Oh yeah. The first time I heard about the show was from a top list of underrated anime from AnimeEveryday. The only other YouTuber I’ve heard mention it is ThatAnimeSnob in his review. Anitube is also how I began hearing about a lot of more obscure anime. Based on your anime list, I’d recommend Bokurano, Alien 9, and Boogiepop Phantom for more dark sci-fi series.
Thanks for the kind words m8 <3 I say this all the time, but it genuinely does bring a giant, goofy grin on my face whenever people tell me they enjoyed my ramblings from over half a decade ago.
As far as MAL ratings are concerned, I've more or less learned to ignore them. Even when I was in the thick of my hypercritical analysis phase, I always felt like numbers just aren't a good way of representing complex opinions. I do believe that there is a baseline for what does and doesn't work within the context of a particular medium (especially in terms of quality), but true "objectivity" in art is borderline impossible because everyone can extrapolate entirely different meanings from the same piece of work.
Funny you should mention Ergo Proxy. That show falls into the same boat as both Ghost in the Shell movies, Serial Experiments Lain, and Texhnolyze: really cool and experimental animes that were ultimately a bit too obtuse for their own good. I'm gonna be honest here: I don't mind shows that take themselves seriously, but every now and then I just wanna see giant anime tiddie guns.
The number of anime you've watched has no bearing on whether you can fairly criticise something or not, and while many people regard reviews as "opinions" and highly subjective, there are plenty of aspects that can be taken apart and examined in a measurable way or context. World building, characterisation, character development, justification, deus ex machina, narrative structure, themes, relationship dynamics, etc, etc, etc.
NGE is great in concept but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Given the work that Anno did prior to it on Gunbuster and after on His & Her Circumstances it's clear that NGE was him exorcising the demons he developed during his work on Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
But that doesn't automatically make a good story.
Anno understands characters and relationships, but it doesn't really show as well in NGE - which is one of the reasons why I rated it a 5. There are plenty of other reasons, the most obvious of which is the remarkably lackadaisical approach to the end of humanity.
Let's put it another way. If you're in charge of humanity's last line of defence, and the only thing standing between extinction and survival is a teenager who's falling apart what would you do? To be brutally honest, you would do whatever it took for humanity to survive - regardless of how distasteful it would be.
Let's go one step further and include Gendou's motivations. He already abandoned Shinji and has no actual attachment to him, and Rei's existence proves he's willing to do anything to achieve his goals so why didn't he persuade, brainwash, drug or lobotomize Shinji - or do something even worse?
It's nice to view NGE through the pastel shades of your emotional lenses, but look at the world it's set in and ask why it wasn't more militarized, why people were allowed to have "normal" lives in the face of an ever increasing threat of extinction, why Shinji was allowed to have feelings but Asuka wasn't.
Then watch the world built in Gunbuster and see the difference.
Also, what's a filthy feelfaggot? When did it become the norm for anime fans to insult each other like this? We had enough trouble getting animation in general accepted as a viable storytelling medium but now people are calling each other horrible names just because they have different opinions?
All Comments (26) Comments
As far as MAL ratings are concerned, I've more or less learned to ignore them. Even when I was in the thick of my hypercritical analysis phase, I always felt like numbers just aren't a good way of representing complex opinions. I do believe that there is a baseline for what does and doesn't work within the context of a particular medium (especially in terms of quality), but true "objectivity" in art is borderline impossible because everyone can extrapolate entirely different meanings from the same piece of work.
Funny you should mention Ergo Proxy. That show falls into the same boat as both Ghost in the Shell movies, Serial Experiments Lain, and Texhnolyze: really cool and experimental animes that were ultimately a bit too obtuse for their own good. I'm gonna be honest here: I don't mind shows that take themselves seriously, but every now and then I just wanna see giant anime tiddie guns.
NGE is great in concept but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Given the work that Anno did prior to it on Gunbuster and after on His & Her Circumstances it's clear that NGE was him exorcising the demons he developed during his work on Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
But that doesn't automatically make a good story.
Anno understands characters and relationships, but it doesn't really show as well in NGE - which is one of the reasons why I rated it a 5. There are plenty of other reasons, the most obvious of which is the remarkably lackadaisical approach to the end of humanity.
Let's put it another way. If you're in charge of humanity's last line of defence, and the only thing standing between extinction and survival is a teenager who's falling apart what would you do? To be brutally honest, you would do whatever it took for humanity to survive - regardless of how distasteful it would be.
Let's go one step further and include Gendou's motivations. He already abandoned Shinji and has no actual attachment to him, and Rei's existence proves he's willing to do anything to achieve his goals so why didn't he persuade, brainwash, drug or lobotomize Shinji - or do something even worse?
It's nice to view NGE through the pastel shades of your emotional lenses, but look at the world it's set in and ask why it wasn't more militarized, why people were allowed to have "normal" lives in the face of an ever increasing threat of extinction, why Shinji was allowed to have feelings but Asuka wasn't.
Then watch the world built in Gunbuster and see the difference.
Also, what's a filthy feelfaggot? When did it become the norm for anime fans to insult each other like this? We had enough trouble getting animation in general accepted as a viable storytelling medium but now people are calling each other horrible names just because they have different opinions?
That's not a fan. That's just a brute.
It works this way:
10 people watched Evangelion
7 said it was good, and 3 said it was bad
Then it's good
10 people watched AnoHana
7 said it was good, and 3 said it was bad
Then it's good