconstitute his body out of the primordial ooze and bring him back into existence-on-a-treadmill, to the tune of "No running away".
We find out that the AIs are tripartite because they have three modules containing a part of the programmer, who was his mother: her as a scientist, as a mother, and as a woman. These three make decisions and vote against each other.
It is the woman in the machine that resists the complete takeover of the system, as she left behind backdoors in the system for NERV to use if the Angels ever invaded HQ completely.
As can be expected, events quickly spiral out of control for the young Turks at NERV HQ. The teenaged pilots begin to question why they pilot EVAs. They grow distant and cold, as each battle drains them more than the last, and resent each other in slow, insidious ways. Rei is grim, and her stoic calm unhinges Asuka into rage and madness. The two women running the operation break down as well, forced to put young bodies into battle against their will and having to rescue them by the skin of their teeth. Captain Katsuragi grows in stature as the fight in her grows. She begins to question the motives of her boss as she comes to know a shadowy man who works for both sides. He gives her enough of a scent to go chasing shadows in basements, all of which builds to Ikari visiting a secret chamber and finding out everything about everything. Rei was a fabrication. In huge vats of orange liquid float thousands of Rei's constituted from biological material borrowed from Ikari's mother and bestowed with memory and personality. A person, made for a purpose.
The series is a good visual treat and a segue for engaging with the ideas of philosophers like Deleuze and Guattari, and accelerationist writers like Nick land. Little attempt is made to flesh out the back story of who the Angels are, how NERVs are made, and so on. The writers for the show were influenced by a lot of theology, so you have to watch the anime much the same way you read a myth. The writers of the shows wish us to engage in deeper discussions by deliberately making the particular facts vague. Do watch it, and let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
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