8 things to know about Neon Genesis Evangelion, the legendary anime now streaming on Netflix

In late 2018, Netflix made one of the biggest moves in anime history by acquiring the streaming rights to the mightily influential series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The legendary 1990s series began streaming on Netflix on June 21, making it easily accessible to both anime connoisseurs and the anime curious for the first time ever.

To those familiar with the property, its arrival on streaming is the realization of a longstanding dream, a seeming impossibility after years of licensing entanglements kept the Japanese cartoon off shelves and streaming. But to Netflix subscribers who rarely peruse the site’s anime section, this level of hype — and the show itself — may seem inscrutable. For as much as Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Japanese pop cultural force, a work inextricably connected to the elevation of anime’s quality and visibility, it’s also a dense, thematically obscure one, rife with philosophical questions and confrontational storytelling. Fun and easily marketable fare à la Pokémon or Dragon Ball, it is not.

And yet Evangelion is extensively beloved and celebrated; its reputation has now preceded its streaming debut for two decades. Netflix’s acquisition is a momentous occasion not just for the streaming service but for the Western anime industry at large.

There are several reasons this show about fighting robots and existential crises has endured. Here are the eight biggest things a newcomer should know about Neon Genesis Evangelion, and why its Netflix debut is such a big deal — and not completely without some backlash from longtime fans.

1) Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most important anime ever

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Japanese animated cartoon (a.k.a. anime) that aired on TV in Japan from October 1995 through March 1996. Developed by the innovative animation studio Gainax, the show ran 26 episodes, followed by a feature film in July 1997. Ten years later, in 2007, a four-part series of “rebuild” movies launched in theaters, with the aim of remaking and reinventing the TV show’s stories. (The fourth and final of these films is due in 2020, eight years after the third film’s 2012 premiere.)

The premise of Evangelion, which fans typically refer to simply as Eva (pronounced ay-VUH), sounds straightforward on its face. The year is 2015 — 20 years in the future from the series’ 1995 debut — and Earth has been irrevocably damaged by an event called the Second Impact. The United Nations is working with a special military organization, Nerv, to protect survivors from the fallout: the arrival of several extraterrestrial killer mechs, known as Angels, that are hell-bent on taking out what remains of the human race.

Only Nerv’s manned robots are strong enough to take on and defeat the Angels. These robots are called Eva Units; there are only four of them, and they require a special physical and mental connection with their pilots. Enter Shinji Ikari, a depressed teenager who happens to be the son of the mastermind behind the Eva Units’ software; thanks to some good ol’ fatherly emotional manipulation pushing him to help out his dad, Shinji travels to Nerv’s base in the dystopian city of Tokyo-3 to become an Eva pilot.

Robot battles ensue, with increasingly mortal consequences. But Eva has little in common with its forebears, like the globally recognized Transformers or the fan-favorite franchise Mobile Suit Gundam, both anime about humans and their big, sentient, rock ’em, sock ’em robots. Because Evangelion also tackles headier concepts: What does it mean to be fighting a battle you don’t believe in? When your body becomes a war machine, what will your purpose be when the war is over? If there’s a God, why would that God be so cruel to their supposedly beloved creation, humanity?

All of these stories and the questions they raise coalesce to become one of the most powerful, visually stunning, intellectually probing anime in the medium’s history. Eva’s not exactly the most fun watch out there, but it’s always a compelling one.

2) Eva’s controversial ending remains famously polarizing

Evangelion fans have often characterized it as two shows in one. The first half of the series is relatively formulaic: Shinji doesn’t want to pilot the big robot because he doesn’t want to get hurt in a fight against an Angel. Shinji’s dad makes him pilot the big robot. Shinji gets hurt in a fight against an Angel. (Sub out Shinji for one of the other teenage pilots; rinse, repeat.)

And then episode 14 rolls around.

Episode 14 recaps the previous 13 episodes’ storyline for about half of its runtime. The rest of the episode then shifts gears and tweaks the anime’s tone from that point on. What was previously an action-oriented, even comedic cartoon — there’s plenty of awkward teen romance and high school hijinks amid the self-reflective stuff — suddenly becomes an existential text slathered in religious symbolism and shocking character revelations.

Eva’s next 12 episodes then lean into its percolating nihilism; they culminate in a two-part conclusion that left Japanese viewers dissatisfied upon its initial premiere in 1996. Much of that dissatisfaction was due to rumored budget cuts, tight scheduling issues, and creative differences on how to end the show, resulting in a finale that excises all the fighting robots and turns inward for 40 minutes of an introspective back-and-forth between the characters. We won’t spoil any of the details, but suffice to say that Evangelion’s ultimate treatise on the nature of existence overwhelms any of the action that viewers may have been drawn in by at first.

