There’s so much wrong with this tripe, I don’t think I can cover it all; jagged animation, lousy soundtrack, tired plot, abstract imagery that’s tacked on for no discernible purpose. And then there’s the characters…my God, the characters! They are embarrassingly two dimensional. Making a character sociopathic or autistic doesn’t constitute ‘depth’. it’s just fucking lazy writing.
The three prodigal children are annoying, and never develop. Shinji whines from beginning to end, with no variation or creativity in his self-hatred. He’s also a potential rapist. Asuka is a German narcissist who shows no variation in her arrogance, and Rei is the autistic girl who should be in a special school, NOT fighting Angels. All three exhibit questionable sexual behavior for their ages…I wanted to take Rei away from her delinquent environs, but other than that, I felt nothing for the characters. Tack on strained relationships with parents and yada yada, and there’s not one ‘real’ person in the mix. I actually wanted the angels to kill everyone post-haste (with the exception of Rei, who should be socializing with other autistic children).
NGE kick started the metaphysical anime fad, spawning numerous, superior copy-cats, but for all its abstract, biblical imagery, NGE doesn’t really try to say…anything. The Chirstian imagery holds novelty in Japan…in the west, people seem to assume it’s some sort of philosophical, low-budget commentary on the human condition. Eva is so much less than that – it barely ventures beyond typical shonen cliches. Each episode has a breathtakingly original formula; Shinji fights angels, has a mental breakdown, goes home, brushes his teeth, maybe has a sexually awkward moment with a narcissistic/autistic girl, then goes to bed. In the following episode, he gets to do it all again! A bit like Japanese cram school, but more boring, and sans the benefit of an education. There isn’t anything that separates this from the likes of Pocket Monsters…in fact, it comes off worse due to its paltry budget and bombastic pretensions.
So where, pray tell, does the hype arise from? Surely there must be some merit? No, but I can tell you why it’s popular among the lower classes. You see, 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン is one of those shows where the amount of acclaim lauded on it by its fandom is inversely proportionate to its substance (ie., little more than a crock of shit). This is unsurprising,and nothing new; most otakus are as thick as a red brick wall, and will profess love for anything that distracts them from their social awkwardness. it’s easy to see the depth and courage of the show’s protagonist, Shinji (*chuckle*), when the viewer himself is so lacking in his social perceptiveness. It is the poor man’s art-college fantasy; the freak misunderstands the gimmcky evangelical imagery, realizes nobody else understands it either, and voila, all of a sudden the overweight otaku gaijin blossoms into dilettante. But for us normal people, Evangelion is about as artistic as a stale croissant.
