Why Does Evangelion Call Them Angels When the Japanese Says 使徒 (Apostle)? — Neon Genesis Evangelion and Japan's Decorative Christianity

Why Does Evangelion Call Them "Angels" When the Japanese Says "使徒" (Apostle)? — Neon Genesis Evangelion and Japan's Decorative Christianity

Spoiler-Free Cultural Analysis

This article looks only at a naming choice in the very first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion and at the wider Japanese habit of using Christian imagery as decoration. It touches no plot twists, no character fates, and nothing beyond the setup any viewer sees in the opening minutes.

Key Takeaways

• The enemies in Evangelion are called 使徒 (Shito), a word for the apostles — Christ's disciples — while the English rendering says Angel. This is not a fan mistranslation; Gainax itself printed "Angel" on screen while the dialogue said "apostle."
• Japan is only about one percent Christian, yet crosses, chapels, angels, and Christmas are everywhere. The imagery arrives almost entirely stripped of doctrine, which is exactly what lets a creator reach for it freely.
• The cross-shaped explosions and biblical names in Evangelion are best understood not as theology but as atmosphere — the same instinct that puts a couple in a white dress walking down a chapel aisle they will never pray in.

Key Terms Explained

使徒 (Shito) / Apostle — A messenger sent on a holy mission; in Christian usage, one of the disciples Jesus sent to spread his word. This is the word spoken throughout Evangelion.

天使 (Tenshi) / Angel — Literally "heaven's messenger," the ordinary Japanese word for the winged messengers of Christian tradition. Notably, this is not the word the series uses in dialogue.

無宗教 (Mushūkyō) / Non-religious — How most Japanese describe themselves; less a rejection of belief than a comfort with borrowing from many traditions at once.

八百万の神 (Yaoyorozu no Kami) / The Eight Million Gods — The Shinto sense that the sacred is plural and everywhere, a worldview that makes absorbing one more set of symbols feel natural rather than threatening.

神前式 (Shinzenshiki) / Shinto-Style Wedding — The traditional wedding before the gods that the imported "chapel wedding" has largely overtaken in popularity.

A Cross-Shaped Blast I Never Thought to Question

When I first watched Evangelion's opening episode in the mid-1990s, the enemy arrived, the military threw everything it had, and a huge detonation bloomed into a perfect cross hanging in the sky. I remember thinking it looked incredible. I did not think it looked Christian. The cross, the strange biblical names, the word the crew kept using for the enemy — all of it registered as stylish, ominous, mysterious. It never once occurred to me to look up what any of it meant. To my eye, that cross was a piece of striking cinematography, not a symbol of faith.

The cross-shaped detonation in Evangelion's first episode reads as striking cinematography long before it reads as a religious symbol.

Here is the part that still surprises me. I am a native Japanese speaker who has been watching this series on and off for decades, and only recently did I stop and notice that the word the characters say — 使徒(Shito: apostle) — literally means one of Christ's disciples, while the English on screen says Angel. The question English-speaking fans type into search engines — why are they called Angels in Evangelion? — is a question that, in all those years, never formed in my head at all. Naming humanity's attackers after the men Jesus sent to carry his message is genuinely strange. I simply never felt the strangeness, because the religious vocabulary was, for me, pure texture from the start.

Related: Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Imperial Navy Naming Code: Why Every Surname in Episode One Is a Warship explains this in detail.

The Word Printed on the Screen and the Word Spoken Aloud

使徒, Not 天使: Two Kinds of Messenger

使徒 (apostle) is spoken in the dialogue while the on-screen English says "Angel" — two different messengers standing in for one enemy.

The gap begins with a single word choice. In the finished series, the enemies are indicated in the characters' dialogue with the word Shito (使徒, "apostles"), after Jesus's twelve disciples, rather than Tenshi (天使), the word normally used for the angels of Christian tradition. If the studio had wanted "angel" in the ordinary sense, the word 天使(Tenshi: angel) was right there. It chose the disciple word instead.

