As far as media goes, I don't generally talk about anything other than games on here. I might drop the occasional wrestling post, but I usually keep those posts hidden in the secret vault. I have a letterboxd and occasionally talk about shows and movies I watch over on bluesky but for my blog... I don't feel like I have the expertise to stray too far out of my lane. While I have a unique view and perspective for games, for other stuff I feel like I am talking over those who are more articulate and better informed.
so I'm not here to say anything new about Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you want to learn about it, just go dig through the incredible evageeks wiki. In fact, I'm going to assume you already know about Eva. What I'm here for is to talk about myself, how Eva almost got teenage me committed, two dead grandmothers, and the experience of forcing the show and its incredible movie on my poor Mother and Sister.
I was exposed to Evangelion about as early as you possibly could in the US. While there were certainly tape traders, importing raw japanese home recordings of the original broadcast, I began watching in the middle of ADV's official VHS release run. The ADV run was between 96' and 98'. This was incredibly timely by the standards of North American anime at a time(Dragon Ball Z was 7, and Sailor Moon? A brisk 3, at least!). Only a two year delay!
These were where $20-$40 tapes, with only two episodes each. At best, each episode cost more than going to the movies. An entire anime in the 90s would cost several hundred dollars to watch -- sometimes closer to half a grand! I was about 13 when I started. Being about Shinji's age was very appropriate, but in general, I'd say 13 year olds tend not to have half a grand laying around.
Fortunately, I got my anime hookup from the strangest place. A Jehova's Witness in my school, whose brother seemed to buy literally everything. I don't know if their parents knew what they were watching or if they just assumed it was all just cartoons, but I watched anything they were willing to lend me. I got exposed to massive amounts of (shit like Shadow Skill and Iczer-One)really mediocre anime at a young age. I watched great stuff. I watched stuff no one our age really should have had. He lent me a copy of god damned Urotsukidoji which I started watching in a van with my grandma in it. So uh... thanks for lending me all those tapes, Jerome.
Being of the target age for Eva, it's amazing how much of the series vibe I ignored. While things in the later half of the series clearly felt wrong, the first half isn't particularly cheery either. I could ignore all the depression, all the sense of isolation, and all the angst to focus on the robots, the humor, and fan service. I cringe now, remembering how excited I was during the episode preview at the end of each tape, where Misato would promise "even more fan service!"
Like Shinji, I too was not ready to view the women in Evangelion outide the awkward lens of pubescent desire.
Puberty processed through Anime and Evangelion
I'd get frustrated every time there was a tape that was "mostly talking episodes", or didn't have a cool fight. Given the other stuff I was watching at the time, I had no reason to view anime as anything other than an indulgence medium. High octane wish-fufillment, through hyper-violence, hyper-sex, hyper-action, and even sometimes hyper-comedy. Nothing had trained me to expect anything deeper. Anime for me at that point was mostly embodied by the works of Yoshiaki Kawajiri, with graphic works like Demon City Shinjuku and Ninja Scroll. "Before even knowing who he was(For awhile I thought that was 'the anime style' before realizing 5 different things I liked were made by one dude), one of my 9 years old memories was seeing bits of the Kawajiri's segment from Neo Tokyo, The Running Man (starts at 11:42) on MTV's Liquid Television(Also that episode of Aeon Flux where the girl gets her legs amputated while trying to cross a border didn't help either). I had no idea what I was looking at (I honestly was wondering if it was some F-Zero anime) but some of the sequences from that are still burned into my brain.
This was consistent with the marketing push for anime at the time. While I had seen anime before hand, unknowing -- from Voltron, to Sailor Moon, to the repackaged Macross, which was converted into a strange chimera, marketed here as Robotech -- it wasn't labeled as anime. I was initially exposed to it from the Sci-Fi Channel's Saturday Morning Anime, followed by the marketing pushes by companies like Manga Entertainment and US Manga Corps. Mature, adult videos cut into trainers, with songs like KMFDM's Ultra blasting over them. Tastes were so dire at the time that they tried to push the barely coherent M.D Geist as one of the most high caliber animes ever to exist. Any attempt to push anything subtle would be almost wasteful in an era where subtitles were rare, and english anime voice actors were still finding their feet. Not that other stuff didn't exist over here, but this was the vanguard.
