Shinseiki Evangelion

This has to be one of the most over rated anime I have seen in my life.

Story-

We have NERV, the super duper military complex builder, who will waste ammo on Angels and sacrifice service men to not even delay any Angels. Conveniently the EVA's can use assault rifles and other armament that NERV can't simply make into mobile weapon units to maybe hurt the Angels with. The disconnect is when an EVA uses a projectile weapon it suddenly turns into a weapon that can negate the force fields of Angels and sometimes out right kill them. This is unexplained and a very ... glaring plot-hole it self.

Now I can see how wasting ammo at the beginning can introduce the viewers to how powerful the Angels are, but repeatedly doing so is very dumb...

This same NERV , that is composed of elite military minds, decided that 14 years old kids will be the controllers and pilots of weapons of mass destruction or EVA's. This plot seemed like the typical shounen plot-line, but its so far from it, very far.

Art-

We have fluid motion and nice hand drawn frames. Everything looks and flows well while somewhat dated by today's standards, it is still very watchable.

There are some questionable biblical symbolism. I am not sure what they mean. They might be meaningless.

Sound-

The sound was very good for the most part. All the music seemed to fit to the situations and that is as much as I can say for that as I am not very big on music.


Characters -

Shinji. This guy alone corrupts the whole show. The other characters were all decently crafted, but they all were overshadowed by Shinji and placed to help prop up the loser that is Shinji. So I will focus on Shinji.

Seriously. I do not understand how he can be so self loathing. I know people without arms, without legs, blinded, the deaf, the poor, the starved, and people have the gale to say "Shinji is realistic". In my eyes I can't even fathom such a wimpy person. I understand people get depressed, and sometimes that mental illness can make you not care at all, but when the show is 99% self pity while nearly 99% of the world needs you to fight and you keep calling your self worthless. It becomes a chore to watch. Over and over again. It happens. The self loathing is so unnatural, even the most depressed person in the world when given the purpose of SAVING HUMANITY would at least love them self a little more. Give themselves more worth and at least try to do something with thier, in thier mind, "worthless life". When your life is worth almost all of humanity it should tend to be worth a lot more. The show hardly gives Shinji the development he deserved. This is a black stain on Hideaki Anno career.

Enjoyment-

It was a very hard watch. I wanted to complete the show before reviewing it or else I would have dropped it at around ep 4.

This review only applies for the first 6 episodes of the series, it does not constitute for the overall experience of the anime itself and it will be comprised of what I liked/disliked about the anime and the reason I have had dropped it for.

So I can summarize the entire story in a non-spoilery way while giving the total relevance of everything that's been happening in the story in only three words: Shinji is depressed. Basically none of the events of the story shine more than the main character's depressive demeanor. The show is portrayed with a melancholic atmosphere which didn't clique with me because ... the only elements it's comprised is the scenery being formed mostly of cold and dark colors & the lack of personality traits everyone else has. The series focuses on how Shinji is forced to pilot a mecha and how he just goes along with it because fuck it. Especially while he seems to hate it a lot and he keeps being like "I should quit. Actually I shouldn't. I should quit. Actually I shouldn't"

There are some other characters but none of them seem particularly interesting. I mean pick a trope, tone it down by like 10 times the way it's executed in general, and that's your cast of characters. They basically feel like cannon fodder. There's one character, a girl, that there is some focus put on outside of Shinji, but imagine this, you already have a depressive teenager as the main character. What's your other character you start putting some focus on. A character that seems to lack any emotions. If anything she's there just to interact with Shinji, but all other characters are lke that already. Ikari Shinji is pretty much the only character that shines through with his one character trait which is depression. Which I can't say it's done badly, as a matter of fact, his depression comes across in a pretty realistic way, I mean you can characterize depression to basically being unable to focus on anything positive and Shinji is portrayed exactly like that. He doesn't care much for anything and pretty much spends his time doing what he's told to do or being brooding. But my problem is, lets say the story goes on the route of him getting over his depression and he's finally happy or something like that. But he has no other personality trait or element to which you can relate to. Because while his depression was thrown aside and wasn't the focus, Shinji brought nothing to the table and is used as a mean to move focus away from him. Lets say he stays depressed through the whole series and things get worse for him. I wouldn't care because the only thing that defines him is again, depression, so what happens to him wouldn't matter much to me. If the character was fleshed out in some way, any way that would differentiate he himself as an individual, so I would be able to care , could've kept me interested.

