Гимназија у Обреновцу

Обреновац, Милоша Обреновића 90

МАТУРСКИ РАД
из енглеског језика

Тема:
“Hope, despair & religious symbolism in Evangelion”

Ментор Ученик
Маја Аћимовић Матеја Пантић
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Обреновац, јун, 2022.

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Hope, despair & religious symbolism in Пантић
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Content
1. Prologue............................................................................................................3

1.1. Cultural Importance....................................................................................3

1.2. Content.......................................................................................................3

2. The mind behind Evangelion...........................................................................4

2.1. Who is Hideaki Anno?...............................................................................4

2.2. Anno’s depression......................................................................................4

2.3. How did Evangelion come to be?...............................................................5

2.4. How did Anno make Evangelion?..............................................................5

3. Introduction......................................................................................................7

3.1. A brief look at the story..............................................................................7

3.2. How was this dystopia created?.................................................................8

3.3. Main Characters..........................................................................................8

4. What is Evangelion really about?...................................................................10

4.1. The punishment of existence coming to an end.......................................10

4.2. Loneliness and the lust for nothingness....................................................10

4.3. Despair......................................................................................................11

4.4. Hope.........................................................................................................12

5. Religious symbolisms...................................................................................14

6. Conclusion....................................................................................................15

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7. References...................................................................................................16

1. Prologue

1.1. Cultural importance

When talking about anime and art in general, we always point out the most representative and
influential pieces that contributed to that field, oftenly bringing up the staples and the bending
points of the genre. In the world of anime, undeniably, that mantle of responsibility would be
given out to Neon Genesis Evangelion, a true genre-bending masterpiece, that serves as the true
anti-anime, deconstructing the entirety of this art. This is an anime that resonated with many
souls, being definitely the most analysed piece of Japanese science-fiction, and besides the
numerous philosophical discussions it spawned, Evangelion also experienced a great commercial
success, that continues to bloom to this day, more than ever before. Many animes throughout the
years have been taking direct influence from Evangelion, only cementing it’s undisputable role
in Japanese animation, and fiction in it’s entirety.

1.2. Content

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a well known psychological drama and mecha anime franchise
created by a Japanese filmmaker and animator Hideaki Anno. Evangelion consists of 26 TV
show episodes and a 90 minute long anime film titled „Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of
Evangelion“. Of course, the TV show and the film are only the main storyline, this popular
franchise has also spawned other alternative storylines (the rebuilds) and a recap movie called
„Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth“.The somewhat controversial and less popular (but
not by any means less worthy) rebuild films serve as an alternative storyline, or better say,
alternative retelling of a classic story, a retelling by a different version of Hideaki Anno, that has
learnt to deal with emotional hardships he was dealing with while creating the original series.

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2. The mind behind Evangelion

2.1. Who is Hideaki Anno?

Hideaki Anno is a Japanese animator, filmmaker and actor, born on May 22nd, 1960. His name
is engraved with golden letters in anime history, being best known for his life work, Neon
Genesis Evangelion. Even before Evangelion, Anno invested himself in the world of filmmaking
and animation, producing a variety of amateur spin off anime films with his colleagues, that
helped him catch the attention of many big names in the industry. In the early 1980s he formed
Studio Gainax and also started working with the well known Studio Ghibli, under the wing of
legendary Japanese animation director, Hayao Miyazaki, known for films like: Spirited Away,
My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle. Hideaki has worked with
his mentor on the movie Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which is his first big endeavour as
an animator. Hideaki even said for himself that he is Hayao’s prodigal son, these two directors
are close friends even to this day. There is an interesting fact about Anno, even though he was a
fan of anime and manga, he never really wanted to be an animator, in an interview in 1999 he
said:

„I became an animator by chance, really - it didn't happen by my will. Before I knew it, I was an
animator. When I was a child, I wanted to be a bus driver or a train conductor; I never really had
a specific vision or dream.”

2.2. Anno’s depression

As the new decade started, new doors had

been opened. Japanese people refer
to the 1990s as the lost decade, because
of the collapse of Japanese economy in
that period. When talking about Hideaki

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Anno, we can see how his mental health can easily be compared to the state of Japanese
economy. In the year 1990, Anno started working on a new show called Nadia: The Secret of
Blue Water. He was quickly swamped with a set of new problems, stress and situations that he
had never known before. The series ended in 1991 but even after the show stopped airing, Anno
faced serious mental problems, being incapable to mentally distance himself from the Nadia
series. He fell into a four year long depression, spending time being unproductive, stuck in a
never-ending loop. He would work out numerous plans and projects, both on his own initiative
and in collaboration with others, but they all fell through, and in the end, Anno’s idle days were
dotted with projects that he imploded by design. In the midst of all this, one project, a feature
film entitled Blue Uru, finally took shape and animation production began, only to be shut down
due to circumstances beyond his control. Anno even contemplated suicide, which he even talked
about with his friend Hayao Miyazaki. Later on, Anno picked up new hobbies like skiing and
scuba diving, in an effort to escape from this empty state of being.