Unfortunately my experience there is limited because I was very much not in the know. I was young, and fueled by new chemicals in my young brain that made high energy sex and violence the most appealing things possible. But those weren't the only desires. The confusion of puberty also brought confusion and anxiety. Even something as mundane as Tenchi Muyo! had a strong draw for me. A young boy, surrounded by beautiful women who liked him, who could in the right moments be a hero, was comfrting. Puberty is the age of fear. The time you desire people the most, yet are the most afraid of others. The period where you want to to grow into your new reality, but have no idea what you want to do.
The Hedgehog's Dilemma
The part of my young heart that found Tenchi comforting was the exact part of me most primed to be hurt by Evangelion. It teased all the same dynamics, but in a more mature way. A young, reluctent boy, surrounded by beautiful women, ready to the center of attention, to become a hero. Of course it'd be bumpy at first, right? But as things progressed, the characters would get closer, and he would get stronger.
That of course didn't happen. While there was teases of healing, as things progressed, the characters drifted farther apart. Every attempt to recouncil became another wound the characters would carry with them. Both of the shows two vaguely health relationships both end in death. Shinji would have short bursts of heroism, but that heroism would only hurt him in the end, causing him to become small and weak once again.
The show teased me. It teased me with the fantasy and comfort my young mind desperately wanted. When it would give me the hyper-stimulus I desired, it would also punish me for it. The middle of Evangelion is a well known tone shift. It's not completely out of left field, but episodes 16 through 19 -- the battles with the angels Leliel, Bardiel, and Zeruel -- gave a young me all the action I could want and then punished me for it.
My favorite episode might be 16, Splitting of the Breast. The sheer abstractness of it, the claustrophobia and loneliness of it, the intense visuals at the end of Eva Unit 01 ripping free from Leliel's shadow. Even at a young age I appreciated it, even though it was, in actuality, mostly a "talking episode". The episode just winds itself up like a spring until it starts buckling in on itself. In my older age I appreciate a lot of the introspection, but as a Kid I think the appeal was the intensity mixed with the lack of guilt. "Oh wow, THIS is what this show could be!"
So perfect for the next bit of action to be Shinji, trapped once again, but this time by the edict of his father, being forced to watch Unit-1 crush his friend Toji. I feel like the show, at that point, was asking young me, "Is this what you really want?"
The battle with Zeruel is tragedy after tragedy. While the big setpiece of a berserk Unit-01 devouring Zeruel is the standout moment, the scene I think a lot about if Rei, in a one-armed Unit-00 attempting to suicide bomb the angel with an N2 mine. There is a bleak hopeless to the whole affair, with the one ray of hope being Kaji basically telling Shinji "If you do the right thing, if you take action, you can make a difference."
While the episode ends with so many questions and possibilities, hinting at an awakened Unit-01 without no power limits... For the most part, with one tragic exception, Shinji doesn't really get to take action ever again. Three of the most intense sequences in the series, with 7 more episodes to tell on the wreckage left in their wake. You are left to look at the emotional damage done to the characters and ask yourself "Was this worth it?"
Leliel
Bardiel
Zeruel
There is this song that shows up frequently in the first half the series. Misato's Theme, which would play in her apartment as hijinks happened. I find those scenes hard to watch now(Killing the part of you that cringes is hard sometimes), but as a young teen they were some of my favorites. Sometime in the depressive haze that chokes the shows final stretch I realized I hadn't heard that track in a long time. I'm not sure exactly what the last episode with it(Okay I DO know, it's actually the last episode, but you know what I mean!) is, but at that point, even after all that action young me deeply craved... I felt a hole in me where that song used to go. The silence in Misato's apartment represented the damage that existed between each of the characters. That silly song came to symbolize a loss of innocence to me.
The remaining three angels all serve to individually ruin each of the three children in turn. The fiery heart of Asuka quenched, the progress and humanity growing in Rei seemingly reset. Even the adults fair little better. Seeing Misato grieving, sobbing over her answering machine, locking herself in her room for days. Sure, she had important work she had to do, but she also surely in that moment, need to be alone. Even the stoic and calcuated Ritsuko, perhaps the character done dirtiest by the show(It matches the show's use of duality, but it doesn't feel earned to be honest), reduced to a husk by the same man who seduced and then discarded her mother. Only Kawaru seemed like he had it together, let he could keep his head held high.
Until he couldn't.
Ends of Evangelion
2000