But the animation studio Gainax sought redemption from the fans who derided the anime’s heavily philosophical finale. Its efforts took the form of End of Evangelion, a feature film that came out in theaters in 1997 and that shirked the constraints of basic cable TV and 22-minute runtimes. The movie offers a gruesome, violent, relentlessly cruel take on the original ending, a horror film to the TV show’s psychological drama, and one that directly comments on fans’ critical response of the original ending. End of Evangelion is something of an expansion on the series, then; while it’s a must-watch for any Eva viewer, it’s more like the opposite, bloodier side of the TV ending’s coin than a separate coin of its own.

3) Eva remains artistically influential

When Evangelion debuted in Japan in October 1995, the “mecha” genre of anime — in which characters pilot their own personal giant robots to fight other giant robots — was already well-known to Japanese anime fans. Mobile Suit Gundam, which kicked off another hugely influential mecha anime franchise, had been around since 1979, and one of the genre’s most popular series, Gundam Wing, had debuted earlier that year. Eva could have slotted right next to Mobile Suit Gundam and Gundam Wing as more of the same: an action series full of fun moments and ever-intensifying battles, but little else.

But then Eva deconstructed the entire genre of mecha anime, and in a sense all anime, in that it was only nominally about fighting robots; at its core, it was a deeply philosophical exploration of humanity and what being “human” even is. Its characters deal with past trauma; experience sexual awakenings; explore death, rebirth, and eternity; and struggle to find personal meaning in a time of apocalypse.

Not only was the series hugely existential, it was also extremely religious, full of references to Judaism and styled as a sci-fi retelling of the biblical Book of Genesis. Most significantly, creator Hideaki Anno spoke openly and frequently about having a mental and artistic breakdown while working on the show, and funneling all that anxiety into its storytelling. The whole series doubles as a metaphor for uneasy artistic creation, for depression, and for life itself.

Eva wasn’t the first anime to marry fun action tropes with deeper religious symbolism and an overarching metaphysical tone. But it was the first anime to combine those elements so successfully, and to such high critical and popular acclaim. And, crucially, this type of project had very rarely been shown on television before.

Prior to Eva, anime series tended to run for hundreds of episodes, be based on either preexisting manga (Japanese comics) or English-language literature, and have a much broader, more mainstream appeal. Eva, by contrast, was a wholly original series conceived as a limited series of only 26 episodes, and far from trying to attract a wide audience, toward the end, it even seemed to be attempting to alienate what niche viewership it had. (It was through Eva that Gainax ultimately gained a reputation for producing wild endings.)

But its deliberate subversion of anime conventions and audience expectations was what made it so popular. In Japan, Evangelion spawned countless anime tropes, and moreover provided a template for integrating stylish genre tropes with serious themes, high artistic aspirations, and deep characterization. It also opened the floodgates for original anime series, as well as anime series that deconstructed their own genres, anime aimed exclusively at adults, and anime that was just plain weird. Other influential anime series like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Serial Experiments Lain feel directly influenced by Eva, while many others, like Cowboy Bebop, feel like evolutionary steps forward in the sandbox that Eva built for creators to play in.

Essentially, Eva instigated a scramble to create original Japanese series that did what Eva did. Suddenly, Japanese TV was full of anime that more overtly flaunted its artistic and literary aspirations, risked seriously dark themes, winked knowingly at viewers, and didn’t cater to the widest audience possible. This proliferation of smart and serious anime is commonplace today. But just how American animation evolved with the advent of The Simpsons, these anime arguably needed a landmark forerunner to push producers into putting them on the air. That landmark was Evangelion.

4) Eva’s pop cultural impact extends far beyond Japanese anime fandom

For all of Evangelion’s divisive quirks and experimental indulgences, the series’ import was immediately undeniable. At a time when the Japanese entertainment industry viewed anime as lowbrow and pandering, Evangelion challenged the medium’s boundaries and its audiences’ expectations.

Eva’s release was also well-timed. Its premiere followed an especially tumultuous year for a Japanese population already struggling to pull itself out of an economic downturn. In 1995, a debilitating earthquake in Kobe and a shocking terrorist attack in Tokyo happened within two months of each other. The country was devastated, culturally speaking, its citizens left with a strong sense of malaise.

But in anime and manga, many people found hope again, as comparative literature scholar Gabriel F.Y. Tsang explained in a 2016 paper on Eva’s societal parallels.