2.3. How did Evangelion come to be?

Immediately after Blue Uru was put on hold, Japanese producer, businessman and musician
Toshimichi Ootsuki called up Anno, as he wanted to talk about something, and the dialogue
between these two shifted towards the subject of TV animation projects. The two of them agreed
that there was a need for an all-original TV animation series, something not based on some other
work, something that no one has seen before. Ootsuki remarking, “Bring me something,
anything, and I’ll make sure it gets green-lit”. That “something”, was Neon Genesis Evangelion.

2.4. Why did Anno make Evangelion?

Sometime in 1999, after Neon Genesis Evangelion ended and during the pre-production of his
anime KareKano, Evangelion’s creator Hideaki Anno appeared on a TV show on NHK (Nippon
Hoso Kyokai or Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) called “Welcome Back for an
Extracurricular Lesson, Senpai!”, which features Japanese celebrities revisiting their old
stomping grounds and teaches a class in their old primary school. In this episode, Anno returns to
Ube, a factory town in Yamaguchi, to teach kids about animation.

“Do you like the anime you make?”

“Well, I like some, but hate others.”

“What parts don’t you like?”

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“The parts where I see myself.”

These are the words that have been said in that episode, these words perfectly mirror Hideaki’s
creative being and his relationship with Evangelion. But perhaps to understand his motivation for
making Evangelion, we must take a close up look on his written statement that he published in
1995. He said:

“They say, "To live is to change." I started this production with the wish that once the production
complete, the world, and the heroes would change. That was my "true" desire.

I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Myself, a broken man who
could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not
dead. Then one thought.  "You can't run away," came to me, and I restarted this production.”

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Hideaki Anno and Hayao Miyazaki

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3. Introduction

3.1. A brief look at the story

The year is 2015 and God’s wrath has been unleashed upon Earth. Humanity was too greedy for
knowledge and power, human beings have surpassed every limitation, both morally and
naturally, leaving it to face the only thing that’s left, the world they live in, the whole existence,
they faced God. The anime starts off by following Shinji Ikari, the rejected son of the
commander of NERV, a research-and-development and paramilitary organization under the
command of the United Nations, Gendo Ikari. Shinji, the frightened and insecure boy that is
completely lost in his world of self-neglecting is being thrown into something that he wasn’t
prepared for, he was meant to be one of the last guardians of humanity against the threat known
as “angels”, huge otherworldly monsters trying to, as it seems, destroy humanity. The
protagonist was chosen to pilot a 40 meter tall bio-mechanical humanoid robot called Evangelion
Unit 01. As angels keep attacking humans in their most important stronghold, advanced
dystopian city of Tokyo-3, characters are making connections with each other that grow and
break constantly, because of their traumatic backgrounds and deep rooted mental problems that
keep stalking them through their lives. The overall atmosphere in this dystopian world can fool
you at first, especially in the moments of carelessness, where characters show that they are still
children through their somewhat naive interaction with each other, but the truth is far more grim
and dark than suspected. Many truths start uncovering, and mysteries behind NERV, angels,
Evangelions, and planet Earth begin to unravel as the world ceases to exist, getting closer and
closer to the eventual end, called The Third Impact.

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3.2. How was this dystopia created?

In the year 2000, 15 years before the show’s current happenings, a mysterious organization
called “SEELE” (meaning soul in German) sent out an expedition team led by Doctor Katsuragi
to investigate Antarctica, where they found remnants of the first ancestral race, making contact
with a being known as Adam. That contact resulted in a massive explosion that melted the
Antarctic ice caps and shifted the Earth's axis. The scientists subdued Adam, but they were only
successful in limiting the damage and averting humanity's complete extinction. The resulting sea
level rise, tsunamis, and armed conflicts eventually wiped out half of the human population, and
had massive geopolitical implications for the nations of the Earth. This completely changed the
world as people once knew it, leaving it a hollow shell of what it once was.

