New Era Earthbound

New Era Earthbound (新世紀アースバウンド), commonly referred to as Earthbound 18, is a Japanese role-playing game, created by HAL Laboratory, Ape Inc. and Gainax, released on February 2024 in Japan and March 2024 internationally. The game was written and directed by Hideaki Anno. It gained international renown and won several awards, and was the start of the new Earthbound timeline.

New Era Earthbound has an original score written by critically acclaimed composer Shirō Sagisu. Shigesato Itoi and Anno are good friends and worked closely together to ensure the game lived up to fans' expectations.

New Era Earthbound revolves around the organization NERV, using large mechas called Starmechs to combat monstrous beings called Angels. They are piloted by several of the main characters, including Ness, Asuka Sohryu, and Rei Ayanami. While the initial chapters focus largely on religious symbols and specific references to the Bible, the later chapters tend to go deeper into the psyches of the characters, where it is learned that many of them have deep-seated emotional and mental issues. Through the exploration of these issues, the show begins to question reality and the existence therein. Much of the series's content was based on Hideaki Anno's own clinical depression.

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This section contains spoilers for the main story of New Era Earthbound.

Setting
The story of New Era Earthbound primarily begins with the "Second Impact", a global cataclysm which almost completely destroyed Antarctica and led to the deaths of half the human population of Earth. The Impact is believed by the public at large and even most of NERV to have been the impact of a meteorite landing in Antarctica, causing devastating tsunamis and a change in the Earth's axial tilt (leading to global climate change) and subsequent geopolitical unrest, nuclear war (such as the nuking of Tokyo), and general economic distress. Later, Second Impact is revealed to be the result of contact with and experimentation on the first of what are collectively dubbed the Angels: Adam. The experiments were sponsored by the mysterious organization SEELE, and carried out by the research organization Gehirn.

In the year 2044, Gehirn had accomplished a number of its scientific and engineering goals and corporately changed into the paramilitary organization NERV which is headquartered in Neo Tokyo, a militarized civilian city located on one of the last dry sections of Japan; NERV's central mission is to locate the remaining Angels predicted by SEELE, and to destroy them. However, NERV has its own secret agenda, as directed by its Machiavellian commander Gendo Ikari: the Human Instrumentality Project, which, according to Gendo in the last chapter, is the task of uniting all human minds into one global spiritual entity. Associated with NERV is the Marduk Institute, which has the task of selecting the pilots for the Starmechs, the most capable being children conceived after the Second Impact (14 year-olds). The institute consists of Commander Ikari, and NERV's chief scientist Ritsuko Akagi; supporting the two are 108 companies which are all revealed to be ghost companies.

Story
As the first chapter opens in the year 2049, Neo Tokyo is being attacked by the Third Angel. Conventional weapons prove ineffective, largely due to its projected force field called an AT Field. NERV takes command of the battles, and is able to intercept and defeat the Angels using the Starmechs, biomechanical mecha previously developed in secret by Gehirn inside the underground GeoFront; the Geofront is located underneath Neo Tokyo.

Not knowing why his father summoned him, Ness, a 14-year-old boy arrives in Neo Tokyo just as the Third Angel attacks the city. Ness reluctantly agrees to join NERV to pilot Starmech Unit-01, and begins living with Captain Misato Katsuragi. He and Rei Ayanami battle the successive advances of the Angels together and are later joined by Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of Unit-02.

Each Starmech has its own designated pilot (Unit-00–Rei, Unit-01–Ness, Unit-02–Asuka, and subsequently Unit-03–Toji Suzuhara), and operates by synchronizing the pilot's soul and the human soul inside the Starmech via the enigmatic liquid substance known as LCL. (In the context of New Era Earthbound, a "soul" refers to an individual's conscious existence, mental structure, and identity, rather than a more conventional "supernatural" entity.) Surrounded by LCL, the pilot's nervous system, mind, and body join with the Starmech's controls, allowing the Starmech to be controlled by the pilot's thoughts and actions. The higher a pilot's synchronization ratio, the better the pilot can control the Starmech and fight more adeptly.

While Ritsuko mentions at the series' beginning that the Starmechs do have some biological components to them, the extent of this is not immediately apparent. Unit-01 is connected to Yui Ikari, Gendo's wife, and Ness' mother, since it absorbed her body and soul in a failed experiment, as shown in chapters 8 and 10. Rei herself is suspected to be a partial clone of Yui, and is known to harbor the soul of Lilith, the second Angel. It is finally revealed, towards the end of the series, that the Starmechs are not really "robots" but are actually cloned Angels (Units 00, 02, 03, and 04 are made from Adam, and 01 is made from Lilith) onto which mechanical components are incorporated as a means of restraint and control. This control is not perfect, as various units are shown over the course of the series driving into "berserker" mode, in which they can act of their own will, independent of any artificial power input.

Along with the battles against the Angels, the central characters struggle to overcome their personal issues and personality conflicts, which factor heavily into the events of the series and its eventual conclusion. Throughout the series, many of the main characters constantly have to cope with several social and emotional problems: characters are unwillingly forced to confront socially complex and challenging situations; unresolved sexual tensions grow between numerous characters; injuries, deaths, and defeats cause blows to their psyches; and previously steady relationships begin to falter.

Over the final months of 2049, the characters begin to learn of the true plan of NERV and SEELE, the Human Instrumentality Project. Its purpose is to force the completion of human evolution, and thereby save it from destroying itself. To do so, they plan to break down the AT fields that separate individual humans, and in doing so, reducing all humans to LCL, which is revealed to be the "primordial soup", the fundamental composite of human beings. All LCL would then be united into a supreme being, the next stage of humanity, ending all conflict, loneliness and pain brought about by individual existence. At the end of the series, SEELE and NERV come into direct conflict over the implementation of Instrumentality.

In the last chapter (set in 2050), Gendo and Rei initiate the Human Instrumentality Project, forcing several characters (especially Ness) to face their doubts and fears and examine their self-worth, with sequences that "suggest animated schizophrenia". This ending was made up of flashbacks, sketchy artwork, and flashing text "over a montage of bleak visuals, that include black and white photos of desolate urban motifs such as a riderless bicycle or vacant park benches interspersed with graphic stills of the devastated NERV headquarters in which Ness' colleagues are seen as bloodstained bodies", and a brief interlude depicting an "alternate" Earthbound universe with the same characters but apparently in the high school comedy genre, eventually seems to depict Ness concluding that life could be worth living and that he did not need to pilot a Starmech to justify his existence; he is then surrounded by most of the cast, clapping and congratulating him. The introduction implies that this same process took place for everyone.

Trivia

 * It is theorized that Asuka and Ness have sex during chapter 7. This is probably a bad thing.
 * The Starmech's are canonically the strongest beings in the entire Earthbound universe.
 * A young boy appears in the first chapter named Shinji Ikari, however he is immediately crushed by the Third Angel.
 * This is the first time Ness' father is shown in the Earthbound series.
 * Earthbound 18 just so happens to have 18 main enemies (the Angels), with humans being the 18th.