“[Anime and manga’s] boom, especially based on a shift of marketing target from children to adults, significantly revealed a social phenomenon,” Tsang wrote; “the general public in Japan had begun to merge their everyday life with cartoon culture, which enabled them to alleviate their daily stress through consuming virtual images and messages that were encouraging, funny, satirical, hilarious or bold.”

It also got them spending money. And with Evangelion already tapping into a renewed nationwide interest in anime, it was also able to capitalize on myriad other marketing opportunities. It remains common to see characters like Shinji, Rei, and Asuka appear in advertisements or pachinko parlors throughout Japan, and the series’ iconography remains widely recognizable in the country. Modern anime reference Eva liberally, often to comedic effect. Even its theme song is still a huge mainstay at karaoke bars, which makes perfect sense, because “Cruel Angel’s Thesis” is good as hell, whether you’ve seen the show or not.

Outside Japan, Evangelion’s characters are well-known, beloved and memed by anime fans. (More on that in a second.) Rei and Asuka cosplay are anime convention mainstays. And many Western cartoons and movies have paid homage to the show. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen the show — if you’re into anime, you know at least something from it, or about it.

5) Eva was one of the first anime to break big on the internet

In the late ’90s and early aughts, the state of exported anime was pretty abysmal: Official English-language releases were often hard to find, and when they were available, fans were often dissatisfied with the translations or dubbing quality. But because Evangelion was so popular in Japan, it was one of the few anime series to get an official English-language release fairly quickly, starting in 1997.

The DVD release of all 26 episodes, as well as End of Evangelion, hit the shelves in 2002, right in the middle of the internet’s early anime fandom boom. Fan sites, including some that are still around today, began to pop up. That same year, the Los Angeles Times reported on Eva as an international phenomenon, noting, “More than 800 Web sites in 12 languages are devoted to ‘Evangelion’.”

Many of those websites were dedicated to rehashing the series’ extremely divisive ending. As anime fandom grew online, Eva became one of the watershed must-see series for newcomers. Fans watched Eva for the storyline, to understand much of what came after it, and so they’d know what the big deal was with That Ending. And as anime fandom grew, so did the memes, the AMVs (anime fan vids), and the fan works. The oldest of the 9,000 Eva fanfics available on Fanfiction.net appeared in 1999.

4chan, known in that still-early internet era mainly for its thriving anime fan community, spawned multiple Eva memes, including the now-famous cry used to mock the series’ brooding main character, Shinji: “Get in the robot, Shinji!” (geek shorthand for “stop whining and grow up”). Throughout 2015, in which Evangelion’s apocalyptic “Third Impact” was supposed to happen in real time, fans memed the end of the world and then celebrated their survival.

Fans have also had a field day with Eva’s opening theme, the aforementioned “Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” churning out endless remixes and covers, turning it into an uber-action theme, painstakingly constructing Minecraft noteblock layers to play it, and, uh, making this:

Finally, in the earliest days of anime fandom, otaku culture, or anime fan culture, was a widely derided and controversial thing in Japan. Fans there, like fans the world over, were and continue to be mocked and shamed for their levels of obsession and zealotry for the medium, as well as frequently criticized and stereotyped as obsessed with sex.

Eva’s creator, Hideaki Anno, often defended otaku culture in the early days of anime on the internet. “I take offense when otaku are criticized by non-otaku,” he stated in a 2003 interview. “Stupid idiots, I think, [criticizing] though you don’t understand anything.” Anno’s view of fandom, while it was often mixed, went a long way toward legitimizing acceptance of otaku culture in Japan and online, and encouraged international anime fans who were just getting to know the medium to embrace his work.

6) The Netflix release is cause for celebration — but it doesn’t come without controversy

Evangelion’s Netflix debut marks the first time since 2005 that an official English-language release has been issued. The series hasn’t been legally available to purchase or stream in years, so even though its cultural influence has been well established, many newer anime fans have never seen it. Additionally, its arrival on Netflix will likely introduce it to many people who’ve never watched any kind of anime before.

This would be a big deal for any beloved TV series that’d been effectively impossible to watch for more than a decade, let alone one that many consider to be the all-time greatest example of its genre. And it’s significant for any well-loved anime to be given a major rerelease in the streaming era. But Eva isn’t just debuting on some small, niche streaming service without many subscribers; it’s being championed by Netflix, one of the biggest streaming services of all. It’s a huge sign that anime is not only culturally significant but worthy to receive a red-carpet rollout and be heralded like the artistic achievement it is.