Oh and you might also find some interest on how the series tried to be futuristic and how hard they got it wrong. Since it's set in 2015 and all and they were aiming for a futuristic world and you might enjoy seeing how many things they got wrong. Considering the animation and sound is also very generic, at the very least it feels and looks very 90's, you might get a kick out of this.

But what I'm trying to say is that the series mostly banks on having a melancholic tone. Which I find hard to follow up with. There is basically nothing else in the series I can even find people being able to relate to or find entertaining. The mecha fights aren't particularly interesting, I mean, they are not bad, but like, they felt pretty average in term of overall action and with the dated animation which doesn't look bad, mind you, but it doesn't exactly look that entertaining either. I mean, the series was animated 20 years ago, so you can expect the fights to hold up only as much after all.

So basically I'd suggest this anime to you if you can relate to depression or anything similar to it. If you can, you might enjoy this since that's pretty much the only thing that cliques in it. That's the only thing about this series that has any sort of outline. Everything else, was, pretty much just bleak and with no relevance. Which gives the melancholic atmosphere even more power, which, is the one thing that shines through the 6 episodes I've seen. If you expect anything different than a depressing tone, you probably won't enjoy this, since this is pretty much the one thing that really shines in the series. I can't say I see things changing in further episodes so I can't say you could expect anything more. Anyway if you would enjoy something about depression, then this is right up your alley. Just note that this is very pure. And for anyone that can't relate to it, it's probably gonna be a bad experience.

Boku no pico has a better story and development than this crap, Mecha and Sci-fi are genres that I like, but this anime is a mix of bitter and sour, it doesn't work, There's an episode where half the time they're going up in an elevator, All the characters are assholes, Shinji is a potato, Hideaki Anno, I'm going to hunt down your family for creating this tasteless joke, I just don't give it a lower rating because I recognize that Evangelion had its importance in the anime industry, the only thing that saved it was the Portuguese dubbing of Portugal with the "Parabains" video ... that you can send to your friends.

*You might consider what I'm writing at certain times a spoiler, continue reading with caution. Please keep in mind that this is my first ever review and English is not my native language.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is the worst anime I've ever watched. Now, many of you will probably go ahead and check out my profile and see that I haven't really watched a big amount of anime yet, which is true and brings me to my next statement. I'm fairly certain that no anime I'll ever watch is going to replace this one as the worst one on my list. This review will go over ... Neon Genesis Evangelion and the sequel which is a movie named 'The End of Evangelion'.

I had been hearing lots of great things about this series since I've started watching anime and after it had been recommended to me for the longest time by a couple of friends I decided to give NGE a try. Note that I started watching this well-aware of the creator's situation (regarding his mental state) while writing Evangelion and therefore I consider some of the stuff shown exaggerated and pretentious. I strongly believe that me being in the know before jumping in affected my viewing experience and had a big impact when it came down to me disliking this franchise as a whole.

Starting off with the characters. The main cast which consists of Shinji, the protagonist, Rei, Asuka and Misato. All of these characters have minimal to non-existent character development till the very end of the movie sequel even. Almost all of them, with the exception of Rei which is a bit of a more complex situation and would lead to spoilers if I were to go in depth about her, have tragic backstories, child trauma, attachment issues and so on. You would think as the series goes on that these characters would try and move on little by little to become a better version of themselves but unfortunately that's not the case. Ironically enough, the only character out of those of the main cast that made some progress was Rei and that says it all. The side characters are not much to speak of either. The most important one is the worst father figure ever created in fiction whose name is Ikari Gendou and is an absolute douche-bag who only cares about his secret agenda and for his plans to succeed. Overall, I think the most disliked part of the series in any negative review you will come across, is the characters. Mine is no different. I could write a whole other review speaking solely about the characters and it still wouldn't be enough to express my hatred towards every single one of them. They are all so unpleasant and boring that they make Rei (again, ironically enough) the most interesting and likeable one, which is very frustrating and sad at the same time. Also no, adding a tragic/dramatic backstory to a character towards the end of the series to justify their actions not only does it not fulfill that puprose, it instead makes the characters seem even more immature than they already were.

