Under Evangelion
Ten years ago I’d record Neon Genesis Evangelion every Tuesday night straight from television because I had to be up early for school. I was taking some language class at the time, so the routine became: get home, hit record on the VCR, sit completely still for twenty minutes. The opening credits hit the same way every single episode and I never got tired of them.
The show itself is giant robots that teenagers have to pilot. An underground organization fighting alien creatures called Angels in a ruined Tokyo. Shinji’s this timid kid who doesn’t even want to do it, forced into the cockpit because nobody else will. Asuka, German redhead, sharp and vicious and dragging around trauma like a loaded weapon. Rei, constantly being cloned, inscrutable. Misato, their commanding officer, drinking beer and screaming orders and completely broken beneath it all. And somehow there’s a penguin living in their apartment, which tells you everything about the tone of this thing.
The premise sounds generic but nothing about it is. It escalates and gets progressively darker and more fucked up. Cities exploding. The director showing you the machinery of civilization and sanity coming apart. By the final episodes it stops being a show and becomes the director having what looks like a genuine psychological breakdown on your screen. Disturbing imagery, dialogue about parents and children and love and whether any of it means a goddamn thing. The fans destroyed themselves over it. The director apparently hated the audience so much he made a follow-up film where he kills the entire cast just to end it.
Nothing has ever gotten under my skin the way Evangelion has. The story that somehow holds together even as it’s falling apart. The characters you actually give a shit about. These huge absurd robots that shouldn’t be this compelling but completely are. And Asuka. I won’t be coy about it—I was completely gone for her. Still am, years later. If I could pull one fictional character into actual reality and drag her to Las Vegas, it would be her, no hesitation. At some point you just have to accept that you’re fucked in the head about something and keep living, and for me that something is a 1990s anime girl.