The anime succeeded wildly beyond expectation and has spawned countless derivative works and imitators. The series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 19. It was later aired across Japan by the anime satellite television network, Animax. The anime consists of 26 television episodes which were first aired on the terrestrial TV Tokyo network from October 4, 1995, to March 27, 1996. The manga was intended to raise interest for the anime (directed by Hideaki Anno with character designs by Sadamoto), which was in development at that point and was intended to be Gainax's next major anime release. The manga, written by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, debuted in the February 1995 issue of Shonen Ace (published in December 1994) and is still running as of 2010. The franchise's central works, both titled Neon Genesis Evangelion, are an anime and a manga serial, both of which follow the same storyline, although with numerous minor differences between them.
