1.11 on toonami thats how my adventure began i thought it was a movie series so looked up 2.22 next got to say i was crying at how awesome it was next thing i know im a regular eva fan

Nightwing wrote:1.11 on toonami

Fuck yes for Toonami.

CJD wrote:Fuck yes for Toonami.

I agree

I first got into Evangelion because I bought a VHS tape of it at a local hobby shop. It was one is the later volumes so I didn't understand it as much. A while past and I found some of the earlier dvd's on amazon and I fell in love with the series been a fan ever since. Since then I bought the whole tv series and 1.11 & 2.22. still trying to find End of Eva for a good price!

My first exposure to EVA was an ad on the back cover of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book, featuring this picture of Asuka:

A couple of years later I was in the library and spotted an Evangelion VHS tape; probably vaguely remembering the above image and thinking "Hmm, an anime with cute girls and giant, awesome robots. Why not?" It ended up being just episodes 11 and 12 (Matariel and Sahaquiel battles), which is very nearly the gentlest, least angsty introduction to the series I can imagine.

Gemini011 wrote:My first exposure to EVA was an ad on the back cover of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book

Hey Kids! If you like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.....you might also like Neon Genesis Evangelion

My first meeting with NGE was back in 1999. I walked into my favourite book store in town and BÄM, there it was, sitting on the shelve. The first issue of the Manga. I never heard about NGE before, but the cover art was so amazing I HAD to take a closer look. And i was in complete awe of what i saw. The level of detail blowed my prepubertal mind into Oblivion. Since i suffered from depression i could totaly relate to Shinji as a charakter. It was love at first sight.

Gemini011 wrote:...A couple of years later I was in the library and spotted an Evangelion VHS tape; probably vaguely remembering the above image and thinking "Hmm, an anime with cute girls and giant, awesome robots. Why not?"

This is the part where Dr. Weird enters and screams "Yes! It be-GINS! BWA HA HA HA HA!"

I first time I saw Neon Genesis was back in 1999. I was ten years old. My oldest brother's friend had the VHSes which had two episodes each on them.

The EoE English dub didn't exist yet. (I didn't even know the movie existed until a year after when that same friend had a copy of the soundtrack). My first impressions of EoE came from the images depicted in the booklet that came with the CD. I only had those tiny little pictures to interpret what I thought might be happening.

This was pretty much the first anime I ever saw and it set the bar pretty high for my standards. I saw most of the episodes as our mutual friend got his hands on the tapes. In between waiting I was treated to Ninja scroll, Key: The Metal Idol, Tekken: The Movie, Final Fantasy: Crystal Legend, and Macross II.

My original viewing was a bit jarring. I saw the first couple of tapes rather quickly and only once (episodes 1-8) and then I saw Magma diver and the previous episodes many times (episides 9 and 10).

The rest of them went by pretty quickly and I only saw them once or twice. My mom, who is quite religious said she had a problem with the fact that they refer to the alien monsters as "Angels" but she didn't make too big of a deal of it assuming it was just something in Japanese culture..

I should make it a point that she (my mom) wasn't always present when we watched Eva, only sometimes.

Then the Jet Alone episode came along and my mom happened to be present when Misato says "Acts of man are greater than acts of God".

Boy was she mad! We didn't watch it for a while, but it crept back in and "all was right with the world" for a while. One VHS cover had Lilith on the cross with Kaji in the foreground, to hide it from my mom, (in a moment of desperation to keep her from seeing it) I sat on it. Our friend was mad that the box was ruined. But not too mad to keep us from borrowing episodes.

I remember I would go to school and I would start feening for it, even just hearing the theme song (or recreating it's tune) was enough to give me that kind of mental high that I got from watching the show.

The anime store where our friend bought is VHSes was sold out of the tape with episodes 17 and 18, so we missed out on Toji becoming a pilot and the drama involved with that. we skipped right over to the next tape with episodes 19 and 20.

Then my grades slipped a bit and I got grounded. So, my older brothers got to watch episodes 21 and 22 and I didn't. I missed the birth of NERV and Asuka's mental breakdown.

Everything was up and running with episodes 23 and 24. I watched that one a lot actually. I must have been fascinated by it...

AT last we came to the last two episodes. We couldn't make heads or tales of what was going on, but
we couldn't be too upset by the ending (which we were never the types to get mad like that). Anyway, we didn't really have time to focus on it because my mom took issue again. She didn't like what they were saying about multiple truths (she see the Bible as the only real source of truth) and she didn't like that there was a Bible verse on the back of the box for the tape. It was something from Revelation...