3.3. Main characters

Story of Evangelion is mainly revolving around three 14 year-olds and a 29 year-old woman,
although, in a non-traditional sense. First off we meet the lost and self-loathing boy Shinji, who
was truly alone his whole life. As he was rejected from his father Gendo, he even lost his mother
at a very young age. Shinji, after arriving to Tokyo-3, met his new guardian, or maybe even a
replacement for his long gone mother figure. His guardian was revealed to be the daughter of
Doctor Katsuragi who died in the year 2000 at the scene of The Second Impact, Captain Misato

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Katsuragi. The series shows us a strong, bold and humorous woman, but she is realistically also a
broken individual on the inside. The story also focuses on two other Eva pilots besides Shinji.
Rei Ayanami, a mysterious girl that does not really seem to show any emotions natural to
humans, lacking skills of conventional social interaction, resembling a machine. Rei is purely a
servant of Gendo Ikari, showing glimpses of emotions only to him, something like to a father
even though at first we don’t know her origins. The fourth main character is Asuka Langley
Sohryu, the complete opposite of Rei and Shinji, as it seems at the beginning. The mentioned
character is a girl full of herself, falsely knowing her worth and what she’s capable of, because of
her disproportional ego that lets her escape from her unresolved traumas and loneliness that
dwell in the depths of her own mind.

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4. What is Evangelion really about?

4.1. The punishment of existence coming to an end

Neon Genesis Evangelion truly is an apocalyptic tale where every character suffers from
something this world has done to them, in a very biblical sense. Upon ourselves we see a world
where everyone and everything is slowly drifting towards the eternal void, or how some
characters in the show portray it, the eternal unity where every bit of existence and life will unify
into one. It all returns to nothing. We see humans as a form of life that has been brought to
extinction, but still fights with its full capacity, although it seems like this is a battle the mankind
can’t win, they fight only by human survivalist inertia. Too much has been done, millenniums
have passed, and it looks like it’s time to succumb to the superior life form that has come here to
punish mankind for their sins, and wipe out everything that’s left, restarting the world.

4.2. Loneliness and the lust for nothingness

„One cold winter's day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through
their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of
their quills on one another, which made them again move apart.”

The mentioned quote is Schopenhauer’s concept of Porcupine’s dilemma, better known as

Hedgehog’s dilemma. This dilemma is a metaphorical representation of human intimacy and its
challenges. It depicts individuals that want to get close to each other, but are constantly being
alienated from each other due to their inabilities to isolate the other from their own flaws that
constantly reflect on the other, hurting them, which is symbolized by sharp spines on the
hedgehog. Evangelion’s characters are always followed by an extreme sense of loneliness, no
matter their circumstances. When the protagonists are, quote on quote, doing well and are being
praised for their ventures, we can still see how transient that bliss is. These broken individuals
are using every aspect of their mission and the slowly dying world they live in just to escape
from their own, most personal battles, and this escapism fully gets its epilogue through fierce
backlashes, whether it is reflected in the real world or in their own thoughts. The characters
eventually realize that they are fighting everything else except themselves, and they realize that
they are the only thing in the universe they can’t escape. This never ending isolation has been

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there since their earliest childhood days, in the case of Asuka and Shinji, lacking the one sacred
primordial warmth every human being needs to know, mother’s love. This is the part where
Freudian psychology is influencing the plot greatly. Here we can connect every flaw and every
deficiency with their lack of mother figures, especially in the case of Shinji, who’s continuously
searching for the long gone mother figure, seeing shelter in being comforted by other people, not
willing to put in effort by himself, not even knowing what he’s capable of. The real problem is
that not even this type of escapism works, because of the unceasing hedgehog’s dilemma,
moving characters away from each other.

In the end everything leads to a perplexed existential crisis that is represented through the desire
to not exist. The main character, Shinji, who is tightly based on Hideaki Anno’s personality,
develops a simple wish for non-existence. This lust for nothingness is far from a suicidal
thought, it is an idea of snapping out of reality, and not being present in this plain of existence.
The weight of expectations, heavy as it is, suddenly becomes too heavy for the protagonist to
bear, and as a result, the character falls into a deeply nihilistic and resigned state, where nothing
matters anymore.

