In this analysis, I intend to delve a little deeper into the accuracy of this nomenclature, especially since it was changed in a previous Italian adaptation; therefore, I feel it is more than necessary to delve deeper into the topic. Before delving into the details, however, it is first necessary to take a historical overview and see what ShinSeiki Evangelion, as a work, drew from (or, better yet, what inspired it).
Let’s start where it all began, namely with the Dead Sea Scrolls (also called the Qumran Scrolls), discovered in the caves of Qumran between 1947 and 1956. Among these was the Book of Giants, classified as one of Qumran’s non-biblical manuscripts. It has been hypothesized that it was originally the second book of the Pentateuch of Enoch, an apocryphal text of the Old Testament, adopted as canonical only by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. This is, so to speak, the starting point: this evidently unexpected discovery had a huge influence on the subsequent science-fiction trend.
The first work we can mention —looking back— is The Sentinel, a science-fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1951. This story would, in turn, serve as the “embryo” for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey and its eponymous twin film (developed simultaneously) in 1968, co-written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick. In broad strokes, the story goes as follows: humanity, having settled on the Moon, discovers an artifact—a crystal pyramid —while exploring its surface. The artifact is protected by a shield that initially proves impenetrable. Some time later, the shield is finally breached with a nuclear explosion, revealing that the artifact is actually a kind of “beacon” built with extremely advanced technology and left on the Moon long ago by alien explorers. This beacon —once its signal is interrupted— serves to alert its creators to the emergence of a species advanced enough to master the two greatest challenges facing an intelligent race: space travel and atomic energy.
In the first part of 2001: A Space Odyssey —“The Dawn of Man”— a monolith (the reference is hard to miss; it’s extremely explicit) appears on Earth and grants the early hominids knowledge, enabling them to develop rudimentary hunting tools. The leap from throwing a bone into the sky to creating a spaceship is short, and indeed, it happens without hesitation. In the finale, humanity reaches transcendence, surpassing the limits of the physical body and attaining a new form of consciousness and existence.
Very similar mechanics can be seen in the next stage of the journey I’m discussing: The Giants’ Cycle, a series of novels written from 1977 by British science-fiction author James P. Hogan. Here too, the Giants— ancestors of humans— monitor them. This surveillance is not intended to dominate or control but to understand and assess the potential threat —indeed, their approach remains non-interventionist.
It’s worth noting that this series, also published in Japan, achieved great success there, so much so that Hogan attended as a guest the 25th Japanese Science-Fiction Convention, then itinerant, held in Osaka in 1986. A chain of curiosities follows: the opening animations for the two previous conventions (known as Daicon III and Daicon IV) were produced by the eponymous collective, which at the time included a group of university animators among whom was Hideaki Anno himself. Hogan attended this last convention with Toren Smith, his friend and founder of Studio Proteus, a publisher and translator of Japanese manga who translated many popular works into English. Smith married mangaka Tomoko Saito (Tomoyuki Saito) and also worked as an intermediary for otaku between Japan and the United States. Why mention him? Well, because the character “Smith Toren,” who appears in Top wo Nerae! GunBuster produced by GAINAX (specifically in episode 3), is entirely named in his honor.
The last work we’ll consider is the manga Mars (1976–1977) by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. In brief, aliens visited Earth long ago and left behind a young being —Mars himself— to act as a “sentinel,” tasked with destroying the Earth and wiping out humanity if humans were deemed a threat to the universe, given the aliens’ fear of human cruelty and the potential for progress. This young being, dormant at the story’s beginning, awakens following a massive volcanic eruption, though he forgets the mission originally assigned to him. With his awakening appear the Six Gods, machines technically at his service, acting as his “messengers,” also tasked with Earth’s destruction. Initially, Mars — who has no intention of fulfilling his mission— fights these beings. However, by the story’s end, having been disillusioned and appalled by humanity’s cruelty, he orders Gaia to obliterate the Earth, thus destroying it.
This work also presents another element: the concept of a single being acting <as the arbiter and judge> of all humanity, embodied, of course, by Mars. Similarly, in the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the Titan Soldier is referred to as <裁定者> (saiteisha), literally “one who issues a final decision/judgment,” that is, a judge or arbiter.
Let’s now take a look at the <kikakusho> (企画書), that is, the “project document,” of the original series: from page 13, entirely dedicated to the Human Instrumentality Project, we learn that:
Humanity had already been seeking a power with which to oppose God.
This is the main theme of the story: the great international plan called the “Human Instrumentality Project” (人類補完計画).