Her biggest issue was the reference made to the Beast that shouted I at the world...she interpreted on face value as reference to the Antichrist.

I watched the previous two episodes a handful more times in secret at my grandma's house after that. But Eva was no longer allowed in our house and discussion of it was brought to a halt.

I was sickened by what Eva did to me, my brain was so expanded (in a good way) that I couldn't even watch "regular" cartoons on Fox Kids and Nickelodeon anymore... Plus I started thinking more deeply on multiple layers as I started making observations about life.

For example, after watching Eva I had the first understandings of "pain" outside of just being physically hurt, such as the kind of pain dealing with emotions and mental trauma.

A year later, in the summer of 2000 I discovered the existence of EoE (which I was excited about for about three minutes until I learned it was still only in Japanese at the time) through its soundtrack.


After that, my mom went off the deep end and called my brother's friend a Satanic influence for showing him demonic cartoons and evil video games like Final fantasy 7 and Evil Zone filled with witchcraft. (This was all her line of thinking).


Her anger against and banishment of these things were the start of my personal and emotional rebellion. Thanks to Evangelion I had the very smallest of seeds where I would eventually have realization and grow up to be an Atheist and gay (like I said I watched episode 23 and 24 with much fascination, lol). Indirectly I also gained my interest in Goth culture. My bothers and their friend all wore long trench coats to school (this was the proceeding fall and year right after Columbine). Our fiend listened to metal and dressed in all black. My admiration for him and this wonderful thing called Evaneglion that he brought into my life left a kind of mental imprinting within me.


Holding onto those passions were the only things that got me through the next couple of years as my mom's religiosity got worse and I had to deal with the consequences of letting go of my beliefs (I was terrified of Hell at the time,but I also hated being a Christian) and finding something else to believe in. (I tried a variety of beliefs including Satanism (of the non LeVay variety) and other types of paganism before choosing atheism).

My mom's religious nature eventually destroyed dour family at the end of 2000, my mom didn't want my oldest bro. to have a Wiccan girlfriend (who was the sister of our mutual friend). So, she took steps to break them apart and the end result was my brother having to live with our great aunt 500 miles away.

Then we moved 30 miles away from my other brother who now lived with our grandma.

It was just me, my mom, and my sister for like 3 years. My sister was my mom's puppet. So for all intents and purposes, I was alone. My passions for anime and goth stuff, and "satanic music", all of which were established a few years prior as a result of Evangelion, were the only things that kept me alive, but incidentally made me "different" too. So, i didn't have any friends and I started disassociating with others.

But seeing the English release of EoE at DVD store was like a kind of acknowledgement that my hopes and aspirations had not been in vain.

It would be 3 more years before I saw the series again and the EoE movie.

In 2008, I finally git my hand son the Platinum edition of the series and last year i got my own copy of EoE. I have yet to see Death and Rebirth (but I heard it was kind of a waste of time...)

I won 1.11 and 2.22 and haven't seen 3.33 (I'm waiting for the English release.

But that pretty my sums up my experience with Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It amplified my awareness of emotions and psychology, Biblical references (I started reading Revelation --which scared me at the time-- to get a better grasp of the symbolism), helped turned me against Christianity, sparked a revolution within me to become rebellious against my mom, drew me to goth culture, awakened the first buddings of homosexual feelings within myself, and granted me a profound love of anime along with many other things all before the age of 14. This show has done a lot for me and I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for it.

I think I was around 12 when we get internet for the first time at my house. I voraciously gobbled everything that was Japanese and animated as I was still in love DBZ and wanted more. I distantly remember misinterpreting a lot of things, such as the characters and symbol isms.

I forgot about it for a while but rekindle my love recently. Its interesting how our view of such things change with age.

Wow, SawItAt10...
Normally I skip posts as long as yours, but I'm glad I read it. Thanks for your heartfelt sharing of an experience which was pivotal in your personal development.

It's too bad your mom didn't take the opportunity to engage in constructive conversations with you, rather than restrain you like she did. I understand that parents must want to imbue their principles into their children, but she really did both of you a disservice by trying to force it. I hope you guys have been able to patch things up a little bit in recent years.

