Have you ever watched “Evangelion”? I think most of you have heard of the name at least. The Evangelion franchise consists of a series of anime episodes and two different anime movie series with lots of fans not only in Japan but also all over the world (Elon Musk has been confirmed the richest Eva Otaku). Maybe, the image of the anime you have is something like (unnecessarily) sexy female characters or cool humanoid robots.

But there is definitely much more to Evangelion than that. The first anime episode aired in 1995 and what was novel and striking about Evangelion at the time was its deep and meticulous delineation of identity crisis of the characters.

Take the main character Shinji for example.

He lost his mother when he was very young and his estranged father is horrible, to say the least. Naturally, Shinji struggles to find his own values and identity, lacking in experience of enjoying unconditional love from his parents. That’s why he couldn’t make any friends for a long time nor can he open up to anybody.

Another main character is Asuka. She is German-Japanese. When she was a kid, she saw the corpse of her mother after she hanged herself, which naturally traumatized her. She tries to prove herself to be valuable by piloting Eva, a humanoid robot, but as the story goes, she comes to face a serious identity crisis, which really makes audiences feel depressed and hopeless lol.

Evangelion is not just a robot anime but a profound and philosophical anime with excellent psychological depictions. I highly recommend it!