The setting:
In an alternate post-apocalyptic universe the world is under constant threat from 'Angels', mysterious beings that come basically out of nowhere with the intention of, as far as we know for most of the series, destroying the entirety of the human race.
Much like most good vs evil anime, Earth has created a top secret military station known as NERV to construct giant robots known as Evangelions to combat the oncoming threats to prevent a cataclysmic event known as the Third Impact.
Also, an organisation known as SEELE (who exist unbeknownst to pretty much everyone in the series) were created to complete the Human Instrumentality Project to bring about the beginning of a new era in Human evolution.
Confused yet? This is just the beginning...
The characters:
Lets start off with our main protagonist , Shinji Ikari. After having lost his mother before he could even remember and being heavily neglected by his father, Gendo Ikari, Shinji inevitably developed multiple psychological defects which take their toll as the show progressees, these issues include a guilt complex; where whenever something he is even remotely involved in goes wrong, he often blames himself for all of it regardless of his actual impact on the situation, and a case known as the Hedgehog's dilemma, where he is unable to become close to people in the fear that he might hurt those he is becoming close to, yet this is all explained alot better in episode 4.
These psychological issues often get the best of Shinji which results in him running away from his fears rather than embracing them.
Next we have the fiery-tempered American, Asuka Langley Soryu who is the complete opposite to Shinji whilst suffering from pretty much the same anxieties.
She tends to be outspoken and outgoing to cover up the fact that she too lacks confidence but unlike Shinji, she refuses to admit she is weak minded as that would result in her confidence dropping towards the amount Shinji holds throughout the entire show, she needs to be complimented by pretty much everyone in order to stay mentally stable.
As the pilot of Eva unit-02 she tends to be completely kick-ass at everything Shinji basically sucks at and this results in amazing battle scenes with Angels with less of the whining Shinji tends to do in the same situation.
She too has had abandonment issues, having a messed up childhood which is explained as the series runs its course is the main reason she is the way she is.
Last but not least we have Rei Ayanami, who sadly i cannot go into too much detail about as she possesses about 40% of the show's main plot points/twists and thus, going into detail about her would result in spoilers, all we know is she has some kind of personal connection to Shinji's father which is shown in the first episode.
Its probably best that i dont describe ALL of the mentally unstable batch of characters this show has to offer, so i'll let you uncover the truth about them all one by one when you watch the show, and if you're a self respecting anime fan you probably should watch the show.
Art:
The show was animated by Gainax in 1995 and was subject to very low budget as proven by the show's creator, Hideaki Anno, because of this low budget, the show began to slowly decline in animation quality until the last two episodes (dont worry, i'll talk about them in due time) throwing nudity and fanservice into the mix to cover up all the plot holes and animation mistakes that were becoming more and more obvious as the show progressed.
A common way for animators to save money is to make all animation static and only animate the mouth, less movement results in lower costs, however Evangelion went even further by having characters mouths covered, off screen or facing away from the camera to further save money by not even animating mouth movement.
This is not to say that animation quality sucks all the way through, Gainax seem to have taken good care of the battle scenes which has resulted in well-choreographed fights that match or even exceed some mecha battle animation that has came out in the last 4 years or so, during these scenes, everything seems to move so fluidly and when the Evas run you can almost feel the weight of them yourself.
Sound:
Coming from a guy who has only seen the english dub of this show i must say its actually pretty good, although i understand that people may dislike it as for the most part of the first 5 episodes dialogue is kind of half-heartedly expressed and makes the impact of the scene more wishy-washy.
Despite the first 5 episodes, the voice actors to eventually settle into their roles and end up doing a pretty damn decent job at it, a big shout out to Spike Spencer for capturing the realism of Shinji's situation to a T.
