Sure, I get that (the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, have no semblance to the real-life DSS), but the overall themes are right on the mark for the legendary stories.
#Neon genesis evangelion watch series
Essentially, Evangelion is the story of Lilith's offspring fighting (and prevailing over) the angels God sends to kill them for their mother's rebellion, an ironic twist on the doctrine of Original Sin.Īs another pointed out, the series contains a lot of ideas thrown into a blender. I hesitate to say they are living because, according the the lore, golems cannot be alive, as only the Lord gives life. The EVAs, it is revealed share DNA similar to people (or, rather, the lilin), if we were to seek an analogue in the lore, the EVAs are golems, dust of the ground (the stuff of Adam) raised into an animated being. In Evangelion, the humans are identified as lilin-which would explain the attacks of the angels. The legends continue that God sent three angels to bid Lilith return to Adam were she to refuse, one hundred of her offspring would die each day. The lore tells how Lilith, Adam's first wife, who left her husband and consorted with demon Samael, begetting a myriad of demonic offspring, the lilin. Have you heard the legends surrounding the interspecies drama of the Nephilim? That's along the lines of Evangelion's setting, except it is a similar legend of Lilith. The key phrase here is man's effort, as this is what Evangelion is on the micro level. On the philosophical level, the story is a meditation on Genesis 2:18: "It is not good that the man should be alone " and so the Human Instrumentality Project-man's effort to finish God's statement: "I will make him a helper fit for him," which is ultimately fulfilled at the very end of End of Evangelion. The material, while drawing on Christian imagery, owes most of its themes to Jewish mythology and lore. The end result is that while individual characters have become popular over the years (such that there's a never-ending stream of licensed merchandise, including material that depicts certain female characters in questionable ways), the series itself has been seriously polarizing and is treated as more of a "this was a pivotal series, so you owe it to yourself to watch it once to see what the hype was all about" event rather than anything serious. The religious material is a mix of Christian theology and the theologies from various East Asian belief systems, but they've all been thrown into a blender and poured over everything to the point that it's functionally incoherent. His goal was to deconstruct a number of cliches that at the time were common in "giant robot" series, but in his diminished mental state he veered too close to depicting the cliches in a more straightforward fashion, leading people to misconstrue what he was trying to get at rather, it was believed that he was trying to produce a more traditional series that pushed the boundaries of what was allowable on broadcast television at the time. The long and short of Evangelion is that the director came up with it after seeking medical treatment for depression and exhaustion.