Half a century ago, after the success of nuclear fusion, humanity obtained the “Sun” and placed it in its hands.
The next step was therefore a plan to create, through its own efforts, a “complete human being.”
The goal: to scientifically penetrate the forbidden fruit that God had hidden —namely, the “Tree of Life”—to remove from humanity the curse of “death,” and to advance even further toward the very origin of life.
All obstacles were to be overcome.
The man who directs and carries out this plan is Gendō Ikari.
Through the “Human Instrumentality Project,” he pursues only the figure of his deceased wife, longing for the form of an eternal love…
In addition to mentioning nuclear energy (in The Sentinel, one of the criteria for proving a race’s intelligence), there is also a reference to the elimination of the “death” curse. This concept —typically science-fictional, the idea that humanity could somehow transcend death and surpass the limits of human existence— is one of the few surviving fragments of what was likely the original Evangelion project. Is this not what was first achieved with the Magi supercomputers through the digitization of Akagi Naoko’s personality, and then ultimately with Yui herself? Connecting the dots: at the beginning of Air —episode 25 of the cinematic version— during the conversation between Gendō, Fuyutsuki, and the SEELE members, they state that they “have no intention of boarding the ark called Eva.” This scene can be linked to another— likely added in episode 21 (and later masterfully reinserted in Magokoro wo, Kimi ni —the 26th cinematic episode— toward its ending), where we see Yui conversing by the lake with Professor Fuyutsuki. In this scene, Yui’s intentions are made as explicit as possible: to use the Eva as an ark, in order to house a soul within it and thereby leave, for eternity, a trace, a testimony —証 (akashi)— of humanity’s existence. Just as in the finale of 2001, this is a form of transcendence, one that surpasses human limits. And in the finale of Magokoro, exactly this happens, precisely as described. After all, Yui’s intentions could have been evident from the beginning, considering that Gehirn operated as an “Artificial Evolution Laboratory.”
Following the sci-fi thread I’ve been analyzing so far, the original sci-fi core narrative of Neon Genesis Evangelion could have been something like this: the entity called Adam originally arrives — if I recall correctly, it was supposed to be on the Moon, though in the end it would be at the South Pole — and remains there. Millennia later, humanity discovers the existence of this being (God; a Giant of Light) and, driven by greed, attempts to seize an unknown energy source —the S2 element, which we could arguably compare to nuclear energy in scope— resulting in the Second Impact when the attempt fails. Adam —the Sentinel— awakens and “activates” in the process, alerting its “Messengers,” who then unleash themselves against humanity. This, had the original project been followed, would have been Evangelion; nothing more, nothing less. But it wasn’t done (and I think we can still consider ourselves fortunate given the final result), and very little of this original narrative block remains, scattered in fragments throughout the series (including Yui’s plan, as mentioned above).
Now, having mentioned the narrative role —arguably evident— of the story’s antagonists brings me to my original topic that I intended to address from the beginning: these antagonists themselves and, in particular, their much-debated nomenclature (from here onwards the direct sources will be linked directly through the text for saving as much space as possible).
As many of you will already know, the enemies threatening humanity in Neon Genesis Evangelion are originally called 使徒 (shito), a word that in Japanese unambiguously means “apostle.” However, within the narrative context of the work itself, they are graphically rendered with the term ANGEL, written in Latin characters and all uppercase (whether on NERV displays or, for instance, in the secondary English titles shown in each episode—you’ll recall that every episode always has a double title).
Even from this very simple —yet clear— introduction, we can draw some important conclusions: the enemies in Evangelion are explicitly called 使徒 (shito), that is, “apostles” (and they will always be referred to as such). Yet this term is graphically rendered as ANGEL, the English word that in Japanese corresponds to 天使 (tenshi), which unambiguously means “angel” and cannot in any way be overlapped with the other term. Thus, we can deduce that there exists —right from the beginning— a deliberate terminological dualism: the beings referred to as 使徒 are visually represented with the English equivalent of 天使, a non-matching word. A genuine terminological discrepancy. Further considerations: in the series, the enemies are always and only called 使徒, never once 天使, which appears only graphically in English (titles, displays, etc.). Moreover, the authors, as far as we know, could have chosen different solutions from a purely writing standpoint: they could have used the kanji form of the word (天使), or they could have employed the katakana transliteration of the English loanword (エンジェル). Instead, neither option was taken: the word ANGEL is used, written in Latin characters and all uppercase. This further underscores the deliberate choice to render the term in this very specific way—among the many alternatives available.
