NEW YORK — Local anime fan Zach Hodges finally went back and read the manga that 1995 science fiction classic Neon Genesis Evangelion is based on, according to those familiar with the situation.
“I was looking up something from the show — the Dead Sea Scrolls — and stumbled across all these books called ‘The Bible.’ I was like holy shit! I had no idea that Evangelion was based on a manga,” Hodges explained. “But a lot of the story is making more sense to me now. I love Eva; I’ve watched the entire series probably fifteen times. But I’ve never actually understood literally any of the plot at all. So it’s really nice to go back and get to take in all this context from the original manga, about Moses and Jesus and all that backstory from before the Second Impact. I haven’t finished yet, but I’m almost done and I’m so excited for all these characters in The Bible to finally get into mechs and start fighting.”
Sources close to Hodges say that he is a super fan of anything he gets into and is going “all in” on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Christianity now that he discovered it’s the origin of the ’90s anime.
“We are very excited to welcome Zach into our prayer group,” said a local pastor, Jerry Jarvis. “I don’t really know what the hoot he’s talking about sometimes, what with the giant robots and human instruments or something, but he takes his Bible study very seriously, which he calls ‘learning lore.’ He’s often making a big show of pushing his glasses up with his hand and he has a lot of interesting things to say about angels, but he’s a dedicated member of the group and we’re very happy to have him! I’ve never met such a young man so interested in discovering his faith.”
“He does seem to sexualize these drawings of children, however,” Jarvis added, with concern. “That’s something we’re trying to get away from as a religion.”
