Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995; anime)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995; anime)
a.k.a Shinseiki Evangerion/New Century Evangelion
Director: Hideaki Anno
== Plot Synopsis ==
A teenage boy (Megumi Ogata/Spike Spencer/Casey Mongillo) finds himself recruited as a member of an elite team of pilots by his father (Fumihiko Tachiki/Tristan MacAvery/Ray Chase).
== Male Deaths ==
* Greg Ayres [Kaworu Nagisa] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub/Director's Cut]
* Clifford Chapin [Kaworu Nagisa] (English Dub) [2019 Netflix Dub]
* Greg Chun [Ryoji Kaji] (English Dub) [2019 Netflix Dub]
* Akira Ishida [Kaworu Nagisa] (Japanese Voice)
* Aaron Krohn [Ryoji Kaji] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
* Kyle Sturdivant [Kaworu Nagisa] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
* Kôichi Yamadera [Ryoji Kaji] (Japanese Voice)
== Female Deaths ==
* Yvonne Aguirre [Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
* Ryan Bartley [Rei Ayanami & Rei Clones] (English Dub) [2019 Netflix Dub]
* Laura Chapman [Naoko Akagi] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
* Mika Doi [Naoko Akagi] (Japanese Voice
* Megumi Hayashibara [Rei Ayanami, Yui Ikari & Rei Clones] (Japanese Voice)
* Maria Kawamura [Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu] (Japanese Voice)
*Allison Keith [Misato Katsuragi] [1997 ADV Dub]
*Carrie Keranen [Misato Katsuragi] (English Dub) [2019 Netflix Dub]
* Amanda Winn Lee [Rei Ayanami & Rei Clones] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
*Erica Lindbeck [Ritsuko Akagi] (English Dub) [2019 Netflix Dub]
*Kotono Mitsuishi [Misato Katsuragi] (Japanese Voice)
* Kim Sevier [Yui Ikari] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
*Sue Ulu [Ritsuko Akagi] (English Dub) [1997 ADV Dub]
== Trivia ==
# The series is heavy with religious symbols and motifs leading to a lot of speculation of the supposed symbolism. However Assistant Director Kazuya Tsurumaki claimed the religious symbols were chosen simply because they looked interesting while creator and director Hideaki Anno has never commented on this matter. Instead, when asked about the show, Anno has stated, "Evangelion is like a puzzle. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we're offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the 'all-about Eva' manuals, but there is no such thing. Don't expect to get answers by someone. Don't expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers."
# According to production sketches, the members of the SEELE Human Instrumentality Project Committee, most of whom are unnamed but distinguished from each other by the colors they are shaded in, represent five major countries of the world. Member A (green) is from the United States, Member B (yellow) hails from France, Member C (red) represents the United Kingdom, Member D (blue) is from Russia, and Keel Lorenz (full color) comes from Germany.
# The 2019 re-release on Netflix omits the ending theme, "Fly Me to the Moon" due to rights issues and replaces it with a piano theme from the series' original soundtrack. However, it's still present on the Japanese Netflix release. The replacement (among other changes) was widely criticized by western fans.
# The three MAGI Supercomputers, Melchior, Balthasar and Casper (Gaspar) are the names of the three wise men (also known as "magi") who, according to Christian legend, followed the guiding star to Bethlehem in order to give praise and gifts to the newborn Christ.
# The AT in AT-field stands for "absolute terror".
# In Gendo Ikari's office in NERV, the large symbol visible on the floor and ceiling are the Tree of Life of Qabbalistic tradition, which contains the Sephiroth, or ten spheres of life. Gendo has his desk positioned directly on top of/below the Sphere of Kether, which represents Infinite Light and Wisdom, Supreme Consciousness, and God.
# Wes Anderson is a fan of the series and of it he said, "This could spawn something like Scientology."
# For the version of "Fly Me To The Moon" used in the final episode, director Hideaki Anno reportedly asked singer Megumi Hayashibara (who also voices Rei Ayanami, Yui Ikari, and Pen-Pen in the show) to perform the song while imagining herself "strangling a little cat with a big smile on [her] face."
