At the turn of the millennium, a "meteorite strike" on Antarctica wipes out half of Earth's population. The NERV project fights the real danger -- aliens called the Angels who are sending bio-engineered weapon to destroy the rest of humanity. The experimental Evangelion project fights the outsized invanders with giant cybernetic organisms, but only children born after the Antarctica incident can pilot the machines. With Rei, the original test pilot, critically ill after an accident, head scientist Gendo Ikari summons his estranged son, Shinji, to take the first mission. Shinji is taken in by the sisterly Misato, an alcoholic burnout with a passionate hatred for the Angels, and the arrival of the hot-headed pilot Asuka Langley creates a dys-functional surrogate family.

With this novel excuse for young, audience-friendly protagonists and giant fighting robots, Gainax incorporates many of its favourite staples from classic anime and monster movies -- the Evas themselves even have a five minute timber in homage to ULTRAMAN. A deeply personal, psychological odyssey that allowed Anno to remake his earlier GUNBUSTER at a slower pace, Eva similarly replayed the Pacific War from the Japanese point of view, specifically the apocalyptic final events. Costmetic use of Wstern religious imagery, such as Angel weaponry exploding in cruciform patterns, may appear to suggest that Western beliefs themselves are an alien invasion, but this owes more to Anno's own reading in Jungian psychology and archetypes as he coped with creative doldrums post - Gunbuster.

Like Gunbuster, Eva also piles on the paradoies, particularly from Gerry Anderson shows (see THUNDERBIRDS 2086), with hidden fortresses launching superweapons and uniforms lifted from Anderson's live-action UFO (1969). It also features innovative casting, allowing famous voice actors to shine in unusual roles, especially RANMA 1/2's Megumi Hayashibara as the schizoid Rei and SAILOR MOON's Kotono Mitsuishi as the tragic Misato.

Ultimately, however Eva ended in a series of disappointments. Gainax was criticized for late scenes broadcast without network approval, indirectly causing the more censorious climate that hurt COWBOY BEBOP. Later episodes ran visibly low on funds, with overlong pauses to stretch the animation budget and two concluding episodes that were glorified radio plays. Rumors abounded that Gainax had run out of money and/or time, and that the final chapters were thrown together in just two weeks when Anno's hard-hitting original finale was disallowed. However, Gunbuster similarly end with a montage of stills rather than the promised climactic battle, leading some to suggest Anno had always planned it this way and that the violent nature of the the-atrical sequels reflected his annoyance that his "intellectual" ending was unappreciated by the audience. A succession of Eva movies followed, seemingly designed to leach the last cash and goodwill from ramaining fans. An audio drama, The conclusion Continues (1996), joked that having saved the world, the Eva cast would consider placing it in fake peril to get their old jobs back; though the gap was ironically close to the mark. The promised "real" finale turned out to be a double bill - Death and Rebirth (1997), a recap of the first 24 episodes with the first reel of the true ending. Audience patience was tested a second time with Death (True)2, which added tantalizing scraps of extra footage, including the moment of "Second Impact" and bonus sequences that also appeared in the Japanese (but not U.S.) video releases of the TV episodes. The genuine movie edition, End of Evangelion (1997), was truly shocking apocalypse, taking the themes of the original to their logical conclusion presented as the two "missing" episodes that should have closed the series in the first place. These multiply endings have since been repacked in another edition, Revival of Evangelion.

Despite this confused denouement, Eva was the most critically successful TV anime of the 1990s, drawing back many fans who had given up on the medium, and even inspiring Newtype to test market a new magazine for"intellectual" anime viewers. but like another of Anno's 1960s favourites, The Prisoner, it teased viewers with the illusion of hidden depths that weren't necessarily there, and though designed to be the last world on the giant-robot genre, its success merely ushered in a succession of imitations. Its influence, however, can also be seen in some of the better shows of the year that followed, BLUE SUBMARINE NO. SIX's Japan fighting a morally superior foe, NADESICO's tongue-in-cheek homage to old shows, and GASARAKI's mixture of militarism and theatrical passion. In the wake of Eva, TV became the growth medium for anime, in turn damaging the U.S. anime market, with distributors forced to risk more money for longer series when they would prefer shorter movies or video productions.

In the aftermath of Eva, Anno reused many of its stylistic conceits (such as multiple onscreen titles) inthe live-action Love and Pop (1999) and the anime romance HIS AND HER CIRCUMSTANCES. Sagisu's score was also recycled when parts of it were lifted for Katsuyuki Motohiro's live-action TV series Bayside Shakedown. In a final irony, two members of the Gainax studio were indicted for tax evasion over the film's profits -- the impoverished filmmakers who finished on a shoestring were now the new fat cats.