Why is Neon Genesis Evangelion good?

neon genesis evangelion is an amazing anime series that you should absolutely watch there is a lot of religious symbolism that is very difficult to understand but i am trying to unravel it all and i do that in my weekly show story secrets that i record for my patrons what you're about to see is an excerpt from that show it is spoiler free and if you want to get access to the full show take a look at patreon.com father roderick [Music] neon genesis evangelion is one of the most influential anime series ever made and in this video i want to tell you why you should absolutely check it out i'm father rodrick i'm a priest and i'm a geek and this is my show story secrets about the secrets of the stories that you like i still remember the first time that someone told me about neon genesis evangelion it was actually on tick tock i'd made a series about religious themes in the movie the batman and in the comments someone told me if you like that kind of stuff check out neon genesis evangelion it's a japanese anime and it's filled to the brim with religious imagery you should watch it and my first reaction was i don't think so i'm really not into anime isn't anime for kids or teenagers i associate it with pokemon and with brightly colored monsters or giant robots fighting each other or fighting brightly colored monsters and i kind of have always discarded the genre how wrong was i and neon genesis evangelion actually opened this entire world of anime to me so i found it on netflix which gives it a huge global audience this show is actually quite old it's from 1995 i think it first aired in japan in 1997 and it's only now available to a worldwide audience and that is why a lot of people are now discovering it including me and so i started to watch the first episode it's a long series it's 25 episodes each episode is about 25 minutes long um and the first episode was about giant robots fighting each other i was like you see classic anime why bother but then when i continued watching the episode i got more and more intrigued because indeed there were a ton of religious symbols and biblical themes that were used to illustrate what was happening to the characters in in the story and and that was to me the most interesting thing it was obviously not a religious series not at all but the use of those symbols especially i i'm i'm a theologian uh i'm a biblical scholar so when i see those symbols i immediately think of like huh how does that the meaning of this symbol or this theme relate to the story that is being told and there were so many parallels there that i was hooked and i continued to watch and and i was commenting on tick tock almost live every week on the the things that the kind of the links that i made between the images the religious stuff and and the story itself and the more i studied it the more i was like wow this is absolutely one of the most amazing series in general that i've ever seen and uh and i'm still puzzling i just finished watching the entire run of the series 25 episodes there are a number of movies that have been made afterwards that evolved the story sometimes even reinterpreted a little bit um but i've watched these 25 episodes now for the first time and i say that on purpose because this is a series that i i need to watch several times and the more you watch it the more you will start to interpret it and and and kind of fill in the gaps that the story is not very clear in the beginning but over time you get more and more immersed in it and then with the knowledge you get towards the end you do want to go back and re-watch it and then it puts everything in a different perspective that all by itself is already i think a major reason to check this out i don't know many series that do that maybe the most obvious one is star wars where the more you learn about what's truly going on with the force and the emperor the more you want to go back and re-watch it and read and you're like oh it was already there but i just didn't notice it um about the religious imagery that of course was the first thing that that kind of got me hooked but it's not the only thing there is also a i think very profound psychological uh element to the story it's very introspective it's also uh in part based on hideyaki anno's own experiences idiaca hiriachiano is the director and the writer of the series and when he first started to make neon genesis evangelion he had just come out of a a very very deep depression or a depressive state that lasted for years and i wouldn't be surprised if he had had a a lot of therapy because later on in the story it's almost as if it's like an anime remake of a therapeutic uh process um which i think makes it very visceral very personal and uh and in in also in a way universal because the the things that hideyaki struggled with to a certain degree are our our questions are issues that we all struggle with and and that's another point where i really connected with this series but i believe that these are not two different interpretations it's not about you know what is the right way to interpret it i think this is all kind of part of the narrative and it's deliberately left open so that you add your own interpretation to it and this is also what i reply to people that tell me about religious imagery uh you know you know that the the the maker of the series has said that they just used christian imagery because it looked cool right it was exotic to the japanese audience at the time but none of the creators were christian so there is no religious meaning and i would say well actually two things first of all uh that was actually kazuya tsurumaki who said that who is the kind of the uh he's the co-director and he's more about the visuals so obviously he was commenting on the visual aspect of those uh uh uh biblical and and religious uh symbols that they used but he's not the creator he's not the writer hideaki anno is much more restrained when he's asked about that he said yes of course you know i'm i'm not a christian and uh but i used those symbols and those themes on purpose uh because and because i wasn't a christian it allowed me to freely associate those symbols but what he doesn't say is oh it's just for you know visual effect and i believe the more i study this series the more i'm convinced that there's definitely a rhyme and reason to the use of these religious symbols and i read another interview and i haven't been able to retrace the the exact quote of someone who worked on the series who said