Neon Exodus Evangelion

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"But what the hell d'you need -me- for?" [DJ Croft] asked, running a hand over his thick black thatch of hair. "I mean, granted, I -am- the world's most handsome and sophisticated fourteen-year-old boy, but what good is that to NERV?"

Neon Exodus Evangelion is a Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfic by the good people at Eyrie Productions, Unlimited. It is an Alternate Continuity fic where Shinji, the Third Child, ran away after watching Eva-00's disastrous synchronization test, so they bring in the Fifth Child, the son of Lara Croft and Fox Mulder, Derek Joshua "DJ" Croft.

It is often the target of mockery for its Mega Crossover nature and for DJ Croft being a Marty Stu; however, it Grows The Beard later, oddly becoming better the more it diverges from the original source. However, it is very different in tone -- and content -- from canon Evangelion.

While not a Script Fic, NXE is structured to simulate the episodic format of a TV series; it is broken down into three "seasons" of nine "episodes" each: The Gathering Storm, Balance of Terror, and Revelations in Real Time. The third season ends on a cliffhanging Crowning Sequence of Awesome, which left the story unresolved for several years until EPU released a final installment called Neon Exodus Evangelion The Motion Picture: Apotheosis Now. This novel-length story caps the entire series with a suitably epic-level conclusion that fulfills all the potential exhibited by the previous 27 chapters. Starting in the third season it also includes the infamous Bonus Theater segments, which showcase short humorous pieces, bizarre Spin-Off ideas and lighter, often Fourth Wall-breaking, views "behind the scenes" of the production.

And in February 2016, EPU unexpectedly released the first installment of NXE‍'‍s sequel Exodus 5: This Is (not) The End.

As a Mega Crossover series, NXE contains elements from or references to -- at the minimum -- the following works:
Tropes used in Neon Exodus Evangelion include:
  • Action Mom: Lara Croft
  • Adaptation Distillation
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: SHODAN, Durandal
  • All There in the Manual: The Terminals, basically blog posts about the progress of Apotheosis Now, contain plot points that might be missed by just reading the fic itself. Also, a number of revelations are made on the Eyrie forum.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: SEELE's invasion forces NERV to move from Worcester-3 to Halifax.
  • Animated Actors: Several of the "Bonus Theatre" segments purport to show the reader what goes on "backstage" at the EPU studios; plus there's at least one "interview" with a "performer".
  • And I Must Scream: Gendo was fully aware of all the dickish things his demon handlers made him do while he was under their control.
  • Arc Words: "I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh." Later expands into an I Have Many Names Badass Boast.
  • Area 51: Given a throwaway mention as an X-COM base they are forced to abandon
  • Arm Cannon: on the upgraded Jet Alone
  • Artificial Human: Jon Ellison; Rei Ayanami is thought to be one but is really something quite different; their clones.
  • Ascended Demon: Lucifer and Moloch trying to Redeem and return to Heaven is what sets everything in motion; and at the end of Apotheosis Now, Lucifer finally accomplishes it.
  • Ascended Fanboy: Ken, who does not pilot an Evangelion, but instead pilots Jet Alone.
  • Author Appeal: Large amounts of it.
  • Author Avatar: Inverted with John Trussell, whose avatar shows up in the series before he became a co-author.
    • Despite accusations that DJ Croft and Jon Ellison are "disguised avatars", Word of God says no. But that never stopped anyone. According to An Encounter at Shamrock House, in the earliest plans for DJ he was Gryphon's son.
  • Badass Boast: DJ's speech in his last moments on screen in the last episode of season three.
  • Batman Gambit: Lucifer/Unit 01 absorbs DJ after the final battle in the series, then stays passive afterward so he can be piloted by one of Natlateth's cloned pilots. Asuka almost screws this up by breaking into the SEELE-controlled Geofront and starting Lucifer up to try and talk to DJ, but manages to avoid it by taking over his body directly and piloting him like a production-model Eva. The culmination of the plan is DJ taking over in the middle of the final combat, so Natlateth stabs Lucifer with the Lance of Longinus. Since DJ is Longinus, and Lucifer became Unit 01 after sustaining wounds by the same Lance while trying to redeem himself, the outcome is that the Redemption is finished. If Natlateth hadn't thought Lucifer was truly dead and had left him at the Geofront, the plan would have failed.
  • Big Freaking Gun: The Positron Cannon; Zashchitnik's antimatter beams; and on a more personal scale, the Blaster Launcher from X-COM
  • Book Dumb: DJ is not very good at algebra or computer programming.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Jon Ellison
  • Butt Monkey: Poor Jon Ellison.
  • Chandler's Law: Invoked in 3:4, and mentioned by name in Gryphon's annotations for that chapter.
  • Character Development: Croft getting a dose of this around the Leliel fight boots him out of Marty Stu status and kicks off the series growing its beard.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: The Positron Cannon gets used again in The Motion Picture.
  • Claustrophobia: DJ is afflicted with this. It proves debilitating when he's trapped in the elevator with Misato, and downright crippling when he's stuck in the Dirac Sea.
  • Cloning Blues
  • Confessional: DJ does this, kind of, at an Episcopalian church. He isn't seeking penitence so much as religious reassurance that he's not trying to thwart the divine plan; the priest reassures him, saying, "...if [God] wished to destroy us with the Second Impact, He would have done it right the first time."
  • Council of Angels: Straight from In Nomine.
  • Cower Power: San hides behind Shinji when God manifests through Yves at the end of Apotheosis Now. It doesn't work.
  • Defector From Decadence: San Ayanami
  • Deus Ex Nukina
  • Dissonant Serenity: "Shinji. You were actually listening. I'm... I'm proud of you."
  • Doing In the Wizard: Followed by Doing In the Scientist, regarding the origins of the Angels, and later the X-Com aliens.
  • Domed Hometown: San Francisco is described as having a dome over it.
  • Doomed Hometown: Worcester-3
  • Driven to Suicide: Ritsuko, though DJ manages to stop her.
  • Electronic Speech Impediment: SHODAN and Tycho both during their final confrontation at the end of Apotheosis Now.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: Subverted; believed to be the goal of the Angels, but is actually the goal of NERV/SEELE.
  • Falling Into the Cockpit: Derek Bacon dumps Ken Alda into the remote control system for Jet Alone when it turns out the pilot assigned to the job is actually a SEELE mole.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Asuka pulls this off in the finale.

