Anyway, I was told by a friend that NGE is heavily based off of a book called VALIS by Phil Dick. I am not sure if anyone here has read any of Dick's work, so I won't spoil anything about the book. However, after reading both VALIS and it's sequel (as well as the 3rd book commonly considered the end of the trilogy, even though Dick died before finishing the intented 3rd book) I am finding very few connections.
I am one of those people that isn't content with watching something, and letting it go. I like to know where it came from. My search started with a game called Xenogears. While trying to find out what led to the game's creation, I read almost everything by Jung and Nietzsche (and being a psychology major, I was already pretty well versed in all things Freud and Jung). I was also told that NGE had a lost to do with Xenogears. That was in the year 2001. Since then I have been obsessed with NGE.
As I noted above, I was told VALIS had some hand in the creation of NGE, so I resolved to read it. And while it was a very good book, I can't for the life of me find any concrete connection to NGE. These are the few links I could find:
-The characters all have some kind of psychological baggage or problem.
-The plot seems to revolve around the idea that we were created by a far more advanced race of beings.
-Most of the characters have some sort of hidden agenda.
-The story is about these random people trying to not only explain the miseries in their lives, but also about them trying to liberate the human race from them.
While these points might seem dead on with NGE's plot, I can only say that if you were to read the book you would also see that these similarities are broad strokes at best. At the moment, for health reasons, I am more or less confined to my home. The purpose of this topic is to be pointed in a direction toward other works that might have (or hopefully, DID have) something to do with the creation of NGE. Also, to those who have read VALIS (possibly going off the same information that I did), I am hoping to gain a little more insight into other people's interpretations of the book and it's connections to NGE.
I know this have been a rather long topic. I hope I have kept it on point enough to be understood. Just so people are familiar with my level of understanding of NGE (which, I hope, should help prevent the need to attempt to dumb things down for me), I have seen the entire anime many times, including the DC version of a few episodes and EoE. I know the anime backwards and forwards, so please be blunt. Thanks in advance.