The soundtrack is nothing noteworthy, most of the music is played as background music during battles and for that reason, they work, other than that the OP, titled 'Thesis of a Cruel Angel', is something that gets a lot of love from alot of people as being possibly one of the greatest anime openings in existence, but despite Yoko Takahashi's beautiful voice accompanied by a fantasitc saxophone composition and brilliant animation to go with it (especially in the full version, you can chack it out yourself on YouTube) i wouldnt consider it the 'best', Soul Eater's 'Resonance' and 'Paper Moon', Higurashi's simply titled 'Main Theme' and Black Lagoon's 'Red Fraction'
are, in my opinion , more notable.
The Ending:
Much like what i said in my Vampire Knight review, my belief is that the Ending is what decides my opinion on the show as a whole, and in the case of Evangelion, the ending is what stopped it from being undoubtedly my favourite anime of all time.
Its no secret that as the series came to a close, production funds were so dry that the last two episodes were created by throwing a packet of Crayola at sheets of paper and releasing it on Japanese TV, and because of this, the show ended on a less than satisfactory note that upset and enraged a vast majority of fans.
While i personally liked the ending as its the happiest ending you'll probably get from Evangelion (unless you read the manga, volume 14, chapter 96 i believe) its not hard to see why people hated it, the final episodes brought down the overall tone that episodes 1-24 had built up for it, yes i am talking about the infamous 'Congratulations' ending.
After 2 years of an already depressed Hideaki Anno receiving both congratulatory letters and death threats, anno took more notice of the death threats and decided to remake episodes 25 and 26 into what would be the most controversial 87 minutes in anime history.
End of Evangelion:
As a direct response to the unhappy fans who were given an unsatisfactory ending to an otherwise masterfully executed show, Anno and his team buckled up to recreate the ending, in 1997, End of Evangelion was released, and with it, came two of the most controversial scenes in anime.
End of Evangelion is less of a film and more of two episodes combined, they're even divided up as such in the film itself, episodes 25 being called 'Air'/'Love is Destructive' and episode 26 named 'Yours sincerely'/'ONE MORE FINAL: I need you' and it pretty much picks up right where we left off assuming you bi-passed the last two episodes of the series.
We go into this movie with alot of questions, many of them being related to the plot holes present in the latter half of the series, but the most important question being, does this movie give the viewer a proper ending? Ehhhhh, alright, if you're the type of person that wants all the explanations tied up in a nice little bow and handed to you on a silver plate, then you're really not going to like it, though granted the movie (and the series for that matter) do make it incredibly difficult for you to understand whats going on.
For the most part, you'll be able to piece everything together if you're paying close attention, but some scenes, such as live action scenes from Japan as well as even some of the animated scenes that follow are cryptic, leaving you to decipher whatever meaning it has for yourself and opinions differ from one person to another.
And then we come on to the infamous finale; the literal end to Evangelion, does it give you a satisfying ending? Perhaps it will, then again, perhaps not.
I dont think the ending was intended to blow you away with its awesomeness, it was intentionally dull, gloomy and depressing and gave viewers the impression that the ending is what it is and thats that, though those who paid attention would know what's REALLY going on and would actually consider it a relatively 'happy' ending, atleast as happy as you can get for Evangelion.
The movie comes jam-packed with all the mecha action-y goodness Evangelion is popular for, but spins full swing into the deep psychological mindfuck conclusion that Evangelion is KNOWN for.
And this brings me to the final verdict of Evangelion; If it wasn't for the existence of End of Evangelion then the series alone wouldn't have held a candle to the anime i currently consider it better than (those being When They Cry, Soul Eater, Bebop and Clannad) but because of a more thought out, better planned finale the movie gave us, i feel that Evangelion, whether it was intentional or not, is the cleverest and deepest anime i have ever seen.
"But what about the endings?"
Yes, well, both endings are in many ways nonsensical, they demand that the viewer thinks about it over and over again in their head whether its days, months or even years until they come to their own logical conclusion, thanks to the movie, i can pretend that the last two episodes dont exist now that they have been corrected with a badass movie, and because of this, i give Neon Genesis Evangelion an overall rating of 10/10 and the recommendation to watch the living shit out of it as, although not all like it, its one of those anime where everyone should at least WATCH it
