Oh wait, yes I can.
Throw in some symbolism and some vague concepts that take a few seconds to comprehend, and ta-da, according to almost everyone, you have a frigging masterpiece!
Are you kidding me?
This is literally what I see when I read positive reviews on this anime: "this is the best anime EVA (hur see what I did der), omg if u dont like it 5deep6u, yoiu just no understand the symbolism and the magic dat is the evangelion omg"
I understood the symbolism. I understood the ending. I am very sure that I am not the only one that understood it and absolutely hated it.
Oh wow, it had some symbolism? Oh wow, you had to think? It must be a masterpiece! AHAHAHAH NO.
This feels exactly like the positive reviews of school days: Oh wow it made you feel emotion? HOW UTTERLY FANTASTIC.
Sure, it had symbolism. Sure, you had to connect concepts. Does that change the fact that it was boring as hell to watch? Does that change the fact that the story sucked? Does that change the fact that we had to sit through the same finding-yourself-through-psychotic-mumbling over and over again? Does it change the fact that we essentially sat through the "endless 8" arc of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi for 26 episodes?
The answer: No. No it does not.
And the 2deep4u ending? It is terrible. It is one of the most pathetic cop outs I've ever seen. The entirety of the anime could be summed up in that one episode were the last enemy appears, as he just conveniently and transparently explains absolutely everything through his pseudo-philosophical rantings. Yes, I understand that there were time constraints. But it doesn't change the fact that it was still terrible. It was a terrible end to a terrible anime.
This anime is literally only praised by people that are too enthralled in their mediocre ability to understand the simplest and most transparent of symbolism, which by the way, appears to be the only thing that they actually praise. If they praise something like character, I'm going to go ahead and say they are lying, because they character development, if you can even call it that, is the most ridiculously shallow thing I have ever witness. Makoto from school days developed more than Shinji, and Makoto is a piece of shit.
And you know what? I'm usually fine with transparent symbols. Unless the only thing the anime has is these transparent symbols and attempts to purport these symbols to greatness. Symbols were the sole virtue in this anime, but they were so overly used that the end result was just awful. I actually enjoyed the 5 minute cliched fantasy world at the last episode more than the entire anime. The rebuild movies exist for a reason, people! Even the original writer hated this version!
If you plan on wasting 26 20-minute episodes of your life, go ahead and watch this. If you want to pretend to be smart and connect shallow symbolism to a shallow and repetitive story, go ahead and watch this. If you want to pretend that over use of symbols makes an anime a masterpiece, go right ahead and waste 520 minutes of your life.
Otherwise, just stop.
