Evangelion is well-known for being a rather divisive and controversial series among anime fans. Some consider it an all-time masterpiece due to its seemingly complex storytelling and deep themes related to religion and psychology. Others find it a deeply flawed series due to Anno going too overboard with his dabbling into psychology, that comes at the expense of advancing and exploring more of the show’s plot and reducing its characters to unlikable and obnoxious angst buckets. Just the thought of trying to develop a comprehensive review of Eva given the volatility of reactions to it is going to stir up some part of anime fandom, no matter what side I take in the debate of it. But it’s this divisiveness that got me interested into recently rewatching the series to get a fresh perspective of it compared to when I seen it nearly 15 years ago. All things considered, just remember that these thoughts are just my own subjective opinion from my own personal experience of seeing all 26 TV episodes of Eva and do not take it too personally.
Let’s get into what Eva does right first. For its time, the series strongly stuck out being a deconstruction of the mecha genre as it bucked a number of the typical storytelling tropes found within past mecha titles of the era. Rather than being an idealistic and mentally well-adjusted young pilot willingly taking part in battling enemy threats, Shinji is depicted as a deeply flawed teen finding himself pressured into his role as an Eva pilot by his neglectful father and continually deals with the stress and trauma that piloting Eva-01 brings upon his mental state and determining his self-worth to others. The “monster of the day” plots involving the Angels are also unique in their circumstances as rather than having the mechs make easy work of their enemies and said monsters being repetitive in their tactics, the Angels are shown to have varying abilities and tactics they utilize to attack Tokyo-3, which force NERV and the Eva pilots to continually change up their strategies to defeat an Angel and narrowly get victory. Also, NERV is not defeating the Angels just to save humanity or other righteous purposes like past mecha titles, as plenty of hints are alluded to throughout the series of influential members within the organization being involved in some rather shady and possibly catastrophic activity, among which includes the true nature of the Evangelion units and NERV’s association with the mysterious group known as SEELE.
To a good degree, the plot development is quite solid in its buildup and there are elements of it that give the series potential at making Eva one of the all-time anime masterpieces. Each Angel threat gets increasingly difficult throughout the series, which forces NERV and the Eva pilots to continually adjust to the challenges and eventually be forced into making sacrifices as things escalate. More of the shady side of NERV is revealed as episodes progress, revealing some rather shocking facts on the origins of the Eva units and the means that the higher brass of NERV will do to hide their true motives. There is gradual character development with the major characters as they settle into their roles and the relationships they have with one another that include Shinji improving in being sociable to others and Misato learning to be a responsible guardian to Shinji and Asuka. The first half of the series lacks any major flaws that would make me criticize things too heavily and if I were watching Eva for the very first time as I did 15 years ago, I would think the show was on its way to being an all-time favorite series for me by this point. But as I am about to get into, things gradually start going downhill a bit with Eva’s quality going into its second half.
As far as characters go when looking at Eva as a whole, the show’s handling of them is a bit of a mixed bag. A number of the major characters do get a solid amount of time focused on them to explore their personalities, chemistry with one another, and their pasts which affect how they perceive themselves and others throughout Eva. However, the show’s handling of them tend to vary quite a bit with direction, actions, and personalities. To give a good idea of how well this gets handled, let me offer my thoughts of the handling of Eva’s four major characters in the form of Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and Misato while trying to limit spoilers where possible.
• Shinji- Viewer perception of Shinji’s character developments is perhaps the most volatile of all the characters within Eva since he is the male lead of the series. On the one hand, his character’s flaws and the stresses he goes through coping with both being an Eva pilot and dealing with social interactions makes him a sympathetic character as he behaves believably for someone his age dealing with things too much for him to realistically cope with. Unlike 15 years ago where I often was irked by Shinji’s timid character, I was actually more tolerable of his character’s flaws in my recent viewing of Eva and could see the gradual growth he underwent through Eva’s first half. However, Anno’s direction of the series in later episodes causes his development to derail quite badly and I will address my issues with it later, though I can see why this aspect of the series causes a number of fans to hate Shinji as a character.
• Rei- I honestly do not get the appeal of Rei as a character. While I get she inspired the “quiet and mysterious girl” character type for later anime titles, many characters of that archetype are depicted to have more development in their characters when they settle into interacting with major characters within their respective titles. Rei is mostly a blank slate throughout much of Eva’s run and doesn’t show much in the way of character growth or dimension, only being prominent in episodes where there is a major plot revelation or the series wants to get into philosophizing something to the audience.
