The Story of NEON GENESIS EVANGELION began in the year 2000 A.D. A huge object, first thought to be a comet or an asteroid, had crashed in Antarctica . At the same time, a mysterious alien race sent a message claiming that they were under the orders of God and that they had sent an "Angel" to the human race. It was soon revealed that the object that had crashed in Antarctica was a gigantic, living organism. It stayed inactive for a brief period of time and then self- destructed, blowing Antarctica to bits . The heat given off by the explosion was so intense that the ice of the entire continent melted, provoking floods and destruction of biblical proportions across the surface of the planet. The Angels warned that they would return to see if the humans had learned and, for 15 years, the human race prepared for their return, not knowing what they had done wrong. And indeed , the Angels did return... During these 15 years, an organization, called NERV , was formed and was given nearly unlimited funds to create Anti-Angel weapons. Of all the weapons they came up with, the most powerful was the Human Shaped Final Battle Weapon, code named EVANGELION (EVA.), giant cyborgs which were the fruit of the Angel technology captured fifteen years ago. Gendo Ikari, the top commander of NERV and director of the

mysterious "Human Aid Project", established, in 2001 A.D, a program code named "Marduke". The purpose of this program was to find suitable pilots for the Evangelions. To date (2015 A.D), that program had only yielded three pilots, all of them 14 years old: Rei Ayanami , Sohryu Asuka Langley and Shinji Ikari .