Pen Pen (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

This is a list of characters in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and the movies Evangelion: Death & Rebirth, The End of Evangelion and the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy. The characters were designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.

According to director Hideaki Anno, Evangelion was an attempt to make all perspectives into one, creating characters that represent different things to different viewers to make it impossible for everyone to arrive at a single theory. To some viewers, the characters are psychological representations, while to others, they are philosophical, religious, historical, and even themselves.

Anno was influenced by Ryu Murakami's political economy novel The Fascism of Love and Fantasy (愛と幻想のファシズム, Ai to Gensō no Fashizumu), and the names "Toji Suzuhara", "Kensuke Aida", and the surname "Horaki" and "Aida" come from this book. Many of the surnames of the characters in Evangelion are named after Japanese warships in World War II.

Most of Evangelion's characters' ages were plotted before broadcasting the TV series, but their birthdays were not settled. After the TV series finished, GAINAX released birthdays which were similar to those of each character's voice actors, except Rei Ayanami, Toji Suzuhara, Kensuke Aida and Kaworu Nagisa. This time, the characters' birth years were still unrevealed.

Adult characters' birth years were simply calculated from their age, but there was an additional aspect in determining the children's ones. According to the Japanese educational system, in 2015 second graders of junior high school (eighth graders) are basically made up of children who were born from April 2, 2001 to April 1, 2002. Children's birth years were set in proportion to this rule. However these birth years did not change the children's ages of 14 in year 2015. This is the reason why Asuka Langley Soryu and Toji Suzuhara were born in December 2001 and Hikari Horaki was born in February 2002, despite all children except Kaworu are 14 in 2015.

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