On a Wednesday evening in October 1995 at 6:30 p.m. in Tokyo, animation changed forever.

"Neon Genesis Evangelion" stunned a nation with its mix of Freudian psychoanalysis, existential angst and a metaphor for a country in the midst of an identity crisis, all wrapped in the deceptive guise of a story about giant robot suits fighting monsters. Until recently, the timeslot had featured the iconic U.S. cartoon "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

"Evangelion" became arguably the most influential anime of all time. Much as "Blade Runner" helped raise Western sci-fi movies beyond spectacle into thought-provoking art, it has joined Akira and the movies of Hayao Miyazaki and the late Satoshi Kon in elevating Japan’s animation beyond pulp.

While the Japanese medium went mainstream this year as "Demon Slayer" grossed more worldwide than "Superman" or "Mission: Impossible," it was "Evangelion" that made the world take the genre seriously.

It was selected as the nation’s favorite anime in a 2006 poll by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. The contemporary artist Takashi Murakami has called it an “unsurpassed milestone in the history of otaku culture,” using the word for Japanese geek subculture — though one that has become increasingly mainstream both at home and abroad.

It’s a surprising outcome for a series that deliberately broke every trope. "Evangelion" at first glance looks to be a show about teen pilots in giant mechs in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, complete with a young boy on a hero’s journey, fated to save the world — your standard juvenile sci-fi setup. But scratch beneath the surface and, dripping with Judeo-Christian religious symbolism, the show explores philosophy and the meaning of consciousness, the nature of individuality, gender and sexual identity, and the choice we face between the pain of loneliness and the risk of rejection and loss.

Eva, as it’s known to fans, ostensibly focuses on 14-year-old Shinji Ikari, selected by the shady organization NERV to pilot the titular mech and defend Tokyo-3 against mysterious monsters known as Angels. Shinji is a dislikable protagonist: whiny, petulant and cowardly. He’s a stand-in for the fears of creator Hideaki Anno, an artist who had worked on Miyazaki’s Nausicaa and who struggled with depression for years.

Partway through the show, as Anno’s mental health deteriorates further under the pressure, Eva takes one of television’s wildest handbrake turns to veer down some very dark places. Monster fights give way to scenes set in the characters’ own psyches — a bold decision also forced by budget cuts — as the protagonists endure struggle sessions with their own egos. A plot that seemed to be building toward a definitive final battle instead ends with a baffling, fourth-wall-breaking finale based entirely within Shinji’s subconscious. Fan uproar led to a 1997 movie that retells the ending but also complements it, and uses the same fan anger as part of its meta-commentary on the subculture that birthed it.

Eva was a cult success outside Japan, but at home it’s an institution. Many know "Godzilla" reflected the trauma of Japan’s atomic anxiety (1), but "Evangelion" mirrors more modern fears. The characters’ struggles to understand themselves shows the crisis of identity at a time when Japan was at a turning point. The 1980s bubble economy had burst and brought down the postwar social contract. Society itself seemed in danger of collapse in 1995, the same year the Kobe earthquake killed more than 6,000 and the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

Murakami again notes the similarities: “The search for a place in the world, which so torments Anno’s alter-ego Shinji, is the insurmountable challenge facing Japan. Our relief at finally putting the trauma of the war behind us was brief, for we immediately were confronted by our inability to devise an independent future. Japan is now enmeshed in the search for what it means to have a self.”

He was writing in 2005. But since then, "Eva" has been reborn — much like the country itself. In four movies released between 2007 and 2021, Anno returned with a project that started as a shot-for-shot remake before shunting into an alternate, more ambitious and commercially successful retelling (2).

In a 2012 interview, Anno said he wanted to take responsibility for having created otaku who became overly dependent on what should be merely entertainment. While it again took him years to complete, the "Rebuild of Evangelion" series gives yet another ending — one that a more stable Anno intends perhaps as a pointed criticism of overly online fans, while also offering more hope than the original open-ended conclusion.

It’s one of the franchise’s strangest quirks that it leans into otaku culture, slapped on everything from pachinko machines to McDonald’s burgers, while also serving as a meta-critique of it. With its giant robots and scantily clad girls, it both caters to the fan-service stereotypes of manga and anime and at the same time deconstructs them: the robots are terrifying, and the girls less titillating than traumatizing.

Anime, in Japan and abroad, has grown beyond otaku. That may make it harder to craft stories as incisive and popular as "Evangelion." But Anno’s masterpiece will continue to endure.

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(1) Anno would later direct the 2016 Shin Godzilla, itself a cutting satire of Japanese bureaucracy during the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

(2) For context, the last movie’s domestic box office comfortably tops the recent, critically acclaimed Godzilla Minus One, despite opening during the pandemic.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan and the Koreas. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia, and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief.

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