Evangelion, NERV Headquaters - Episode Summaries

Episode Summaries - #1-4

Episode Summaries:

One-Four

Five-Eight

Nine-Twelve

Thirteen-Sixteen

Seventeen-Twenty

TwentyOne-
TwentyFour

Episode #1 "Angel Attack"

The episode begins with a woman driving around an evacuated Tokyo-3 looking for a young child named Shinji Ikari. She finds him and picks him up just before a large group of UN forces intercept an angel-monster. They had returned after fifteen years. The angel tears apart about everything they throw at it including an N2 mine (a nuclear explosive) and it still isn't hurt. In fact, it regenerates and becomes smarter from it. The angel starts to come close to NERV Headquarters, the home to NERV, a top-secret UN agency assigned to deal with the angel threat, so the Japanese Defense Force allows NERV handle the situation in order to eliminate the angel threat. Gendo Ikari, the supreme commander of NERV, orders his son, Shinji, to pilot EVA-01, the man-made fighting machine, created as man's last attempt at survival. When Shinji refuses, Gendo orders EVA Unit-00's pilot, Rei Ayanami to pilot it. When Shinji sees a group of people wheeling this beautiful girl, around his age, on an emergency stretcher all bandaged up, he agrees to pilot and surprises everyone when he syncronizes with no prior training with the EVA, this coming after the EVA saved him from falling debris without being plugged in. Unfortunately he doesn't know how to make the thing walk so the angel starts to trash it. As the episode ends Shinji has just lost consciousness.

Episode #2 "The Beast"

We open with Shinji waking up in a hospital bed in an unknown hospital room. When he gets out of the hospital, he learns that the woman who picked him up, Captain Misato Katsuragi, has taken the responsibility to be his legal guardian. She takes the reluctant and shy Shinji into her home and it is not what he expected. It looks like a tornado hit her room. There are empty beer cans all over, the room is a mess and she even has a pet penguin named Penpen. Shinji remembers what happened with battle between him and the angel. He got angry and went beserk. He started to pumble the angel and broke its AT field. The angel decided to try to take the EVA with it and self destructed on top of the EVA's head. A little later he returns to NERV and sees the face of the Evangelion robot he piloted. It truly scares him and that is where the episode ends.

Episode #3 "A Transfer"

Shinji decides it is time he goes to school and tries getting his life back to normal despite having to save the Earth from the Angels. Unfortunately, his classmates are all talking about the battle just a few days prior and all speculate who the pilot is. When they learn its Shinji, everyone is shocked and want to talk to him. Well most of them. His peer, Touji Suzahara, had a sister that was injured in the battle and he is set on revenge for what happened. Touji comes to the conclusion that fists are the bets solution. He would beat Shinji up outside. Later on, Touji's best friend, Aida Kensuke, drags him away from the emergency shelter to a mountain to get a ringside seat for the fight between the newly arrived fourth angel and EVA-01. They accidentally get caught in between the two combatants following the angel severing Shinji's power cable. With only five minutes left, Shinji is afraid to fight seeing Aida and Touji outside. Misato orders the boys into the entry plug and Shinji starts to fight the angel, despite Misato's order to retreat. Shinji loses control and withdraws his EVA's progressive knife, plunging it into the EVA's core. With no time left, the progressive knife pierces the core. From that point on Shinji, Touji, and Aida become best friends. The episode closes with the eerie site of the silhouettes of the dead fourth angel and the powerless EVA with a progressive knife.

Episode #4 "Hedgehog's Dilemma

Misato wakes up and after wondering where Shinji only to discover after days of not attending school, Shinji has left home. It turns out, Shinji took a train to the middle of nowhere and gets off. After thinking about his situation, he sleeps overnight at an abandoned movie theatre and next morning starts walking around in the country, running into Aida Kensuke who is vacationing by himself. Shinji explains to him how he wants to leave NERV. Kensuke explains how he basically would love to be in Shinji's shoes. Shinji is found by NERV intelligence and tells Misato about his reluctancy to pilot the Evangelion. To his surprise she tells him if thats what he wants, then so be it. He goes to the train station where he sees Touji and Aida. Both newfound friends wish him off. Misato rushes to the station to see if he left only to discover Shinji decided to stay. We leave Shinji standing there looking at Misato at the empty train station. Tough love by Misato works. The Hedgehogs Dilemma is over... for now.