Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion

新世紀エヴァンゲリオン
1995 -1996 Gainax / Tatsunoko Production TV Tokyo 26 episodes Completed
Action Mecha Psychological Drama
Details & Synopsis
The year is 2015. Fifteen years after a cataclysm that killed half the human race, the city of Tokyo-3 is under attack from beings called Angels, massive, incomprehensible, and apparently unkillable by conventional means. The only things that can stop them are the Evangelions: giant biomechanical units that can only be piloted by children born in the aftermath of the disaster. Shinji Ikari is fourteen years old. His father, commander of the paramilitary organization NERV, has not spoken to him in years. He is asked to climb inside the Eva and save the world. He does not want to.

Produced by Gainax and directed by Hideaki Anno, who made the series as a working through of his own four-year clinical depression, Neon Genesis Evangelion aired on TV Tokyo from October 1995 to March 1996. It begins as a mecha action series and becomes, by its end, something else entirely: a deconstruction of heroism, identity, and the terror of human connection so thorough it broke the genre it was working in.

26 episodes. The last two will make you feel insane. Watch The End of Evangelion immediately after. Then sit quietly for a while.

Gainax went bankrupt in 2024. The series endures.
Alt Title 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン
Studio Gainax / Tatsunoko Production
Network TV Tokyo
Aired 1995 - 1996
Episodes 26
Genre Action, Mecha, Psychological, Drama
Status Completed
← All lore

Cosmology & Calamities

Primordial Creation

First Ancestral Race (FAR)

SPOILER! Supplemental Lore · Not Explained in the TV Series
The First Ancestral Race is part of Evangelion's expanded cosmology, used to explain the origin of Adam, Lilith and the "Seeds of Life" framework.

The original 26 television episodes do not explain this civilization to the viewer. Treating it as ordinary TV-series exposition makes Evangelion appear much more mechanically solved than the broadcast story actually is.
Why it matters
This is useful background for deep lore reading, but it should not be required knowledge for understanding what a first-time viewer has actually been shown.

Secret Dead Sea Scrolls

SPOILER! SEELE's Scenario · Contents Mostly Withheld
SEELE repeatedly refers to the Secret Dead Sea Scrolls as a source for its scenario and expectations about the Angels and Instrumentality.

The television series does not hand the viewer a technical manual explaining their origin, complete contents or exact authorship. What matters on screen is that SEELE believes the Scrolls give it a script for events and judges Gendo by whether he is following that script.
Why it matters
The Scrolls function as evidence that SEELE thinks history can be managed according to a plan. The show is much clearer about that political role than about the document's full cosmology.

Global Impact Events

First Impact (Giant Impact)

SPOILER!

Ancient Event · Mostly Supplemental Cosmology

The television series treats First Impact as an ancient catastrophe in Earth's history but does not explain its true mechanism in the same detail it eventually gives Second Impact.

The familiar account involving Lilith, the Black Moon and competing "Seeds of Life" comes primarily from expanded Evangelion material rather than a clean exposition scene in episodes 1–26.
Why it matters
For a TV-series watch-along, First Impact is background, not a puzzle you are expected to solve from the broadcast episodes alone.

Second Impact (September 13, 2000)

Antarctica · Contact Experiment

The public story says Second Impact was caused by a meteorite. The hidden history revealed through Misato, Kaji, Fuyutsuki and the episode 21 flashbacks is that the Katsuragi Expedition was conducting a contact experiment involving Adam in Antarctica.

The experiment produced the catastrophe that devastated the planet and killed Misato's father along with the expedition.
Why it matters
Second Impact links the global apocalypse, Misato's trauma, SEELE's research and the Angel conflict. The disaster was not simply something humanity survived. Powerful people were already experimenting with the forces behind it.

Third Impact & Human Instrumentality

SPOILER!

TV Ending · The End of Evangelion

The television series ends inside Human Instrumentality rather than presenting a conventional external account of how Third Impact unfolds. Episodes 25 and 26 focus on Shinji and the other characters as the boundaries between selves break down and identity is examined from inside the process.

The End of Evangelion later supplies a much more explicit physical-world progression for the same endgame material. It should not be silently substituted for what the original TV finale actually shows.
Why it matters
The TV ending is not a missing battle recap. Its subject is what Instrumentality feels like when the barriers between people are no longer holding everyone apart.

Covert Organizations

SEELE (The Seven)

SPOILER! Secret Committee · Instrumentality
SEELE is the secret committee operating above NERV and using the organization, the Eva project and the Human Instrumentality Project to pursue a scenario it believes should determine humanity's future.

SEELE and Gendo cooperate for most of the series because they need many of the same pieces. They are not pursuing the same personal end.
Why it matters
Once SEELE and Gendo begin openly working against each other, the conspiracy stops being one pyramid with a single person at the top. NERV is caught between overlapping plans.

NERV (Formerly GEHIRN)

Eva Operations · Gendo's Organization
NERV is the organization responsible for defending Tokyo-3 against the Angels and operating the Evangelions. It grows out of GEHIRN, the research organization shown in the episode 21 flashbacks, and is commanded by Gendo Ikari.

Publicly, NERV's purpose is survival. Privately, its personnel and resources are entangled with SEELE's Human Instrumentality Project and Gendo's separate intentions.
Why it matters
Most NERV employees are not members of the conspiracy. The organization contains ordinary technicians, soldiers and operators working inside a project whose deepest purpose they do not know.