Before we move on to the story, let me clear something up that I haven't mentioned yet. I'm not a fan of the mecha genre. I only watched Evangelion because I kept hearing that the real point of this anime was its story, the messages, symbolisms etc. and the mecha element of it doesn't play as much of an important role. For the most part it is true, but I would be lying if I said that it wasn't the part I enjoyed the most. So please try to comprehend how horrifying that is, coming from someone who in general doesn't like this genre. As for the story itself, I consider the concept and the idea behind it brilliant but it was executed and delivered very poorly. It's as some of the fans of this franchise say, Evangelion's story and purpose is perceived differently by each individual. You are free to think of this positively or negatively. Personally, in the case of this series I consider it the 2nd worst thing that has come out of it. The reason why I think it's as bad is that Evangelion fails miserably to deliver answers that are crucial to the plot. Speaking of plot, oh boy does it have a lot of holes. If you are the kind of person to sit down and actually try to understand something through rewatching or searching up answers yourself then you are in for a treat. From my point of view, Evangelion's story is a way for the creator to share his feelings and thoughts that were running through his head at one of his lowest points in life which is well, when he was writing Evangelion. Now, if you are a person who is going or have gone through a low point in their life or at least have had a conversation or two with a person that is not doing good mentally, you would understand how unrealisticly this anime approaches all those feelings and hardships. If you ask me, it also got repetitive relatively fast and the cause is more or less how the characters don't develop at all like previously mentioned. The anime ending was one of the most low effort endings I've ever witnessed too. They tried making the characters go from 0 to 100 in a matter of 1-2 episodes in a very lazy way as well while they were at it. The sequel of the anime is a movie, that is considered by many, the true ending of the series. It tried salvaging the previous ending but it also fell short. We reached the point of the franchise where a few of the many questions that might had been created inside your mind through out the entire series are kind of getting "answered" and we see the minimal character developement I mentioned in the characters section above only for it to do a 180 at the very last minutes which makes you think that not even the writer knew how he wanted it to end. While the movie is reaching its climax the team behind it is trying to distract you from all the previous horribly written scenes by presenting to you a huge clusterfuck of nonsense and to be honest if we exclude the part where you don't understand what is going on, it's actually my favourite part of the movie and honestly the entire series. At least visually, considering it aired 27 years ago.

The art and the sound are not too crazy and I'm not someone that cares about them too much unless they are either stunning or really bad so I'm not going to emphasize on them in this review at all. I liked the designs of the EVA units and the Angels, they were decent, but that's about it really. Generally speaking both art and sound are good, especially for mid to late 90s, but if you try to watch it now that we are in 2024 it might be a hit or miss. Although, I must say, the best part about this series is the opening. One of the best ones I've ever heard.

In conclusion, when I finally finished watching the movie I felt something that I hadn't ever felt before, after wrapping up an anime. I felt that my time got scammed. I thought I would never feel this way no matter how bad an anime would be, especially when it comes down to an anime like NGE that has received this much praise all over these years. Hell, I would prefer continuing my one and only (as of the time I'm writing this review) dropped anime than watching anything related to the NGE franchise ever again. The combination of really bad pacing, atrocious characters and most importantly very poor story-writing can not be saved and should not be overshadowed by symbolisms no matter how good or how many there are. Also, it might be true that the things NGE did almost 30 years ago now, were innovative/unique/original however you might wanna call it, but the fact that it was executed terribly, stays. Statistically speaking you probably will like NGE and what it has to offer. If not you will get told that you didn't understand it and that's why you didn't like it. In my opinion, if you truly understand the messages and the situations that NGE shows, or at least tries to, that's when you realize how bad it actually is.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to read my review and I hope I made my thoughts and points clear.

--The review may contain spoilers-- (and my grammar might be broken)

NGE is one of the most overrated anime series I've watched ever.

First of all, I really don't like mechas, but I thought I give this a chance. I didn't like the story(or the storytelling), the characters, and the ending, what was terrible.

But this anime is one of the most impact series in anime industry, Then I think I should write a review to show my opinion why I did this to this series)

*****Story*****
The show was 50% Shinji not doing anything and 50% monster-of-the-week fighting. Each time the kids got hurt and you felt bad for ... them. The dad was remorseless and Misato had issues and each episode nothing changed. I barely remember the blonde guy, who was supposed to have a profound impact on Shinji, but from all I can see, he showed up, took a bath with him and died. And Shinji was still depressed.

Then at the end some psychadelic stuff started happening, and the Earth was going to end. But Shinji made a choice that somehow both tied into saving the entire world and also accepting himself as a human, and this coincidental all-or-nothing opportunity made his character perfect and saved the Earth. Actually writing it down it does seem like a really good way to tell a story, but at the time it just made no sense to me.

*****ACTION:*******
Action in this series quite good.Some action scenes have Raw&Blood for making a difference between mature series and Kid series.But for me who really don't like Mecha series It seems like useless, I just feel like Ultraman vs Kaiu hahaha

*****CHARACTERS:*****
This part is one of the points that ruined my enjoyment for NGE, Everyone is annoying and unreasonable.

