In the beginning, there were a group of godlike aliens called the First Ancestral Race. They created the seeds of life known as Adam and Lilith. Each of them came with their own eggs, or moon. Adam had a white, a fruit of life seed,and Lilith had a black, a fruit of knowledge seed. Each egg came with a Spear of Longinus. The First Ancestral race spread these eggs throughout the 9 (count em, 9) planets, with only one egg on each. Planets that have an Adam seed have angels (but not many), while planets with a Lilith Seed have humans, and other life.If you’re wondering why there’s no other life on the other planets, it’s the same reason as our universe; all other planets except Earth have no habitable spaces. If any creature were to possess both of the eggs of Lilith and Adam, they would become as powerful as the First Ancestral Race, thus only one seed per planet, with an Adam seed landing on earth. However, on Earth, a "Black Moon" containing a second Seed of Lilith, accidentally crash-landed on Earth as well, in modern day Japan. That was First Impact. After First Impact, Lilith spread her LCL; AKA Tang, Orange Juice, Fanta, or whatever you want to call it, which then evolved over billions of years [insert all of evolution here]. Two Seeds are not meant to exist on the same planet, and in the event that this accidentally occurs, a Spear of Longinus, would be used to deactivate one of the Seeds to prevent a catastrophe. However, the Spear accompanying Lilith was destroyed in the crash, leaving Adam's Spear the only functional one on Earth. Therefore, Adam was placed into suspended animation by its own Spear of Longinus. The inert Adam, and the Spear upon which he was impaled, were later discovered by the Katsuragi Expedition, in 2000 Adam was experimented on by Dr. Katsuragi and his crew. They put Adam in contact with a human, a ‘donor’, which was a really bad idea. There was just enough of Lilith’s DNA in humans to initiate Second impact, wiping out half the world’s population(big oof). The explosion turns Adam’s body into an embryo. Additionally, the merging of Adam and the donor created Best Boy Kaworu Nagisa, who holds the Soul of Adam. Fast Forward 3 years. Gehirn, headed by Gendo Ikari, creates the Evangelions in the Geofront (A.K.A. Nerv HQ), by using parts of Adam’s DNA, all except Unit-01, which used Lilith’s. Seele manages to find both the soul and body of Adam, who is still an embryo. They keep both for their future plans. About a year later, Yui Ikari does a contact experiment with Eva Unit-01. She dissolves into LCL, and her soul in absorbed by the Eva’ core. She had planned to do this from the start, to live within the eva as eternal proof of humanity’s existence. In attempting to get Yui back, Rei Ayanami is accidentally created, with Lilith and Yui’s DNA. Gendo can’t live without Yui, and thus starts the Human Instrumentality Project. Seele’s council backs it so that they, and only them, will enter instrumentality, and be united in a godlike entity, while all other humans would cease to exist. To do this, they need to destroy the remaining spear of Longinus, the only thing that can prevent them from doing this. Gendo, who simply wants to reunite with Yui, makes his own plans, apart from Seele, but the lore doesn’t expand on what happens to the rest of humanity after that. Gehirn changes into Nerv, and episode 1 begins. Angels begin attacking Tokyo-3. But why would they do that? They want to reach Lilith, who Gendo keeps inside the Geofront, at Terminal Dogma. If the angels reached Lilith, or if humanity touched Adam, that would cause another worldwide catastrophe, but this time wiping out all life on Earth, except angels Later when Best Girl Asuka Joins the Eva Gang, an Angel attacks. Why would it attack them if Lilith is back in the Geofront? Now it’s after Adam. Kaji secretly stole the embryo from Seele, and was on his way to give it to Gendo. After this, Gendo and Fuyutsuki manage to obtain Adam’s spear of Longinus. They spear Lilith with it the moment before it could initiate third impact, for convenience. However, when the angel Arael arrives, the spear is used by Rei to take it out, due to Asuka being out of commision, and Unit-01 not responding to anything. This leaves a crucial piece of Seele’s plan in space. After Asuka’s breakdown, Seele sends Kaworu as a replacement, who is secretly both the first, 17th, and last angel, being in possession of Adam’s soul. After befriending and then betraying Shinji, Kaworu makes his way down to Terminal Dogma to merge with Lilith, who he thinks is Adam. Upon realizing his mistake, Kaworu’s attitude completely shifts. There’s no real concrete evidence for why but I think that it’s because while Kaworu refers to humanity as “lilin” almost like an insult, he doesn’t want to kill all of them, which