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.
