Neon Genesis Evangelion II: DELTA Invasion, to give it its full title, is a Self-Insert Fic written by Tom Dyron.
Like many other Neon Genesis Evangelion fics, it was MSTed at Elmer Studios
(link goes to a mirror, the old site was on the now-defunct Geocities) and an audiobook production was started (and abandoned in 2011).
Set post-series (but ignoring both episodes 25-26 and End of Evangelion), it concerns NERV's conflict with a new group of enemies called Invadors (yes, it's spelled like that throughout) and the adventures of new pilot Tom Dyron.
No "raw", non-MSTed copies were known to exist until someone used the Wayback Machine.
In 2012, Elmer Studios themselves came out of retirement with an updated version of the MSTing, the "Rebuild of Delta", published on the Elmer Studios Blog.
The MST also can be read here.
Two sequels of sorts exist, AYNGEL Project and The Apocalyptic Battle.
Neon Genesis Evangelion II: DELTA Invasion provides examples of:
- Ace Custom: Tom's rebuilt EVA-03, complete with custom paint job and "progressive grenades"
- Adults Are Useless: Tom and Shinji seem to come up with all the battle strategies. Mistato just agrees and lets them do it.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Tom genuinely feels bad about killing Matt Yazama. Never mind that Matt killed hundreds of innocent people during his rampage, attempted to start Third Impact and showed no hints of remorse for his actions (and actually seemed quite enthusiastic about it).
- Artistic License – Economics:
- Tom tries to raise money by letting people challenge him... for a few yen each. He makes a total of six hundred yen, which he spends on a lavish dinner at a restaurant for all his friends.
- One chapter has Tom's band signing a contract, recording a CD and having it released to million-plus sales... all within a week.
- Artistic License – Physics:
- The Progressive Grenades, The Nuclear Based Cannon... in fact, the entirety of the space trip to DELTA could be summarized as this.
- When the heroes' ship is attacked en-route to DELTA, there's a brawl with intercepting Invadors. When killed, the Invadors spiral down to their doom... in space.
- In the fic, the moon was formed when Lilith blasted Atlantis off Earth and into space. Also, Atlantis was in the Pacific Ocean.
- Author Catchphrase: More like signature spelling and grammar errors; there's "The Invadors", the use of the term "children" for the singular, calling it "The Nerv" throughout, Ritsuko handing people mallets, the outdoor "floor" in the fight scenes, the "ombilical wire", the "swang" and so on. The misspellings are strangely consistent.
- Beta Couple: Shinji and Rei. Brother–Sister Incest is (sort of) averted by a Retcon where it turns out Rei was unrelated to Shinji but injected with Yui's DNA for unexplained reasons.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: EVA-14, the Golden Evangelion
- Blood Knight: Tom enjoys fighting the Invadors and after each battle brags about how tough it was. When confronted with EVA-14, he wants to fight it alone with no help.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Keel Lorenz is crushed to death by high-fiving Evangelions.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Most of Tom's fights with the Invadors amount to this, with Tom quickly and effortlessly dispatching the Monster of the Week. Inverted with Asuka, who is usually easily defeated by the same Invadors.
- Department of Redundancy Department: There's a lot of repetition of statements throughout the fic.
- Determinator: Tom is shot in the gut at point-blank range and yet finds the strength to not only kill Jeff Garyn - who is seven feet tall and weighs over 400 pounds- with a knife, but throw him off a cliff and into a river. Aggressively lampshaded in the Rebuild of Delta. Rebecca points out that he'd either be dead or running on pure adrenaline and likely to die of shock when it wears off.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom
- Evil Counterpart: Matt Yazama and EVA-014 are this for Tom
- Evil Gloating: Justice
- Expansion Pack Past: Crossed with Continuity Snarl; John Barren's backstory seemed to constantly change and mutate with each retelling. His variable number of siblings (some of them called Charles) didn't help.
- Faux Action Girl: Asuka is helpless for much of the fic, constantly needing to be rescued by Tom.
- Filler: Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 8 pretty much are all filler, as well as chunks of several other chapters. The MSTers wonder if the author had set himself some word and/or chapter count that he had to reach.
- Filler Villain: Matt Yazama and EVA-14 appear without a single hint of foreshadowing in chapter 10 and are defeated shortly thereafter. They then come back in chapter 12 and are defeated again. They contribute nothing to the plot, have no effect on events other then giving Tom something to fight and could be easily written out with no effect.
- Flat Character: John Barren has no personality aside from being "Special". He rarely gets more then a couple of lines per chapter and almost never interacts with the rest of the cast.
- Forgotten Superweapon: The Blade of Souls. After being the focus of chapter eight, it isn't mentioned again until twelve.
- Genre Shift: Chapter 4 reads like a knockoff of a standard martial arts movie plot, with Tom entering a fighting contest to get revenge on Jeff.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Averted save for the inexplicable, constant use of "Hai".
- Improbable Age: At age 16, Tom has been a state kickboxing champion, singer in a world-famous band, and a fighter pilot. And all that's before the start of the fic. And then there's his size (6 feet, 3.5 inches). To quote Elmer Studios, "That's not a kid, that's Shawn friggin' Michaels!"
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Blade of Souls.
- Informed Attribute:
- John Barren is special, and you will be reminded of this fact constantly. Of course, he is actually an inferior Evangelion pilot to everyone else, is effortlessly trashed in virtually every fight he's in, never contributes to the plot and spends the last few chapters in a coma. But he's special. Really.