However, as one might expect with a series this highly esteemed, some controversy has arisen surrounding the Netflix release. Shortly after news of the rerelease broke in November 2018, fans learned that Netflix was producing an entirely new dub, with an all-new English-language voice cast. (Some of the original actors later confirmed that they were invited to audition for the show’s new dub after the social media backlash.) Many fans were upset that the original voice cast would likely not be involved, and that the original dub would not be available to stream alongside the Netflix release. Some anime fan sites called it a “make or break” situation that could entirely alienate Netflix’s anime fan base, though plenty of fans seemed to be looking forward to the redub.

Meanwhile, Gen Fukunaga, the ex-CEO of the popular anime distributor Funimation, which had previously tried to license Evangelion, told Vox sister site Polygon in 2018 that he felt a Netflix release was bad for the Eva franchise and for anime in general, because on Netflix, Eva would get lost among a sea of other lower-quality titles. In essence, Fukunaga predicted, Eva will be “just another brand on the platform.”

But even so, there’s plenty of indication that Netflix’s attention could be a major game changer for anime as a whole.

7) Evangelion’s hotly anticipated streaming debut proves just how big anime has become worldwide

For the past half-decade — specifically since its distribution in 2014 of the popular anime series Sword Art Online — Netflix has proven to be something of an anime fan itself; at least, it’s realized that there’s money to be made in bringing anime to wider audiences. The platform has picked up several exciting, well-acclaimed series, and even launched some original entries of its own. Devilman Crybaby and Aggretsuko, for example, are two series that can only be seen on Netflix in the West and have big-name talent behind them in director Masaaki Yuasa and Sanrio, respectively.

Hooking up with the visionary behind cult faves like Ping-Pong: The Animation and the makers of Hello Kitty, respectively, is one thing. Spending an undisclosed but presumably huge amount of money to get anime’s Holy Grail behind its paywall is another. Netflix usually shies away from releasing viewership data and the cost of its big licensing deals, so we don’t know how much the company paid for Evangelion. But as Fukunaga told Polygon shortly after the acquisition, Netflix wasn’t thrifty with the purchase.

That Netflix is competing with Western anime distribution stalwarts like Funimation is also telling. Funimation has the rights to properties like Dragon Ball, Fullmetal Alchemist, and My Hero Academia — all hugely popular, mainstream series on both sides of the globe. These series used to be available on platforms like Netflix and Hulu, but when Funimation changed corporate hands, they left for the company’s own premium, anime-specific streaming service, Funimation Now. And with Funimation Now — as well as increased mainstream marketing pushes — Funimation is positioning itself as a competitor to Netflix’s growing anime catalog.

Consider, for example, the Western theatrical release of Dragon Ball Super: Broly earlier this year. The film had record-setting stateside box office grosses for an anime, and its promotional campaign reflected growing efforts to market anime to a wider audience. With Evangelion, Netflix is essentially participating in the same trend. Its dedicated sci-fi and anime social media accounts counted down to Eva’s release, and their countdown posts elicited thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets.

Becoming Eva’s exclusive home is a huge get for Netflix if it wants to establish itself as a legitimate, credible anime powerhouse. It’s one of the hugest gets there is.

8) If you’ve never seen an anime, should you start with Eva? There’s little reason not to.

If you replace the word “anime” in the heading above with “television,” you’ll immediately see why this is a misleading question. Like television, cinema, or any other art form, anime is a medium, not a genre. Sure, it has its specific traits; in particular, anime’s highly stylized visual language can sometimes be disorienting or confusing to newcomers. Additionally, many people prefer watching subtitled anime (“subbed”) over dubbed anime (with translated voiceovers, and vice versa). But anime itself is simply another mode of storytelling. So choosing a series to start with should depend on what kind of story you think you might like.

That said, if you’re into a really good story for its own sake, and don’t mind going down some unexpected and dark pathways with a philosophical bent, you probably can’t pick a better anime to start with than Eva. This is a story that has remained mystifying, fascinating, and inflammatory since its debut nearly 25 years ago, so if you don’t fully understand all of it, you won’t be alone, and you will be experiencing it alongside plenty of other people who are also watching it for the first time.

As a bonus, Netflix is releasing the 1997 feature film alongside the series, so you’ll have the benefit of being able to watch what is basically the series’ most complete ending — the anime ending and the ending detailed in End of Evangelion, which can be viewed as coexisting alongside one another.

If you think Eva sounds too dark, cerebral, or convoluted for your particular tastes, that’s fine, too; there are plenty of other anime out there that you might like better, and some of them are also streaming on Netflix. But once you acclimate to the format and find an anime you like, spare a thought for Eva — there’s a good chance it paved the way for a thing you now love to exist.

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