The characters were interesting but not well-developed in my opinion, or at the least not well-handled. Certain characters had extremely well-done climactic scenes, including but of course not limited to Misato. However, I claim that certain episodes and scenes, such as unneeded bathing scenes, or especially the episode where Asuka has to go to the core of the Earth (or something like that) and inflates like crazy, were a bit hard to swallow. They seemed very exaggerated and out of place.They were very one-note.

Shinji - Shinji is annoying because he is always acts like a crybaby and Shinji was always depressed and while you can say that is a realistic depiction because certainly there are Shinji-like people in the world, it is not a very interesting depiction. I don't think that "depression", "angst" and "rebelling against his father" can make a complete character.

Rei - Rei is annoying because she is always takes side with gendo his master just like
a doll or the bird in a cage.

Asuka - She is the most annoying character in this series.

And some other characters is annoying as well but I won't bring it up to write.

Add-on 1: I accept that NGE is anime which has a lot of impact and change the anime industry at the period of that time but if I have to score it by its own show and not talking about its impact,value,market and the period of time, I can only give it like this.

Add-on 2: If NGE had aired in 2000s' not Fall 1995 I would have scored it lower. Someone might say why?? Think and think and think again!! NGE aired in fall 1995 but Cowboy bebop and Trigun aired in spring 1998 It just only 3 years but can do much better than NGE, But okay someone might say the industry might be upgraded after NGE has come.Then How about Dragon ball - Dragon ball Z or Yu yu Hakusho??

Add-on 3:watch something else that worther than NGE. Cowboy bebop > NGE

This anime is probably one of the worst animes I've ever watched.
To put it shortly, the main characters nor the story are anything special, just more self-hating characters that everyone has seen tens of times, except this time they don't evolve, making it very repetitive, boring and quite predictable.
The last two episodes, despite being very different from all the others, don't help it in the slightest, as the "phylosofical" aspect of it is totally irrelevant to the story; not only did I not get what they were trying to portray but also it already had been feeling like a drag to watch and this only ... came to solidify it.

Action wise it still has some good bits, especially saying this as a first time mecha genre watch, but it hardly compensates for what I mentioned earlier.
The opening theme is a banger though, I'll give it that.

After seeing how well regarded this anime is, I can't believe how disappointingly bad it turned out to be.

In the rating system, for me, this jumped from 4 to 3, to 5, to 1, back to 3, then plummeted to 1 at the end and never recovered. I appreciate anime's style and substance, and this series had both, sometimes enough of both to justify it's classic status. Fabulously scary, those Angels are. And what a back story--half the Earth's population killed in the second impact--that's the stuff of epics. Some of the battle sequences are breathtaking. Yet for all this, we've got the most whiny, annoying and unlikable wuss for a "hero". Shinji, shut up. Daddy doesn't love you? I don't blame ... him, you scrawny little creep. Take this plus an anticlimactic, largely incomprehensible finale (to me, anyway, kudos to anyone who could understand it), the deterioration of the primarily jovial, lively co-stars into moping basket-cases, and the oh-never-mind disposal of the last Angel. What a let-down. "Congratulations," they yammer at the end. Well, thanks. I guess that's for making it through those last three episodes. This one's all over the map, and while it's got qualities to recommend it, it's got others that'll make you gnash your teeth in frustration.

26 episodes of him whining, and an ending so bad, they had to remake it as a movie.

People like Evangelion for the same reason people like Emo music: It's angsty and intensely emotional. A lot of people call this a "deep" show, but intensity is not depth. Intensity is not story. Intensity is not plot, or character development.

If you take away the emotional intensity of mostly the main character, and look at everything else in Evangelion, what you get is mostly not much. 2 Dimensional characters that don't really develop or grow past their signature character flaws which are the sole aspects of the ... characters. But flaws are not all there is to being a person, and we never see anything else except for those, and all the secondary characters essentially exist just to further the main character.

The plot itself is pretty basic, and has huge amounts of elements to it, that are never really explained. What are the Angels? What is SEELE's motive for doing what it does? How did Evangelions come into being? There are lots and lots and lots of huge plot holes that are never really explained or addressed. Fans of the show will say that that's being profound. But if the idea of profundity is simply having a bad plot, and then covering it up by cranking the emotional intensity up to 1000%, that's not "depth" to me, it's just bad writing.

