Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime released in 1995 and produced by Gainax. It is one of the most debated and hated / loved animes of all time. Everyone has their own little take on it, be it "best anime of all time" to "utter shit", which can be said for a lot of animes but I found to be even more true for this particular one. Statistically it's the ~55th most popular anime of all time (according to MAL and AL), but everyone and their mothers has heard of it at least once, which makes it somewhat special in my eyes. You might say that EVAis to Japan what Star Wars is to the West.
This goes without saying but my expectations were mid to high, also helped by the fact that some friends had recently watched it and liked it a lot.

I was somewhat disappointed.

Brief story resume and quick thoughts

There is no way to correctly summarize NGE, but here's my attempt.

The year is 2015. 14 years ago, the entire south pole was completely vaporized by supernatural creatures called Angels in an event called the Second Impact. The only hope of humanity is Nerv, a super secret super cool agency whose only objective is to defeat the Angels to prevent the Third Impact, which would eliminate humanity. To accomplish this goal, it has created giant robots maneuvered by 14 year old children called Evangelions.
Sounds dumb?
Okay to be fair, I've only explained the bare minimum.
If this sounds okay to decent to you stop reading here, because I'm going to dive into spoilers.
Turns out the super shady organization who does shady things was shady after all! Nerv is controlled almost entirely by Gendo Ikari, the father of the main protagonist. He is allied? to an organization called SEELE who are following some sort of script called the Dead Sea Scrolls, and whose endgame is to achieve the Human Instrumentality Project, which would basically unite all of humanity in one soul. This would allow them to rule on the entire species and basically become gods. I won't lie to you reading this, I don't understand how that would work. I am guessing there must be some sort of explanation in the movie but I haven't watched it yet, so uhhh.. Yep, this is weird.
I found the story to be just plain confusing. I'm sure I could understand every single notion if I read the wiki but should that really be necessary? I think of that as being so bad though, they tried and mostly succeeded, it's just really difficult to follow for an average person like me who wasn't 150% into it. Anyway, moving on.

The characters

This has probably been said a million time but jesus christ, the characters in Evangelion are bad bad bad. This is where the anime falls flat and it's really a shame, because it had good potential and it could have done so much more with them.
Okay, I'm going to touch upon the characters of the main three and briefly on the others.
The main problem I found is that too much time is spent on the big three, and even more so on Shinji. Which on paper is fine because you need your focus to be pointed somewhere but that time isn't well spent.
During the entire running of the anime, the characters each go through a journey of discovery and understanding of their own mind.
Asking themselves questions, finding or not finding answers. That's an interesting dimension to have! But it goes on so slowly that I gradually lost interest. This goes hand in hand with another issue I have with this anime which I will discuss after this bad character resume sheet. I won't go into too much detail because it has been done a thousand times already.

Please keep in mind that these are 14 year old children and I only speak ill of them in the context of this anime. Please don't be a weirdo.

1 - Shinji

One of the most annoying characters in all of the anime I ever watched. Although I will admit that it gets much more bearable as time goes on and as he slightly matures but god damn. Shinji is at the core a crybaby and a coward and I think he might have bipolar disorder at this point, it's really incredible.
Shinji fears being lonely and hated.

2 - Rei

Rei is an interesting character in the way that you have no idea what the fuck is wrong with her until near the end and even then it's still kinda bad. So basically Rei's emotions are comparable to a robot but she does seem to be having a love/hate relationship with Gendo Ikari, powered by the fact that he keeps selfishly reviving her every time she dies. She seems to be remembering parts of her previous self, which is an interesting concept.
Rei ultimately fears death and wants to be loved.

3 - Asuka

Asuka really is a cunt and I kinda hate her. She is a 100% concentrated ball of jealousy and hatred for everyone and everything it's really incredible. I liked seeing the development in her "spiraling out of control" arc of personality. I found it to be really well made and believable. She had the kind of spurs and actions that I would have expected out of her which is a good sign for a well written character.
Her Japanese VA talking in German was fucking hilarious though I'm sorry I just had to point it out.
Asuka fears being lonely above all but at the same time hates people, what a weird little person she is.

That's it for the characters now.
As I said previously, their development takes too much time (but is well made!) to be the best it could be. And it's a shame.
Speaking of taking time there's something else I'd like to talk about, and it's the anime itself.

Time tantrum

It's so slow. Agonizingly slow. Okay, it's 1995, I get it. But damn.
Every shot takes an eternity, and that whole issue is summarized best by that famous / infamous elevator scene.
That's just one scene but every time something is happening, it's as if it's in slow motion. It's a feeling I got right away as I started watching and I couldn't shake it off, even if I tried a little.
Sadly, this means that I had to push myself that much further to finish it and I found that the pace really picked up in the second half / second third of the anime, so that was very welcomed. As soon at I had gone past the very slow start, I was able to watch it much more willingly than before, if that makes sense.

The rest

Art -
The art style and animation in general are great imo. It's fluid and has a really distinctive style which helped make Evangelion a staple of the genre. When you see some stupid ass twitter screenshot, you can tell which anime it's from.
The "fight" sequences are very well made and gets you very much into it. Huge props for that.

Music -
Nothing remarkable, really. In fact, I have nothing to say about it.
OP and ED are classics thought, that doesn't count.

Conclusion

Neon Genesis Evangelion. Classic anime with huge cultural impact.
It's good!
Decent story although quite tough to follow.
Alright characters but will a slow development.
Great art style and animation for the time and era of anime.
I enjoyed my time with Evangelion. It's a good watch, really. I'll watch the movie, and then I will probably be satisfied to call it quits.
Overall, all things considered. I'd rate this 6.5/10
Probably more 7 than 6 :).

Should I watch it?

If you want to know you classics, yes. Then you will have your own little personal take on it, like everyone. It's sweet, really :)
Even if you expect nothing grandiose you might be pleasantly surprised, as I was.
Keep it mind that there's a 99% you'll appreciate it more than me, I'm a bit pessimistic.

If you don't care about your classics, then no!
But really, you should. Shame on you.