"This is Man's ultimate fighting machine, the synthetic lifeform known as Evangelion."
It is the year 2015 and we are introduced to Shinji Ikari, a 14-year-old student who gets caught in the conflict between the JSSDF and an angel named Sachiel. Shortly afterwards, he is picked up by Misato Katsuragi and is taken to a paramilitary organization know as NERV, where he meets his estranged father, Gendo. Shinji must make a decision to run away or follow Gendo's orders to pilot Evangelion Unit-01, mankind's ultimate weapon, to stop Sachiel.
This episode contains examples of:
- All There in the Script: The Angel of this episode is Sachiel, designated the Third Angel.
- Bookends:
- The appearance of "Bookend Rei" will become significant again in End of Evangelion.
- A more subtle one is Shinji uttering the line "Kimochi warui" inside Unit-01's cockpit. It is more infamously also the first and last lines of End of Evangelion.
- Call-Forward: Why Unit-00's hand is seen punched through a wall is explained in Episode 5.
- Calling the Old Man Out: For what it is worth, Shinji makes an attempt at this, but between his own conflicted feelings, the sudden circumstances he finds himself in, and his father's unmoving and cold attitude, that attempt quickly falls flat.
- Cliffhanger: Shinji ends the episode armed with a weapon he has no idea how to control in a fight against a gigantic beast.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: When Sachiel attacks Tokyo-3, it quickly destroys the bulk of the military hardware brought against it.
- First-Episode Twist: As soon as the first Evangelion is introduced, the audience are straight-up told that they are anything but typical mechas. When Shinji at first identifies Unit-01 as "a giant robot", Ritsuko corrects him, telling him that, actually, it is an "artificial human". What this means, however, only receives scant and fleeting attention in these early episodes and it first gets explored in depth in the latter half of the show.
- Foreshadowing: Unit-01's ability to protect Shinji while having no synchronized pilot is explained much, much later in the series.
- Godzilla Threshold: With the military fleet utterly decimated during Sachiel's Curb-Stomp Battle, the JSSDF use one of their N2 mines as a last resort to stop the angel dead in its tracks. When that fails, they're left with no choice but to have NERV use Evangelion Unit-01 to stop Sachiel.
- Hope Spot: After the JSSDF arms an N2 mine on Sachiel, one of the generals are elated that they killed the angel. Unfortunately for him and the other two generals, Sachiel is still alive.
- Meaningful Background Event: Quite a few:
- Though Gendo's to Shinji letter is shown prominently on the screen, it happens so briefly that is effectively this. Studying the letter closer actually reveals quite a few things, most notably from its rather damaged stage, which shows that Shinji' first reaction to the letter was to tear and crumble it up, and that he at some later point went through the effort of straightening it out and taping it back together again. The whole thing rather neatly encapsulates his very conflicted feelings towards his father in a nutshell.
- Unit-00's hand can be seen in the background, having punched through a wall, during one of Ritsuko, Misato and Shinji's elevator rides.
- Oh, Crap!:
- The JSSDF officers get one when they realize that the missiles have no effect on Sachiel.
- Misato has one when she sees the jet fighters retreating through her binoculars and realizes the JSSDF is about to arm an N2 mine on Sachiel. She and Shinji brace themselves as the explosion's shockwave causes her car to roll over on its side.
- The JSSDF officers have another one when they see that the N2 mine has failed to kill Sachiel.
- Skewed Priorities: In the middle of what is basically a full-on kaiju-invasion, Misato takes a moment to internally complain about how getting caught in the N2 blast has done quite a number on her car, which she wasn't done paying the mortgage on, and messed up one of her favorite dresses, until Shinji snaps her back to reality by asking a question. It is downplayed though, in that Misato never voices her worries — which are somewhat trivial in the face of a potentially apocalyptic event — aloud and first does when she and Shinji is at a safe distance from the action. Of course, it also hints at the confidence that Misato has in NERV and the Evangelions' ability to solve the problem.
- Tanks for Nothing: During Sachiel's Curb-Stomp Battle with the JSSDF, the Type 74 tanks attempt to destroy it, obviously to no effect.