The pattern was simple: She ran, and they died.

Then he took a deep breath, reached down, flipped the comm set to the NERV tactical band, and said the sort of thing he had wanted to say since he was five years old:
"Super Techno Soldier Jet Alone: TAKE OFF!"

  • I Have Many Names: "I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold."
  • I Know Mortal Kombat: Ken Alda
  • Kill Sat: Sahaquiel, and later, Babylon-2.
  • The Legions of Hell: They make their appearance at the end of the Motion Picture.
  • Lock and Load: Before raiding a SEELE installation, DJ tosses Shinji a pistol and is a little surprised to see Shinji do the full badass guncheck routine.
  • Married Mai Waifu For Real: If you insist that DJ is a "disguised" SI despite EPU's claims to the contrary. The end of Apotheosis Now has DJ proposing to Asuka, and the fragmentary "sequel" material that's appeared in the years since make it clear that they've been married for at least a couple decades afterward.
  • Mega Crossover
  • The Men in Black: Both X-COM and SEELE have them
  • Meta Fic: Some of the Bonus Theatre segments
  • Mindlink Mates: Rei and Jon have this.
  • Missing Mom: Subverted: Lara Croft was only trapped off-screen for the first few episodes.
  • The Mole: Agent Wasdin and Tycho; on the other side, Derek Bacon.
  • Mythology Gag
    • The Men in Black agent Jim Edwards wields "a deceptively tiny concussion blaster", which is a reference to the Noisy Cricket from Men in Black.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Why the Angels are really attacking Worcester-3 -- to rescue the comatose Lucifer from the (unwitting) agents of Hell and complete his Redemption.
  • Not Quite Dead: Lucifer. And Yui Ikari.
  • Nuclear Option: A nuclear cruise missile is used to destroy the demoness Natlateth. Notably, it needs special command codes from Mission Control in order to launch.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted. According to Word of God, N2 mines are "next-generation nuclear" weapons, not "non-nuclear" ones. Also, Zashchitnik carries a nuclear cruise missile.
  • Omake: Bonus Theatre segments. All Those Stars. Plus, arguably, the NXE "apologia", An Encounter at Shamrock House
  • Our Angels Are Different: The Angels NERV fights are fairly standard for NGE; however, later ones are more like angels from In Nomine.
  • Over Nine Thousand: Averted; the highest synch ratio is 100%.
  • Parody Sue: Claimed for DJ
  • Phobia: DJ Croft is claustrophobic, This comes back to bite him in his battle against Leliel.
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Gendo Ikari gets one of these while trying to shake off alien mind control.
  • Real Person Fic: Jeff "YaK" Minter plays an unexpectedly large role. Also, the late Derek Bacon, a college friend of the authors, appears in the last episode of season three and plays a large role in Apotheosis Now.
  • Recap Episode: Episode 3:0, The Big Show. The narration by the Sports Center hosts turns this into a Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • Reentry Scare: In episode 2-5 "Skyfall", Asuka and Jon are dispatched into orbit in their Evangelions to battle an Angel. In the process, Jon's re-entry gear is damaged. Asuka resorts to cutting his entry plug free and carrying it back in her EVA's hand and curled around it as she re-enters the atmosphere tucked behind an Evangelion-sized heat shield. No one's certain Jon has survived the process until they land.
  • Reincarnation: DJ turns out to be the reincarnation of Longinus.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Mentioned in 1:9 that Great Britain decided to go this route after Second Impact, after the example of "poor old Elizabeth". (Even Ireland signed on to the idea, God alone knows why!)
    • Nothing like half the human race dying to make one reasses one's living arrangments. Besides maybe they figured that this time around the British would be nice(r) about things or at the very least, that that was a risk worth taking when the alternative is anarchy and starvation.
  • Running Gag: The EPU "Taco Night" gag makes a mandatory appearance; also, a repeated riff on NGE's "unfamiliar ceiling" line.
  • Satan Is Good: Lucifer's and Moloch's attempt to repent is what starts everything off.
  • Sequel Series: Neon Generation: Exodus 2035, a teaser for which was posted in the EPU forums in late 2005. Gryphon didn't promise it would be soon, but did promise it would appear someday.
  • Series Continuity Error: Although early in the third "season" Misato was completely briefed on what's actually going on, complete with demons running NERV and Rei being a genuine angel right out of Heaven, she seems to have forgotten this entirely in a later episode where Rei and Moloch go to town on a SEELE base and reacts with disbelef when she is told again. Acknowledged by Word of God.
  • Shown Their Work: In the space episode, the Apollo 13 book is referenced. Space Does Not Work That Way is thus massively averted.
  • Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter!

