‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Netflix Deal Is Huge: Here’s Why

Step aside Voltron, B the Beginning, and Seven Deadly Sins. Neon Genesis Evangelion is coming to Netflix and it’s going to need some space.

The streaming giant recently announced that the beloved 26-episode series will be coming to Netflix in Spring of 2019. This marks the first time the anime has ever been made available on streaming. Not only that but the series will be joined by two of its spinoff movies —The End of Evangelion and Evangelion: Death (True)2. For diehard anime fans it’s a great day to be alive. Soon we can all binge-watch one of the greatest animated shows ever made at the touch of a button. But those out of the loop may be wondering exactly why Netflix, a service that releases dozens of new shows every week, is devoting a trailer and multiple excited tweets to some short anime from the ’90s.

The difference between Neon Genesis Evangelion and whatever run-of-the-mill anime Netflix is offering today comes down to the former’s legacy. Based on the manga of the same name which ran 10 months before the anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion premiered in October of 1995. When it first aired, it was a fairly typical mecha anime. The futuristic series follows Shinji Ikari, a young teenager who’s practically forced by his estranged father into saving the world. Naturally he does this by using a giant bio-machine called a Evangelion to kill monsters called Angels. So far it’s anime insanity as usual.

But as the series progressed it became about something far more than using giant robots to fight giant-er monsters. It morphed into a heartfelt and emotionally taxing story of forced responsibility and the tolls of war. Unlike almost every other anime hero, Shinji can’t walk away from his battles against the foretold Angels scar-free. He’s haunted by what he’s forced to do, and the PTSD-stricken young man who leaves this series is drastically different from the boy we met — and that’s not a good thing.

From reviving the anime industry when it was in the middle of an economic and creative slump to redefining the mecha subgenre as a whole, Neon Genesis Evangelion stands as one of the most influential anime series of all time. But what transforms it from important to iconic is its scant episode count. During a period of animation when both anime and Western series were dominated by painfully long, drawn out seasons, Neon Genesis Evangelion told its complicated story in 26 short episodes.

This approach gave creator Hideaki Anno an almost unheard of amount of control over his creation. The series didn’t emphasize merchandising opportunities or cliffhangers for commercial breaks. It was first and foremost about Anno’s story and vision — an approach that directly translated into the series transforming from a traditional grand savior narrative into a heart-wrenching deep dive into individual characters. Of course there were some problems with this approach. The series’ final two episodes still stand among the most controversial in the history of the medium with half of the series’ fans claiming its disjointed ending was deep and the other half screaming about its laziness. But prior to Neon Genesis Evangelion telling an emotionally complete story in such a short amount of time was almost unheard of, let alone telling that story through animation.

Since its conclusion in 1996 many anime series and cartoons have followed in Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s condensed footsteps, from the intentionally confusing and deftly crafted FLCL to Cartoon Network’s singularly brilliant miniseries Over the Garden Wall. Creator-focused and led animation is now far less of an outlier and more of the norm. But decades before it was common knowledge to know Hiromu Arakawa and Rebecca Sugar’s names there was one creator who was paving the way for the future of animation. And in spring of 2019 his most revered creation is coming to Netflix for the first time.