This strictly terminological dualism then reflects another dualism —always present— namely, that the creatures called 使徒 also bear the names of 天使 (angels). And this dualism —or contradiction, if you prefer— is also explicitly highlighted within the anime itself, where on two occasions (episodes 11 and 20, respectively) Shinji questions the nature of his enemies, stating that they are Apostles who have—or who bear—the names of Angels.
If we return to the kikakusho, we notice that this dualism was, in fact, present from the very beginning. On page 2 we read:
“The Apostolos. They've been given the names of angels, but can they really be Messengers of the Gods?”
And again, on page 7—entirely dedicated to them:
“The enemies are unidentified giant battle weapons, designated Apostolos.
Possessing various forms and various super-scientific special abilities, the mysterious objects called Apostolos advance upon mankind. In actuality, they are ancient relics that were left sleeping all around the world by prehistoric life-forms called the First Ancestral Race. There are 28 in all. Adam was the first one confirmed, excavated by mankind 15 years ago in the Dead Sea region, but he was destroyed by a mysterious explosion. 27 will subsequently awaken.
The Apostolos are all named after angels described in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
On this very page —in the header— we can even see that, alongside the term 使徒 written in kanji, appears this time the correct corresponding counterpart written in katakana (アポストロ). This is a direct loanword, in this case from Portuguese. This means that, initially, in the original plans, that other dualism —the terminological one— was not intended, since the term was rendered with its matching katakana transliteration. Only in the actual series was the decision made to adopt this change (perhaps because アポストロ was not considered appealing and was replaced with something else; we can’t know for certain). What is clear, however, is that in both cases it is explicitly stated that these Apostolos bear the names of Angels. Clear and unequivocal.
Now let’s take a look at some sources, including some of the collateral material related to the work.
1) The first booklet we will examine was released at the time of the theatrical release of the film ShinSeiki Evangelion – Shi to Shinsei, that is, DEATH AND REBIRTH, the first film screened in the spring of 1997. One of the various sections of this booklet is a “glossary” (yougoshuu), where numerous key terms from the anime series are listed and elaborated. One of these contains the definition for the entry [ANGEL]; the translation of the relevant excerpt is as follows:
"They are the Apostolos, the beings that threaten humanity. Their English name is not APOSTLE (= 使徒, しと, shito, apostles), but ANGEL (= 天使). In fact, Sachiel, Shamshel, Ramiel, and the other names given to the Apostolos, with the exception of the 1st Apostolos Adam, are all names of angels."
This, perhaps, has been somewhat a source of confusion. This formulation was likely interpreted to mean that, for foreign audiences —since English is mentioned— the nomenclature for 使徒 is not APOSTLE but ANGEL. However, this is clearly an overreading; it is not a translation, nor intended or imposed for foreign territories, especially because we are talking about collateral content produced purely for commercial purposes— for the Japanese audience, not foreign ones— and for which, although produced in close collaboration with them, the original authors are not explicitly credited in the booklet (neither Gainax nor Anno himself), implying that the booklet was neither supervised nor curated by him—or anyone on his behalf. Rather, it simply intends to state that the English equivalent of those called 使徒/shito in the story is ANGEL. From this, the clear and deliberate non-correspondence between the Japanese term 使徒 [しと, shito], whose sole meaning “apostle” is reinforced even with the correct English translation APOSTLE, and the “corresponding” English term ANGEL, which while correctly indicated as the translation of 天使 [てんし, tenshi, angels], is deliberately associated as the English name of the beings called 使徒 [しと, shito] is made even more evident.
2) The second booklet to mention, released with the second film, THE END OF EVANGELION , became known among fans, especially in the U.S., as the “Red Cross Book,” due to its cover design. It also contains a glossary very similar to the previous one, but with entries “updated” to reflect the latest “version of events”—that is, the second and final film. For this reason, it was generally considered the most revised and therefore reliable official record of Evangelion’s narrative “canon.” In this booklet, in contrast to the previous one, the terminological dualism is completely absent, as the glossary entry only lists 使徒, and throughout the text the term shito is used exclusively; ANGEL never appears, neither in the title nor in the text. In this case, the Apostolos are referred to only as “Apostolos” and nothing else. For this reason, no translation of this excerpt is required here (interested readers can, of course, translate it themselves using amateur or professional tools, based on the image linked above).
