Neon Genesis Evangelion/Trivia

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• Anime First: An odd example. The Manga ran for almost a year before the series began, but it was made specifically for promoting the anime.
• Cash Cow Franchise: Let's face it, the volume and variety of merchandise that's been created for Evangelion is up there with Kiss.
• Creator Breakdown: So much of it, it actually originated from Creator Breakdown. Some parts of the manga suggest Sadamoto isn't too happy or wholesome either, though not as "broken" as Anno.
• Defictionalization: Operation Yashima, the plan to reroute all of Japan's electricity into a single sniper rifle to take down an Angel, was the name given to a Twitter campaign to support Tokyo Electric's plan to conserve electricity after the 2011 disasters.
• Development Hell: It's largely forgotten by now, but The End of Evangelion was in this for a brief period, which is why so many Japanese viewers who went to see Death and Rebirth were pissed off at the sudden cut-off of an ending. There's also the live-action movie (a co-production between GAINAX, ADV and WETA), which has allegedly been "in pre-production" since 2003. Rebuild of Evangelion also counts; 2.0 was delayed a full year after its original release date, and 3.0's is around three years after 2.0's. Keep in mind that the tetralogy was supposed to be finished by now.
• Enforced Method Acting: Yuko Miyamura allowed herself to be strangled by Megumi Ogata in the recording room during Shinji's vision of strangling Asuka in End of Evangelion.
• Executive Meddling:
  • One of many theories regarding how the final episodes came to be as notoriously bizarre as they are is that the original scripts for the last two episodes were rejected by the network due to their graphic content; thus the current ending was made due to last-minute budget cuts and/or as a way of giving the network the finger, and the rejected scripts eventually became The End of Evangelion.
  • Also, Anno's original intent was to use a piece of the Polovtsian Dances for the opening theme. The studio, concerned that viewers would be confused by such an opening, requested that it be replaced with a catchy J-pop number, and thus "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" was born.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Tang" for LCL.
  • Mind Rape (The Trope Namer).
  • GNR, or Giant Naked Rei, for the so-large-as-to-be-very-easily-visible-from-space glowing white naked Rei that Lilith transforms into.
  • "Puppy-kun" for Shinji, at least for Eva fans who like him.
  • EMK, or Evil Manga Kaworu, for the Kaworu who kills a kitten in the manga -- hence the meme "every time you masturbate, Kaworu kills a kitten."
  • "Yui-sama" for Unit 01.
  • "Uberpimp" for Gendo. Super Gendo, Super Adam Gendo and others for his insane AT Field-generating incarnation in the manga.
  • "Harpies" for Evangelion units 05-13 because they look like grotesque cyber-vultures.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Misato is Sailor Moon. Now you can never unhear it. And Shinji is Sailor Uranus. And Kurama. Motomu Kiyokawa, Fuyutsuki's dubber, also dubbed Gargoyle. As for Megumi Hayashibara...well, she's Megumi Hayashibara. Alternately, most of the show's English cast were relative unknowns at the time, but have provoked this response for every subsequent dub they've been in.
• Lying Creator: The amplitude of self-contradictory and at times seemingly absurd statements about the series from Hideaki Anno has led many to accuse him of this.
• The Other Marty/The Other Darrin: While the Japanese cast has remained remarkably consistent over the years, the English dub is notorious for being recast with every subsequent iteration of the series (four so far, for those keeping track). Most characters have had between two and four different voice actors, with poor Toji having at least six. The only characters who have retained the same voice between every version so far are Shinji, Misato and Asuka.
• Rule 34 Creator Reactions:
  • The opening to EOE has been seen as Anno's response to a portion of his fanbase fetishizing over the characters...which is weird, given the amount of ecchi merchandise that came from the series.
  • There's also the manga. We have several Does This Remind You of Anything? moments, Kaworu killing a kitten, Shinji saying emphatically "Guys don't like guys!", Shinji and Kaworu's relationship downgraded to an unrequited Stupid Sexy Flanders, Kaworu calling Rei a fool and saying "I figured you'd be a heftier girl.", Shinji and Kaworu in the ladies' room with Asuka...Yeah.
• Schedule Slip: The manga, and how. The first chapter was released months before the anime started, but the English translation of volume 12 has only just now (as in February 2011) been released. Nearly sixteen years is a long time for twelve volumes of material, and while new chapters are slowly surfacing, there's no telling how long it will take for the entire thing to wrap up, since Sadamoto has been working on the Rebuild movies.
• Short Lived Big Impact: Evangelion was one of the most influential anime shows of the Giant Mecha Genre, but only lasted one season and 26 episodes.
• Shrug of God: After fans were upset with the ambiguity of the series, Hideaki Anno basically declared that it was up to viewers to determine their own meaning and reprimanded them for expecting all the answers on a silver platter. Over the years he has offered, at best, several vague and contradictory statements as to the meaning(s) and intentions of the series.
• What Could Have Been: The proposal provides various examples.
• Word of God: Anno has issued a few surprising or controversial statements about Evangelion, for example his quip that it shouldn't be analyzed because it was just "a scream" on his part.