yeah in the beginning we were a bit puzzled by all this religious imagery that hideaki yana told us to use but over time we started to to read up on it and it started to make sense and we started to integrate it in a different way so that shows me that in the course of the production they actually started to get better and better in in figuring out you know which religious symbols would be pertinent to the story and that is what was my quest to figure out you know what what is just fluff uh maybe just coincidental that they used a certain name or or concept and what is really meant to give us an idea of what what is going on with the characters what the what the ultimate uh stake or what the stakes are of the story why we should watch this story and i believe that one of the reasons that i believe it's so important to watch this and so worth your your while is that this series more than almost anything else i've seen on tv or in movies is is touching upon the most profound questions of our existence why are we here who am i uh why do i feel how i feel is there another way to look at the world can i can i reframe my perception how do i deal with trauma how does that relate to my the way i look at god the way i regard religion there are actually several different perspectives on religion woven into the story and all that is taking place in this post-apocalyptic world with giant robots i think it's genius so i'm not going to give you any spoilers in case you haven't seen this and this video hopes to encourage you to definitely go check it out but i do want to give you a general outline of the story uh just to give you an idea what you can expect i want to give you some tips on on how to watch this because it's it's it's not easy it can get very very confusing or even a bit you know disconcerting but i'll give you some tips on on how i approach the series and then i will record a second part of this show which i will uh give to my to my patrons so there's a patreon community of people that support the work that i do and enable me to do this work because you know i'm not paid by the pope and so i want to as a thank you i want to give them like an extra part of each a story secret show where i can talk about spoilers and i go a little bit more in depth or actually i go in depth a lot so i'm making that podcast and that show available to my patrons uh if you are interested check it out at patreon.comroderick so what is this story about it takes place in a literally a post-apocalyptic world there has been this major disaster and huge explosion in the antarctic region in the year 2000 which has destroyed most of humanity there are some cities left and for instance tokyo is completely rebuilt it's now called tokyo three uh the previous two tokyo's have been completely eliminated and this city is built to withstand the worst uh threats and there are actually after that explosion still a lot of threats to mankind the most important one is these giant robots called angels that are attacking tokyo time and again and seem to be almost invincible there are some lesser threats as well there is a huge issue with global warming the the explosion has caused massive meltdown of the polar regions and so basically the world lives in this perpetual summer which is also expressed in audio form because you constantly hear crickets like throughout the series and it the way they visualize it is also by making the air tremble a little bit so it the series feels like oh my gosh it's so suffocatingly hot um but the city of tokyo three is constructed in such a way that the skyscrapers can also move down they can they can go the opposite way and whenever there is a threat or danger they can disappear underground and there's this massive underground space where everybody can be safe and whenever there is a threat by these giant angels that are attacking uh the people of tokyo and also several other uh countries have created these massive robots called evas and these evas have to be piloted by children by teenagers it doesn't really explain why but it's a given that only teenagers around the age of 13 14 are able to connect uh in a kind of psychic way with these robots and so whatever movements they make these big robots make but then like times 100 very similar to uh for instance pacific rim if you know that uh movie series it's it's a it's a classic idea uh in uh in in japanese anime but here the story the story really goes much deeper because we discover and i'm not going to tell you how and what's truly going on but we discovered that there is a very peculiar bond between the pilots and the avas and and once you hear what it is you're like wow oh my gosh this is definitely setting this series apart from so many other uh stories in in the genre so these angels attack the funny thing is the angels are very different from one another uh which in in one of my tic tocs i explain by if this refers to the way that christian tradition looks at angels we we tend to imagine angels as being just like these you know wings and uh nice genderless beings very benevolent but in fact if you look at the description of angels in various places in the bible each angel is terrifying if you try to imagine it and plus every angel is in is totally distinct from other angels there is not one angel that is the same and so i i found it really extraordinary that in this series they visualize that by creating these different threats some aren't even robots some of these angels are like these interdimensional beings and it's like how do you fight something that has no substance um and so the the story uh let us meet a number of these teenage pilots and we see their interaction because they all live in in tokyo in fact a few of these pilots actually live together in an apartment with uh like an official uh who works for these governmental institutions that won't go into detail it's very complicated but anyway she's kind of like the the substitute mother for it for these kids and then there is a lot of tension because and this is another thing that i really like about neon genesis evangelion um everyone we meet is broken and has trauma and and and has trouble relating to other people and at first you think it's like this is so weird why is there so much strive why is there so much competition between these pilots and and and why why where are the normal people but then you have to realize of course this is after a global trauma of the this big destruction the threat that maybe something like that will happen in the future