The 20th anniversary of legendary anime mindfuck Neon Genesis Evangelion is coming up this year, and fans in Japan have decided that they need to honor the series in an appropriately ridiculous way. Evangelion is about, essentially, teenagers who use giant robots to destroy giant monsters, except that’s purposefully reductive, because we don’t have the time to actually explain Evangelion. All that matters is that it has a ton of religious imagery, and also it’s a sci-fi action show about giant robots. Anyway, there’s a weapon in the show called The Spear Of Longinus, named after the supposedly real artifact that was used to stab Jesus during the crucifixion. On Evangelion, the spear eventually gets taken into space and stabbed into the moon, and that’s exactly how the fans have decided to celebrate the show’s 20 years of confusing everyone who watches it and/or reads about it.
To do this, they’ve set up a page on Japanese crowdfunding site ReadyFor in order to raise the 100 million Yen (about $840,000) necessary to create a small replica of the spear, attach it to a lunar lander, and then put it on an American rocket so that it may forever prove the moon’s status as the king of all otaku. If we understand the cute rocket graphic on the crowdfunding page, they’ve already raised a shred over 34 percent of their goal, which means it’s looking extremely likely that a bunch of anime fans are going to be able to stick a thing from a cartoon—a critically acclaimed cartoon, to be fair—into the moon.
Some moon traditionalists might have a problem with all of this, but we think it’s an exciting first step toward humanity’s future in space. After all, we’ve got to put our nerdy stuff somewhere, so why not the moon? Plus, this means more and more people will have to try and explain what Evangelion is about, and that’s always fun.