• Asuka- As a character, Asuka is rather obnoxious in her attempts to show off to others, act independent, and assert her superiority as an Eva pilot. Among the major characters, I often struggled with trying to tolerate Asuka as a character and the show does not do enough to make her a likable character for me to care for. Even with the rather tragic backstory revealed about her later in Eva, I still found it rather difficult to give a hoot about Asuka, even if she is suppose to represent a deconstruction of the hot-blooded mech pilot character type.
• Misato- Probably my favorite and among the best developed characters within Eva for me. Misato is shown to be as flawed as the three younger Eva pilots with how the show’s events affect her, with aspects of her personal life serving as a sort of coping mechanism to the internal conflict she has over how events with the Angels affect her personally. Unlike the other three characters, Misato’s personality is not an extreme for a specific character type nor is she hit too badly by Anno’s later direction of Eva. She comes across as someone attempting to be a good guardian to Asuka and Shinji and a competent leader of NERV, but later events and revelations within the series gradually wear her down mentally as such where she can barely keep herself together and makes her developments all the more engaging throughout Eva.
As far as Anno’s direction of Eva goes, the series excels within its first half when there is no trace of his heavy dabbling into psychology and does get derailed a bit in the second half when he starts devoting more focus on it. For anyone new to the franchise, Hideaki Anno was just recovering from depression at the time he started directing Eva in the mid-1990s and developed a strong interest in psychology during his recovery, notably dabbling into existentialism. Portions of a number of later episodes in Eva are focused on characters navel-gazing about their self-worth, perception of others, and other issues giving them some sort of existential crisis. For the most part, this implementation of psychological focus does little to advance the plot or explore anything about the characters beyond them angsting about their problems. It gets especially bad within the final two episodes of the TV series as they are totally devoted to psych sessions with the major characters that occur at a rather bad time with the anime’s plot as events were at the point where it was about to reach a climax, though the show going overbudget with its animation would have also likely been a contributing factor to Anno setting up the final episodes in this way.
The dabbling into psychology does also affect things outside of what is mentioned in the prior paragraph. Anno also gets a bit too immersed into wanting to explore humanity’s psychological lows, without going into any means of which to overcome them. This exploration notably results in Shinji’s character development from earlier in the series to be greatly derailed as he continually faces crisis after crisis that negatively affects his relationships with others and his self-confidence, leading him to regress to a mental state as he was at the start of Eva. Rather than these being dilemmas that Shinji must learn to overcome, Anno instead uses them to continually regress him into a pathetic angsting mess and use the final episode of the series as a rather half-assed means to have Shinji embrace existentialism to overcome his inner doubts that comes off more as pandering to that particular school of philosophy than anything compelling with Shinji’s character development as a whole.
As far as presentation goes with Evangelion, animation quality wildly varied throughout the series. Gainax was known to go overbudget with some of their animated TV projects during the 1990s and this resulted in their animation quality taking a hit, Eva being one of those mentioned titles. The series did resort to a fair deal of animation shortcuts in earlier episodes during less action-heavy scenes. But at its best, Eva was among the best animated TV titles of its era with fluid animated sequences in action-heavy scenes, gorgeous scenery, and unique, diverse designs for the Angels and Evangelion units. However as episodes progressed and Gainax went overboard with their animation budget, they eventually started to get more liberal with animation shortcuts as more still shots and reused animation frames became noticeable, particularly with the final six episodes of the series.
In short for me, Neon Genesis Evangelion was a unique mecha series for its time that deconstructed major elements of the genre that would be utilized in later mecha anime. It offers engaging plot developments with Angel battles and the shady activity of NERV, some of the best TV animation of its era, and the developments and interactions of some of its characters are often interesting to see occur and develop. However, there are characters in the show that are not handled as well in developments, Anno’s dabbling into psychology negatively impacts the show’s quality a bit in its second half, and Gainax going overbudget with their animation leads later episodes to take a hit in their overall quality. While I recognize the history that Eva brings to the mecha genre and do see what solid qualities it has to offer up as a whole, I do not find it to be among one of anime’s big masterpieces that many fans hype it up as due to notable issues I have with elements of the presentation and series direction coming from Gainax and Hideaki Anno. Still considering its reputation, I would at least recommend anime fans check out the series at least once so they can come to their own conclusions if they think the series interests them or not.