- Also, Jeff Garyn is supposedly a professional hitman who has killed fifty-seven people. His modus operandi would suggest otherwise.
- Info Dump: Huge blocks of stats are dolloped out when new characters show up.
- Knight of Cerebus: Up until Justice's appearance, the monster battles have been goofy and fun, with little to no consequence or regard for what's going on. Justice kills thousands, leaves John in a coma, nearly kills the other Children and comes so very close to starting the Third Impact.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Keel Lorenz is John Barren's father. Maybe. Possibly. It's hard to tell.
- Mind Screw: Chapter 11, also known as "Delta Theology". A mish-mash of Judeo-Christian mythology, astrophysics, martial arts movies, revising (and mangling) Evangelion's back-story and concepts, biology, theology and anything else that was thrown into the mix.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Most of Invadors are described by some variation on "body of an A, head of a B, arms of a C, legs of a D, etc.". Mercilessly parodied by the Random Delta Invasion Episode Generator.
- Mister Exposition: This is pretty much all Ritsuko does in the fic. Well, that and endless synch-tests.
- Monster of the Week: The Invadors .
- No Endor Holocaust:
- Most of the Invadors are easily defeated with little to no mention of the damage done by their attacks and the subsequent battles.
- Justice, conversely, kills thousands during its attack, as well as nearly killing John.
- Pair the Spares: John is paired with Tom's ex-girlfriend for no obvious reason.
- Retcon: EVA-00, EVA-03, Tokyo-3, Toji's limbs and Kaji are all back in one piece with nary a reason given.
- Satellite Love Interest: Asuka for Tom, Rei for Shinji. Also Kaji for Misato, as he does nothing in the fic other than take her out on long dates but never contributes to the plot in any way. Also possibly Jenya for John, but neither are exactly the deepest characters to begin with.
- Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale:
- Chapter Nine. Between the five-hundred meter long ship with a crew of eight (plus one passenger) and the six-week trip across the solar system, there's very little "in scale" to be had.
- Chapter Ten has a three-kilometer tall Invador.
- Chapter Eleven reveals that Earth's moon is the size of the Tokyo-3 Geo-front.
- Shaped Like Itself: The "Golden EVA" is an Evangelion that is gold-colored.
- Slut-Shaming: Tom's ex-girlfriend Jenya is mentioned several times before finally appearing in the last chapter. In each case, she has abuse heaped on her by Tom for dumping him and then hooking up with and dumping his best friend, Mike. Added to that, Tom compares her unfavorably with Asuka throughout. She contributes nothing to the plot, and the while thing feels very out of place and incredibly uncomfortable.
- Sociopathic Hero: Tom enjoys getting into fights and and killing Invadors, and gleefully relishes in mowing down SEELE soldiers. Not to mention his gratuitous killing of Jeff Garyn and the glee he takes in dispatching Keel. Tom even calls himself a psycho several times in the fic. This being Delta Invasion, everyone laughs it off. In the Rebuild of Delta, Rebecca even calls him a 'budding sociopath' at several points.
- Wave-Motion Gun: The "nuclear based cannon".
- Weddings for Everyone: Chapter 13.
The Elmer Studios MSTings provide examples of:
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: In the Rebuild, the MSTers see Justice as being this.Tsuneo: In classical martial arts bad guy style, I imagine that Justice is doing all this in a neutral stance with one hand behind its back, as if to mock the enemy.
- Alternate Universe Fic: The MSTers imagine what a Delta-fied Rebuild of Evangelion would be like with hilarious results.
- Berserk Button: Tsuneo is driven into a frenzy by the crazy backstory infodump in chapter 11; the others have to bring in an electronic monk (from Martian Successor Nadesico) to calm him down.
- Played with in the Rebuild; the Monk also is used on Rebecca after she gets more then a little annoyed about Asuka's Faux Action Girl status.
- Call-Back: The first chapter of the Rebuild MSTing includes asking about what Evangelion continuity the fic is set in. The last chapter brings that up in its discussion of what "Rebuild of Delta" would be like.
- Continuity Reboot: The "Rebuild of Delta", a re-MSTing of the fic by the same people
- Running Gag:
- John Barren is Special.
- Tom cooks Newspapers for breakfast.
- Charles and his brother Charles.
- The singing fleas and cockroaches in Misato's apartment.
- This series also introduced the "What, you dare (blank) the great Asuka? WA-TAK!" gag that was, for some time, a
Memetic Mutation of its own within the Evangelion fanfic community. Used in the Rebuild with a variety of unsuccessful sound effects. - In the rebuild, the MSTers constantly note of the fact that they're thinking about the fic more then the writer likely did.
- Also from the Rebuild, Dan shouting out random lines as Tom in response to unlikely events in the fic. Chapter nine is remarked to be "entirely Tom shouting".
- Another one from the Rebuild; the constant phone calls are punctuated by Dan listing episode titles from The Big O
- Four Hundred Babies
- MST3K Mantra: Invoked by the MSTers with their attempts to analyze the fic and find explanations for its plot holes, and then realizing that they're thinking about it too much.
- Mythology Gag: While the "Rebuild of Delta" is a Continuity Reboot there has been numerous references to the original Elmer Studios MSTings.
- The "Rebuild" MSTing ends with showing that the Voice has a copy of Gates of Oblivion
- Shout-Out: In addition to the Mythology Gags above, there are references to other MSTings, most notably Mystery Octagon Theatre
- Testosterone Poisoning: The term is used several times in the Rebuild MSTing to describe Tom.
