The Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise is a multi-billion dollar umbrella of Japanese media properties generally owned by the anime studio Gainax.

The originating work was a TV series, but a manga serial was being published at the same time. The Neon Genesis Evangelion manga serial, written by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, started running in the February 1995 issue of Shonen Ace (published in December 1994) and is still running as of 2008. The manga was intended to raise interest for Gainax’s next major anime project, a mecha TV series also named Neon Genesis Evangelion (directed by Hideaki Anno with character designs by Sadamoto), which was in development at that point.

Neon Genesis Evangelion consists of 26 television episodes which were first aired on the terrestrial TV Tokyo network from October 4, 1995 to March 27, 1996.¹ It was later aired across Japan by the anime satellite television network, Animax. The series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1995 and 1996.