First paragraph from A Vampire in New America
A shadow had fallen over the town of Middlebury. In the span of a single week, two of Middlebury High’s most lauded students went missing without a trace. The first was the athlete, the star of the woman’s soccer team and the apple of the National Honors Society’s eye, Kasandra Nievo. The second, Eric Davidson Jr, first child of local dairy baron Eric Davidson and universally respected president of his class, went missing only days after. These disappearance injected a palpable anxiety into the spring air of Essex county, and one could not drive more than a few streets in any direction without confronting missing persons posters and flashing LED signs.
A poem entitled Big Fight
Love her but
she’s a bastard.
Should have thought faster
(or at all)
before the slammed can
made the stairs a dump.
Wet wipes, ripe
pad streaked brown,
refuse, expletive.
Fists on hips,
sinewave curve,
black hair
like wire.
Taut cheeks,
defiant gleam,
electrifying
eye on fire.
Rebuked.
Cauterized.
Proselytized.
We’re about
the same height but
her thighs would crush me.
Sullen, I
jerk off in the corner.
From Apocalyptic Review: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Every once in a while, a piece of media will be leap into the public conscience like an atomic blast. Although “Mecha” was already a popular genre in Japanese manga and animation for decades, the release of Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995 exploded the popularity of both giant robots and anime across the world. Americans were already familiar with their own soft brand of fighting robots with the Transformers franchise of toys and television shows, but Neon Genesis Evangelion was something else. It’s intentionally short episode count allowed for a quality of animation rarely seen outside of feature-length animated movies, and the show’s intense themes of apocalypse, authoritarianism, and psychological turmoil added weight to a genre previously dominated (in American eyes) by the likes of Astro Boy and Optimus Prime. It is a wonder of worldbuilding and kinetic action. With the show’s rerelease on Netflix in 2019 with an entirely remastered dub, we are finally allowed a legal method by which to experience the cult classic paradigm shifter for ourselves.
As an example of popular apocalyptic media specifically, Evangelion portrays a bizarre blend of Japanese atomic apocalypticism in a futuristic/cyberpunk setting and, as its name implies, Christian evangelicalism and biblical occultism. The anime is decidedly dispensational in its vision of the end of humanity, and its invocation of epic battles with angelic beasts and the resurrection of Godlike beings seems to pull images and themes from Revelation at will. Though Christian imagery is loaded throughout the anime, the depths of the show’s fascination with rapture are at first cleverly disguised by the typical Mecha formula. The world of Evangelion takes place in the Japan of an imagined 2014. The story follows Shinji Ikari, estranged son of the inventor Gendo Ikari, as he arrives in Tokyo-3, a technologically advanced metropolis built upon the ruins of the old city. Fourteen years prior, the world underwent cataclysmic change after an explosive event known as the “Second Impact” melted Antarctica, shifted the world off its axis, and plunged the Earth into climate catastrophe and war. Though Tokyo-3 appears lush and affluent, the heat of the city is seemingly equatorial and a natural ambience composed of deafening cicada chirps indicates an ecosystem that is unbalanced and only recently vigorous in its repopulation of the planet. In the first episode, these elements are only accents—the contemplative tone of the initial moments are undercut by sirens urging the Tokyo-3 into lockdown. An angel is descending upon the city!
[…]
We see in Neon Genesis Evangelion a merger of apocalyptic traditions that is rarely seen. On one hand, the anime certainly follows the tradition of contemporary Japanese apocalypticism inspired by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Animated films like Akira (1988) render a futuristic Tokyo created in the aftermath of an incredible explosion. Evangelion’s brutal architecture of apartment complexes and skyscrapers seems to adapt this popular aesthetic, including the foundational imagery of explosions to kick the plot off. Unlike the American nuclear terror, Japanese nuclear apocalypse is often framed in the aftermath of disaster rather than a buildup to the blast. However, Evangelion mixes Christian rapture culture into the formula. The show contains a Mecha-apocalypse that is entirely aware of its own course. Plot becomes prophecy, and considerable pleasure can be derived from piecing the events together, especially in repeat viewings.
Evangelion is an anime that unfolds. Once you really get into the world, the show drags you straight to its violent conclusion. Though I originally set out to watch the anime for its striking animation quality, I found myself increasingly drawn to the convoluted plot and religious imagery. The show pretty much begs you to binge-read the wiki afterwards! The lore and iconography go incredibly deep. It is also a particularly relevant piece of media for our current disinformation age. The reality of Tokyo-3 is ruled by conspiracy and lies underscored by an insatiable appetite for an Evangelical reckoning. Imagine a version of Q-Anon that spoke of giant angelic monstrosities and a scientific method of inducing rapture via giant God-robots… that’s sort of like Neon Genesis Evangelion. In a lot of ways, the show can be really upsetting. Though it adopts Christian ideas about the end of the world, I must warn you that the end of Evangelion is far from happy. The New World that this rapture brings about is far from paradise.