I got into Evangelion back in 2003 and I think it was on Toonami or some channel but I also the Magma Diver episode on VHS that I borrowed from the library. It wasn't until much later that I watched Evangelion as a whole on television, it was of the very first anime I actually watched. It was an amazing experience but it was also a traumatizing one as it really forced me to see things that I didn't want to face on a personal level. I was Shinji when he screwed up, I could see myself being two faced as Asuka and Misato, I was basically a doll without a purpose like Rei and I was mostly suffering with issues concerning communication and relationships with loved ones. I landed on this site I believe in 2007(?) and I had since interacted with the fandom I learned a lot more about this series than ever did before I joined the site.

Like the poster before me, and like so many other American viewers, my first taste of Eva was during Toonami's initial airing of the show in 2003.

Until that point, I had grown up on a steady diet of Robotech, Voltron, and eleven different flavors of Gundam. Evangelion promptly shot to the top of that list by the end of episode one. I loved everything : the premise, the killer opening theme song, the art style, the mecha designs, the action sequences, the soundtrack, and even those goofy voice actors. It became instant nostalgia, surpassing even my undying fascination with DBZ.

Fast-forward to late 2005/early 2006. My second taste of Eva, and first complete watch-through of the series occurred courtesy of Adult Swim. As fate would have it, I was now fourteen, the same age as Eva's protagonists. Here, I developed an appreciation for the story and themes therein. Shinji presented a supremely identifiable character, as I worked through my own version of the Hedgehog's Dilemma.

But as my reverence for Eva's finer points grew, it did nothing to diminish the awe-inspiring action sequences that had redefined my standards for visceral entertainment as a youngster, and continue to do so to this day.

I could go on and on, but I won't presume to subject you all to a wall of text on my second day.

Long live the therapeutic gorn that is our beloved NGE.

Edit: @SawItAtAge10 - Wow! That's a truly remarkable tale. Thank you for sharing!

I seem not to have posted here, except elliptically...

It was 10 years ago, when I finally decided that with my latest PC coming with a DVD drive, I really ought to watch some classic films I'd always managed to miss out on seeing, and rewatch some that I'd enjoyed years before. Cue trip to local media outlet in late autumn, and the World Cinema section hidden away in one corner. Now, I'd picked up a handful of manga/manga-esque titles along with my cape comics back in the c1990 manga boom (Appleseed, GitS, Dirty Pair and the like), and enjoyed the rather different attitude in the sci-fi girls with guns titles. So along with things like Nikita and Seven Samurai, I came away with a Dirty Pair Flash OVA, since anime was filed with foreign film.

Then, over the holidays, while I was going beck to raid for things to watch, I noticed the first NGE DVDs and remembered that it had been mentioned in terms like "if you watch one giant robot series, make it this one" in various places -- so I thought that I'd pick that up as I'd run out of obvious girls with guns titles, and I supposed I ought watch one mecha show. And the rest is history.

To reiterate a tale told many many pages back:

It really begins at my original discovery of anime, right around the end of 1999. I'm ashamed to admit this, but my original anime fandom was...Dragonball Z (*pauses to shudder*). But I outgrew it and found better (newer Gundam, Cowboy Bebop) after a year or two. Sometime in 2001, I watched my original trilogy of good anime films: Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Vampire Hunter D (well, this one has special circumstances: I seem to recall seeing this one late night on TBS, of all places, sometime during the mid-1990s). After that night, I pretty much spent the next year-or-so clearing out my local Blockbuster's anime section (VHS and DVD). Saw many a movie, and the start of a few series (and a couple they had the entirety of).

Anyway...cut to October 15th 2002 (yes, I still recall the date). I bought the first DVD volume of Neon Genesis Evangelion from a place in the mall here that sold music. I'd heard (I think it was from Amazon reviews) that it was considered a "watershed", so of course I wanted to see it. Watched it a couple of times before I decided, "I must see the rest of this." Oh, had I only known then...

Actually, if I had known then, I may not have stuck around to see the rest. But I digress...

Less than a week later, I was bringing the Perfect Collection home. And when that week was over, I was left with the same feeling a lot of other people after the TV ending had. So, of course, I found EoE thanks to that (which had only had an official English release for about a month at this point, an odd coincidence I noted). And simply, that just depressed the shit out of me. Once I snapped out of that, I was convinced to find more of this thing called "Evangelion"...mainly the fault of both exceedingly vague endings. And it's still the only fictional thing I feel emotional investment in, even years later as it is.

The real turning point, however, would be December 12, 2002. I discovered Evafiction.