is what would happen if Lilith and Adam DNA interacted. This would also wipe out humanity a lot more than just humanity, considering who/what is interacting. Kaworu says that killing him is the only way for Shinji to save humanity in that moment. Shinji, after a long pause, crushes Kaworu in Eva Unit-01’s hand. Before he dies, Kaworu reveals that all life has AT Fields, even humans, and that removing that is what would cause instrumentality to initiate. This causes Shinji to go into some sort of coma, where he overcomes his depression and learns to accept himself in a mind-fuck of a finale resulting in one of, if not the most infamous scenes in all of anime. At least until End of Evangelion, where throw all that out the window and pretend it never happened. With the last angel destroyed, Seele turns on Nerv, and sends in the JSDF to take the Evas, as they are a crucial part of Seele’s plan. Asuka launches in Eva Unit-02, where she battles with the mass-produced Evas, where she completes her character arc, but loses her life in an ultimately futile gesture. Soon after, Shinji launches in Eva Unit-01, with a pair of wings levitating him,where he witnesses the MP evas eating Unit-02. This causes Shinji to lose his mind, and the spear of Longinus returns from orbit, stopping in front of Unit-01. In the Geofront, Gendo proceeds to merge Adam’s body with Rei. He thinks merging Adam’s body and Lilith’s soul will give him the power to bring Yui back. Rei then betrays him and merges with Lilith, body. She then becomes a huge, powerful, godlike being, initiating third impact, and beginning the Human Instrumentality Project. Rei, Eva Unit-01, the MP evas, and the spear of longinus, create a giant anti-AT Field, spanning the planet. This turns everybody into orange juice, and combines everyone’s soul into one superbeing. Rei leaves the decision to continue or reject instrumentality to Shinji, as he was the only person to ever truly treat her like a human being. This would be Shinji’s dream. The flaws in everyone would be gone, and pain and suffering would be a thing of the past. No more hurting. But Shinji realizes even though he will suffer, even though he will feel pain, the relationships he forms will be genuine, he’ll be able to see the people he loves again, and his feeling would be his own feelings. So shinji rejects instrumentality like every girl I’ve ever asked out has rejected me (oof) and snaps the spear of Longinus. The MP evas and super-Rei dies. Shinji knows that people can restore their bodies from the LCL as they imagine themselves in their heart (they have to make the same decision as Shinji to accept or reject instrumentality like Dio rejected his humanity). The children of Lilith were given a second chance. On the final scene of End of Evangelion. Because this took forever to do, I just copy pasted this from one of my sources, because seriously, they worded it WAY better than I could have: “On Shinji strangling Asuka: The reason I did not explain in the video why Shinji strangle Asuka is because it is very much a personal interpretation. The most "official" explanation is from the Bandai Evangelion Movie Series 2 Trading Card, which says, "Shinji renounced the world where all hearts had melted into one and accepted each other unconditionally. His desire... to live with 'others' — other hearts that would sometimes reject him, even deny him. That is why the first thing he did after coming to his senses was to place his hands around Asuka's neck. To feel the existence of an 'other'. To confirm (make sure of) rejection and denial." This is my personal theory, which incorporates the "official" theory: Rei explains that giving back the AT fields and thus everyone's ability to be a human will also give people back fear --- fear of those who might hurt us. When the scene opens, Shinji reacts on the fears shown in the previous strangling scene with Asuka during Instrumentality. Asuka, at the time, only represented the way humans hurt and reject others. So to confirm if Asuka was still the same rejecting, hurtful person she was in Instrumentality (the kitchen scene), Shinji picks up where he left off and begins to strangle her once more. But her response to his attack is a caress, fulfilling Kaworu's promise that the hope of love also remains. This caress reminds Shinji of the caress from his mother (right before he rises from the LCL), when one of her last lines to him was that "You can find the chance to achieve happiness anywhere". He had replied that "he didn't know where to find happiness..." He now knows where his chance for happiness lies, and he nearly strangled her to death.” Thank you all for reading this. I know it’s a bit long, but I think I ogt most of it right. If there’s anything you think I’m missing, please let me know! Sources:trust me bro