If you don’t know me very well then you might be surprised to learn that I’m an avid anime buff.  And with anime gaining popularity in the U.S. (with people who wouldn’t normally watch it) I’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Must-See Anime Series for those of you looking to pop your anime cherry.  Now while there are alot more (and better) ones out there, I decided to stick with the more popular and completed ones that you can actually buy in this country without having to look that hard.

4. Neon Genesis Evangelion

 

 

 

 

What Wikipedia Says:

The story of Evangelion primarily begins in 2000 with the “Second Impact”, a global cataclysm which almost completely destroyed Antarctica and led to the deaths of half the human population of Earth. The Impact is believed by the public at large and even most of Nerv to have been the impact of a meteorite landing in Antarctica, causing devastating tsunamis and a change in the Earth’s axial tilt (leading to global climate change) and subsequent geopolitical unrest, nuclear war (such as the nuking of Tokyo), and general economic distress. Later, Second Impact is revealed to be the result of contact with and experimentation on the first of what are collectively dubbed the Angels: Adam. The experiments were sponsored by the mysterious organization Seele, and carried out by the research organization Gehirn.

In the year 2010, Gehirn had accomplished a number of its scientific and engineering goals and corporately changed into the paramilitary organization Nerv which is headquartered in Tokyo-3, a militarized civilian city located on one of the last dry sections of Japan; Nerv’s central mission is to locate the remaining Angels predicted by Seele, and to destroy them. However, Nerv has its own secret agenda, as directed by its Machiavellian commander Gendo Ikari: the Human Instrumentality Project, which, according to Gendo in episode 25, is the task of uniting all human minds into one global spiritual entity. Associated with Nerv is the Marduk Institute, which has the task of selecting the pilots for the Evas, the most capable being children conceived after the Second Impact (14 year olds). The institute consists of Commander Ikari, and Nerv’s chief scientist Ritsuko Akagi; supporting the two are 108 companies which are all revealed to be ghost companies.

As the first episode opens in the year 2015, Tokyo-3 is being attacked by the third Angel. Conventional weapons prove ineffective, largely due to its projected force field called an AT Field. Nerv takes command of the battles, and is able to intercept and defeat the Angels using the Evangelions (Evas), biomechanical mecha previously developed in secret by Gehirn inside the underground Geofront; the Geofront is located underground and underneath Tokyo-3.

Not knowing why his father summoned him, Shinji Ikari, a 14 year old boy who chronically suffers from anxiety, depression, lack of self confidence and loneliness, arrives to Tokyo-3 just as the Third Angel attacks the city. Shinji reluctantly agrees to join Nerv to pilot Evangelion Unit 01, and begins living with Captain (later Major) Misato Katsuragi. He and Rei Ayanami battle the successive advances of the Angels together and are later joined by Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of Unit 02.

Each Eva has its own designated pilot (Unit 00 – Rei, Unit 01–Shinji, Unit 02–Asuka, and subsequently Unit 03–Toji Suzuhara), and operates by synchronizing the pilot’s soul and the human soul inside the Eva via the enigmatic liquid substance known as LCL. (In the context of Evangelion, a “soul” refers to an individual’s conscious existence, mental structure and identity, rather than a more conventional “supernatural” entity.) Surrounded by LCL, the pilot’s nervous system, mind and body join with the Eva’s controls, allowing the Eva to be controlled by the pilot’s thoughts and actions. The higher a pilot’s synchronization ratio, the better the pilot can control the Eva and fight more adeptly. For example, Shinji had a hard time making his Eva walk with 41.83% synchronization, but with higher synchronization (up to 100%, and even 400% at one point) he could perform acrobatic feats of hand-to-hand combat. The drawback of LCL control is that the pilot experiences physical and mental pain proportionate to that experienced by the Eva; at a high enough synch ratio, injuries to the Eva may even be mimicked within the body of the pilot, potentially leading to severe injury and/or death. Almost all of the known pilots are hospitalized multiple times throughout the series as a result of injuries suffered through synchronization with an Eva.