so there's this constant fear and and then it we we discover that the traumas that all these characters struggle with have to do with parts of their past that we haven't heard about yet and so the more we progress the more we discover what has been going on in their lives and how their their behavior towards one another but even even the way they look at their themselves stems from all this unresolved trauma and the series then after all these different attacks ends with a big culmination of of this battle and again i i won't spoil it what happens but the last two episodes are very different from what you expect not necessarily bad uh although a lot of people at the time when they first watched the series were like this is ridiculous why why all of a sudden do we get this this changing genre this this looks like something completely separate from what came before give us a real ending what was going on um but i believe that these two last episodes actually form the crux of the whole story because this is not just about an external battle the whole battle between mankind and the angels this whole opposition almost between heaven and earth is a metaphor for this internal struggle for this internal battle that the characters will have to fight often with themselves or with their past or with other people and in a way the experiences they acquire during the fight during the battle ultimately helps them to resolve their inner battle their inner struggle it's very deep i was super impressed by these last two episodes and i may be in a minority because i know that a lot of if you are a fan and you've seen the whole series maybe you'd think oh like what it's awful the ending is terrible and many people warned me don't watch it it's so terrible watch the movies instead because they have created a number of movies that we will oftentimes do like a retelling of the narrative sometimes they tell the story a little bit differently and we see much more what was going on brother than just what happened to the characters and what happened in this internal struggle but i believe that even without the movies i think this was super impressive i was even emotional towards the end because a lot of the questions in in these last two episodes are questions that i've been asking myself uh some of the traumatic events that have such an impact on on the heroes of this story are are relatable and and i i too personally have been having to deal with with trauma with with with self-doubt with you know who am i why am i here and and what i believe uh is maybe unintentional but still the genius of this entire series is that it juxtaposes this this whole personal adventure of discovery this quest who am i why am i here what what should i do why do i do the things that i do it juxtaposes it to these religious questions and i believe it's because the two are related religion is not just about concepts about stuff you have to believe uh let alone you know about scientific things that you can prove religion is very much there to help us find our way in life it's it's like a guide that can help us to discover ourselves and to discover our true vocation and meaning and that is what is constantly on the mind of all these characters in neon genesis evangelion now there are way more things that i'd love to share with you but i can because of spoiler so i will do that for the second part of this show for my patrons again if you're interested uh check out patreon.com i do want to say one thing almost every thing has meaning there is not a single shot i believe that was just because it looked cool no i can tell even from the perspective of just analysis structural analysis uh i studied media movie analysis in in in rome for two years if you look at this series you can tell that everything has a reason and uh ano is not telling us what it means and rightfully so because that's why it's art it we should be the ones who ultimately determine the interpretation and that is not because you know it's just an opinion and therefore it's wrong and we need to figure out what what the author wanted to say no i i believe and this is also what i say to people that are critical of my kind of religious efforts to understand the religious symbolism i think it adds to the it's another layer of interpretation it's like if you have a recipe you can follow it to the letter but if you're a cook you take that as a basis and then you just start adding some some herbs or stuff you make it in a certain way music same thing you can you can just follow the notes but then it's not music so a musician has his her own feelings interpretation to it and it enriches the original material the original content and that i think is something that hideyako hideyakiano deliberately wanted us to do and that is i think why this series is so long-lasting and still going strong after decades um those are my reasons let me know if you are going to check it out let me know also if you have uh maybe given up on the series a while ago and if you started again there's just a tip that i want to uh give you is there were moments when i was watching this series where i was like yeah come on i'm i this is too convoluted too complicated who is this what is disorganization what i mean really it's sometimes so opaque [Music] that's also what makes it so intriguing and so interesting because everything has a reason it makes me want to dive deeper if i don't understand it's not the fault of the of the author it's it's just because i haven't worked and hard enough on this and so that's why i make these videos to try to share that with you and i i love the process of of thinking together with other fans of what this all could mean and how it can relate to us and why it touches us so much it's it's an amazing series go watch it and let me know in the comments what you think thank you so much i'm father rodrik this was story secrets see you next time

Channel: Father Roderick - Anime Secrets

Views: 17,179

Keywords: evangelion analysis, evangelion anime, evangelion explained, evangelion review, neon genesis evangelion, neon genesis evangelion explained, neon genesis evangelion good ending, netflix's evangelion, shinji ikari, top anime, why is neon genesis evangelion good, why is neon genesis evangelion important, why is neon genesis evangelion so confusing, why is neon genesis evangelion so good, why is neon genesis evangelion so popular, why is neon genesis so good, father roderick

Id: 7rFghQKzH2o

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022