Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

I have one simple question: if Eva is so deep, why was Anno still depressed? But first, let's get one thing clear: Neon Genesis Evangelion is POWERFUL. It is absolutely brutal, visceral, and raw in its depiction of the ugliest parts of the human psyche. The madness and despair of the characters seeps into your own emotions. Its iconic imagery burns into your mind. Its violence is traumatizing. I dare say that most people, to varying to degrees, hasbeen a Shinji or Asuka at one point in their life. NGE is significant at least because of its earnest determination to unearth these emotions in the audience and show them in all their twisted glory.

That's why I completely understand why this is a 10/10 masterpiece for many viewers- it penetrates deep into their most intense feelings and most tortured thoughts and connects with them. If I had watched this show a little earlier, I would've been among this audience. However, my perspective will be different because I am (almost) past that point in my life that NGE is depicting.
First of all, let me clarify what NGE is talking about, minus the Christian themes and all. It all comes down to caring about what people think. That's it, people. NGE is only as deep as that idea. You can make all the references to libidos, egos, ids, super egos, hedgehog's conflicts, Oedipal complexes, sickness unto death, and the Bible that you want but it's all just centered around this:

People feel bad about themselves because they recognize the validity of the realities perceived by others. If someone hates me, then I am a bad person because I believe that another person's worldview is rooted in reality. He/she believes I am bad, and he/she perceives reality, so I must be bad. With a stranger or acquaintance, their dislike stings. With a loved one or family member, it destroys you, because they're supposed to be the ones that are closest to you, which means that they know you well, which means that their opinion is likely true. A hit from this range in the form of a lack of love from mom or dad or romantic partner at an impressionable age leaves deep scars in a person that they try to cover up with various defense mechanisms. Because when you're young and don't have strong judgement ability of your own, you're at the mercy of the judgement of others and your self image is formed by the love or lack of love you receive.

One of the most devastating things a person can undergo is the devaluing of one's self. A fight against the self is harrowing. The pain is unbearable. So you have to find a way to make yourself feel better. People seek validation, acceptance, and love of themselves from various external sources so they don't have to go through the pain of hating themselves. The source of this shame was that someone else's worldview told them they were unworthy, and they want to change this view of themselves by getting a different worldview from friends, parents, and romantic partners. This, of course, leads to problems when these people are unable to provide the love that people seek. Basically all the characters in Evangelion are manifestations of this central theme--- they all want to feel good about themselves through others or through doing something that proves their worth.

While all this is going on with the characters, the plot is composed of monster of the week episodes that slowly reveal NGE's mysterious lore. The monster of the week episodes are good because they do the two most important things: they establish the characters and they have exciting battles. The battles always have me on the edge of my seat because each angel presents a genuine threat. The angels don’t just damage the Evas--- they brutalize them. It’s clear that one or two hits is enough to take the Eva out of commission. You see their armor melt and deform, their limbs get chopped off, their blood gushing out. It feels like a real life or death struggle and not just cool mechas fighting kaijus, enhanced by the fact that the evas aren’t just suits of metal but organic beings that spew blood and scream when hurt and direct that pain directly to the nerves of the pilots as well. In addition, there’s a real weight to the Evas as they move around--- they’re not just humans in suits playing around in a miniature city. The only potential problem is that they’re kind of short, as most of it is buildup for the threat of the angels.

The episodes also function as the basic building blocks of a story in that they introduce a character, develop them, and then establish their relationships with other characters. Shinji gets a few episodes to get settled into his role as an Eva pilot and when the other two pilots are introduced they get a couple of episodes dedicated to the teamwork between the three.
Shinji’s introduction is well done and realistic--- as a withdrawn, confused, self-hating teen, he chickens out on several occasions at the thought of having to fight giant monsters in a robot he doesn’t know how to operate, but ultimately accepts his task anyway. The show does a good job lingering on his fear and his urge to run away, sinking the audience into his mindset.

The reason Shinji is so polarizing is the same reason all the other characters in the series are the way they are. In an attempt to craft characters revolving around the central theme of needing others to validate one’s self image, NGE is too focused on characters’ psychological struggles while forgetting to round out their portrayals by showing different sides to them. While it is important to show what makes characters tick, it is also important to show their strengths and quirks as well. Hideaki Anno said that the characters represent different facets of his personality and it shows because the characters can feel more like a case study in a psychology textbook than actual people.
EDIT: Apparently all the characters ARE taken from a psychology textbook called DSM-IV.

Specifically, characters’ actions and dialogue are always clearly defined by their internal problem. Shinji almost always says something wimpy to get the approval of others, Asuka always lets everyone know she’s the best, and Rei is almost always robotic and silent. I’m not saying that such characterization is bad. This is strong characterization, but it’s strong in one dimension. It is true that in real life people think and say the things that Shinji, Asuka, and Rei do, but they don’t ALWAYS do it in such an outright manner. In Shinji’s case, a person might try to phrase things in such a way as to gain the approval of others without appearing needy. In Asuka’s case, a person is going to be more tactful in their claim to be better than others because they fear being viewed as conceited and overly competitive even if that’s what they are. I know because I’ve been in Shinji and Asuka’s place before. In short, NGE makes it too obvious. There’s little subtext because most of the meaning is already in the text.
In addition, even withdrawn/sad people have a hobby, a place, or a certain time that allows them to briefly forget about their problems and behave more naturally. It might even be a certain show they watch or a game they play that allows them to crack a smile once in a while. From what I know and have personally experienced, just because people are depressed doesn’t mean they are thinking about being depressed and act depressed every waking moment of their lives. People aren’t just defined by their struggles, but also by their interests and strengths as well.

