Director Hideaki Anno fell into a depression following the completion of work on Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and the 1992 failure of the Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise sequel project, Blue Uru. According to Yasuhiro Takeda, after the failure of Blue Uru Anno agreed to a collaboration between King Records and Gainax while drinking with King representative Toshimichi Ōtsuki; King Records guaranteed Anno a time slot for "something, anything". Anno began the development of the new series in 1993 around the notion of not running away, which had been the underlying theme of Aoki Uru, which focused on a protagonist accustomed to avoiding personal responsibility who finds himself trying to save the heroine of the story. Early into the production, he stated his intent to have Evangelion increase the number of anime fans, named otaku in Japanese, and attract interest in the anime medium bringing a breath of fresh air to the mecha genre. In the early design phase of the Evangelion project, several formats were considered, including a film, a television series and an original video animation (OVA) series. The producers finally opted for the television series, as it was the most widely accessible media in Japan at that time. Anno also originally proposed the title Alcion for the new series, but this was rejected due to its lack of hard consonant sounds. He conceived the series as a metaphor of his four-year depression, as he tried to put his whole self into the work and imprint his own feelings on the film.