Anyone can do that. Movie director J.J. Abrams is fond of telling a story about how he bought a "Mystery box" at a game store as a kid, and never opened it, because he felt the "mystery" was more profound than finding out what was in it. And as a result he commonly has put important plot elements into his movies, that he never addressed, thinking the "mystery" is more important. But some people actually found one of those same boxes he bought, and opened one up, and found that inside was just a bunch of cheap junk that the store couldn't sell so placed inside a "mystery box" to make it more marketable. In other words, the "mystery" was just a marketing ploy.

The same is true here. Plot holes are mistaken for profundity, and then covered up with a blanket of emotional intensity. People are so distracted by all the screaming that the characters are doing, that they fail to notice that the rest of it is just kind of bad.

This show was groundbreaking mainly because of that emotional intensity. It was the first show to really "go there" in an anime in terms of how intense the emotional level is. And because of that, and how unique it was, it had a huge impact on the anime industry. Additionally, people who really resonated with that angsty feel, really didn't care about the other aspects of the show, and just resonated with the angsty, over the top emotions of the main character.

If all you care about is emotional intensity, this is the show for you. But if you want true depth, true character development where characters actually *grow*, and move beyond their flaws; if you want a well-constructed plot with a story: this probably isn't the anime for you.

In my 24 years of living on this planet, no other media has even come close to being as much of a complete chore to sit and suffer through as Eva. I do not understand why people like this show. I don't know if they just like it for nostalgic reasons or because they are self-loathing humans like most of the cast. Either way I still just can't grasp what people would find appealing about this show. It's full of interesting yet completely unexplored plotlines/concepts and downright insufferable characters.

Eva is really good at introducing some neat concepts or planting little nuggets of curiosity throughout and ... then just completely acting like all of those things never existed outside being vaguely referred to. They don't even make the smallest attempt to explain any of the nonsense sci-fi jargon that they throw at you every episode. The whole show just ends up being a tangled mess of all questions and no answers. I remember specifically there was one episode in the last half of the show that actually managed to have me interested. It was showing some weird concept that actually made me kind of excited to watch the next episode so they could expand on it. But no, instead they just do what they do every time and just drop it into the abyss of plot points that aren't worth talking about ever again. Not to mention the show is extremely boring and repetitive which is the main reason it was such a chore to watch. Almost every single episode is the same but I mention more about that later.

This is the part about Eva that I think confuses and frustrates me the most. Every time I see people talking about this show they constantly say how Eva's characters are the highlight of the show and praise them constantly. They talk about how deep and complex these characters are. I mean I guess would be fine except for the fact that they aren't deep or complex in the slightest. Asuka and Shinji are the most insufferable pieces of shit characters I have ever seen in media. Extremely one-dimensional characters who go through the same exact cycle of emotions in every single episode. Every single episode Shinji goes through the cycle of not wanting to pilot the Eva, getting essentially guilted into doing it, hating that he did it, and then crying about how he doesn't want to pilot it/people only like him for the sole reason that he can pilot it. But then oh look at that he goes and does it all over again in the next episode. Yippee! I mean honestly, to be fair to those characters Shinji has no redeeming personality traits so if I was in their shoes that would be the only reason I would put up with him either. Rei and Shinji's dad are probably the most interesting characters in the entire show and they get shafted so Shinji can come to the realization that he's just a shitty person.

Another point people bring up is how "Oh the plot isn't really that important, the characters what's important in Eva.". Having a show with a bad/unstable plot along with bad characters, trying to represent a metaphor, doesn't make your show deep let alone good. Just because the characters vaguely represent some "deeper metaphor" doesn't mean it did a good job doing so or overall make a good show. The philosophy in this show is like the stuff you teach kids in grade school. This isn't some Reddit 5head big-brain stuff that's being put on display here. It's just bad, surface-level thinking.

I could be here all day talking about the issues with this show. The only points I'll give this show are that the Eva designs are pretty cool, there were a couple of cool moments during fights, and the opening is a banger. Other than that most of what the show has to offer isn't enjoyable. Like they don't even give the Evas cool weapons or anything. They just get normal ass guns and a knife that vibrates. It's super uncreative. I might eventually make myself watch the movies or read the manga to see any of this shit is actually redeemable but I won't hold my breath.

Now I am getting pissed off. But here we go again, now it is short and sweet (even though I am more a ranting person). And getting a feel again of the characters (re-watching the conversation parts of the show), because, no matter what happens, they still break the show.

Story (second most important)
Nothing that original, would be a 5 or six if they would not be pretentious. That last movie ruined it a bit more for me, but that is in retrospect, so not counted.

