As someone who is more or less new to anime and doesn't have much contact to other fans, I had little to no bias when I began to watch this series. Of course, I knew that this series was praised by many people, but I still went into it not expecting much... and in the end, not much came of it.
There are two main flaws that spoil this anime for me: First off, the main cast is boring. This would not be that big of a deal at all if it wasn't for problem 2, but we'll get to that in a second. Shinji is just a flat, two-dimensional character from start to finish and doesn't get developed in any meaningfull way. He can be completely described by the two tropes "people pleaser" and "daddy issues", and he never ascends from that characterisation.
Rei is the only character I really liked in this series, but unfortunately she too doesn't get much developement and just stays static.
Asuka is your basic tsundere, and given the airing date of the series, I dare to say that she indeed is the original tsundere (an Eva, if you will). She gets interesting in the end, but her main reason for existing is just to call Shinji a "baaaaka" and help him get moving.
All of this would not be such big of a deal if it wasn't for problem 2: The story is boring and seems deeper than it actually is. The first 2/3 of the show is just teenagers in mechs fighting evil beings and surprisingly always coming out on top at the end of each episode. In the last third however, things seem to get interesting, with more and more secrets about the EVAs and the main characters coming to light. These, however, are never really elaborated upon, and it basically boils down to the trope of evil scientists following the motto "human's are so fascinated with power that they will risk the destruction of the world".
This brings us to the philosophy of the series: Concerning the characters, it is mainly just "don't define your self-worth by what others think of you", and in terms of human morality, it is more or less "don't try to become/ create god"... both very important messages, but also done to death by a million other movies/ series.
I am not gonna mention things like animation quality/ music/ ending, since these are products of its time/ budget and thus don't factor into my judgement.