What makes the "gap" so tidy is that both English words trace back to the same root. The English "angel" comes from the Greek for "messenger," which is also the source of the word "Evangelion" itself. An apostle and an angel are, at the deepest level, both simply ones who are sent. So the translation is not exactly wrong — it swaps one kind of messenger for another. But it quietly trades the unsettling image of Christ's own disciples turned against humanity for the more familiar, marketable idea of an angel.

The "Angel" Gainax Chose on Purpose

This is the detail most fans miss: the English word was never a translator's slip. Gainax chose the English translation "Angel" itself, rendering it in Latin characters as on-screen text, while the dialogue said "apostle." The two names were meant to coexist. Michael House, the only American member of Gainax, objected to putting the two terms side by side, but director Hideaki Anno decided to keep the dual naming.

Anno has been candid about why he could reach for this imagery so freely. Because he had no Christian attachment himself, the symbols carried no risk for him — he could pick them precisely because the sound and feel were appealing, not the meaning. He also recognized that equating apostles with angels would rightly bother anyone raised in the Western tradition, and chose to do it anyway. That is the whole thesis of this article compressed into one creator's shrug: the religious layer of Evangelion was selected as aesthetic, not as belief.

One Percent Christian, and Almost No Doctrinal Weight

To understand how a hit show could bathe itself in crosses without controversy at home, you have to understand how thin Christianity's footprint in Japan actually is. Christians make up only about one percent of the population — as of the end of 2023, official figures counted roughly 300,000 followers, about 0.73 percent. The history behind that number is short and interrupted. The Jesuits arrived in 1549, the religion was outlawed within about 60 years, and the ban lasted nearly 260 years; in real terms ordinary Japanese people have only been in sustained contact with Christianity for around 150 years.

The result is a culture that knows the images of Christianity intimately and its doctrine barely at all. More than 99 percent of Japanese are not Christian, yet many are quite familiar with Christian culture and hold a generally positive image of it; their interest tends to be in a version of the faith more or less stripped of its doctrinal content. A cross in Japan is closer to a beautiful, slightly exotic shape than a statement of belief — which is exactly the condition under which it becomes free raw material for a designer or a director.

Borrowed Sounds: From Warships to Scripture

Once you see the religious layer as texture, you notice Evangelion borrows other resonant vocabularies the same way. Something I only learned as an adult: several of the surnames — Ikari, Katsuragi, Akagi, Ayanami — were lifted from Imperial Japanese Navy warships. I had watched the show for years without hearing the naval echo any more than I had heard the biblical one. Adam, Lilith, the Lance of Longinus, the cross-shaped blasts: these sit in the story less as arguments about God than as a mood board of powerful, half-understood names. The genius, and the honesty, of Anno's approach is that he never pretended otherwise. He gathered symbols that felt enormous and let the audience supply the awe.

Rosaries in the Mirror, Crosses in the Jewelry Box

There is an old joke that the Japanese are "born Shinto, married Christian, and buried Buddhist." It is not really a joke; it is an accurate description of a life. Growing up, I moved through the year taking whatever each tradition offered and worrying about none of it: a shrine visit at New Year, bean-throwing at 節分(Setsubun: the seasonal bean-throwing festival), cake and fried chicken at Christmas, chocolate at Valentine's, a costume at Halloween. A funeral would be Buddhist, a wedding Christian or done before the Shinto gods, and switching religions from one ceremony to the next felt like no contradiction at all. This is the 八百万の神(Yaoyorozu no Kami: the eight million gods) worldview in modern dress — the sacred is plural, so one more set of symbols is simply welcome.

In a country where Catholic faith runs through daily life, the cross is a devotional tool rather than a fashion accessory.