Asuka: Do You hear me, God, in Your ivory tower? Do my words offend You? Well, TOO BAD! I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! I'm already IN Hell - SO WHAT CAN YOU DO TO ME?! YOU made this world of conflict and suffering and hate! YOU let this happen to Your children who Your Scriptures claim You love so much! You must be DEAD! Or CRUEL! Or You just DON'T CARE! Either way I - DON'T - FUCKING - NEED YOU!

  • So Proud of You: Ichi, to Shinji, when he shoots her: "Shinji. You were actually listening. I'm... I'm proud of you."
  • Spin-Off: According to An Encounter at Shamrock House, NXE was initially intended as the future of EPU's Warrior's Legacy setting, but that idea was discarded during the first week of planning as the series took off on its own.
  • Spy Satellites: In the final chapter, all the spy satellites are controlled by X-COM, since they sent up Raiden interceptors to destroy any satellites SEELE had. They're pretty much only used for searching for the villains' base.
  • Taking You with Me: Natlateth tries this twice. And fails epically both times.
  • Theme Naming: Rei's clones are named in numerical order: Ichi, Ni, San... ("rei"="zero", "ichi"="one" and so on); NERV Security personnel are often named for Red Sox pitchers; similarly, SEELE security personnel are named after ice hockey players.
  • They Might Be Giants: In addition to Gryphon and Truss's out-of-story observation that Shigeru and Aoba look like the guys in the band, there is a moment in 2:2 when Rei quotes a line from "Birdhouse in Your Soul".
  • Tropical Epilogue: In an explicit echo and inversion of the final scene of End of Evangelion, Apotheosis Now ends with DJ and Asuka in chaises longues on a tropical beach, Umbrella Drinks in hand, as Asuka assures DJ that she feels great.
  • Tuckerization: The angel Rachael, who is a major figure in Apotheosis Now, was named for (and modeled a little on) NXE fan Rachael Mayo, who passed away after the last "episode" of the original story was released.
  • The Undead: The first two EVAs are the corpses of Moloch and Lucifer. Except it turns out Lucifer is Not Quite Dead...
  • Villainous Breakdown and Villain Decay: These go hand-in-hand for Natlateth at the end of the motion picture.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: SEELE has this for about half the civilized world.
  • You Shall Not Pass: DJ does this at the end of the regular series.
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