The plot goes on about how these children fight the evangelions and live their lives, and then the plot thickens, as they all struggle from past scars, and overflowing emotions. Which I find cliche. Almost all anime I've seen have this main character who is struggling with past memories, and emotional instability, and generally feels like a nuisance.
Evangelion is filled with creative ideas of angels (their shapes, their behaviors their natures, their abilities), and how the heroes defeat them, almost like they are major influences for a lot of videogame and anime developers. And the angels here aren't like normal enemies from other anime, they feel real, and hostile, equivalent of bosses in videogames. They won’t ever hold back on killing the evangelions. You’ll get your fair share of action and blood and gore here, along with all the suspension there is. The anime’s themes sometimes change rapidly, but not in an overwhelming manner, in other words, it won’t exhaust your mind trying to comprehend what is happening, but I can assure you that it will surprise you… in a disappointing way sometimes, even. At least that’s what I felt.
From delivering an awesome story, to teaching you high values of life, Evangelion excels in one, and fails miserably at the other. Some episodes here are really strange, and surprising, as to show you how weird the anime can be, but not in a good way, unfortunately, which is a turn off. But you’ll find other moments, where the anime is heading the course it should take, and it can’t get any better. Simply compelling at times.
Once you watch the first episode, you won’t stop until you finish the whole anime. A splendid experience, from start to finish….. At least I wish it was from start to finish. There are parts in the anime that seem lacking, and there are parts where the anime is just better without. You’ll encounter a long psychological part, where the minds of the protagonists are being messed up, and most of these parts seem elongated, and are tedious. With that said, the rest is just pure excitement. I’ll say especially at episode 18 and 24 where the anime reaches its climax.
Evangelion perfected the twisted feel most anime try relentlessly to give, but it failed to show you the beauty of the world. It made me cringe, and by that, I honor it. And I honestly, didn't think it would go this far.
You know how a lot of normal movies start out, and continue normally with nothing worth noting, nothing really interesting, and then by the end, it all hits you? Evangelion is the opposite of that. You’ll see later on. Just try not to be disappointed. I know many people who liked the ending, but since a lot of the fans complained about the terrible ending, Gainax made the movie, The End of Evangelion, to replace episodes 25 and 26, which were pretty neat. And wicked.
You’ll see a lot of things in other anime which were ripped off from Evangelion, which is very nice to see, and add up to the actual experience.
In the end, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a remarkable anime, and one of the best out there. One that should be added to everyone’s anime experiences. You probably should avoid it, if you hated a nagging protagonist, but it wasn't that much annoying to me. 10 hours of pure fun, and 1.5 of not so pure fun.
