A Cruel Angel’s Thesis or 残酷な天使のテーゼ (Zankoku-na Tenshi-no Teeze) is the opening theme from the 1995 television series Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン; Shinseiki Evangelion).

For over 30 years now, this straight banger has been pumping viewers up enough to make it through an ensuing 25 minutes of teenage robot pilots having existential angst.

I kid, I kid.

But also it is kind of a lot of existential angst.

Anyhoo, the song is great. Here’s the extended four-minute version for a start. Extra verses! Etherial vocalizations! Electric guitar break! Horns! Let’s do it!

I think I also managed to find a video of the original anime opening that hasn’t been “enhanced” by some rando YouTuber, so here’s that.

A fun thing on the song’s Japanese Wikipedia page is its position in various karaoke selection rankings, where it consistently ranks in the top 3 in the anime category (and fairly high overall). The chart only goes up to 2021, but looking at the Joysound results for 2025, the song still checked in at #2 in anime and #3 overall.¹

Long story short, the people want to sing this song, and the people are right. It is, as I noted above, a straight banger.

Night Thread よ、神話になれ！(Happy Night Threading!)

1. Mrs. Green Apple’s “Lilac” from 2024 is #1 for both. It’s also pretty great but a very different vibe. ↩︎