When Evangelion’s decade-spanning Rebuild project wrapped up with the 2021 film Thrice Upon A Time, its story ended definitively. Like, very definitively. Series creator Hideaki Anno said goodbye to his sprawling mecha epic with a blast of post-modern insanity, as his characters were metaphysically freed from the shackles of the franchise. Reborn into a world missing the third word in the title, they were no longer stuck fighting an endless battle with cosmic horror kaiju. They finally got to grow up. Anno essentially wiped away existing “canon” with an orbital laser.
Sowhen it was recently announced that Neon Genesis Evangelion would be getting a follow-up TV show from Anno’s Studio Khara and Cloverworks, there was some understandable confusion and cynicism. The simplest explanation for this comeback was money: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a huge deal, especially in Japan, where its merch can be found everywhere from Shibuya to suburban convenience stores.
But there’s a very good reason to be excited about this follow-up. Yoko Taro, the director of the beloved Nier video game series, is writing this Evangelion sequel. The torch is being passed from one idiosyncratic auteur to the next, and it’s hard to think of many creators who seem as well situated to wrestle with this legacy. For starters, Taro has made a career out of bold resets.
A defining part of his Drakengard and Nier games is that they don’t generally work like “normal” sequels. Drakengard 3 is a prequel set in an alternate timeline. Nier is a spin-off set one thousand years after a hidden joke ending from Drakengard (one that’s an extended End of Evangelion reference no less). Nier: Automata is set even further in the future, taking place around 8,000 years later. While Automata has easter eggs, homages, and other Nier tie-ins for lore fiends, the closest direct plot connection is an ageless side-character who doesn’t really impact the narrative. These stories are largely disconnected, and while there is some upside to playing the games in order, doing so isn’t a prerequisite; it’s more like watching a filmmaker’s oeuvre in order. Make no mistake, Taro loves odd spin-offs. He’s written like seven Nier: Automata stage plays. But when it comes to turning the page, he likes to start with something close to a fresh start, setting up new blorbos and bad times. Considering that the Rebuild Of Evangelion films wiped the world clean, a fresh start seems to be what Taro will inherit.
More than just making it easier to jump into each new installment, Taro’s sequels show a drive to go to novel places, maintaining underlying thematic threads, but not proper nouns: Nier leaves behind Drakengard’s Midgard, and Automata replaces Gestalts with trashcan-shaped robots. There is occasional fan service, like discovering Emil’s moving ode to Kaine in Nier: Automata, but these moments are an optional aside. Letting the past lie is a borderline necessity for the Evangelion sequel because the ultimate purpose of the Rebuild films was to free its characters from the series’ recurring plot structures. If Taro were to pull the same approach as the most recent Star Wars trilogy by revitalizing a Death Star equivalent (like Evangelion’s evil rhombus, Ramiel), it would feel like a slap in the face.
The tiny snippets we’ve seen of the new show—which admittedly aren’t a ton to go on—seem to avoid this problem. In fact, they come across as more inspired by Taro’s work on Nier than anything by Anno. In the trailer, a post-apocalyptic landscape is complemented by a melancholy score from Taro’s longtime collaborator, Keiichi Okabe. Grass sways, and symbols of human culture, like a piano, lie broken. The only thing that screams Evangelion is the appearance of what looks like Unit 01 in the final five seconds or so. It feels like a new start. Or at least something that takes place after the Rebuild films’ apocalypse.
While Taro’s work is defined by a willingness to push things forward, he also has plenty of other authorial quirks that naturally line up with Evangelion’s tone. For one, he puts his characters through the wringer. Whether it’s the precious good boy Emil being turned into an immortal “monster” or 2B’s trauma loop, Taro’s stories are about people being crushed by unjust systems; this calls to mind a certain teenage boy being thrown into a death machine for the benefit of scheming one-percenters and an abusive father. Protagonists like 9S bend and even break, so warped by tragedy that they do unforgivable things. Even with this suffering, though, there is almost always a tiny flicker of optimism and a willingness to allow characters to atone. Maybe that doesn’t happen until a later retelling sets the stage for a happier ending (such as the Nier Replicant remake or Rebuild films), but it comes eventually.
Much of this is a clear case of influence. “The work I was most inspired by is Neon Genesis Evangelion. I thank you for praising Nier: Automata’s story, but actually it’s pretty much just a retelling of Evangelion, so there’s not much originality to it,”said Taro in a hilariously self-critical interview with IGN. But while Taro’s work has fundamental similarities to Anno’s, he has his own voice.
Nier and Drakengard are obsessed with the reasons for and ramifications of violence, both on an individual and a structural level. There’s a focus on grandiose philosophical questions. By contrast, Evangelion’s interests are directed inwards, centered around Freudian psychology and Shinji’s headspace (the original ending literally takes place inside his mind). While Taro’s career indicates he can do a damn good impression, it’s his unique outlook that could bring the most to this series. There’s always the chance for these kinds of sequels to go sideways, as money-making aims eclipse any semblance of artistic integrity or risk-taking. The quality of Yoko Taro’s sequel remains to be seen, but even if it’s flawed, it’s probably fair to assume it will be big, bold, messy, and weird. That certainly sounds like Evangelion.