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Evangelion Index

Eva Guide Intro

Chapter 1- An Overview

Chapter 2- Shinji Ikari

Chapter 3- Rei Ayanami

Chapter 4- Asuka Langley Sohryu

Chapter 5- The Angels

Chapter 6- The Evangelions

Chapter 1- An Overview:
What you need to know to understand this guide.

A man called Hideaki Anno created Evangelion as a self-insertion (he saw himself as Shinji Ikari) to deal with personal issues. (I.e. the death of his mother, and his subsequent relationship with his father.) It is composed of 4 main aspects.

1) Religion- Evangelion is heavily involved with Christianity and Judaism. This is probably the most obvious aspect- Almost all explosions shape into crosses, continual references to God (i.e. Nerv’s logo- “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”), Lilith (Jewish religion, the first wife of Adam, created to be his equal), Adam, etc. This is primarily for a backdrop to emphasis the (unnecessary?) complexity of our perceptions of the world, and questioning the basic desire to believe in higher powers that many people feel.

It is not necessarily a statement of religious beliefs. It also helps to provide a background for all the other aspects of the story, whilst questioning to what extent our perceptions define ourselves, and to what extent we define our perceptions. (In other words, if reality forms our thoughts, or whether our thoughts form the basis of reality, or if they are completely separate.)

2) Freudian Psychodynamics- According to Freud the mind is composed of several parts:

Primarily the Ego (our sense of self, and the part which negotiates between all other parts),
The Superego (the embodiment of parental and societal values we were brought up with),
The Id (our basic impulses- I want, give me, food, sex sleep, etc.)
The Libido (Life is good, I enjoy life, the highest priority in life is to go on living and to reproduce)
And Thanatos (Life is pain, therefore life is bad, therefore death is good.)

So, the Ego must manage the conflict between the Id and the Superego by trying to obtain what the Id wants, inside of methods and actions allowed by the Superego. At the same time, it manages the conflict between the Libido and Thanatos by directing our need for self-destruction outwards, and trying to focus on the good things in life.

Most of the main characters are representations of a major part of the human mind, as understood by Freud. Please note, however, that psychodynamics is by no means the be-akk/end-all of psychology. It is an imperfect set of theories with little proof to support it, that while it has good general ideas (basic 5 components, displacement, projection, etc), it was overstretched by Freud, in his arrogant belief that he could explain everything through it.

Evangelion also includes other psychological theories, for example Learning Theory (E.g. Shinji's piloting of Eva-01 at first being considered bad, but laterconsidered good because he got positive reinforcement). (And yes, i know theres a heck of a lot more to Shinji's piloting than that, but its just an example to show learning theory is in Eva, not a complete explanation of Shinji's piloting. Trying to do that on one paragraph would be beyond stupid.)

3) Nietzsche- This is mostly focused on the idea that the universe is nothing but our perception of it- There is no fixed reality, nothing really exists in a sense that we can truly understand. It is generally summarised as meaning, “everything is nothing”. The Absolute Terror field shows this. (The darkness of our soul, something insubstantial, is the greatest destructive force there is) and by Yui Ikari’s saying, “anywhere can be heaven so long as you have a will to live.” Perception is the most important part of reality according to this, even if reality is beyond human comprehension.

4) Humanity- what defines humans as humans, and whether humans are essentially “evil” or “good” and if it’s even possible to truly define such things. This is something that many shows have tried to cover, and Evangelion is nearly unique in its ability to go into the topic without turning into a corny piece of garbage. (I.e. Eva’s being human, Kaworu being an angel, etc.)

Of special importance is that in Evangelion, all of humanity is considered one entity- the 18th angel. This allows individual characters to represent different aspects of the human psyche, and means that all humans are interconnected in a theoretical sense. This is largely irrelevant on its own, but it helps for understanding how different characters can represent just one part of the mind, and is vital to understand the term ‘the beast that shouts I at the heart of the world.’

Obviously, being an overview, such matters will be gone into in greater depth later.

Chapter 1- An Overview
Chapter 2- Shinji Ikari
Chapter 3- Rei Ayanami
Chapter 4- Asuka Langley Sohryu
Chapter 5- The Angels
Chapter 6- The Evangelions