The Shock of Evangelion — The Revolution of the 1990s

On October 4, 1995, in TV Tokyo’s Wednesday early-evening slot at 6:30 p.m. — a time aimed at children — a single robot anime quietly began. Its title was ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion,’ produced by Gainax. A boy boards a giant humanoid weapon and fights mysterious enemies called ‘Angels.’ Put that way, it might have seemed like an ordinary entry in the lineage of robot anime traced back to the 1970s in Episode 4.

Yet with each episode, the story twisted in a strange direction. Rather than the thrill of defeating enemies, what came to the fore was the loneliness and anxiety the young protagonist carried, and his fear of being hurt. Near the final episode, the inner lives of the characters were depicted endlessly through monologue and abstract imagery, and even the resolution of the story was left suspended. Viewers were drawn into this uncanny work with a mixture of both fervor and bewilderment.

How an Evening Robot Anime Became a Story of the Heart

The director was Hideaki Anno. Having taken part in the production of ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,’ touched on in Episode 5, he was one of the central figures at Gainax. What he poured into ‘Evangelion’ was not the formulaic exhilaration of defeating an enemy and saving the world, but inward questions: how to relate to others, and how to affirm oneself.

On the surface, the story is scattered with giant weapons, an enigmatic organization, and religious motifs. But at its core lay the distance that lies between one person and another — the movement of a heart that wants to draw close yet fears being hurt. Borrowing the vessel of robot anime, its contents came remarkably close to a psychological drama of adolescence.

Visually, too, the work employed a range of techniques. Alongside meticulously rendered battle scenes, methods such as long still frames, text-only screens, and the repetition of past footage were used boldly. The traditional Japanese craft of making an impression with a limited number of drawings — touched on in Episode 3 — functioned here as more than a mere means of economy: it became a staging device that expressed the characters’ inner states. Not moving the image spoke all the more eloquently of silence and tension — this accumulation of expression gave the work its distinctive texture.

When it aired, the final two episodes swung fully into abstract inner portrayals, and it was reported that this was partly due to a tight production schedule and budget constraints. Demand for a proper ending was strong, and in response, the 1997 theatrical film ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion’ was released, depicting an ending different from the television version. That two endings — television and theatrical — could stand side by side is itself testament to the work’s singularity.

A Social Phenomenon and Otaku Culture

As the broadcast progressed, ‘Evangelion’ moved beyond a circle of ardent fans to become something widely talked about. Debate flared over interpretations of its ending, deemed difficult, and related books and merchandise appeared one after another. The work was often described as a ‘social phenomenon’ and became one that symbolized the anime boom of the 1990s.

Carrying this fervor were the people known as ‘otaku.’ Watching a single work over and over, decoding its details, hunting for the consistency of its settings and the origins of its quoted motifs — this deeply probing way of enjoying a work was placed at the heart of understanding ‘Evangelion.’ Its difficulty was not a flaw but functioned as room for discussion.

That said, attitudes toward otaku culture at the time were not necessarily favorable. The figure of the deeply immersed fan was often treated as something strange by the general media. The way ‘Evangelion’ became a social phenomenon can be seen as one milestone in the process by which such a culture won acceptance. The light side — rising passion and creativity — and the shadow side — prejudice and friction — coexisted in the same period.

As the work was widely discussed, opinion was also divided over its difficulty. Some received it as a richness that allowed many interpretations, while others felt the ending had been thrown away and were disappointed. That a single work drew such contradictory impressions was itself proof that ‘Evangelion’ had transcended the frame of a simple story. In later years, Hideaki Anno would face this story anew with the remake series ‘Rebuild of Evangelion,’ which began in 2007. That a creator himself kept questioning a single work over long years — this stance, too, is an indispensable facet in any discussion of the work.

Late-Night Anime and the Production Committee Model

What ‘Evangelion’ left behind for the industry was not only the impact of the work itself. Its success is said to have helped push forward two systems: how anime is delivered and how it is made.

One was late-night anime. Originally broadcast in the evening, ‘Evangelion’ was reported to have drawn solid ratings when it was rerun in the late-night slot in 1997, and the recognition spread that anime for adults could succeed even in the late-night hours. Rather than children’s prime time, delivering to a core fanbase in the dead of night — this idea would connect to the flourishing of late-night anime in the 2000s. Narrowing the audience, paradoxically, gave rise to a market of high intensity.

The other was the production committee model. This is a system in which multiple companies jointly invest, sharing the risks and the rights of anime production. The term ‘production committee’ itself originally came from the film industry and is said to have been used in anime films in the first half of the 1990s. Spreading out of the soaring cost of anime production and the need to disperse risk, and with companies that witnessed the commercial success of ‘Evangelion’ rushing one after another to invest in anime, it became an investment format widely recognized in television anime as well. Entering the 2000s, it settled in as one of the mainstream methods of producing television anime.

These two changes were linked to each other. The late-night slot was easier to secure than prime time, and became a venue for sending out a diverse range of works aimed at specific fan segments. And the production committee model became the vessel that supplied the funds to make such works possible. The time of delivery and the way of gathering funds to make a work — when these two meshed, television anime from the 2000s onward would put out a great many works. It is not that the single work ‘Evangelion’ gave birth to all of this, but that its success was one of the works that pushed the current of the era forward is often pointed out.

At the end of the 1990s, Japanese anime greatly broadened the range of its expression, and the industrial systems that supported it were also changing shape. A single robot anime that depicted the darkness of the heart would cast a long shadow over the industry to come, both as a work and as a business structure. And around the same time, Japanese anime was about to open another great door — the door of borders. Anime crosses borders and captivates children around the world.