Neon Genesis Evangelion presents itself as a giant robot anime, but action loses its centrality as the series progresses. Minus the tropes of the genre, Evangelion presents a story of how dysfunctional individuals try (and fail) to live their lives while facing a mounting unavoidable catastrophe.

In Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, one of the first scholarly works on the subject to be translated into English, cultural theorist Hiroki Azuma associated the appearance of Japan’s otaku communities—groups of like-minded pop culture fans—with the postmodern breakdown of societal grand narratives.