"Neon Genesis Evangelion"
Story

(The Story does contain Spoilers!)

(Music - Soul Refrain)

Page 1 of 3

In 1999, humanity found some sort of entity in Antarctica. The facts were covered up, but the entity may have been the First Angel, or Adam, or God Itself  (if in fact these are not all one and the same). It was probably the entity called Adam, supposedly the first human being and possibly the First Angel as well. A scientific research team, including Gendou Ikari and the scientist father of Misato Katsuragi, sought to use science to understand the entity and reproduce its power on behalf of the human race. Misato was present as a young child. The "Second Impact," a tremendous explosion, resulted from their research. (The "First Impact" had occurred in the distant past, and was probably the explosion which killed off the dinosaurs and paved the way for the ascendancy of homo sapiens.) The most likely cause for the explosion is that an Angel showed up and came into contact with the first entity, turning Antarctica into a hellish ocean of poison and killing over half the human race. Gendou had left for Japan the day before the Impact, carrying much of the data they had so far collected; Misato's father saved her by placing her in a protective floating escape pod.

In the aftermath of the Second Impact, an ultra-secret committee called Seele (a word meaning "Throne of the Soul") arranged for the creation of NERV, a United Nations agency dedicated to the Human Completion Project, to push the human race into the next stage of its evolution, possibly the attainment of Godhood itself. The true facts of the Impact were hidden from the survivors of humanity, who were told that the Second Impact had resulted from the collision of a comet.

NERV was headquartered in the GeoFront, a perfectly spherical cyst-like cavern discovered in the Earth under Japan. Over the GeoFront was constructed the fortress city of Tokyo-3; the skyscrapers of this city were designed to retract into the ground, becoming suspended from the roof of the GeoFront, making them all but invulnerable to attack from above. NERV's headquarters was called the Central Dogma, located at the bottom of the GeoFront's sphere.

Gendou Ikari  was made Commander of NERV. Seele was apparently guided in its actions by predictions/prophecies that had been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls but had been suppressed from public knowledge. The Scrolls predicted the advent of  "17" Angels that humanity would have to defeat in order to achieve Human Completion.

Gendou's wife, Yui Ikari, was a brilliant geneticist who gave birth to a son, Shinji Ikari, less than a year after the Second Impact. Yui was instrumental in the creation of the "Evangelions" and was in fact an early if not the first test pilot of them. Evangelions are huge artificial biological organisms engineered from tissue collected from an entity named "Adam." They apparently have some form of rudimentary mind but no soul or willpower of their own. These elements are provided by human pilots, who are inserted in mechanical "entry plugs" into the beasts. An Evangelion with a human pilot synchronized within can generate an AT Field, making it nigh-invulnerable. The Evangelions are clad in metal "armor" which looks protective but is really intended more as a method of restraining and controlling the creatures. An Evangelion requires a constant feed of electrical power to move; its internal batteries die out within five minutes of unaided use, immobilizing the creatures.

Yui Ikari  was "erased from the world" as a result of her experiments. There is an extremely strong implication that, while attempting to synchronize with an Evangelion, she lost her "ego boundaries" and her body liquefied into an undefined, primordial organic soup (this same fate happens to her son Shinji in one episode, but his soul manages to resist the call of merging with his Evangelion and redefine himself as a human, apparently largely due to his personal connection with Misato.) Shinji, aged 4, was present at his mother's "erasure" but later suppressed the memory. There is an unconfirmed implication that Shinji may have somehow been instrumental in the accident, leading to Gendou's estrangement from him.

After Yui's death, Gendou, an unlikable sort, withdrew and became almost inhumanly cold and aloof, though still brilliant. He abandoned his son to a private tutor and ignored him for the next ten years. Gendou became "romantically" involved with Nakoko Akagi, mother of  Ritsuko Akagi. Naoko was the leading computer engineer with NERV; it seems Gendou was dispassionately interested in meaningless sex while the elder Dr. Akagi was hopelessly in love with him. Naoko introduced Ritsuko, then a college student, to Misato, who was of similar age.

Misato, who had been aphasic (withdrawn) for two years following the Impact, had become an extroverted motor mouth thereafter, almost as if to make up for the lost time (as Ritsuko's mother observed). Misato took up with a young man named Kaji Ryoji, with whom she cut a whole week of college classes to do nothing but make love. Ritsuko, by contrast, was quiet and shy, and avoided contact with boys. It is likely Ritsuko had a crush on Gendou and was jealous of her mother. Misato, Kaji and Ritsuko all become good friends and all later joined NERV in various capacities.

Continued on next page!

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