"The meat of Evangelion, for which these elements are mostly trappings, is in the psychological complexity of its characters and its philosophical examination of the nature of relationships and the self. Structured around eschatological Judeo-Christian imagery and a Freudian mother-worship of religious proportions, Evangelion takes us on a nightmarish ride of existential angst and brutal physical violence, climaxing in an elaborate fantasy of return to an idyllic, primal state of oneness. Through this lurid mix of confession and spectacle is woven a complex examination of apocalypse and self-definition, a death-rebirth narrative that consciously exists in the shadow of Hiroshima."