3) Finally, the seventh official LaserDisc, the so-called Genesis 0:7, containing episodes 13 and 14—the latter titled Seele, the Seat of the Soul [ゼーレ、魂の座]. Each original Japanese LD, in particular, featured on the back cover a section called ENCYCLOPEDIA, each elaborating one or more key elements in depth, like true encyclopedic entries: fully official, original, and extensive texts. The one on the back of Genesis 0:7, not coincidentally, was entirely dedicated to the Apostolos. The most relevant part of this entry, placed under the image of Israfel, with translation, reads:
使徒 (=ANGEL) 、 死海文書、アダム、マギ、エヴァなど、一連の事象に、これだけキリスト教文化の言葉が頻出するのは偶然とは言えまい。そこに何らかの意志が介在すると考えるのが自然だろう。 同様に、使徒につけられた天使名も、無作為に選択されたのではなく、意志を持って選択されたと見るべきである。それは、各天使がそれぞれ担うとされる分野と、実際に出現した使徒の性格に、興味深い一致が見られるからだ。以下に、それぞれの天使が担う分野を記す。
"Apostolos (=ANGEL), Dead Sea Scrolls, Adam, Magi, Eva, etc.: if this level of expressions from Christian culture recurs throughout the chain of events, it cannot be said to be a coincidence. It is natural to think that some intention is at play. Similarly, the angelic names assigned to the Apostolos were not chosen randomly, but should be seen as deliberately selected. This is because there is an interesting correspondence between the domains each angel is supposed to oversee and the characteristics of the Apostolos as they actually appear. Below, the domains assigned to each angel are listed."
The first observation is that the sheer volume of text reserved for the “encyclopedic entry” on 使徒/ANGEL is clearly incomparable to the tiny excerpt in the theatrical booklet, which has been much hyped and even misinterpreted by the domestic fandom. The information in this in-depth entry is truly rich, citing much of the apocryphal tradition derived from texts such as the Books of Enoch and the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, in addition to discussing all the “proper names” and “elemental domains” of the Apostolos from the third to the tenth.
However, the most decisive point is the specific explanation of how these proper names of the Apostolos (使徒, shito) belong to the beings that, in apocryphal Christian scriptures, are called angels (天使, tenshi), which are not equivalent to the concept of “angel” in mainstream Catholic doctrine. This highlights the authors’ full awareness of the discrepant linguistic dualism inherent in correlating the terms 使徒 (shito, apostle) with ANGEL— a fact already evident, which, as will be seen later, is also emphasized in the dialogues of the animated series itself, but here is additionally traced to deliberate intent and presumably significant meaning. In ShinSeiki Evangelion, 使徒 is the term deliberately used to indicate “the mysterious enemies of humanity,” and the authors intentionally associated the corresponding but non-matching English nomenclature ANGEL with the Japanese term, thus creating a deliberate, linguistically divergent dualism, further emphasized by the Apostolos’ proper names, which deviate from those of angels in apocryphal Christian scriptures.
At this point, we are approaching the final phase of this analysis. By now, some may wonder how it is possible for such a pronounced linguistic discrepancy to exist within the work. In fact, and I think many already know this, this is not the only one: there are several other interlinguistic terminological dualisms; just consider the title of the work itself, or the 波長パターン青 (hachou pattern ao, “Wavelength Pattern: Blue”) and BLOOD TYPE: BLUE (also a reference that Anno wanted to include), which are themselves discrepant.
Honestly, I think there have been a few too many overinterpretations. For example, it is often assumed that the presence of dual titles within the episodes —one Japanese and one English— implies that the first is for Japan while the second is for foreign audiences; that the English title is intended for the international public because of this dual-track system. But this is not the case: the English title is not meant as a title for an international audience; it is simply another of the numerous references or homages that the author decided to include in the series, nothing more. Michael House, who was the in-house English translator at Gainax in 1995, confirmed this in an interview:
"Anno wanted to use that line in one of the English episode titles in Eva (he had different Japanese and “English” titles in the series because he’d grown up watching dubbed foreign series with Japanese episode titles that were often drastically different from the original English titles, as another aside)."
House also confirmed that Anno clearly did not care much about the English equivalents he had in mind:
"[…] most of the time they treated me like a black box, despite my initial attempts to educate them about the basics of translation. Sometimes, especially on Evangelion, they, usually Hideaki Anno, would throw out some phrase and expect me to spit out some English."
"Anno took it into his head that he wanted to describe a given thing with a given term, because it struck his fancy, and which was aimed at other Japanese, not foreign, audiences. Again, I can’t pick on Gainax specifically, because my anecdotal observation to-date suggests that much of what Japanese do is intended for the benefit of impressing other Japanese, with little or no regard for how such things may appear to non-Japanese."
