Gehirn

Gehirn, whose name means brain in German, is the organization from which NERV grew, and the birthplace of technologies as pivotal as the Magi supercomputers and the Evangelion itself. The United Nations established it in the aftermath of Second Impact with SEELE supervising from the shadows, tasking it with clandestine research that drew on knowledge of Adam recovered from that catastrophe, including Project E and the Magi program.

Its base of operations, the UN Artificial Evolution Laboratory, stood in Hakone, Japan as a tall concave structure that predated both Tokyo-3 and the completion of NERV Headquarters. Because everything Gehirn touched was classified, the public knew the site only as a United Nations research facility. Additional branches operated around the world, though Hakone remained the center of gravity.

With SEELE's backing, Gehirn pursued two parallel efforts: Project E, the research foundation for the Evangelions, and the construction of the Magi supercomputers. In 2003, Gendo Ikari invited Kōzō Fuyutsuki into the organization; Fuyutsuki accepted with reluctance, troubled by Gendo's connection to Second Impact.

Progress came slowly and at a steep price, as the many Failed Evangelion Prototypes attest. A 2004 contact experiment with Evangelion Unit-01 pulled Project E scientist Yui Ikari into the unit's core, body and soul, and no effort by Gehirn's staff could bring her back. A comparable accident struck Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu at the German Branch 3 during Evangelion Unit-02 testing; she retained her body but lost a portion of her soul, a wound that drove her into madness and ultimately suicide.

The Magi reached completion in 2010, though the milestone turned grim when their creator, Naoko Akagi, took her own life immediately afterward. Gehirn was then restructured into NERV. Every employee transferred to the new agency, Project E continued uninterrupted, and the main branch relocated into the newly finished NERV Headquarters nearby. Gehirn's regional offices fed directly into NERV's structure: the two American branches, presumed to be in Massachusetts and Nevada, apparently grew into NERV's first and second divisions, with the German Branch 3 evolving into its third.

Naoko Akagi led the science staff as chief scientist, heading Project E and personally creating the Magi. Yui Ikari worked under Project E until her absorption, and Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu conducted parallel work from Branch 3. Ritsuko Akagi contributed to both Project E and the Magi as a scientist, while Gendo Ikari and Kōzō Fuyutsuki held positions whose exact titles are never specified.

The organization's equipment roster included Evangelion Unit-00 in an unknown state of completion, plus the unfinished Units 01 and 02, all of which passed to NERV (Unit-02 going to the German division). Its non-combat assets included the Magi and the failed prototype Evas. One point of frequent confusion: despite always appearing in capital letters, Gehirn is not an acronym; the all-caps rendering is a stylistic habit of the Japanese production team, also applied to words like ADAM and SECOND IMPACT.