The History of Anime on TV can basically be broken down into two big eras.
Pre-Evangelion and Post-Evangelion.
You see, before Neon Genesis Evangelion aired, there wasn't a whole plethora of
original anime TV shows, especially not in the late-night broadcasting blocks.
Most of the really original anime as well as all of the nice stuff the stuff
aimed at otaku and older audiences was being produced in Ovas or films.
TV anime was usually relegated to much longer series
with much broader appeal. For instance you had stuff like the world
Masterpiece theater shows each of which was a 50 or so episode adaptation of some piece of classic literature?
Usually from the west these projects were the breeding ground of talents such as hayao
Miyazaki and the staff of Studio Ghibli then you had Manga adaptations usually of stuff with a pretty broad appeal
sports anime from the 70s like a sheet on Ojo action Mecha series like Mazinger z later a plethora of
long-Running shown in action series hitting it big with dragon ball in the mid 80s as well as long-form romantic comedies like the
adaptations of Rumiko Takahashi x' work like a loose ayaat
Sura and Ranma 1/2 the works of Meets udo
Adachi such as touch generally lots and lots of manga adaptations of Manga that were usually already pretty popular
Some of these appealed to older audiences or to the whole family but very rarely were these the niche otaku shows that proliferate
Anime today with few exceptions. It could be said that even before
Evangelion changed the face of anime Mobile suit Gundam had already done
So in 1979 and Gundam did inspire a fair few imitators with a blossoming mecha and Sci-Fi Genre in the 80s
But a majority of those were just other shows from studio sunrise the studio who had created mobile suit Gundam
And as the 80s gave way to the 90s fewer and fewer of those were
Serious Dark adult shows and more and more of them were kids shows aimed at selling toys as they had been before Gundam
Particularly when sunrise was bought out by Bandai and really became focused on Mecha series for Younger children such as the brave franchise
Well, we did get some interesting Sci-Fi series here, and there such as super dimensional fortress macross in the mid
Irresponsible Captain Tyler in the early 90s the latter being an adaptation of a novel series
It wasn't really until after evangelion blew up that the doors were thrust open on not only
original anime on television with shorter runtimes in later Timeslots
But also more experimental anime aimed at a more niche and adult audience
Seriously go on my anime list go into the archive section of their seasonal charts
Open up every year in the 90s before Evangelion airing you will see almost
Exclusively kids shows and Manga adaptations
But then the second evangelion hits the air all of a sudden the second half of the 90s changes completely
But in a very slow and methodical Manner first immediately following evangelion is the series
Escaflowne an original anime series from studio sunrise once again this one which tries to blend Shoujo elements into a mecha
Fantasy series now ask a flow name probably isn't as directly a result of neon genesis Evangelion
It was an original project which involved a lot of staff who had already been working on original projects with sunrise up to that point?
And would be a breeding ground for talent which would go on to create further original projects in the near future
but nonetheless the fact that it comes right after
Evangelion kind of signals the flood that is soon to come later that year is the first true successor to neon Genesis Evangelion
In the form of Martian Successor in Edessa. Co this is a Mecha parody
Deconstruction anime which seeks to take apart all of the tropes of old robot shows as well as the otaku
Oriented Media in General, and just pull it all apart and look at how it works before putting it back together
It's got a wacky fun dysfunctional cast of super cute girls some really dark
unexpected turns throughout the narrative and a crazy-ass ending granted one that like the end of evangelion seems truncated and
Unsatisfying and was meant to be followed up with further Media which in this case
Some of it got made but not all following that we have
Revolutionary Girl Utena which really seems to be an answer to evangelion
But in the realm of Shoujo magical girl anime lewton O was spearheaded by Kunihiko Aku Hara
Who was good friends with?
Evangelion creator hideo Keano at the time the two of them had
Work together on some episodes of sailor Moon which Eco hada had been the chief director of for the third and fourth seasons
Eco hada and his team called, babe
Papa's decided to break away from the studio that was creating sailor moon and decided to go work with j.c.staff
Whom aside from sunrise was the only studio other than neon genesis evangelion?
Even attempting original TV anime in the 90s. They had produced metal fighter miku just a year before evangelion
Which was a pretty standard girls sports series?