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4.3. Despair

It’s no secret that the world of Evangelion is unlikable, and the same goes for its characters.
NGE’s creator Hideaki Anno has also stated that Evangelion’s world is completely imbued with
pessimism, it is a world devoid of any sense of optimisim where you can’t find any comfort. The
imagery we see through the show is often portrayed beautifly, but at the same time the real
nature of this surrounding is coming to surface, exuding with grief and darkness. It is a planet
filled with death and suffering, the already tormented Earth is being ravaged by hellish beings
that are carrying the name angels and in that madness comfort is hardly being found in the
individuals the show follows. The main hero of the show is a person completely afraid of any
form of human interaction, other characters are also challenged and not in a position to make a
significant bond, filling the show with a torturing feeling of being imprisoned and stuck.
The characters have the freedom to interact with each other, they even live and spend their days
together, but still they find themselves unable to get close and to find aid.

The reality seems unfixable and the destiny is sealed, these souls are condemned to go through
this timeline that is really a never-ceasing loop.

4.4. Hope

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“Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you
will always have the chance to be happy. As long as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth exist,
everything will be all right.”

Symptomatically enough, these words that have been said by Shinji’s mother tremendously
reflect on the contrary existence of hope in this show’s pessimistic setting, with correlation to the
real world and life in general.

Evangelion is nothing more than a representation of journey that constantly loops and really has
no definitive ending. It is a true recreation of life, showing us how things need to happen more
than once for us to finally understand what’s happening around us, and most importantly, to
understand ourselves.

As one definitive outcome is not possible, Evangelion’s original series has two endings, and both
are in some sense indefinite. One is carrying the sense of hope, where the main character goes
through a thorough mental re-examination and re-evaluation in his own mind, and in the other
ending, Shinji suffers the consequences he has inflicted upon Earth because of his inability to
understand the point of his existence and inability to act. Still, even with this desolate outcome,
he has been given a chance to live, this time with his greatest inner questions being elucidated.
He knows he will make mistakes over and over, he knows he will feel helpless and end up back
at the start, but he knows he can find happiness. Both endings are actually two sides of the same
coin. No matter how sophisticated this experience may look, and no matter how much layers of
religious and philosophical metaphors are on top of the punch line, the essence is hiding in plain
sight and is truthfully simple. It all sums up to one sentence. Take care of yourself.

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5. Religious symbolism
Religious and philosophical influence is no mystery when talking about Evangelion, it does not
take hours to spot it and it can actually be seen just by reading the name “Neon Genesis
Evangelion”.

The show’s creators openly said that the reason they included so many Christian references is out

of pure feeling of aesthetic, it seemed exotic to the Japanese. But nonetheless all these references

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somehow make sense in the final product, in fact, the whole plot of The Second Impact and The
Third Impact is an allegory to the belief of Christ’s Second Coming and Armageddon. The word
Evangelion refers to the gospel in Christianity, translated from the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον
(euangélion, Latin: evangelium) meaning “Good news”. This series is fully filled with religious
symbols, to the point where we couldn’t just refer to them as symbolisms and references, but to
as a foundation to this imaginary universe. There are too many examples to list, but each one of
them has been executed masterfully, adding up to the hopeful and anti-escapist word of this piece
of art.

6. Conclusion
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a show unlike any other, and it has definitely shown that through
time, being a force in the anime industry that changes and influences many other pieces of work.
It is a moment in human imagination capable of helping and changing millions of people that
resonate with it. Throughout the years it has become a cliché to say that some artistic work or
some piece of entertainment has changed your life, but Evangelion is an anime made to do just
that, it is a broken man’s genuine cry for help made to reach and resonate with everyone, since
every human being is carrying the heavy cross of existence. You might change as the time
passes, and you might forget certain things, but you will still carry a piece of it with you. It
shamelessly differs from well-known commercialized positive messages that falsely push us
forward, Eva represents the grim reality we live in and all the possibilities that will most
probably occur to us whether we want it or not. The message that NGE is trying to send is a
message that hides in front of our eyes, it’s nothing that people don’t know, but it rather is
something that needs to be processed and it varies from person to person. The only way to really
understand Evangelion is up to you, you make your own meaning and you see how you identify
with it. Like in Christianity, there is no real death, there is no definite ending, and that’s the real
beauty of Evangelion.

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References

Studio Gainax (1995), Neon Genesis Evangelion

Studio Gainax (1997), Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion

Khara.co.jp. (2021), Hideaki Anno’s personal biography

Ken Kawashima (1999), Asashi Evening News, Interview with Hideaki Anno

NHK (1999), Extracurricular Lesson with Hideaki Anno

Hideaki Anno (1995), Neon Genesis Evangelion Vol.1 manga

Arthur Schopenhauer (1851), Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II, Chapter XXXI, Section 396

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