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 headquarters at Tokyo-3 and the Magi supercomputers were completed, it was renamed and reorganized into "Nerv" in 2010. Secretly, Nerv is backed by the mysterious organization Seele, a power cabal covertly 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 (denoted by two lines on rank insignia)
- Captain
- First Lieutenant
However, a definitive ranking list is never provided.
Notes
- "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". The proper pronunciation is something along the lines of "nairf", and it is phonetically approximated into Japanese as nerufu. The casts of the English dubs by ADV Films and Manga Entertainment do not provide as accurate a rendition: they say "nerv" exactly like the English word "nerve".
- "Nerv" is often spelled using all-capital letters in the series, however it is apparently not an acronym. Further, it is not spelled with all-capital letters on the "Welcome to Nerv" (sic) pamphlet that Shinji is given in Episode 01. "NERV" is just how the word is often romanized by the Japanese production team: even several other words like "Adam" or "Second Impact" get spelled as "ADAM" or "SECOND IMPACT" at times in the series. Its just a quirk of translation.
