A friend introduced me to Neon Genesis Evangelion during the pandemic, and like a lot of anime fans, I became obsessed with it. Not sure what it is, but this weird, weird anime defies logical conventions so much you can’t help but be drawn in to trying to understand it. Here’s my takes on the main pilots from the original series.

This one was a bit of a coloring experiment to see what I could with lighting a blue character in red. It’s more complicated than it looks.

Asuka’s Eva Unit 02 is a little stylized in this one as I was having a hard time finding a profile image to draw from. I came across an interpretation similar to this online, and I liked the exaggerated chin piece. So I made my mine that way, as well. Asuka always makes me happy too look at in this one, too. Her confidence here betrays the dark insecurity and depression she suffers in the actual show.

The most annoying and whiniest character of the bunch, this image portrays shinji in a rare moment of assertiveness. I really liked how the Unit 01 came out in the background of this one.

This image actually came from a sweet story in the Evangelion Rebuild movies. She’s actually a clone of the original Rei trying to figure out her place in the world, and I just really liked the story. So I did this image from a screen shot in the movie, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time.