Earlier this month, Revolution of Eva ran a panel at New York Anime Festival (NYAF) entitled “The Psychology of Evangelion.” While it wasn’t necessarily well-received, it did spark my interesting in visiting the group’s website. There, I found a new video that the group created: “Project Eva Episode 04: Explanation of Religious References.”
If you’re familiar with Neon Genesis Evangelion (and most of us are at some level), you probably know that the show is ripe full of religious imagery. The video proports to mention every single religious reference in the series (I’m not sure if the movies were included). In nine minutes, the narrator, Blake Zahari, mentions a hostful of references. I recognized most, had missed some, and didn’t fully understand a whole of them, so I found the video informative.
There was at least one inaccuracy, which had to do more with sentence structure rather than direct factual error (the video implies that the “Lance of Longinus” in mentioned in the Bible, whereas the spear is not given by name in the Gospel of John). Otherwise, I found the video to be respectful of the religions discussed – it certainly probably should have been, since the video is meant to explain and inform, rather than analyze. Zahari directs viewers to the Revolution of Eva website for analysis.
Zahari himself does a good job of narrating – the video isn’t flawless, nor is his speaking, but it doesn’t have to be, right? I watched it entirely without getting bored. And trust me, it’s hard to read for minutes on end from a script. I give presentations as part of my job and was a teacher, and believe me, it’s more difficult to read for minutes on end from a script (even a good one) than to just talk on the fly about a topic one is familiar with.
Also, I totally approve of Zahari’s taste in anime (Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist posters in the background, and of course, Evangelion at the forefront of the conversation). 🙂
But for all you Evangelion fans out there, did he accomplish what he said he did? Did the video cover everything? Was anything left out?
Watch the video at Isugoi: Evangelion: Explanation of religious references.
