For those of you who have played Xenogears...

[Sheex, The Dark Stalker]

Have any of you guys played Xenogears? Its an RPG made by Squaresoft for Playstation. Anyway, as the owner of a popular Xenogears website I hear all the time stuff about how Xenogears 'ripped off' Evangelion. What are your opinions on this? I think its utter bull, here's an essay on it from my site that exemplifies my point.

EDIT: Oh yes, for those of you not familiar with Xenogears, this contains massive SPOILERS

When I first started posting on various Xenogears messageboards one thing I heard about a lot is how Xenogears was extremely similar to the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. They said stuff like "Xenogears is a video game version of Eva", and "Since they ran out of ideas they stole stuff from Eva". Well, it wasn't till this past Christmas that I first saw Eva, and its been less than a month since I finished watching it for the first time. And what do I think about this Xeno = Eva argument? Its a load of crap. Any notion that Xenogears was a rip off of Eva is ridiculous. I will proceed to rip apart nearly every argument I hear that points to this hypothesis.

Both Shinji and Fei; the main characters; hate using their mechs.
At first glance, Eva and Xenogears are very similar in this sense. Shinji refuses to pilot Unit 01 at first; then runs away, resigns from NERV multiple times, etc... Fei meanwhile ends up destroying his hometown with his mech then refuses to pilot it multiple times, like in Dazil, Barts Lair and at Nortune. However, where Eva uses this hatred of using a mech as a main theme, Xenogears doesn't. Eva continues to use Shinji's mech hatred even in the final 2 episodes and the movie "End of Evangelion" but Xenogears drops the idea after Fei leaves Nortune. While it was an interesting plot devise, Xenogears obviously didn't think of this as an important thing to use throughout the game, while we all know how important it is in Eva.

Use of mechs
This idea is ridiculous; how can you say that Xenogears stole this idea from Eva, when Eva obviously stole it themselves! The Mecha genre is very popular in anime, so the fact that the most popular anime of all time, and a popular anime based game both uses them shouldn't surprise anything. People saying this should be claiming Eva as copying Gundam, since Gundam started using mechs much earlier than Eva did.

Use of Religous Terms: Angels, Lance of Longinuss, Deus, Melchoir, Balthasar, Gaspar etc...
Another ridiculous statement. Are we now gonna start claiming that any show/game that uses religous terms is copying another? I can name hundreds of novels, games and TV shows that use religous terms in them. Everyone does it, not just these two.

Religous Themes
Once again, this is commonly used, so how can you say Xeno ripped it from Eva? The novel Imajica contains a new age Christ and involves the slaying of God, yet we don't see people claiming that Xenogears copied it, do we?

Red Haired Heroine
Let me remind you that there are millions upon millions of women out there with red hair. Are we now gonna start saying that games like Final Fantasy 7 with brown haired heroines copy animes like Vision of Escaflowne because that show has a brown haired heroine? You people have to realize that its quite possible for people in 2 different things to have similar hair colors. The same argument can be made with Rei & Miang; blue hair is popular in anime, do we say Eva copied Gundam Wing because there's a blue haired woman in that show too?

Mysterious Committe: SEELE and the Gazel
Another commonly used plot devise; many animes and games have powerful councils like these in them. Even so, SEELE isn't even that important in Eva(if you don't take End of Eva into account) while the Gazel is vital to the story in Xenogears.

The Hero's mother died
Again, this is used so commonly that saying Xenogears ripped this off from Eva is lame.

Cute animals: Pen Pen and Chu Chu
The use of a cute animal in animes is quite popular. Since Xenogears is an anime-based game, its not surprising.

Guy goes nutz after the woman he loves dies; Guy's sibling gets hurt so he gets upset at hero
People die all the time. When people die, loved ones tend to get emotional, eh? It happens all the time and is a commonly used plot device in many forms of entertainment.

Nanomachines; Crucifictions; Spotlights; Nudity; Symbolism; Angels, etc...
Again, these things are used in many stories, TV shows, games etc... To say that Xenogears copied Eva because they both have nudity in them is probably the stupidest argument I have ever heard.

Shinji destroys a winged woman (Lillith), Fei destroys a winged woman(Urobolus)
C'mon, these 2 don't even look alike. Lillith is a giant white being of light while Urobolus is a snake like woman with wings. Vision of Escaflowne has winged women in it, maybe they copied from Eva too...

The Eldridge's Bridge and Central Dogma at NERV look alike
Yeah, they sure do. Know why? The same guys designed them!!!!! Of course they're gonna look alike!!

The 'Villain' causes the absorbtion of people into a god like being
Yes, both contain this, but for very different reasons. In Eva, this was to cause the further evolution of humankind. In Xenogears, Deus absorbed the people because they were part of him originally. Krelian has no wish for mankind to become more 'evolved', he just wants Deus to be revived.

And so on. I'm sick and tired of hearing all this crap. Eva and Xenogears are nothing alike. Xenogears is a philisophical story about humankind and god. Eva is a psychological story about a boy and his Mech. The religous things used in Xenogears is a main theme of the game, while in Eva it is just a backdrop to support the rest of the story. There's more interesting things to talk about than whether or not Xenogears copied stuff from Eva. Lets talk about something more substancial, okay?

[raanefea]

I haven't played the game, but it sounds fascinating. Do tell more... (glyph of greedy drooling... slurp... slurp...)

[Eva Series]

I played the game and loved it. I didn't read the essay cuz I don't need to. I don't think Xenogears ripped off Eva. It may in some little ways, like both are really confusing but that's it. Xenogears and Eva are not the same except they both have really cool mechs which again are not similar in design, use, etc.

[Robotech Master]

Um, one thing here sheex:

I don't know who told you that Xenoger's "ripped off" Evangelion, but the creators of the game DID admit that their plotline for the game was influenced by Eva. Not necessarily a rip off, but influenced by it.

Thats why there are so many similarities. True, plenty of books, movies have had similar religious/philosophical themes, but the fact remains that the people who made Xenogers were influenced by Eva, not by those books/movies.

I'm not saying they ripped it off, but they did use things from Eva in Xenogers. Hell, one of Sony's websites offered news, information, and the possibility of merchandise for Evangelion because of that game.

Before I even knew about Xenogers, a person I knew who knew NOTHING about Evangelion came up to me and said that this new game Xenogers had a plot that was influenced by Eva. Keep in mind he only read this off of Sony's description,and he knows nothing of what Evangelion is about.

Myself being interested, I read some stuff over at this webpage, and guess what...thats where I first read that the Evangelion Movies were being dubbed for release in America.

[mtyoo]

Even if xenogears DID rip off everything from NGE, it still remains a VERY good game with a great story.