Christmas made the logic especially clear. For me it was, start to finish, a street event: illuminations, department-store displays, couples and cake. The idea of actually going to church on Christmas never once entered my mind. And the moment December 25 passed, the trees vanished overnight and the same streets put out 門松(Kadomatsu: New Year pine-and-bamboo decorations) as if a switch had been flipped. That speed — tree today, pine tomorrow — tells you everything about whether the tree was ever a religious object.

Weddings are the purest case. About 60 to 70 percent of Japanese couples marry in "nonreligious" Christian-style ceremonies. Despite so few Christians, wedding demand outstripped the supply of churches and priests, producing an industry of chapel-like venues and hired celebrants, because it is the aesthetic and the image that matter, not the faith. The white dress, the aisle, the candlelit vows: it is Cinderella, not catechism.

I only felt the full oddness of this after living for many years now in a country where Catholic faith runs through daily life. There, the symbols are load-bearing. A rosary hangs from nearly every taxi's rearview mirror. On Sunday morning, whole families in their best clothes walk together toward the church. Statues of Mary and the saints stand in shops and offices as a matter of course. And a cross around someone's neck is a devotional tool — something used, prayed with — not the fashion accessory it so often is back home, where I wore and saw crosses chosen for how they looked with an outfit. Standing between the two worlds, I don't feel one is sincere and the other frivolous. I feel two completely different relationships to the same shape. Japan's version is lighter, freer, endlessly playful — and it is also the reason a director could set humanity's apocalypse under a cross and have almost no one at home flinch.

FAQ

Q: Why are they called Angels in Evangelion when the Japanese word is "apostle"?

A: In the Japanese dialogue the enemies are 使徒 (Shito), meaning apostle. Gainax itself supplied the on-screen English word "Angel," and director Hideaki Anno deliberately kept both names even after an American staff member objected. Since "angel" and "apostle" both come from the Greek for "messenger," the two overlap in meaning, but the studio chose the softer, more familiar English term while the spoken line kept the stranger "apostle."

Q: If most weddings are Christian-style, are most Japanese people actually Christian?

A: No. Only about one percent of the population is Christian, yet roughly 60 to 70 percent of couples choose Christian-style ceremonies. The appeal is visual and emotional — the dress, the aisle, the "movie wedding" look — rather than religious. Many ceremonies are led by hired celebrants in chapel-like venues that have no congregation.

Q: Is it disrespectful for Japan to use Christian imagery as decoration?

A: That is a values question rather than a factual one, and views differ. Some Christians find the decorative use hollow or careless; others note that the images are used with warmth and a generally positive attitude toward Christianity, not mockery. Within Japan it flows from a long habit of absorbing symbols from many traditions and treating the sacred as plural, so the imagery is usually offered as celebration, not commentary.

Key Insights to Remember

• The 使徒/Angel split is not a translation error to be fixed but a window into a worldview. Where a symbol carries no doctrinal charge, it becomes free material — and Anno's willingness to name humanity's attackers after Christ's disciples is possible only in a culture where "apostle" reads as sound and shape before it reads as scripture.
• Familiarity with images and ignorance of doctrine are not opposites in Japan; they coexist comfortably. A country can know exactly what a cross looks like, deploy it in weddings, jewelry, and anime, and still hold almost no shared idea of what it asks of a believer. That combination is the engine behind "decorative Christianity."
• Living abroad reveals the weight the symbols lose. A rosary on a taxi mirror and a rosary as a fashion pendant are the same object doing two entirely different jobs. Neither relationship is fake — but only by standing outside Japan did I understand that the lightness of its Christian imagery is itself a specific, deliberate cultural choice, the same choice a cross-shaped explosion quietly makes on screen.

Sources & References

• Angels (Neon Genesis Evangelion) — Wikipedia
• Christianity in Japan — Wikipedia
• A Little Faith: Christianity and the Japanese — Nippon.com
• Christianity in Japan — Japan City Tour
• Why Saying 'I Do' in Japan Is More Interesting than You'd Think — Hapa's Japan