

In retrospect, what was the point of the angels at all? The goal of NERV and
etc. was the Human Instrumentality Project. Why go through the effort of
killing fifteen angels? And even if you could say they had to establish peace
for the moment to go ahead with the project, that just makes the entire plot
of the angels a waste. So what was the point?


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neon-genesis-evangelion
What was the point of the angels?


The Angels NERV fought were the Children of Adam, who sort to instigate the
Third Impact to reclaim earth back from the Children of Lilith, the Lilin
(Humans).

NERV's goal all along was the preservation of humanity so stopping the Angels
falls along their goals, the Human Instrumentality Project was SEELE's secret
goal to force the evolution of man though creating their own Third Impact that
they could control, because the Human Instrumentality Committee oversaw NERV
it was also NERV's Secret Goal.

SEELE couldn't let Adam's children instigate the Third Impact because then
they couldn't control it themselves so destroying the angels as they appeared
was needed to ensure that SEELE's could execute their plans without
interference.


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Note that, like many things in _Evangelion_ , this answer would fall under the
category of educated speculation.

The point of the Angels largely seems to be to drive other points of the plot.
It seems that the plot of Instrumentality itself does not really need the
Angels--and I think you're right in this respect. The Angels themselves are a
[Monster of the Week
trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonsterOfTheWeek)
embodiment, but you'll notice that each one (except perhaps Matarael) has a
large influence on the events of each episode (and often the whole series).

Consider Leliel, Arael, Armisael, and Kaworu. Each of these caused a great
psychological trauma in the characters. Leliel was really the first to probe
Shinji's mind and break him down to nothing; Arael and Armisael followed suit
and brought forth even more trauma and, along with it, character development.
Kaworu, the pinnacle of all of this, essentially brought Shinji to the verge
of suicide, but then made his choices in _The End of Evangelion_ all the more
human and relatable.

The Angels also achieve one of Anno's goals of telling us that, well, [humans
are _even
worse_](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreTheRealMonsters).
The fact that the Angels are actually just acting on instinct--the instinct to
return to Lilith--and not actually destructive (with a couple exceptions)
shows us that humans are really the strongest villains in the series. (A nice
bit of [grey
area](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreyAndGrayMorality) there.)

So, to answer your question: No, the Angels weren't strictly necessary. But
the plot points they drove and the scenarios they created were **critically
important** parts of the series.


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In addition to the above two answers, Ner/Seele had to wait until they
discovered the lost Lance of Longinus in the Antartic Ocean before they could
begin Instrumentality. This did not occur until after the Angels began
appearing, so they were obliged to battle at least _some_ of them!

There was clearly some need to delay enacting [Third
Impact](http://wiki.evageeks.org/Third_Impact) and Instrumentality until after
the final Angel was dispatched, probably at the order of the Dead Sea Scrolls
(which is never explained), otherwise Nerv/Seele would have simply commenced
it as soon as they had the Lance (Adam, Lilith and Rei were already in their
possession). For some reason, Instrumentality was only likely to work if there
were no other Angels alive to prevent it.


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