The nymphs are departed. For case in point, Nerv can be viewed as the very same as the Solo Ship battling a lonely struggle from each humankind and the Buff Clan, and then there are the incomprehensible robots that can only communicate with children and tend to go berserk, etcetera. It could not be an exaggeration to say that if you include "Ideon" and "Devilman" jointly and divide by two, you get "Evangelion".