While working on my senior thesis on anime cyborgs, I watched Mamoru Oshii's Patlabor OVAs and read a lot of opinions on how revolutionary his approach was. While most giant robot shows like Gundam emphasize a sense of beauteous warfare and sleek robot designs meant to catch the eye, Patlabor was not nearly as flashy, and instead focused on the human relationships that form within an increasingly technological world. Patlabor was very much about its humans, not the robots. Neon Genesis Evangelion came to mind as another show that revitalized the giant robot genre, or this is what I've heard for years now. I set out to see what those reasons were, and began watching the original Evangelion series that broke the mould. (And in case anyone notices, we already have a review on Evangelion previously written by ABC. This latest inquiry is being carried out by Nelson).
A mix of mecha and kaiju action, Neon Genesis Evangelion takes place in 2014 after an Angel crashes down on Earth and wreaks ecological havoc. The Angels are monsters who attack cities, and are stopped throughout the series by a mix of military bombardment and humanoid mecha called Evangelions. For reasons I haven't discovered yet the robots can only be piloted by 14 year old children, and the battles they endure either put them through great distress or nearly end up killing them.
Shinji is the protagonist, and it is through his character that I really see Evangelion not only as a narrative journey, but as a psychological and artistic journey as well. Shinji is a quiet and submissive kid. He isn't very social and always walks around with a cassette player and headphones, playing and replaying an unknown track. He is recruited by his father to pilot the Eva-01 Unit and rescue the city from a newly formed Angel. Nearly losing his life in every battle, Shinji begins to break down from the stress and wants to be killed by the Angels. The adults running the NERV program that handles Angel outbreaks do not regard their teenage pilots with much sympathy. They are needed as weapons, and the fate of the world depends on them. There is nothing else to be said.
I find a lot of similarities between Evangelion and the Eureka Seven franchise, which includes the original Eureka Seven and Eureka Seven: AO. Aside from the obvious mimicry of giant monsters that can be found in AO, and the use of young boys to pilot mechs, the characters from each series suffer when constantly endangered. Eureka Seven's Renton Thurston one episode loses control and goes into a fit of rage when fighting enemy pilots, experiencing an increase in norepinephrine that manifests in a "rider's high." This happens to Shinji all the time from what I've seen.
Neon Genesis Evangelion's use of freakish rage power that most anime heroes seem to carry isn't an obligatory trope. It makes perfect sense in the context of a show that doesn't feature superhuman fighters or ninjas, because the enemies Shinji faces are strong enough to destroy the entire world if left unchecked. Shinji feels pain whenever Eva-01 is damaged, but he can't quit unless he is willing to let everyone in the city down. When there are no options left, people can either break down and cry or scream and fight back. Shinji does both, and is more human than I thought most anime characters could be.
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