Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime series created by Gainax. It began broadcasting in Japan on TV Tokyo on October 4, 1995 and ended on March 27, 1996. WOWOW aired the series again during 2003. It was written and directed by Hideaki Anno and produced by Project Eva, which included TV Tokyo and Nihon Ad Systems (NAS). Evangelion is an apocalypticanime in the mecha genre. It focuses on a teenage boy recruited by a paramilitary organization named NERV to control a giant cyborg called an Evangelion to fight monstrous beings known as Angels. The show takes place largely in a futuristic Tokyo years after a worldwide catastrophe. It also centers on other Evangelion pilots and members of NERV as they try to prevent another catastrophe.
The series was first aired in North America on San Francisco-area PBS member station KTEH (now KQEH) in 2000. The first two episodes first saw nationwide broadcast in dubbed format on Cartoon Network as part of Toonami's Giant Robot Week on February 24–25, 2003; both episodes were heavily edited for content. Later, the entire series aired nearly unedited on Adult Swim from October 20, 2005, to April 21, 2006.
In 2004, A.D. Vision, the English language licenser, released the director's cut versions of episodes 21 through 24 on its Platinum Edition DVDs. The director's cuts included several new and reworked scenes to better explain the events that occurred in The End of Evangelion.