Evangelion as Second Impact: Forever Changing That Which Never Was

Since the airing of the original series in 1995 and 1996, Neon Genesis Evangelion has acquired a quasi-mythical status for much of the otaku community in and out of Japan. There are many flourishing franchises in the world of anime, but the new installments and revisions of Evangelion that regularly appear are not just an indication of its commercial success but reflect the content of the series: the open, unstable nature of the fiction itself seems to propel the franchise forward through a process of incessant revision, keeping the interest of the audience alive. It is neither the first nor the most commercially successful product of the manga and anime culture, but this instability and repetition have made Evangelion a primus inter pares, an auratic and remarkable example of anime and of Japanese popular culture. And although the idea may pose a conundrum for the chronological history of anime, we will argue here that Evangelion has become a sort of absent point of origin, its own instability representing an archetypal and, at the same time, transformative force.

This is expressed in the way Evangelion coexists with itself as a fiction, filling two very different roles at the same time: it is simultaneously an ongoing series (with the original manga series and derivative material still in publication and the new reimagined episodes of the anime hitting the theaters every two or three years) and a classic, canonical work that serves as a point of reference to judge other manga and anime. This second role is evident in the persistent presence of the series in serious academic works on anime as well as in all kinds of rankings and top-ten lists produced by fans and experts in the Internet.¹ Like any other series, Evangelion has its detractors among fans but is invoked with a surprising frequency as a touchstone for almost any new anime that styles itself (or is proclaimed by the public) as “difficult,” “dense,” “philosophical,” “groundbreaking,” or any other of the adjectives that have become associated with Evangelion since its inception. This is true not only for anime of the mecha genre (within which, albeit with some justified reservations, most fans and academics locate the series) but also for other technological anime like Serial Experiments Lain (1998), and even titles from apparently unrelated genres, such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011).²

This coexistence of the series with itself in different forms is relevant, of course, when trying to determine the meaning of its later instances or presentations: the recent films that constitute Rebuild of Evangelion (2007–) cannot be fully understood without comparison with the original series. But this same phenomenon of recurrence and reference also occurs in the “original” fiction considered by itself. In fact, even determining the exact boundaries of the original fiction is nontrivial: the series originally ended with its twenty-sixth episode (broadcast on television in 1996), and it can be interpreted as complete in this form, but most fans and critics include as part of the canonical work two theatrical films originally released in 1997: Death and Rebirth and The End of Evangelion.³ The first is already a retelling of the first twenty-four episodes of the series, in condensed form and with significant narrative differences, while the second is an alternative ending (and clearly a very divergent one, despite sustained attempts at harmonization from the fan community). By accepting these addends as canonical, most interpretations of the original series present an unavoidable element of autoreferentiality and comparison. But even for those who attempt to approach to original twenty-six televised episodes by themselves, Evangelion still presents a very particular kind of duplication, as if it were acting simultaneously as original and copy, referent and reference.

That happens because, even if in its shortest form, Evangelion is an open work, not only in Eco’s sense (a work not limited to one closed, linear, prescribed interpretation) but also in a more general sense: it is a fiction without clearly defined limits.⁴ The beginning of the series presents us...