"On the [Evangelion] TV series, Anno would communicate what he wanted, and then I would struggle to think of something that might not be entirely awful in English."
This also explains the crude, if you want at times comical, linguistic/grammatical error whereby the pilots in Evangelion are referred to in the singular as ‘children’ (which is, in fact, plural) instead of the correct singular form ‘child’. Anno himself, in a 1996 dialogue with critic Oomori Nozomi, reiterated:
庵野 使徒と天使を同じにするなんて西欧人から見たら、文句言われてもしょうがないぐらいだと思いますけどね。いや、社内にもアメリカ人がひとりいるんですけど、色々と叱られましたよ。これはいけないって。やっぱり、そうなんすよね。でも、そういうの、気にしないんでやったんだと思いますよ。
Anno: “Of course, even if we look at it from a Western point of view, equating ‘Apostolos’ and ‘Angels’ is something that could naturally receive complaints. In fact, there is one American in the company who scolded me for various things, saying ‘This cannot be right.’ And indeed, he was correct. But I think I did those things without worrying about it.”
The reference here is clearly to Michael House, whose recollection aligns with and confirms that of director Hideaki Anno. As for our discussion on nomenclature, once again it is evident that the author knew the dualism between “Shito” (Apostolos) and ANGEL was inappropriate, but he chose to pursue it nonetheless.
Having closed this additional chapter dedicated to the testimonies of those directly involved, and having laid out everything that has been written, I believe that rendering the term as Apostles/使徒 is terminologically the most accurate for multiple reasons. It is evident—even from the first part of this analysis—and following the science-fiction framework that Evangelion was originally supposed to have, that the narrative function of the ‘Shito’ is to act as messengers of the Sentinel—Adam—once awakened (exactly as in Mars). On the other hand, if we look at its etymology—from Greek apóstolos, derived from apostéllō, meaning ‘to send’—it clearly carries the meaning of ‘messenger’. Secondly, all claims suggesting that there was an original intent for internationalization on the part of the author are false and therefore untrue. Hideaki Anno had no interest in foreign audiences: what he did, he did for the Japanese public, not for international audiences. The second English title was not included to serve as a title for foreign viewers but simply as a reference or homage the author wanted to make. As mentioned above, he had no particular concern for the English terms used or the potential mistakes they might entail. This is all verifiable from the combined testimony excerpts cited earlier. Thirdly, adapting 使徒 as “angel,” within the context of ShinSeiki Evangelion, is not only an undue simplification, reducing an intentional and discrepant dual nomenclature to a single convergent meaning, but it also de facto eliminates the 使徒/ANGEL terminological dualism present in the original and deliberately intended by the authors, with the consequence that it fades into oblivion.
That said, each person may choose to refer to them however they like, but with the awareness that doing so is, to a large extent, a mistake. What concerns me more, however, is dispelling another long-standing myth: the common narrative that Anno, or Gainax on his behalf, explicitly decreed that the enemies in foreign localizations outside Japan should be called Angels is false. It is not true. There is no documented source in which Anno or the animation studio explicitly, clearly, and precisely state: “We want [blah blah] these to be called ‘B’ instead of ‘A.’” There is none, it does not exist—until proven otherwise, it has never been explicitly produced nor, to my knowledge, ever received. Therefore, this narrative, now long-standing and traditional, is false.
One final point remains: the iconic theme song of the anime, 残酷な天使のテーゼ (Zankoku na Tenshi no These). In this wonderful piece, the term 天使, meaning “angel,” certainly appears, but here it does not refer to the enemies of the work —they have nothing to do with this context— but, as the title suggests, to the “Thesis of the Cruel Angel,” that is, to the ideal child who ultimately becomes an adult according to the “thesis of the cruel angel”: the inevitable psychological journey toward adulthood, achieved through the overcoming, disavowal, and thus betrayal of childhood idealism. Not coincidentally, the lyrics of the chorus explicitly address a “boy” (少年, shounen) who, by following “the thesis of the cruel angel,” if he knows how to “betray memories,” will “become a legend”— a poetic climax that, in the powerful crescendo of imagery, focuses on the face of the protagonist Ikari Shinji, who, “released” from his Eva unit (his mother!), turns with a determined expression, first in a gesture of refusal, then blinded by the spotlight, and finally smiling and resolute.
And that's all. I realize it's pretty long but considering the opera and the theme it couldn't be otherwise. To all who'll read this, i genuinely thank you :-)