While Ritsuko mentions at the series’ beginning that the Evas do have some biological components to them, the extent to which the Evas are biological is not immediately apparent. Unit 01 is connected to Yui Ikari, Gendo’s wife and Shinji’s mother, since it absorbed her body and soul in a failed experiment, as shown in episodes 16 and 20. Rei herself is suspected to be a partial clone of Yui, and is known to harbor the soul of Lilith, the second Angel.^[8]

It is finally revealed, towards the end of the series, that the Evas are not really “robots” but are actually cloned Angels (Units 00, 02, 03, and 04 are made from Adam, and 01 is made from Lilith) onto which mechanical components are incorporated as a means of restraint and control. This control is not perfect, as various units are shown over the course of the series driving into “berserker” mode, in which they can act of their own will, independent of any artificial power input.

Along with the battles against the Angels, the central characters struggle to overcome their personal issues and personality conflicts, which factor heavily into the events of the series and its eventual conclusion. Throughout the series, many of the main characters constantly have to cope with several social and emotional problems; characters are unwillingly forced to confront socially complex and challenging situations, unresolved sexual tensions grow between numerous characters, injuries, deaths, and defeats cause blows to their psyches, and previously steady relationships begin to falter.

Over the final months of 2015, the characters begin to learn of the true plan of NERV and Seele, the Human Instrumentality Project. Its purpose is to force the completion of human evolution, and thereby save it from destroying itself. To do so, they plan to break down the AT fields that separate individual humans, and in doing so, reducing all humans to LCL, which is revealed to be the “primordial soup,” the fundamental composite of human beings. All LCL would then be united into a supreme being, the next stage of humanity, ending all conflict, loneliness and pain brought about by individual existence. At the end of the series, Seele and Nerv come into direct conflict over the implementation of Instrumentality.

In the last two episodes (the second set in 2016), Gendo and Rei initiate the Human Instrumentality Project, forcing several characters (especially Shinji^[9]) to face their doubts and fears and examine their self-worth. This ending was made up of flashbacks, strange, sketchy artwork, and flashing text “over a montage of bleak visuals, that include black and white photos of desolate urban motifs such as a riderless bicycle or vacant park benches interspersed with graphic stills of the devastated Nerv headquarters in which Shinji’s colleagues are seen as bloodstained bodies”,^[10] and a brief interlude depicting an “alternate” Evangelion universe with the same characters but apparently in the highschool comedy genre (and not the apocalyptic mecha genre; this alternative universe was explored in greater depth in Girlfriend of Steel 2), eventually seems to depict Shinji concluding that life could be worth living and that he did not need to pilot an Eva to justify his existence; he is then surrounded by most of the cast, clapping and congratulating him. The introduction implies that this same process took place for everyone.

The ambiguous and unclear meaning of this ending left many fans confused and unsatisfied. The final two episodes were possibly the most controversial segments of a controversial series^[11] and were received as flawed and incomplete by many.^[12] However, Anno and deputy director Kazuya Tsurumaki defended the artistic integrity of the finale.^[13][14]

 

Why it made the list:

Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) is a one-of-a-kind anime series that comes along every 20 years and blows you away with a story-line so well thought out and detailed that you have to wonder if its real.  But its doesn’t just stop there, the characters are all as deep as the story-line they are intertwined in.  Genre-wise NGE would be a cross between a robot-mech type (where the focus is based on the giant walking robots that resemble transformers) and a drama.  NGE takes some of the main characters and shoves them inside the “EVA’s” which is what they call the big-ass robots.  Keeping the story fresh are the bad guys called Angels.  They don’t know exactly what they are but they do know that when they come around, buildings tend to fall down.  Now while I won’t give away the story, I will say that to keep everything straight, you might want to keep a notepad handy to take notes, cause it will get complicated.  In this series the characters actually have flaws and not the just normal ones.  Ones you should be locked up for. NGO, just like FMA, has its story finished in the form of two movies that shouldn’t be missed.

 

OCBENJI One Line Review:

“If somebody made an anime so good that he got death threats for leaving the series on a cliffhanger, you know its gotta be good.”