Let's start with Evangelion, what is it? Evangelion is a highly acclaimed anime that I think gets way more credit than it deserves. It's not that I hate it or that it's bad, it's that there are anime fans who think it is one of the best, but it's just not. Maybe it's because I didn't see it until many years after it was originally made and seeing what they've done since, I'm not as impressed, although historically it was fairly cutting edge for it's time. Evangelion was loosely based on the biblical apocalypse and uses many references to the bible, notably referring to it's villains as angels, as in the angels of destruction from Revelation. That's about as far as it goes, and then it just goes off in it's own direction and relies on an audience who doesn't actually know the source material to call BS. Anyway, the background that is referred to in passing to the point that you really do need someone to explain it to you is that the Dead Sea Scrolls contained prophecies of the apocalypse regarding angels of destruction, and then(this is where we switch from fact to fiction) toward the end of the twentieth century, a group of archaeologists discover the angels of prophecy, or more to the point, the first two, they name Adam and Lilith after the first man and woman according to the apocrypha. This discovery resulted in the Second Impact, named because the world is told it was a meteor like the one that killed the dinosaurs and has the same effects on the Earth. Among the archaeologists was Gendo Ikari who understood the significance of what he found and began the Evangelion project to develop a means to fight the angels that would destroy what managed to survive. This project was rather complicated but boils down to what they call Evas, three giants that are to be controlled by specially selected pilots to fight the angels with the same power the angels have. These pilots are Shinji Ikari (Gendo's son) Rei Ayaname and Asuka Sohryu Langley, all of whom were born after the Second Impact and are called into action at the age of fifteen. It probably seems wrong that they are recruited at such a young age, but the truth is everybody is lucky it took fifteen years for the angels to appear. The story mainly focuses on Shinji when the third angel (fourth in the movie) attacks and he is recruited to pilot the Eva-1. Over the course of the series he meets and works with the Rei who seems to have no personality and Asuka, who thinks she's better tan everybody else, especially the other two pilots, and most especially Shinji. Now, here is where things get really fucked up...the Evas, while appearing to be robots, are actually cloned from Adam(Eva-1) and Lilith(all other Evas) and were combined with the parents of the three children. The Eva-1 is actually Shinji's mother Yui transformed by being combined with Adam, Eva-2 is Asuka's mother used as base material for a clone of Lilith and Eva-0 is the most bizarre of all, Rei is actually a clone of the woman who was used for the base of another clone of Lilith. The reason they appear to be robots is that the only way for them to be controlled is to for complex machines to restrain their bodies and prevent them from using full power and are ultimately controlled by the pilots who are chosen because of their biological relation to the Evas, which means they are the only ones capable of piloting the Evas at all. The reason for such dangerous beings to be used to fight the angels is simple, the angels are protected by AT(Absolute Terror) fields which can only be penetrated by a counteractive AT field which can only be produced by the Evas because they are part angel.
The series quite simply follows the fight against the last fifteen of the seventeen angels ending on episode 24 where Shinji fights the last angel who comes in the form of Kaworu pilot of Eva-3 which was itself an angel earlier on until it was deactivated after a disastrous test run with the equally disastrous "Fourth Child". It's important to note the series was only 24 episodes long because most anime run for 26 episodes, but the creator only had 24 episodes of material. There were in fact 26 episodes but episodes 25 and 26 are filler that don't really have anything to do with the story told up to that point. This is significant because Shinji is always listening to tracks 25 and 26 on his cassete player and this is a direct reference to how the creator never really had a plan for those episodes, he's just kind of giving the finger the whole time. As for the movies, it's pretty much the same story as the series, except that they try to condense it to fit in three movies. Movie one covers Shinji meeting Rei and fighting angels four, five, and six, with a brief glimpse of Kaworu hinting at the end of the story. The only major difference in "1.11 You are (not) alone" is that they used fresh and new updated animation and edited the corresponding episodes for time. "2.22 You may (not) advance" introduces a new character, an alternate pilot and veers the story off in a new direction. Well, asthetically different, it's still Shinji freaking out about how his father is even worse than he thought while Asuka and Rei cover his ass.
One thing I have to say, I have wanted to make a live action movie of Evangelion mostly because I love Cruel Angels Thesis Bleeds, the original theme and wanted it attached to a film, or at least a trailer. "NO!" I hear you scream because live action movies of anime tend to be disasters. However, I have three rules to make this work.
- Cast must be Asian. If we have learned nothing from Dragon Ball Evolution, it's that fans can not stand Japanese characters being played by white people.
- Angels and Evas come first, they must be done properly or this thing is dead in the water. No improvising, they are to be 3D renderings of the cartoons EXACTLY!
- Use FUNimation's script exactly, no edits. When you make changes, people get mad, use the script that the fans accepted already and it saves the trouble of them being pissed off when you finally make it.
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