But with some weird and trippy visuals because of director occupation though coming in late on the project
Revolutionary Girl Utena has many of the same intentions as evangelion
but turned up to 11 with the visual factor if the densely laden themes and symbolism and the obvious attemPts at
subversion all
Over the place the creators were aiming to do everything that they had wished they could do with sailor moon and couldn't and boy they
Did everything they possibly could the follow-up film revolutionary girl utena?
apocalypse of adolescents is often referred to as end of tuna in reference to its similarity to end of
Evangelion and while Lewton afield like the most direct result of
Evangelion existence we would very quickly start to see things open up and get crazy in
1998 once everybody had time to really let evangelion settle in and decide to try and copy it one series
Which doesn't really borrow much from Evangelion?
But may very well have been allowed to exist because of the success of such a show is Cowboy Bebop
a show that was created when studio sunrise told director
Shinichiro watanabe that he could basically do whatever he wants as long as it has some
Spaceships that they can sell toys of so, what - now?
They creates one of the most eclectic original and memorable anime series of all time bear in mind these series were also
big successes Martian success or no disco and Cowboy Bebop also sold
Gangbusters and revolutionary girl utena has been extremely well remembered over time itself having won Several awards
But 1998 is where the floodgates really start to open and not every one of these shows is as well remembered as neon genesis Evangelion
And its first few successors at this point
It's not only these hyper talented visionary directors
Who are being given the reins to do whatever they want on these really great series now things are starting to get more
Experimental some very strange writers are getting hired people who are known their weird-ass bullshit for instance show.i, Okawa
Who's put in charge of the Series Neo Rangga and utterly insane?
Batshit Balls-To-the-Wall
series which starts off with three episodes of what is literally a
Godzilla film before it becomes about three young girls who have a pet kaiju that they used to solve
Yakuza disputes
And the housing crisis in Japan this thing has tons of political
Commentary it really goes all over the place in tone and is completely unpredictable and show.i
Okawa would go on to write
No shortage of Batshit insane bullshit over the course of his career likewise we would be introduced to Chiaki J
Kanaka who made his mark on the world with serial experiments lain a cult favorite
Series which makes up for its relative lack of production value with incredibly striking artwork and design and especially
Sound design but more importantly its mind-altering perception of the internet and the upcoming singularity which seemed way ahead of its time in
1998 other less remembered shows which started that year are the likes of gas Adachi and generator gall a mecha series and
Transforming hiro series respectively, which feel a little bit more standard and anime ish than the likes of evangelion?
but clearly take cues from it in terms of their
Presentation and the integration of more horrifying and trippy Sci-Fi elements into their plot in 1999 we get dual parallel
Adventure a show which I haven't seen myself
but the only thing I've ever
Heard about it over the 17 years that I've been hearing about it is people saying that it's like a light-hearted
Take on neon Genesis Evangelion
Depending on who you're asking
It's a not up its ass version
But you know you know how people are a couple of the producers working at studio sunrise who are in charge of the brave
Franchise remember that kids toy line show would take it in a very strange
Direction when they brought Gaogaigar to an end the final brave series, and then gave it this crazy-ass
Ova
finale that completely goes into the realm of dark and insane and this is right before setting another series in the same universe as the
brave series called better man
Which is a straight-up Sci-Fi horror series that has nothing
Totally to do with the brave series in spite of sharing the same style of character design and to start off 1999
We see the legend of Black heaven a show with dogshit production values
but a really
story about a washed-up old Rock star come
Salaryman who's trapped in Limbo between trying to relive his glory days and taking care of his wife and kid aside from its random breaks
Into complete wacky silliness that don't go over all that well the series handle some
Shockingly mature themes with a character older than almost any other main character in anime ever
not to mention some badass guitar solos if I have to mark the exact moment that the full impact of
Evangelion release really takes hold though it would be in October of 1999 in this season four
Different very dark Sci-Fi series make their debut on television
each of them featuring characters who experience deep pSychological trauma really horrifying world views on the Nature of
Humanity and just plenty of carnage and violence in some cases
We have now and then here and there which starts off looking like a shown an adventure series about a kid getting
Teleported to another world until it turns out that this other world. He's been teleported to is a horrifying
Dictatorship full of child slaves and soldiers in which the main characters are essentially
tormented and raped throughout the series then we have blue Gender a show about humanity coming out of
Cryogenic Chambers to find the Earth completely ravaged by giant insects that kill everything and which I remember primarily for the fact that so many
of the main characters get eaten horrific ly by Giant bugs
Not to mention infinite revised a show about a bunch of space cadets who end up
abandoned on a ship out in the middle of space when all of the adults die and they have to learn to form a society
which comes with no shortage of
Horrifying horrifying things that people do to one another very often referred to as the lord the flies in space
