Who created Neon Genesis Evangelion?

Evangelion was created by Hideaki Anno, who directed the television series and its films and is credited with the original story. Anno co-founded Studio Gainax, the company that produced the series, and came to the project after directing Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water for NHK. His return to television after a period of depression shaped the work's preoccupations in ways he has discussed openly in interviews.

The visual identity was a collaboration. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, a Gainax co-founder, designed the characters, giving the pilots their deliberately ordinary school uniform normality against the scale of the machines. Ikuto Yamashita led the mechanical design of the Evangelions themselves, proposing tall, thin, almost organic silhouettes that broke with the bulky armour tradition of earlier mecha series.

Production was a partnership. Tatsunoko Production co-produced the television series, TV Tokyo broadcast it, and the music was composed by Shiro Sagisu. After the films, Anno left Gainax and founded Studio Khara in 2006, which produced the Rebuild films and now manages the franchise, a corporate split that explains why credits and rights lines differ between the 1990s releases and the modern ones.

That split matters on physical media. Japanese and English packaging from different eras names different companies, Gainax on the original releases and Khara on the Rebuild and current editions, and collectors use those credit blocks, alongside catalogue numbers, to place an edition in the franchise's history.