Art. (tied with sound for least important, unless it is lower then a 3, which would be very ugly or ... something that hurts the ears)
Fine, good mecha, well drawn people and that good old style.

Sound.
Great, what we expect of anime now judged on the dub (sorry sub might be superior but I didn't watch that one).

The Characters. (most important)

Shinji is fearful and angst ridden at first and also at the end, which gets old real fast.

Asuka a person who got "Vegeta-syndrome" (thinking you are the best) and it gets old real fast.

Rei, quiet, competent and all by all the best character the show made.

Misato, a cheerful, loud and an alcoholic, what is not to like? (unless, like me, you dislike loud people)

Enjoyment.
Not good. No matter how good a story is, the characters still make or break it, here they break it.

Now, if this ain't short and sweet, then I do not know what is.

Evangelion is the most overated anime I have ever experienced. I went into the mindset that it is a very engaging anime with awesome action scenes and great characters. A perfect binge anime. This was partly true.

The action scenes against the angels are pretty good with nice fight scenes with fluid movements. A good example is the fight scene with Auska and Shinji syncing their movements during the battle with an angel, resulting in a very interesting battle to watch. Some of the main characters are actually makes the show interesting. For example, Auska's character was both entertaining to watch and sad to learn about ... her depressing backstory.

This is all the show is good for as the pacing is slow, forgettable, and very repetitive at times (this ends around the last 7-10 episodes though). The characters are very one note bland characters that would make Noriaki Kakyoin blush. Shingi is a terrible main protagonist as he is as annoying as he is bland, like the most of the other characters in the show. If you want to see a better version of shinji's character, minus some of the daddy issues, just watch cell saga era Son Gohan.

All and all, bad show. I've been told to watch the movies next, but from what I've seen, I do not want to subject myself to more of this godawful franchise. And don't get me started on that god damn stupid endin-

Time flew and there humanity was, 1996. The timing was just right, a new millennium was about to come, even though its predecessor’s problems remain: climate conversion, pollution, overpopulation, religious and social conflicts,… The creators of Neon Genesis Evangeline couldn’t find the solutions for those matters, but they could talk about something more fundamental, ‘human’. The term is for a species that resides on Earth, also the culprit behind the things that certainly will endanger the existence of the precious life, the one and only known across the universe. It is expected that humanity, with intelligence and cooperation, would overcome those menaces. Nevertheless, there is ... also a fact that the ever-changing future brings uncertainties, and those are possibly the cause of anxiety, ignorance, or simply the darkness within one’s inner self. That darkness has also become a hindrance that each human being should be aware of and accordingly find a solution.

Well, Neon Genesis could have talked big, huh. However, what did we have there? They had 26 episodes, but was unable to work it out, which resulted in a movie as the epilogue. That was a huge failure in term of pacing. There were at least 3-18 times 23 minutes of fillers, which didn’t contributed anything. I remember there was an episode recaptured all the previous incidents, and the question is, why they didn’t take advantage of it, in order to bring out the answers for the unresolved mysteries and conflicts within the world of Evangeline, or dig deeper into the inner selves of the characters, inflicting the damage gradually yet sharply, painfully yet comfortably, undesirably yet inevitably. The time could have earned would have been enough to insert the entire movie, but what had done was done, and the final minutes of the TV series were just the characters screaming to their heart content. As the consequence, the protagonists, aka Shinji the Garbage and Asuka Langley, initially supposed to be sympathisable, were utterly disgusting and there was nothing to learn from them. In addition, there wasn’t much to say about Rei Anything-could-fit-here. Indeed, she had ‘many’ ‘characters’, and her words of wisdom were empty, yet full of unoriginality... Wait, perhaps Miss Langley had done something meaningful...

There are reasons why Neon Genesis Evangeline could be more than it is. Still, the show is just a spectacular failure. I wish I had experienced 4 minutes of Beware of Darkness, 1970, way earlier... Anyway, good times, bad times.

*This review contains some spoilers*

Neon Genesis Evangelion, a classic that everyone has heard about at least once and praised by reasons that I'm not quite sure
I'm counting with the film End of Evangelion too

Story (6)
Well, I have to admit the story was really nice, complex and well thought, but the way this anime tells it is awful... Is not anyone who gets to the end of the series understanding everything, and thats a shame cause it could be a lot better
I just think that making 3 children with psycological problems, the last hope for humanity was ridiculous

Art (6)
For the time it was released, ... is not bad at all. It could be a lot worse so I can say the animation was the best aspect of the anime, if we don't count whit the last 3 episodes. It would be better to stop producing the anime for a while than make those episodes if their problem was the lack of money, cause that was a shame...
And in the film, why the real life photo scenes? just why?