Not to mention Chiaki J
Kanaka returns once again with big O this one a sort of fusion of Batman with mecha that has lots of film noir
trappings and on a lighter note die guard a mecha series in which the mech isn't really as important as the study of
Bureaucracy an extremely adult centric series considering that it's a mecha show at this point in time
original anime got into full swing
Plenty of weird eclectic original shows were hitting the air over the course of the next Few years
stuff like Nia under Seven Brigadoon Strange, Don, Bandra, Argento
Soma
Arjuna the Daichi's new are the Soultaker Gene shaft figure 17 xingu s cry add all of these debuted in
2000 and 2001 all of them were highly original series with varying levels of adult appeal some of them were completely
Out there
And just totally full of weird ideas that they were getting to explore in this new
Expanded format of original TV anime and others were a lot more anime like and felt more like the ova
's of the 80's and 90's, we're just getting
expanded into full TV shows now whether or not they had been based on Manga if I had to pinpoint the apex of the
Evangelion influence though it would be with the series Rasa fon in
2002 Rasa fun has always been closely compared to
evangelion for good reason my friend ghost lightning made a whole post about all the direct parallels between the two shows as a response to
People who were arguing that rasa fun was somehow nothing like evangelion
Which is objectively not true, but in a way rasa fon reflects an attempt to do ever again
but with a whole different crew of Major Talent
This was the first really major original project from Studio bones
And it was a collaboration between many different writers and directors to make something
extremely eclectic and out there in a mecha series one that goes a step farther than
Evangelion and being
truly out there with its design sense and with a narrative that really kind of plays second fiddle to the idea of just
Going crazy and experimenting with different episode styles
But by this point the floodgates are just officially
open original anime is a thing that we have now and not even much of it is necessarily trying to copy elements from
Evangelion the people who made
Evangelion have all moved on to work on future
projects the nature of most anime studios has completely shifted with tons of new studios opening up and breaking away from one another at the
Turn of the century and anime on TV is becoming a bigger and bigger deal as more and more shows get introduced every single season
Even the weirdest original anime feels less and less like it's directly trying to do what Ava
Did shows like hi Bonnie ren mei Wolf's rain last exile and techno lies which aired in 2003 all create their own
Completely unique worlds while shows like Paranoia agent ergo proxy and no wine over the next couple of years managed to explore the these deeper
psychological concepts and really out there plotlines without really feeling like
Evangelion ripoffs and in the meantime a lot of more normal anime style is being brought to
Original anime shows like my he may and mahou Shoujo lyrical Nanoha that aired in 2004 played with completely different
Elements of the meta of anime and would be bigger inspirations on the types of shows that were to come
But it wasn't just original anime which was following Evan galleons example over that decade a lot of the stuff
That was being
Adapted from Manga and light novels was very clearly being adapted because of its similarity to evangelion as well
And in fact in some of these cases the stories actually feel less ava
Like simply because they weren't actually being made in response to evangelion
But we're instead picked up because they could now be adapted to anime with shows like ever being proven popular
It's hard to imagine
We'd get stuff like the berserk adaptation something as baffling as eat man
Trigon the first TV version of Bubblegum crisis
crested the stars or Boogie Pop
Phantom which is less an adaptation of the book and more in original anime set in between the first two books of the series
by the time we get into the
mid-2000s with huge years for anime like
2006 and 2007 the engine of what anime will eventually become begins to
Perpetuate itself without any need for one huge breakout series to change everything every year more and more shows are debuting
Until eventually every season more and more shows are debuting and the rise of the open internet and piracy starts spreading all
Kinds of different shows to a huge audience all around the world
There are no shortage of tentpole anime that you could point to for having massive influences over
What was going to be popular in the next Few years the Melancholy of Haruhi suzumiya code gasps death note?
Sword art online all of these are massively influential shows on the landscape of anime in the time after their airing
But nothing can be compared to the sheer magnitude of difference between what there was on TV before and after neon genesis Evangelion
Especially in those first five to ten years when everyone was really just trying to make that show again
I hope that you enjoyed this video and that you might go and check out some of the post ava shows if you happen to
Be a fan of shows like evangelion most of the stuff that came out back then was pretty excellent Martian success turn a disco
revolutionary Girl Utena Cowboy Bebop these are all must watch series
especially if you're a fan of the genres of the first two and stuff like neo
Rangga serial experiments lain now and then here and there or infinite revised is very much worth watching to get a totally unique experience
From anime that you just are not going to get today check all of that out and while you're at
It check out my playlist of every YouTube video that
I am featured in because I show up on tons of different channels all over this website
and if you want to help me to make more videos like this then consider donating to my patreon which is linked below and
On-screen, thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one