Term · Neon Genesis Evangelion
NERV
A secret agency under the United Nations, headquartered in a cavern, using half a fig leaf as its logo.
In Otakana the clue reads: Secret agency with a fig leaf logo
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Letters
- 4 · Normal
NERV exists to fight the Angels, and it does so by building the Evangelions and putting teenagers inside them. Headquarters sit in the Geofront, an enormous artificial cavern beneath Tokyo-3, with an inverted pyramid of an office block hanging in the middle of it and a city overhead that folds down into the ground whenever a fight starts.
The logo is a half fig leaf over the agency name, wrapped in the line God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. That is Robert Browning, from Pippa Passes, printed on the documents of an organisation whose commander answers to a committee of monoliths. The irony is deliberate and the show never points at it.
Anno's production design gives NERV a specific look: orange and black, endless corridors, warning text in German on every surface, and colour-coded briefing screens that fans have been recreating as desktop wallpaper for thirty years. The word itself is German, and it sits inside a whole layer of German naming that runs through the series alongside SEELE.
Spelling NERV
NERV is four letters and stops one short of the English word. It is German for nerve, pronounced with the V sounded, and the series always prints it in capitals. Typing NERVE is the obvious mistake and it will not fit the row anyway. Short, consonant-heavy, one vowel, and that E is the letter to find first.