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• Many of the characters were named after various WWII-era naval vessels, most often aircraft carriers. 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, Maya and Aoba are names of heavy cruisers; the Ibuki existed only on paper, it was never built. The Hyuga is another warship. Langley is also the name of two American aircraft carriers, and the Graf Zeppelin is the name of an uncompleted Nazi-German aircraft carrier.
  • Similarly, Ikari means "anchor."
  • Katsuragi was also one of Japan's very last operational aircraft carriers, surviving mostly through delayed construction. All the other ships lending their names to characters, including the first Langley were either sunk in battle or never completed.
  • At an almost esoteric level, the Akagi was also the name of a Russo-Japanese War-era Maya-class gunboat. How quaint.
• The Ayanami bears mentioning that not only is it the name of a destroyer; it means "wave pattern" as in "frequency." Similarly, Shikinami (from Rebuild) literally means "wave equation," as in "wavelength." If we combine these two together, we get the equation for the speed of light. This allows for Fridge Brilliance: Both Rei and Asuka were designed to be two parts of the same whole.
  • Even more Fridge Brilliance when you realize that Shikinami was only mentioned in Rebuild. Remember that the Ayanami is a Destroyer-class battleship. Exactly what happened during the original series?
• Looks like everyone has an interesting Meaningful Name. Makinami, the Meganekko in Rebuild, has two variants:
  • When the kanji for nami (波) is placed behind maki (真希), this will literally mean "wave winding", which can reference "momentum" and/or "velocity". In turn, this relates over to the speed of light mentioned earlier, in which light is found to have both mass and velocity in the form of an electron/photon. For comparison to this "speed of light", her personality (as it is on the Characters page) is most often described as a hard-hitter who normally presses Berserk Buttons on the battlefield.
  • The second variant is when the kanji for unusual(!) (which is 希) is removed from the above. This new term (波真, which is now nami shin) now has an entirely new meaning: True Wave. This would be best represented by how, near the ending of Rebuild 2.0, Makinami unleashes an entirely new form of the EVA. She explains this as a pilot "rids itself of its humanity", and she uses code word to unlock this new form: The Beast. Note that the Angels are, as per NERV's research, supposed to bear a 99.89 percent similarity to humanity. That research, along with the above information, makes this "Beast" form not a coincidence.
• On another note, the interconnecting theme to the pilots here is how they have some usage of the equation for momentum of light used in Chemistry(!) and other sciences. Applying Fridge Logic based on the above given information, we have (in SI Units): Makinami (representing momentum, in kg*m/s) = Ayanami (representing frequency, in "1/s") x Shikinami (representing wavelength, in "m") x Shinji (representing mass, in "kg"; remember his name literally means anchor).

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• The Evangelions were based visually on Go Nagai creations Devilman and Mazinger Z. Anno cites the terrifying face, slender build, hunched back and chest plate as coming from Devilman, while its glowing eyes with the red markings were derived from Mazinger Z. The first shot of Evangelion, with its large head, was a direct homage to the first episode of Mazinger Z.
• The opening shot of The End of Evangelion is a mirror image of the closing shot of Evangelion: Death. The opening shot of Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 is a reflection of the closing shot of The End of Evangelion, with a few... scenery details removed.
• The US voice actors for the three main Children all married the original voice actors for the Bridge Bunnies: Amanda Winn-Lee (Rei) is married to Jason C. Lee (Aoba); Spike Spencer (Shinji) was formerly married to Kendra Benham (Ibuki); and Tiffany Grant (Asuka) is married to Matt Greenfield (Hyuga).

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• Frame by frame on Episode 22, during the Mind Rape sequence, we get some...creepy analysis of what the Angel is doing. In order (apply Does This Remind You of Anything? throughout):
  • Gnoll is a cross between a gnome and a troll. "Groll" (German for "resentment") is also accurate.
  • Menarche is female puberty.
  • Schema is an pattern of thought-behaviors. In other words, automation of the human mind.
  • The kanji for "Baka!".
  • A series of German lines that, when combined, mention that Asuka was actually saddened when her mother died.
  • And then repeated use of Nein (No) and Tod (Death).