-For the Uncensored!
(Many will remember the theme song from the original 1997 anime, and it still is one of the best anime theme songs, but it’s not Sumusu Hirasawa, by any means)
In the thriving market of Godzilla, King Kong, Japan has always made a staple of keeping big monsters alive throughout To-Ho Studios lifetime. In the canvas of monsters, Dracula and King Kong are literary in their origins. Godzilla is instinctually propelled films into a thriving Kaiju film world spanning from the 40’s Godzilla, a narrative concerning man’s ability to play god, and then creating monsters in turn, or Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013), which creates Kaiju fighting monsters in response to alien invasions. It has always been a thriving market, essentially.
(the beginning fight in the first episode reveals Shinji’s reluctance but also how this shouldn’t be happening to a 14 year old, at all)
But an anime and manga, as I am 36 years old, manages to grip me, as I had never seen it before in my youth. Berserk has always been the gateway to manga and anime. Blade of the Immortal, Lone Wolf and Cub, Ghost in the Shell, Akira (manga, not the anime), Attack on Titan, and Alita: Battle Angel, GYO: The death scent, are the most influential for me. What Neon Genesis manages to do is capitalize on the kaiju monster fighting world, but offer a realistic interpretation, while propelling us toward a sci-fi “us or them” outlook.
Children are the only ones who are allowed to fly the Eva’s, the machines who are defending earth from the Angels, huge monsters with no real voice to personify their anger. Laying waste at everyone in their path, towering 40 to 200 Meters high, give or take, according to the Evangelion fandom site[1]. Now concerning why 14-year-olds must pilot a 96 thousand ton EVA, or mechanized gundam pilot robot, is stated in a science fiction and fantasy website, from a user, Lulalala, stated with her findings, on October 26th, 2013, “From the Evangelion Proposal page 11, it mentioned that: When choosing the pilot, the A10 nerve synchronization rate and the adaptivity to impact is the most important. It is found by Marduk Institute that, 14 years old mother-less teenager can establish the purest and stablest connection with EVA.”[2]
So, with pure little 14 year olds piloting the Eva’s, fighting the EVA’s what could go wrong?