Sound (5)
The opening was aweasome, the seiyuus did a decent job too, but the ending and the soundtracks weren't remarkable at all

Character (2)
This was by far the worst aspect of the anime. We have PenPen, Shinji's classmates and Misato as the only passable characters and all the rest is trash.
The main character, Shinji, don't evolve even a little bit thil episode 1 and he even seems to get worse... he even masturbates to Asuka in the hospital, that's nasty
I don't understand how can an anime be popular with main leads like this cause Shinji was the worst protagonist I've ever seen

Enjoyment (4)
Almost none, but it was not unwatchable. It had great moments mostly on fight scenes and I enjoyed listening to the opening in every episode, but the rest was just meh

In the end I couldn't understand why this anime has so much praise
I don't recommend it to anyone but thats just my opinion so be free to watch it if you want, just don't expect much

This will be the first review I write on this site after recently joining. The reason why I decided to write a review for NGE is because I was so terribly disgusted by it. I only recently started watching anime and gave this a chance because it came highly recommended and it had such high scores on this site. Having watched Mecha Anime before and because the Synopsis sounded interesting I felt I should give it a try, regardless of the fact that it was so old.

And boy was I disgusted at this. Each episode was absolute torture to watch. The characters was annoying ... as hell, the plot inconclusive and the last 3 episodes was an absolute joke.
The introspective monologue bullshit was enough to make me go into a depression. And I was extremely put of by the Mechas being hooked up to power chords.
If only it was about liberating man kind from these Angel attacks, Finding some secret Angel Base and then having the lead protagonist lead an assault on the angel base (preferably after most of the female characters died and if he dealt with he's character flaws), the plot would've still been mildly acceptable.
But instead the plot falls flat into an excruciatingly painful psychological fruit bowl which is difficult to understand, partially due to fact that I just got too bored with it to actually pay attention to what was being said. I still have painful memories thinking back on this as I write this. I hope this review serves as a warning. So far this is the ONLY Anime that I have such a strong disliking to. Do not watch unless you wish to inflict extreme psychological trauma on yourself or if you wish to use boredom as a self torture device.

2024 Edit: In retrospect, I might have been to harsh with this review... But after having seen all 4 rebuilds in one day(which has nothing to do with this show really), I kind of want to stand by my opinion? But I understand that it appeals to a lot of people. If I saw it 1995 and also was a teenager at that time, I might have been really into it.

To be perfectly honest, I drop 90% of anime I start to watch nowadays, often within 5 minutes, I think Violet Evergarden not even made it to 1

what a boring snoozfest this was.overated crap,the characters are amongs the most boring and uninteresting i have ever seen.I could find more interesting people at a morgue,their that boring !.The diologue is filled with a lot of psycological and religious metaphors that become so lame and boring that it made be want to blow my brains out.

There is so much vagueness in this anime eg why can only 14 year old pilot the eva,why are the pilots called child etc.

The fight scenes arent that great either not bad just unimpressive.

The animation is pretty good and aged well while still being better than most of the ... anime today.

Overated and a great disapointment.

My problem with this show is pretty simple. If I have to go out of my way and read up on the shows backstory and production to understand what in the holy plain of Rey is going on. That’s when the show is bad.
I like shows that make you think, have open endings, does not give you all the answers, let's you decide what's right and wrong. However, when something like Neon Genesis comes along where you understand a bit of the story and then it all falls apart in the last episodes then the whole narrative is flawed. I can’t enjoy this. I ... personally need a start, middle and an ending to a story. I can’t start in the middle and have no real ending (I do not count those awful movies as an ending because the creator Hideaki Anno intended the show to end at the 25th episode mark not 2 movies after).
I don’t know. Maybe I just have shit taste but if you’re not an anime freak that reads up on all the production of a show, then don’t watch this. More power to you if you can enjoy this. However, this must be the most overhyped show I have ever watched. I think SAO is better than this because I can at least understand how awful that show is without having to google it.
The music is good tho.

Overrated and pretentious. Many people whom have watched the series often say how "deep" this anime is and how they cannot understand it- creating a sort of culture that surrounds Evengelion as an effect. Also, "Coming of age stories" are and were nothing new when this anime came out. I recognize that this may have had a strong impact on the anime industry- but I do not care. This anime has been analyzed so heavily- which is a good thing, however the universal adoration of this anime has garnered too much praise for what I personally believe to be ... themes that more often do not exist in this anime or are exaggerated.

