Tokyo and Random Japanese guy

Here’s  a pic from when Green Lobster visited japan.

The franchise’s central works, both titled Neon Genesis Evangelion, are an anime and a manga serial, both of which follow the same storyline, although with numerous minor differences between them. The manga, written by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, debuted in the February 1995 issue of Shonen Ace (published in December 1994) and is still running as of 2009. The manga was intended to raise interest for the anime (directed by Hideaki Anno with character designs by Sadamoto), which was in development at that point and was intended to be Gainax’s next major anime release.

The anime consists of 26 television episodes which were first aired on the terrestrial TV Tokyo network from October 4, 1995 to March 27, 1996.^[1] It was later aired across Japan by the anime satellite television network, Animax. The series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1995 and 1996.

The anime succeeded wildly beyond expectation and has spawned countless derivative works and imitators^[2]. The series established a number of distinctive features of future works in the franchise: a stock set of distinctive characters such as Shinji Ikari, Asuka Langley Soryu, Rei Ayanami, Toji Suzuhara, and others such as Misato Katsuragi (for a complete list, see here); a number of philosophical, psychological, and religious themes; and an idiosyncratic vocabulary of symbols and allusions drawing heavily on Christian and Kabbalistic symbolism, Buddhist beliefs, and the Japanese otaku subculture. Similarly, Evangelion properties consistently focus on a number of themes and dilemmas:

Plot summary

In 1988, Tokyo is destroyed by an apparent nuclear explosion that leads to the start of World War III. Thirty-one years later, Neo-Tokyo, a metropolis built on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, is troubled by political strife and gang violence. Shotaro Kaneda leads his motorcycle gang, including Yamagata, Kaneda’s right-hand man, Kai, and Tetsuo Shima, Kaneda’s best friend, in a war with another gang called the Clowns. As Kaneda and Tetsuo battle a pair of Clowns on a highway, Tetsuo almost runs into a child with wizened features (Takashi) and is injured when his bike suddenly explodes. Tetsuo and the child are taken away by armed soldiers. Kaneda and his gang are taken in for questioning, where Kaneda unsuccessfully flirts with a young girl named Kei, and the group are later released.

Tetsuo, under watch by Colonel Shikishima and Doctor Onishi, is discovered to have mental frequencies similar to “Akira“, a boy with powerful, almost god-like, mental abilities. Akira was the cause of the explosion that started World War III thirty-one years earlier. Aware that another gifted child, Kiyoko, has had visions of Neo-Tokyo’s destruction in the same manner, the Colonel orders the doctor to kill Tetsuo should the powers manifest any further. Tetsuo escapes and meets up with his girlfriend Kaori and steals Kaneda’s motorcycle. They are attacked by Clowns who attempt to sexually assault Kaori, but Kaneda and the gang show up and defeat the Clowns. As Kaneda helps Tetsuo and Kaori recover, Tetsuo begins to suffer a very painful headache and experience terrifying hallucinations of falling and of his organs falling out. A government van monitoring him arrives to take him away, refusing to answer Kaneda’s questions. Later that evening, Kaneda sees Kei, helps her avoid arrest, and goes with her to the Resistance headquarters. Kaneda offers to help after they reveal their plan to infiltrate the hospital that Tetsuo was taken to.

That night, Tetsuo is attacked by the three psychics Espers, Takashi, Kiyoko and Masaru, causing his powers to manifest further, killing a doctor and damaging the hospital in his attempts to find them. In the Espers’ room, Tetsuo learns that Akira was a young boy with similar powers, now in cryogenic storage below the new Stadium being built for the upcoming Olympics, and that he may be able to help Tetsuo remove his pain. The Colonel, Kei, and Kaneda, converging on the Espers’ room, learn that Tetsuo is heading for the Stadium to meet Akira. Kei and Kaneda are detained, but Kiyoko, speaking through Kei, explains that Tetsuo must be stopped, and helps them escape. That night, Tetsuo attacks his fellow gang members, killing Yamagata for whom he harbored a bitter hatred. He then departs for the stadium. Tetsuo fends off attacks by the army, including a helicopter, a tank, and soldiers using laser rifles, on his way to the Olympic Stadium. At the Stadium, Tetsuo unearths the Akira chamber to find it empty except for the organs of Akira stored in jars. Kaneda, having learned of Yamagata’s death from Kai, uses Tetsuo’s moment of confusion to fight him with a laser rifle, but Tetsuo is able to dodge the attacks. The Colonel tries to shoot Tetsuo using an orbital laser weapon, managing only to sever his right arm. Tetsuo takes off into orbit and destroys the weapon, then spends the night recovering at the Stadium, psychically forging himself a new arm from inorganic material. His girlfriend Kaori arrives and tries to calm him down as his powers create immense physical pain.