# In 1998 GAINAX Company was audited by the National Tax Agency for concealing revenue from various Evangelion properties. In their findings, it was discovered GAINAX had concealed 1.56 billion yen worth of income (thereby failing to pay 560 million yen due in corporate taxes) which it had earned between the release of Evangelion and July 1997. Eventually then GAINAX president Takeshi Sawamura and studio tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki were arrested on 13 July 1999 for tax fraud. 
# Tokyo-3 was based on the real-life town of Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
# Favourite anime series of the late Robin Williams (who star in One Hour Photo (2002) where he meet kid holding a Neon Genesis Evangelion toy.)
# SEELE is the German word for soul, GEHIRN means brain. It can be assumed that GEHIRN is named this way because it seems to consist mostly of scientists (mankinds rational side), while SEELE seems to consist of humans spiritual side. NERV is the German word for nerve, often used in a medical context. So together, SEELE, GEHIRN and NERV can be seen as making up a human.
# In episode 16 (Sickness, Unto Death, And.../Splitting of the Breast), Shinji and the EVA-01 are absorbed into a "Sea of Dirac". This comes from a theory by physicist Paul Dirac which states that the entire universe is filled with densely packed, negative energy electrons (in other words, anti-matter). This became known as a Dirac Sea, though later studies by other physicists gave way to the similar, but slightly more accurate Stückelberg-Feynman theory.
# NERV's motto of sorts, "God's in His heaven; all's right with the world," comes from a poem by Robert Browning called "The Year's at the Spring". The full text: "The year's at the spring,/ And day's at the morn;/ Morning's at seven;/ The hill-side's dew-pearled;/ The lark's on the wing;/ The snail's on the thorn; /God's in His Heaven-/ All's right with the world!"
# The popularity of Evangelion in Japan alone has made it one of the highest-grossing media franchises in the world. With profits of up to $16.6 billion, it's comparable to franchise like The Simpsons, James Bond, Power Rangers, and Sailor Moon.
# Many of the characters were named after various WWII-era Japanese naval vessels. Katsuragi, Akagi, and Soryu were all aircraft carriers; the Akagi led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ayanami and Fuyutsuki were destroyers; Fuyutsuki rescued survivors from the great Yamato when she was sunk near Okinawa in 1945. Kirishima and Hyuga were battleships that were part of the fleet which attacked Pearl Harbor. Ibuki and Aoba are names of heavy cruisers; the Ibuki existed only on paper, it was never built.
# In the original Japanese, the Angels are referred to as "shito", which can be translated as "disciple" or "apostle". The actual Japanese word is "tenshi". Occasionally, English text would be used in the series, and the Angels were referred to as angels in print. The reason "angel" was used was that this was Anno's preferred translation. On the same note, the Human Instrumentality Project is referred to as Jinrui Hokan Keikaku in the original Japanese which would translate to something like the Human Completion Project. Anno asked for the official translation to be Instrumentality as a homage to sci-fi author Cordwainer Smith.
# Hideaki Anno had considered making Shinji a female character, similar to the previous Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), however character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamototalked Anno out of it. He also suggested to model Shinji and Asuka's relationship on Nadia and Jean's from Nadia.
# The kanji used in Shinji and Gendou's last name (Ikari) means "Anger".
# In the episode "Asuka Strikes", where we first meet Asuka and Eva 02, four ships in the UN convoy are named after Shakespeare's plays: Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, Othello and Tempest.
# The version of Episode 16 ("Splitting of the Breast") that is contained on the Renewal (Japan) and Platinum (overseas) rereleases is not the original print. The older 16mm negative had somehow become lost from the development lab archives; therefore, a 35mm internegative was used for this recent edition. Color correction and digital remastering were also utilized to simulate the original. However, there is a noticeable discrepancy in color saturation and artifact cleanup compared to other episodes in this release.
