Thoughts on “Neon Genesis Evangelion”


I first learned of the existence of anime and manga in college in the late 1980s. That was when “Robotech” was a big deal. I never really got a chance to see the show, but I was curious enough to read a book about it. The book alluded to a whole world of cartoons and comics—two interests of mine—that I had never before even suspected existed.

Some years later the library where I worked received a large donation of anime videocassettes. While helping to catalog these I sampled some of them. They included the subtitled first episode of “Neon Genesis Evangelion.” I was intrigued by some of these shows and began reading up on anime. From this I learned that NGE—then still a fairly recent series—was one of the most acclaimed anime series ever. Over the last couple of years I’ve watched a modest number of anime. Recently, despite some reservations over what I had read about the content, I decided to watch NGE.

The title “Neon Genesis Evangelion” has intrigued me for years. Like many anime titles it is derived from a foreign language. In this case the language is Greek. It means, approximately, “New Beginning Good News.” The “good news” part may strike the viewer as sarcastic. While it has a lot of humor in places, the series is mostly what people call a downer. It is set 15 years after a catastrophe destroys half the human race. Giant alien monsters called “Angels” seem bent on finishing the job. Mad scientists use the anti-Angel defense project as cover for their own agendas. Things are no happier for the individual characters. Every one for whom we get any significant backstory has a tragic and dysfunctional past. The revelations about the characters grow more shocking with each episode.

At the end—well, it’s hard to say what exactly happens, but it appears that main character Shinji is healed of his psychological wounds and receives a fresh start. There are hints that all of the characters, even the whole human race, have had a new beginning. Perhaps this is supposed to be the “good news.”

That term “evangelion” means a great deal to me. Centuries ago this Greek word for good news was translated into Old English as “gospel.” In modern English “gospel” has a specifically Christian meaning. It refers to the New Testament account of how God came to Earth to live as a human being named Jesus, lived a blameless life, and was put to death for crimes he did not commit. He then arose from the dead, appeared to his followers, and promised them that anyone who believed in him would also someday arise from the dead. He had come to Earth to die for the sins of which we are all guilty. If we confess our sins and believe in Jesus he will forgive our sins and give us new life.

What does all this have to do with a Japanese cartoon show? NGE often employs the Christian image of the cross. It also uses many names taken from Jewish/Christian tradition (Though most of them—for example Longinus and the names of the Magi—come from extrabiblical traditions, not from the generally accepted Jewish/Christian scriptures). Why did they do this? I’ve read that the Shinto and Buddhist religions of Japan do not tend to take a teleological view of history—that is to say they don’t see it as moving toward a determined end. So the series’ creators chose to borrow imagery from a tradition that does—Christianity.

The Christian New Testament is full of references to history as moving toward an end, when Jesus will return and God will bring history and the world as we know it to a conclusion. In its place will be a new world, a perfect world where God’s will is acknowledged by all, and those who have believed in Jesus will always be with God. The end of the old world will be accompanied by great trials and destruction, but the final result will be a good one for those who remain faithful to Jesus’ teachings.

The predictions about the coming end have been much abused. History is littered with examples of charismatic individuals who combined elements of Christian teachings with quack revelations of their own to form doomsday cults. A few of these cults went on to do great harm. On a less harmful note, one sees reports in the news now and then of people who hysterically take sudden disasters and the like as signs that the world’s end is imminent. This sort of thing has led many to regard Christians who take their faith’s teachings about the end times seriously as weirdos who look forward to seeing everything around them destroyed.

This is a misunderstanding. What the believers are looking forward to is the return of Jesus and the REMAKING of the world. Those who look forward to the return of Jesus tend to be very conscious of the problems in the world as it is now. They can’t just pretend they don’t exist. They can’t accept the illusion that human science and technology and political and economic systems, after centuries of failure, will finally fix everything and make it right.

This isn’t to say that they’ve just given up on everything. Some are guilty of fatalistic complacency, but most try, within the limits of their abilities, to improve the world around them. They’re acutely aware, though, that there’s little that people like themselves who have little power in the world can do. Ultimately their hope can only come from God.

This is what the Evangelion, the Gospel, the Good News, does. It contains warnings of destruction for those who do not choose to follow God. It assures those who do that they will face troubles and trials the same as anyone else—sometimes more so. But ultimately it is a message of hope. The world WILL get better. We WILL see it, even if we perish in the process.

The world needs hope. Life as we know it can’t go on forever. We congratulate ourselves on our material progress that has made life longer and more comfortable. Yet we are often miserable for reasons that material progress can’t fix. The progress itself carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it has been predicated on the mistaken notion that the world contains unlimited resources and an unlimited capacity to serve as our dumping ground.

We also live on a geologically active planet, in a solar system alive with meteoroids and asteroids. Geological history contains a number of episodes that could have demolished civilization as we know it. Civilization as we know it has emerged in a lull between these. The lull won’t last forever. It may well not even last that much longer in human, historical terms. No, the cosmic near-misses the Earth experienced only last week may not have been harbingers of imminent destruction. At the very least, however, they remind us that we are at the mercy of forces far beyond our ability to control or even to predict with any great certainty.

Individual life is also uncertain. Though the world may not end tomorrow, for some people it will end tomorrow for all intents and purposes. Not one of us can say for certain that we will not be one of these people. Perhaps we like to watch fictional disasters like those in “Neon Genesis Evangelion” to try to convince ourselves that our own mortality is somehow a fiction. It isn’t. Yet the real Evangelion gives us hope even beyond our own and our civilization’s inevitable deaths.

One last observation: That book about “Robotech” where I first read about anime and manga? It so happens I read it while in transit on a trip I took when I was in college. It was a short-term mission trip to Central America with my father. Christians aren’t allowed just to sit back in smug comfort in the knowledge that we’ve got our insurance because we’ve believed the Good News. Each and every one of us is responsible for telling it to others so that they have a chance to share in its promise. Dad and I were trying to do our little part on that mission a quarter-century ago. We couldn’t and can’t make anyone believe anything we say. We can only say it. It invites disagreement, anger, and ridicule. In some parts of the world it can get you killed. We have to tell people anyway.

Jesus told his followers that “The evangelion about the kingdom of Heaven must be proclaimed to all the world in every nation. Then shall the end come.” There are indications in the New Testament that God in some way excuses ignorance about his word. In a global society where the most isolated cultures are rapidly losing the isolation that kept them from hearing the excuses are fast running out—for individuals and for the world as a whole. The Evangelion is a warning as well as a promise. Whether it is truly good news or bad is finally up to the hearer.