NERV military ranks

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NERV military ranks

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Postby Archer » Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:27 am

What actually is NERV?

Is it a private organization that uses military rank names for its command structure but isn’t actually considered a military organization?

Is it a private organization that contracts a lot of military members who receive their rank through official means?

Or is it officially recognized as an international organization with its own military ranks a la the UN?

Aside from Gendo and Misato, I don’t recall anyone else even having a rank, though I’d assume that the bridge bunnies are probably officers and the Eva maintenance teams that must exist probably have whatever rank is given to engineers.

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Postby Blockio » Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:33 am

The bridge bunnies are called First Lieutenants somewhere, but I don't recall the exact source off the top of my head, so it's a reasonable assumption that everyone in it has ranks, apart from maybe the pilots, they might be a special case.

As far as Nerv's official status under martial law would be, I don't think we ever got anything concrete, but if I were to make an educated guess, I'd say it's in a similar spot as real life privately owned defense contractors. Legally speaking that would make them mercenaries, but considering that they are recognized and funded by the Japanese government, I guess it's more of a "private army" position
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Postby cyharding » Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:34 pm

^I thought the organization is chartered under the United Nations, not the Japanese government.
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Re: NERV military ranks

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Postby Lavinius » Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:04 pm

Nerv is a "special agency" of the UN, answerable to the Human Instrumentality Committee. They're absolutely not "private" by any means. They have no special relation to the Japanese government- that's why they have branches all over the world, and why the latter have Kaji as their mole inside Nerv (even while Seele is also using Kaji as a "separate man" from Gendou, even while Gendou is also using Kaji as his errand boy).
Nerv also seems separate from the UN military structure.
Distinct national military forces seem to still exist though, since the JSDF appears on multiple occasions. I'm not sure what the deal here is- the UN can't have completely absorbed all national militaries under their own system, but it also can't be that they're just able to assume command of national forces, since the tanks &c. have UN painted on them and the American navy has had its vessels renamed for UN use. There's some mixture of two.

Proposal wrote:What is The Secret Military Agency “Nerv”?

The central characters affiliated with the organization forming the core of this drama. A secret military agency under the direct control of the ”Human Complementary Committee,” an international federation of supreme executives. A highly regulated internationally-armed organization devoted to the first original race with the goal of investigating and researching the unidentified organisms, “the Angels,” and perhaps their capture or extermination. Implementing security for the surrounding facilities of the “Artificial Evolution Research Center” in support of this goal. The content of their activities have partly been made public by the public relations department, but the majority of their activities are highly secretive. As a contingency, they can also invoke their command authority (to the highest degree excepting nuclear weapons) against the United Nations forces and the armies of United Nations member countries at their own accord. When this happens, the authority held by the supreme chief officers of all divisions supersedes executive and legislative agencies of the United Nations member countries (Nerv headquarters currently does not get along well with the Japanese government and their Defense Agency). As their primary weapon, they retain the universal humanoid decisive land weapon, Evangelion. As drawn up in their stage 1 maintenance plan, they plan on deploying five versions of the Eva weapon. As of episode 1, they have accomplished 62% of their plan.
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Postby Archer » Sun Apr 11, 2021 5:30 pm

Okay, I’d forgotten that NERV was actually a direct subsidiary of the UN. I wonder if NERV stands for anything, or if it’s just written in all-caps to look cooler?

Anyways, with regards to the US Navy vessels, it’s possible the US “donated” the ships to the UN forces in the aftermath of Second Impact in exchange for influence within the organization. With the state of the world post-Impact and the amount of resources being pooled into NERV (of which the United States was undoubtedly contributing a great amount of capital to, much like they do for the IRL UN) it’s very possible that they had to redirect portions of the “normal” defense budget into NERV funding, which could mean downsizing the US Navy and transferring personnel under UN jurisdiction.

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Postby Blockio » Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:34 pm

That's certainly a believable scenario, and I think NGE2, CI or some other extended universe material might have something on the matter, but off the top of my head I'm unsure
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Postby UrsusArctos » Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:41 pm

NERV is simply German for "Nerve", and the word isn't always written in all-caps, for example from Episode 01 -

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Postby AWinters » Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:48 pm

I was recently think about the ranks too and I'm confused about Gendo's title.
He's more like a managing director than a "commander". Don't commanders give commands during battle?

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Postby Archer » Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:29 pm

View Original PostAWinters wrote:I was recently think about the ranks too and I'm confused about Gendo's title.
He's more like a managing director than a "commander". Don't commanders give commands during battle?

Per Wikipedia:
In the United States, commander is a military rank that is also sometimes used as a military billet title—the designation of someone who manages living quarters or a base

So, the title would mean that Gendo is the guy in charge of the Tokyo-3 NERV base.

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Postby UrsusArctos » Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:40 am

Nerv is a paramilitary organization under the UN, and the US billet title doesn't make a difference at all.

Nerv's rank structure is something I gave up on as arbitrary and hodgepodge a long time ago. The Japanese word used for Gendo's title is "shirei", which is translated as "commander", but the rank for a naval commander would be "chusa". Gendo's and Fuyutsuki's "ranks" are actually titles, rather than ranks. Misato has a proper military-style rank in both the NGE and NTE continuities.
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Postby AWinters » Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:44 am

Thank you both, this makes more sense now.

I can see why he hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job.

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Re: NERV military ranks

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Postby Blockio » Mon Apr 19, 2021 4:45 pm

AWinters wrote:I can see why he hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job.

Alright, that's amazing. This one is going in my sig
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Postby UrsusArctos » Tue Apr 20, 2021 6:51 am

View Original PostAWinters wrote:I can see why he hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job.


Hahaha :lol: By the way, Misato's rank after Episode 12, Major, is the army equivalent of the naval Lieutenant Commander rank in most countries, including in Japan - which actually uses the same word (shosa) for both Army and Navy ranks! Assuming that Misato's rank really does hold up as a proper military rank, she really is a commander!
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Postby AWinters » Tue Apr 20, 2021 4:47 pm

View Original PostBlockio wrote:Alright, that's amazing. This one is going in my sig

Why thank you ^_^

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Re: NERV military ranks

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Postby Malevolo » Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:33 pm

So now i have a interesting question, if following proper military ranks, and assuming that the EVA Pilots should be vis a vis equal rank with JSDF ranks or NATO ranks to be jet pilots, what would be their ranks? 2nd lieutenants at minimum?


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