>>279873781
There's a lot about EVA that has been collected into the flow of the cultural zeitgeist (a la LoTR/Star Wars) that even then I'd struggle to call anything but overt references (cum hand) as directly originating from it, though perhaps that's just being needlessly autistic.
Speaking of influences and Slopperman from earlier, I wonder if that Responsibility speech from the first film was ringing in Fuji's head when he was writing the recent chapters with Fire Devil.