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10 Years of Neon Genesis Evangelion
smooth wombat writes "Mainichi Daily News has a lengthy, multi-part article on the history of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The article looks back at the 10 years since Evangelion appeared and how it changed the world of manga." From the article: "In a series of 26 episodes, Evangelion told the story of a 14-year-old boy called Shinji Ikari, who piloted a biomechanical combat robot called an Evangelion, which fought against mysterious extraterrestrial monsters known as Angels. But Shinji was also a regular junior high school pupil, and his school life featured strongly in the anime's plot too. As did psychotherapy and the Old Testament, which director Hideaki Anno attributed as influences while creating the series. Evangelion become a huge hit across Japan, attracting fans across generations, sparking a massive public debate over its controversial final episode -- which many criticized for leaving the work unfinished -- and sparking unprecedented merchandising sales that set the scene for the current manga market."
OK, here goes:
The Three-Minute Summary of NGE
NGE is the story of a program initiated by a secret council of powerful old men in order to make themselves immortal. The program uses genetic material from "aliens" (who are actually not aliens, but rather the original inhabitants of Earth, related to humans but not the same species) to create living "robots" that can only be operated by children who have been traumatically separated from their mothers - the bodily fluids of the mothers are used to provide an interface to the "robots". The original plan was to have the old men take over an immortal fusion of human and "robot", but this was hijacked by the lead scientist on the project who was aiming to be reunited with his dead wife (the mother of one of the child pilots). This also goes awry, and the result is that all of humanity undergoes an involuntary fusion with everybody else, but this is interrupted by the rejection of this union by the child pilot who acts as the medium for the unification, when he realises it will mean those closest to him being able to know his most secret thoughts. The ending is ambiguous as to how the whole mess works out.