The work in question was The One I Love is... (it's a good starting point for new readers, but be aware: it's not really that good anymore). And overrated as it may be now, as they say, "You never forget your first." And I'll be damned if I do. After two nights of reading, it was finished and deposited me off the emotional rollercoaster. And much like the series/movie had done, it broke me and remade me in its image. After those nights, I discovered a great many things (namely my inner romantic and perv).

There, the old me died to be reborn as the Bardi you know.

After that, it was mainly the systematic clearing of (old) Evafiction archives, just taking in as much as I could (well, there were still some limits then). Right around March 2003, I decided to walk my own personal path (LAS, to clarify). Reasons are too much to go into here (and this isn't the right place), but a main one is that I needed to focus: there's just too much Evafiction to see it all. A couple of months later, I joined the NGE community-at-large through Darkscribes.

And as the saying goes, "That's my story, and I'm sticking to it."

SawItAtAge10 wrote:*lengthy wall-of-text too big to repost again*

Wow, just...wow. That's quite a journey Eva took you on.

And to think, some people wonder where I get my distrust of the religious from.

I first watched Eva, the first couple of episodes anyway, in my first years of Secondary School (12/13ish) . And I hated it, I did not like the characters, the story, anything. I was more interested in stuff like Death Note and all that other stuff. I watched it simply because 'the action looked cool' and the controversy that revolved around it, the ending, the hospital scene in the movie, Shinji being 'a bitch' et cetera (and also because of the kick-ass OP but shh).

Then I revisited it in August of 2013 because I wanted to get in on the hype for 4.0, so I decided to watch the show then the rebuilds.. And it became not only my favourite anime of all time but one of my favourite /things/ of all time. I had matured and now I had began to understand, I could put myself in the characters shoes and feel what they felt, relate to them. The great action was still there, but I just finally got it. And I sat down over one weekend and finished it come Sunday evening. Along with the End of Evangelion.

I watched the Rebuilds and hated them. The original series had some sort of magic to it, that made it perfect.

I can't quite put my finger on why I love it so much, but I do.

I first heard about Evangelion from my brother about a year ago. I just never got a chance to watch it, then they showed 2.22 on toonami a while back. I've been Hooked ever since. Kind of upset that it took so long to finally watch it. Having seen the movies/series I consider it my favorite anime of all time. I found this forum and pretty much everything I've wanted to ask is covered, so thank you all for your input. I can't wait for 3.33 to be released, sadly the closest showing in theatres will be 4 hours away.

::KL7:: wrote: I found this forum and pretty much everything I've wanted to ask is covered, so thank you all for your input. I can't wait for 3.33 to be released, sadly the closest showing in theatres will be 4 hours away.

There are "other" ways to get it right now, subbed and let's call it "morally questionable" (You still can buy it via Internet if you have a remorse)

Just kidding, I'm sitting here In Germany, in the middle of nothing and the next theater that would possible show it is about 3 hours away. I'm as desperate as you.

I forgot how, but I ended up on the TV Tropes page for it somehow, which was before I even knew what TV Tropes was, leaving me confused as to the format of the "article." Someone probably either mentioned the series, or used the term "Gainax Ending", leaving me to look it up to see what the heck they were talking about. I think it was Gainax Ending actually that led me to that. Anyway, the same time I was introduced to Evangelion, I was introduced to TV Tropes, one way to another, and as I wasn't used to the format of TV Tropes at the time and reading about the series there was frustrating, I got frustrated and looked for other sources of information about the series. Later on I actually found out what TV Tropes was and started using it. I got up to some number of episodes between 6 and 11 I think, then stopped. This was sometime between 2004 and 2009 I think when I was watching it. I'm just now watching it again, picking up on a lot more details between the characters than I did before. There is some untranslated Japanese text at the bottom of the screen in episode 6 that's tripping me up though, but I will continue watching it when I figure out what it means.

I accidentally saw spoilers for the series though, which might affect my experience with this series. It was recommended to watch the original series first before watching the remake. Do you guys think that's how it should be viewed? I don't really want to watch the same thing two times but apparently there are too many differences, or going to be (?) for some of it to make sense without watching the original.

When I read Tvtropes I wasn't even into anime, so I got the mostly wildly misdirected opinion of the series. I honestly thought it was some girls-with-guns series starring Ritsuko, Misato, Asuka and Rei as a team of stylish international commandos like Charlie's Angels directed by the mysterious voice of their mission control, a pimp-Lincoln called Gendo. I thought Shinji was some kind of adorable mascot character like Pen-pen.