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Again, spoilers for Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and Studio Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion (Series + End of Evangelion + Rebuild movies) and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (Series + Movies).

This isn't an in-depth analysis, but my thoughts as find connections between all three works overtime. They are scattered thoughts, but they're what I can make of the whole mess. It's a work in progress, so I'll be adding to this over time.

















Section 1: Earth and the Overlords

- Humans trying to reach space, only to meet aliens that demonstrate a technology that far exceeds them by millennia.

- Aliens, or Overlords, act in secrecy, relying on human agents to act in their behalf physically.

- Their technology allows them to speak across the world and block out the sun with just the size of their ships. They do not interfere with human affairs, but have gone forth to restrict cruelty to animals, or the injuring, mistreatment, or killing of animals not related to food or personal defense.

- A missile strike was launched at one of the ships, but not only did it not do anything, but the attack was not even acknowledged by the Supervisor. What's more demoralizing is not the fear of attack, but the realization that one is so insignificant that their struggles are as noticable as an ant.

- The Supervisor worked to create global peace through passive displays of power, never fully showing anger or force, but by simply demonstrating the magnitude of difference between humans and his civilization.

- The idea that freedom was stolen from humans by this alien force is interesting. What humans fear is the unknown, since in that void, neither light nor darkness can be conformed, and all we can do is guess what exists there. What's more fearsome than a visible display of force is the thought of what may come.

- Humanity has been slowly putting an end to itself, and the aliens are merely hastening the process? No, it would be more of humanity trying to find that "one answer" to everything, the Truths of the world. One religion, one government. The aliens may have the answers to everything, and with a single monologue, destroy everything that humanity has worked for in the past few millenia. It's impossible for all religions in the world to be correct; the Supervisor's civilization represents science and technology, and could very possible hold the knowledge to disprove every religion. A power more threatening than any gun.

- After the human representative was rescued from captivity, the Supervisor originally planned to do something to the resistance leaders who acted against him, but decided to simply put "tracers" on them. If the leaders were aware of their situation, then they would realize that they had become effectively powerless. If they weren't aware of their situation, they wouldn't realize that the entire world had become their birdcage.

- Human curiosity is its strength and its poison.

- Magic, unknown technology, and acts of God are possibly all describing feats impossible by man. However, perhaps acts of God are described as such because they are not only impossible, but also incomprehensible, whether with regards to the method of execution or the thought process behind the feats. Perhaps that is why Gods exist on another level in these kinds of stories: humans could never understand what they are thinking. Perhaps being a God is not just about abilities, but a certain mindset that ascends humanity? Perhaps absolute benevolence and absolute abhoration could be attributed to this mindset?



Section 2: The Golden Age

- Utopia is eventually reached after crime, famine, poverty, hate, and everything else is removed from humanity. Technological increases overtime caused humanity to become more sloth-like, relying on entertainment to keep them going. No war or suffering has meant the end of imaginative art. Education is freely accessible by everyone in the world, advanced transportation allows people to travel to anywhere in the world within 24 hours. Everything is industrialized and run by robots. Humans only need to perform maintenance.

- The Overlords reveal themselves to be devil-like being with large bodies, horns, wings, and a spiked tail 50 years after they arrived. The old people who were afraid of the Overlords have long since lost power, or have died all together. Humanity continues to live in stagnation within their utopia for the next century.



Section 3: The Last Generation

- Turns out that in the stagnation, the children of 150 years in the future would bring about the end of humanity by "evolving" into a different being. All the children in the world joined to become a giant collective being with immense psychic powers - the next step in humanity. A collective hivemind in the universe called the Overmind - both the Overlords master and a callout to the Anti-Spiral in Gurren Lagann - seeks to collect various races in the universe who has achieved this state of being, so the Overlords exist to take care of races until they reach this state of evolution without those races destroying themselves first.

- No more children are born, humanity has ended. The children are assimilated into the Overmind and our solar system is wrecked.



Thoughts and Analysis

- In relation to Gurren Lagann, I can see parallels, where LordGenome forced humanity underground in order to protect them from the Anti-Spirals. It was for humanity's own good, but human curiosity - their will to venture into the unknown and accomplish the impossible - could not be tamed. That led humanity to its freedom, but also to its doom. Then its freedom again. Then I don't know.

- Yes, the drills could be metaphors for penises, as in how "manliness" makes them larger and such. They could also be taken literally, as humanity's drills used to pierce the heavens and make way for tomorrow. Perhaps humanity could be likened to a drill, where everything must be focused at the single point in order to create breakthroughs and allow the rest of humanity to follow in suit. This exists too in Childhood's End, where humanity, despite reaching utopia, still had some urge to find some meaning in their lives. A group establishes New Athens, a utopia within a utopia that tries to abolish advanced technologies and live a life similar to today's world. In the wake of this, a young man sneaks into an Overlord supply ship in order to travel to their home world. There's something here that I can't quite piece together, plus the relationship between these two and how humanity in Evangelion continued to persist after the Second Impact.

- As far as Evangelion, the feeling of hopelessness through humanity's own insignficance is present. However, in order to combat the gods, humans had to borrow the power of the gods. The discussion of the creation of "Fake Gods" and "Real Gods" are most likely superfluous, but the dialogue gives way to certain points.

- In my view with regards to Evangelion, gods are neither wrathful or benevolent. They merely act on whims and carry with them the weight of existence. They represent all unknowns, as they can accomplish things no man could ever fathom. In other words, the ability to perform feats of emotioneless mass destruction, to take amazing forms and perform impossible feats, etc. In a way, Shinji Ikari stepped into this realm when he rescued(?) Rei in the second Rebuild movie.

- Childhood's End has devil-like alien beings come down to Earth to try to save it from its own destruction, but they're really just guiding and protecting humanity from its own destruction before humanity reached its own inevitable destruction.

- Evangelion has angels that are trying to destroy humanity by bringing about the Third Impact, which is essentially armaggedon or whatever.

- STEELE wants to become God through creating a controlled Third Impact, becoming a collective conscious within an Eva - an artificial fake God with omnipotence.

- Childhood's End has the Overmind, that is attempting to apparently collect all manner of races across the universe to "feed" itself. It has no individuality, and what happens to the childen of Earth is essentially a reactionary thing that occured once humanity reached its utopia - a stagnation of growth. The children became a collective being.

- Gurren Lagann and Childhood's End - "Man is not meant for space," AKA the point where the Anti-Spiral first appeared in the second Gurren Lagann movie. In Childhood's End, it was said that humanity had enough trouble screwing itself over trying to take care of itself, and they just weren't capable of managing multiple planets and stars in the galaxy, even if they were able to develop space travel.

- The Anti-Spiral is essentially the Overmind - an omnipotent observer of the universe that is a collection of infinite amounts of minds. This then relates to Evangelion, where Human Instrumentality would lead to the assimilation of all human minds into a single entity - very much like a God.

- All three feature the leap towards the next step in humanity, leading to the end of humanity in the process: Childhood's End going the next evolutionary step, Human Instrumentality in Evangelion aiming to create a collective being akin to a God, and Gurren Lagann's spiral energy symbolizing humanity's drive to prosper and grow.