Enormous Power Restrained

The personal impact of Neon Genesis Evangelion

I think Eva-01 is the best giant mech design ever crafted, and I have believed this since I first started engaging with Neon Genesis Evangelion in 8th grade, when I talked my parents into buying me the first volume of the manga adaptation while we were on vacation.

Eva-01 in the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga, illustrated by Yoshiuki Sadamoto

Up until that point, I don’t really recall how I was aware of Evangelion. I think it was mainly from ads seen in comics and magazines, usually Yoshiuki Sadamoto’s painted artwork, and the frankly demonic face of Eva-01 always stood out to me. Giant robots weren’t exactly new to me: Jet Jaguar and the Dino Megazord taking on giant monsters were favorites of mine since I was 4 or 5, and Gundam Wing had just become a phenomenon on Toonami, but Eva-01 didn’t look like any of those. It didn’t look like anything else to me at all!

“The director instructed me to make the image of a demon,” writes the anime’s mecha designer Ikuto Yamashita in the back of that first volume of the manga. “A giant, just barely under the control of mankind.” He also uses the term “Enormous Power Restrained.” An incredibly fitting descriptor, as it never really feels like these teen pilots are in full control of these giants.

Early art of Eva-01 drawn by Hideaki Anno and painted by Yoshiuki Sadamoto

Of course, (spoilers for a 30 year old anime) it is revealed that, while Evangelion is very much inspired by the giant robot genre (and tokusatsu, especially Ultraman), the Eva units themselves are NOT robots at all, but bioweapons, with Eva-01 being originally grown from the body of Lilith, the Angel hidden deep below NERV headquarters. Which just makes these things even more unique than your typical Gundam or Veritech fighter. Humanity harnessing a godlike, demonic power to battle giant alien beings in a post apocalyptic world, it makes sense how quickly this became part of my DNA.

The big thing that, honestly, changed my life was when I downloaded the End of Evangelion in two parts off of Kazaa in 9th grade. I had some AMVs too that I’d watched repeatedly, but this is the first true thing I watched, before even a single episode of the actual anime series. Reader: it melted my brain and left me a little traumatized. It was so unlike anything else I’d ever watched before, and I watched it repeatedly after the shock of that initial experience wore off, trying to make sense of it until finally getting to watch the full series itself AND reading the manga adaptation years later. The End of Evangelion is burned into my brain, every frame of it, and I’m sure if you were to dig through my art over the past twenty or more years you’d be able to see its influence.

Screenshot from the End of Evangelion

I really was the prime age to experience this, an angsty and confused 14 year old just like the pilots.

Last week, I got to see it for the first time in theaters, something I never imagined being able to do, with a co-worker joining me after he’d just finished watching the original series himself the night before. It once again melted my brain, an overwhelming and overstimulating experience. Seeing Asuka take on the Eva Mass Production units (my favorites, even though I declared Eva-01 to be the best) on the big screen was nothing short of incredible. I told my coworker when we got out about how I enjoy the way Hideaki Anno just assaults you with raw human emotion in a way I’m not used to seeing, and I think that’s one reason I always come back to Eva and to his Shin Kamen Rider film.

Also, a weird thing to realize is how much I identify with Rei, struggling to understand basic human emotions. Also the fact that she’s nude all the time, highly relatable.

Digital artwork of Eva-01 from 2016 that I used to sell as a print

Another big thing about Evangelion that I keep coming back to, which was also made apparent in seeing the End of Evangelion on the big screen, was its handcrafted nature and how it always felt like the wheels were going to fall off at any time. Gainax was constantly struggling financially, Anno’s depression and research into Freudian psychology kept introducing changes, and it’s a miracle this series exists and got any sort of conclusion in the first place. Even moreso, it’s incredibly wild how something that’s clearly so personal to its creator, so strange and different, became a huge hit and reshaped anime in its aftermath. The Rebuild films are neat too, and I think 3.0+1.0 is an incredible finale, but the fact that they got bigger budgets, better technology, and all the time they needed to be made the way Anno wanted, as well as being redesigned to be blockbusters with a more broad appeal and a lot of the more horrific and intense elements stripped out, makes them lose some of their appeal.

The new remake series, written by Yoko Taro, looks intriguing to me, especially since Anno isn’t involved. I hope Taro gets as weird and personal with it as he wants to, I hope they’re giving him full creative freedom to make the Evangelion that he wants to make, not just another cookie cutter remake that hits the same notes.

And if it does suck for some reason, well, I still have the End of Evangelion to make my head spin and traumatize friends with.