# The story for "Evangelion" came from Yoshiyuki Tomino's series "Space Runaway Ideon". Anno has gone on record saying that Tomino-sensei and his stories (such as "Mobile Suit Gundam") were his biggest inspirations.
# Originally, Hideaki Anno tried to get Kunihiko Ikuhara to join the project, including bringing in some of the voice actress from Sailor Moon, which he had previously directed, to voice character in Evangelion. Ikuhara did not get on board, however. Ikuhara is widely rumored to be the basis for the character Kaworu Nagisa. Ikuhara himself has noted that the scene between Kaworu and Shinji in bathhouse has remarkable similarities with a real situation when he ran into Anno at a bathhouse.
# In the preview for the "TV version" of episode 22 (broadcast before the "director's cut" was produced), subliminal messages written in multicolored text on a white background are rapidly flashed on the screen. These were actually not used in the TV version and were relegated to the extended "mental attack" scenes added for the DC version. Interestingly, the preview for the DC version features subliminal text written in white over a black background, which appeared in both versions.
# The ending theme song is "Fly Me to the Moon". Approximately 56 different versions of the song were produced for the show. Some of these contain vocals, are karaoke versions, or are instrumentals. Others are short-length mixes or "TV-size" versions of previous recordings that were designed to be played at the end of the show, and a few versions of the song are not even called "Fly Me to the Moon" at all. To date, most of these recordings can be found in Original Soundtracks I, II, and III as well as the CDs "Addition," "Birthday of Rei Ayanami," "Refrain of Evangelion," "Death & Rebirth," and the 7-disc "S2 Works" collection. However, several of the TV-size versions that appear during the show's closing credits are not available on any official Evangelion CDs to date.
# Hideaki Anno had considered taking Evangelion to another studio at first given at the time Gainax was teetering on collapse. Anno stuck with Gainax for "old time's sake" as he puts it.
# The original ADV dub of the series is notorious for abruptly changing voice actors throughout its run. Toji was recast a total of three times in the dub, as his first voice actor, Joe Pisano, left to join the circus after episode 18, then Michael O'Connor briefly took over for episodes 19-20 before leaving to do theater work in the UK, with Brett Weaver eventually voicing Toji for the final episodes. In the case of the Director's Cut, when ADV re-recorded episodes 21-24 as well as the final two episodes of the series, a number of characters were recast, with John Swasey replacing Tristan MacAvery as Gendo, Monica Rial replacing Kendra Benham as Maya, Vic Mignogna replacing Jason C. Lee as Aoba, Mandy Clark replacing Amanda Winn Lee as Pen Pen, and Greg Ayres replacing Kyle Sturdivant as Kaworu.
# The re-translation of Evangelion for the 2019 Netflix release was met with scrutiny as a result of Studio Khara having more creative control of the translations, with a recently-deleted tweet from Carrie Keranen revealing that the studio had to personally approve the VSI dub cast to give the project the go-ahead. The translation received even further scrutiny when Amanda Winn Lee, the original ADV dub voice of Rei, revealed that Khara's script was derived from Gainax's original script for the series, a script that Matt Greenfield, the ADV dub's director, flat-out rejected in favor of the script that ADV itself used.
== Gallery ==
Kyoko's Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Yvonne Aguirre/Maria Kawamura
Rei's 1st Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Amanda Winn Lee/Ryan Bartley/Megumi Hayashibara (1st Death)
Ryoji's Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Aaron Krohn/Greg Chun/Kôichi Yamadera (last moments)
Rei's 2nd Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Amanda Winn Lee/Ryan Bartley/Megumi Hayashibara (2nd Death)
Kaworu's Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Kyle Sturdivant/Greg Ayres/Clifford Chapin/Akira Ishida
File:Ritsuko's Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Erica Lindbeck/Sue Ulu/Yuriko Yamaguchi
File:Misato's Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion).png|Allison Keith/Carrie Keranen/Kotono Mitsuishi
Category:1995 TV series debuts
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