(PS: Originally posted on July 5, 2011)

For this review of Neon Genesis Evangelion I’ve decided to take a different approach on how I will be tackling it. Instead of giving a very nice detailed overview of why I either liked the Anime or not, I’ve decided to do a step by step re-enactment of all my reactions when watching this show from the beginning till the end. Also, these reactions are from an outsiders perspective. I did not research this anime or anything. I went into this with a fresh mind.

Reaction 1: Well this is a good start, the main character Shinji may be a ... complete pansy but he is well developed and so are all the rest of the characters. Also, Shinji may be a pansy but he at least has a reason for being so. The fate of the world is thrust on his shoulders out of no where and his father is a complete douche bag. I actually pity him :( The fights are all really cool too and so is the music. This might just turn out to be pretty good.

Reaction 2: I am now half way through this show and I still have no idea what this show is about? Plot holes are starting to show up in great amounts. Who are these Angel beings, what exactly are the Evangelion’s, why is Rei such a boring and lifeless character, why are there betrayal’s happening left and right, etc…? Doesn’t really matter though because I’m only half way, so this might be all explained down the line. The characters are still good so I got not too many complaints.

Reaction 3: Alright, so I’m nearing the end of this show and I still don’t have much answers. Some of the answers I’m getting aren’t exactly making much sense either. I know what Rei is…kind of…but it doesn’t make sense! Why is it that they are putting new questions out there that need to be answered, don’t you guys have enough plot holes to answer already? Stop adding new ones! Also how come your turning all the characters into unlikeable pricks? Stop ruining your own characters, they are becoming really annoying and emo!

Reaction 4: Ok, can someone explain why exactly Shinji’s father is such a freaking douche bag? What exactly is his role in all of this? It was said before that he had a plan and everything was in motion but up till now I haven’t seen jack shit! Why is it that nobody dies in this show? Almost every person in this Anime gets caught in an explosion that destroys cities completely but they survive with only minor wounds…what the fuck! The characters may have been good before but up till now I haven’t seen a single character growth. They have all become worse instead, like they de-evolved. Also some characters don’t even get any development at moments when they should and instead of developing them like they should, they are completely forgotten about instead.

Reaction 5: So there are three episodes left and why are they introducing this new guy? Don’t you people think this Anime has enough problems already? Oh wait…so he’s one of those Angel bad guys disguised as a human…and he just died. Am I supposed to feel bad for him? He did infiltrate the base to kill everyone, so now that he’s dead I couldn’t exactly give a shit. Good riddance. But why is Shinji being all emo about it…THE GUY WAS AN EVIL MONSTER THAT TRIED TO KILL EVERYONE! WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE THIS SCENE TENSE AND SAD BECAUSE IT ISN’T!

Reaction 6: TWO EPISODES LEFT AND THEY BETTER START EXPLAINING BECAUSE THIS IS SUCKING SOME SERIOUS ASS!!!

Reaction 7: ………………………what the fuck is going on?

Reaction 8: ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! FUCK THIS ANIME, FUCK THIS ANIME!!!!!!!! IT CAN BURN IN SOME DEEP PIT IN HELL!!!!!!!!

Review covers the show + all the movies (including those not listed on MAL).

What happens when a horndog animator cant get enough puss at the age of 40? He creates a shitty alt-reality in the form of an anime series to express how horny and depressed he is. NGE is littered with your typical otaku garbage, giant anime boobs, big robot fights, skintight bodysuits, and some "creative" camera angles. This series was a chore to watch. I am a grown man, I have no desire to see a bunch of naked 14 year olds horning for each other.

Dogshit story, horrible character development, borderline porno. ... The ONLY thing I enjoyed was the fucking Penguin.

Honestly? Mad respect for a man who's spent around 26 years developing a fantastical, horny, confusing, and visually stunning series with the sole purpose of telling a bunch of nerds to go touch grass.

There is a difference between something being influential and something being good, NGE while it may have been extremely influential, it's not very good, for example, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was really influential for its time but that doesn't mean it's a good movie. The same can be said about NGE, I really don't see how this is considered the greatest anime of all time, if this is what is considered as the all-time great of anime, then I don't think I'll like any other anime shows. The characters are obnoxious, just because they're supposed to be depressed and relatable doesn't mean that the ... characters are good. The art, for the most part, was good, although it was inconsistent I liked it. Japan really likes to sexualize 14-year-old girls, so it was pretty uncomfortable seeing those parts of the show. I could go on and on about every problem I have with the show but I don't have the time to discuss it, overall I give this show a 3/10.