Nerv

NERV (German: nerve) is a special agency nominally under the control of the United Nations, led by Commander Gendo Ikari, tasked with defending humanity from the Angels using the Evangelions, which it was tasked with constructing. Officially, NERV is "a private organization under the direct supervision of the UN", and under the aegis of the United Nations it is granted power to pressure local civilian and military organizations into aiding it, but in reality NERV has very little oversight from the United Nations itself (beyond matters of funding). The effort to defeat the Angels is left almost totally at the discretion of NERV's highest ranking personnel, without outside interference. Further, NERV is pursuing its own agendas unknown to the UN, from sabotaging a rival defense contractor's prototype combat robot, "Jet Alone", to NERV's ultimate clandestine goal to carry out the Human Instrumentality Project.

Originally, NERV was known as GEHIRN, but after its main Tokyo-3 base and the MAGI supercomputers were completed, it was renamed and reorganized into "NERV" in 2010. Secretly, NERV is backed by the mysterious SEELE organization, a power cabal which is the real power controlling the United Nations.

There are several global branches of NERV besides the main NERV HQ base built underneath Tokyo-3, such as NERV-01 (Massachusetts), NERV-02 (Nevada), and NERV-03 (Germany). NERV also has a secondary testing facility located at Matsushiro.

Observed NERV rank structure (in descending order) includes:

• Commander
• Vice-Commander
• Major
• Captain
• First Lieutenant

However, a definitive ranking list was never provided.

Notes

• "NERV" is consistently spelled using all-capital letters in the series, however it is apparently not an acronym.
• "NERV" is named after the German word "nerve", following the scheme that NERV's predecessor organization "GEHIRN" is named after the German word for "brain", and SEELE after the German word for "soul". "NERV" is actually a German word, but the official English dub by ADV Films simply pronounces it exactly like the English word "nerve". The Japanese voice cast is slightly more accurate, pronouncing it "nerufu" (which is actually as close to the correct pronunciation as Japanese syllables can produce). The proper way to pronounce "NERV" in German would be something along the lines of "nairf".