Fourteen years past the birth of Shinji Ikari, the absurdities of human life manifest themselves and assault our unwilling messiah.  His mother left lost in childhood memory due to an accident that can be blamed on his father with oedipal intimations.  Gendo Ikari, a man behind a wall of cold stoicism and devotion to profane science, provides nothing for his son but a terrible burden of responsibility he doesn’t understand.  Gendo cannot empathize with anyone, his only connection to others defined by employment and means to his ends.  He calls his son out of the childhood innocent pond, forcing him to pilot an awkward and giant humanoid body known as the Evangelion, unit 01.  Resentful of his new environment and the burden placed upon him by his father, Shinji wishes to flee back to his childhood world.  Displeased, his father calls Rei to take Shinji’s place.  She is known as the first child, an experienced and prototypical pilot of the Evangelion.  Her wounds from the previous battle still shedding fresh blood, she is wheeled in to take Shinji’s place.  The Angel attack outside of Tokyo 3 damages the holding bay they stand in, knocking over the gurney holding Rei.  Shinji rushes to her shivering body, for the first time attempting to empathize with a female.  His hand covered in blood, Shinji accepts his responsibility and embraces maturity for the first time.

The Evangelion stands taller than the buildings that fill Tokyo 3.  There is a human quality to these externally metal clad weapons with flesh within.  The beast is fully articulated and controlled by the child inserted by means of an entry plug, a phallic control module that screws into the back of the neck-a reference to the place the soul enters and would be stolen from the body.  Powered by an umbilical cord,  a means of the mature world supplying a child with enough resources to venture out, Evangelion was created to battle the Angels, a curious set of solitary aggressors, each with a different consuming ethos and character.  Shinji, as he moves this unfamiliar new body he is within, is forced to confront the Angel known as Shamsheil, a manifestation of one logical end of total egocentrism and solidarity.  Its singular goal to reach the carnal knowledge it lacks held underneath subterranean geo-front, the last vestige of hope for human kind.  Violently and indiscriminately it tries to reach it, attacking with overt religious bombardment; each explosion forming a cross telling of death and advancement toward redemption.  The profane weaponry of the human armies only slows its advance.  The only defense remains in the profanation of the sacred form, the Evangelion.  Shinji’s first steps within this giant body are slow and inept.  The Angel begins a melee with the neophyte, quickly overcoming him and breaking his left arm, each pain felt fully by the pilot.  The Angel palms Eva 01’s skull and assaults it directly with a glowing spur pounding from the center of its hand.  The cranial plating is penetrated and Eva 01’s head is left bleeding from front and back, the pilot in shock and somatic torture.  Eva 01 goes berserk, giving into guiltless brutality and loss of human conscience.  This feral state violently overcomes Shamsheil and causes the regeneration of Eva 01’s sinister arm.  First is the effortless removal of the Angels forearms, followed by a grappling and disemboweling, revealing its spherical power source.  Rather than compromise, let its shell be breached, or flee, Shamsheil holds tightly to the Evangelion and commits suicide by manner of self-destruction, hoping to take Eva 01 with it.

Shinji takes time to recall the battle that damaged much of Tokyo 3.  After a time in the hospital and the praise of Misato, his young guardian, he rebuilds the facts in his mind.  The head armor of the Evangelion was destroyed, revealing the eyes and mouth bound underneath.  Shinji sees it, recognizes it, as Eva 01 focuses its eye upon him.