Take the scene with Shinji playing the cello, which could have been a much needed element of individuality and self expression and/or a means of escape for a character that's otherwise completely spineless. However, even with this, the decision was made to make his music another thing that he doesn’t have a particular passion for and he does it because he was told to do it.

The adult characters don’t suffer from this problem nearly as much. We get to see many different sides of Misato--- as a slobby drunk, as a lover, as captain of Nerv, as a mother figure, as a daughter, etc. She’s just as broken as the kids, but her portrayal is more well rounded.

The comedy was supposed to break up the monotony of the characters’ behavior by showing their lighter sides and what they can be like when they’re being natural. However, it baffles me why a lot of anime think that perverted fanservice humor counts for comedy. It’s pathetic, it’s juvenile, it’s flat, and it’s perverse. Oh look Shinji’s looking up a 14 year old girl’s skirt and he gets slapped! Hahahahah, SO FUNNY. It wasn’t funny the first time and it wasn’t funny the twentieth time. Then there’s the scene where he sees Rei just coming out of the shower and Shinji manages to fall on her and touch her breast. Like really? Really?
The “comedy”, if you can even call it that, not only fails to provide rounder characterization but degrades the characters. Furthermore, it disrupts the tone and breaks immersion.

Furthermore, the mindset underlying Shinji’s depression and Asuka’s hypercompetitiveness doesn’t change much during for much of the 26 episodes. Sometimes this can work, if the narrative progressively reveals the reasons and arguments that make up a character’s worldview so we get a better understanding of that character. Progression of explanation can take the place of progression of thought. However, in this case, to a seasoned viewer familiar with the various psychological tropes, the entire reasoning behind the character worldviews was already apparent early on, but NGE continues to touch on the same points and spell out what we already knew. Viewers less familiar with the inner workings of their own minds might benefit from such a clear message helping them understand themselves. It is clear that Anno was using NGE to sort out these issues himself in the midst of his depression, which explains why some points are reiterated and the lack of progression from these points--- he’s still grappling with the novelty and implications of these revelations. He was at the stage of defining what the problem was, a task so monumental in itself that finding the answer to the problem is an entirely separate endeavor.

All of this makes for repetitive and narrow characterization both reinforces the connection between the characters and those who've been in their shoes and alienates those who haven't, leading to polarization among the fanbase.

In addition, it seems Hideaki Anno didn’t really find an answer to the problems he described in NGE and so could not lift himself from his depression. The final episodes approached and he had to cobble together a half-baked, bittersweet argument just to provide some closure. This is my problem with NGE. It succeeds in describing the problem vividly (the method it uses is disputable) but it doesn’t provide the answers because the writer himself didn’t know the answers. I understand that for many people, NGE’s ability to clarify their problems is enough, which provides the basis for them to find the answers. For me, every thought that Anno presented is a thought I’ve had before. I have had these problems in the intensity presented in NGE. And I’ve moved past them. I wanted NGE to present the answers to these problems so it can lift people from the depths of their despair, but it doesn’t.

Instead, NGE is saying that Shinji thinks everyone hates him and hates himself because that's only from his perspective, whereas if he looks thoroughly at the perspective of others, he will see that that's not the case. By looking at himself through the different perspectives provided by others and interacting with them, then he gets to know his true self and look at himself in a more positive light. But he doesn't, because he fears that if he looks he will find that people don't like him, so he doesn't try at all and just assumes the worst. He doesn't allow that possibility for himself but in the end he ventures outside of his narrow viewpoint and sees that he might be a different person than he conceives himself to be. My thoughts on this? Yes, you should always try to assess yourself more accurately, but doing this solely through the perspectives of others is stupid collectivist thinking. NGE thinks that a person's identity is only formed within the context of society. By this logic if I was a black person living as a slave in the 1700s, I would form my identity by looking at myself from other people's perspectives and promptly realize that I am a piece of subhuman property. Furthermore, even if Shinji is not really looking at the perspective of others but rather just trying out different possible perspectives by himself, NGE is not really concerned with accurate self assessment. Its primary goal is finding a perspective to view yourself in a more positive light, a mental technique to make Shinji feel better and feel accepted by others. Its answer to "Don't people hate me?" isn't "It shouldn't matter if people hate you", it's "That's only in your head". Its answer to "I'm a coward and I'm weak" isn't "That's true and that's OK", it's "Only if you think you are". That type of thinking is weak-minded and ineffectual because in the course of life you will always find something to hate yourself over and there will always be people that hate you and neither is something you deny just by shifting to a different viewpoint. Sorry, but if you're a weak coward, you can't sugarcoat that by taking a different perspective of yourself. I've seen this kind of behavior before. Some people in Shinji's situation just want someone to reassure them that they're not the terrible person they think they are, that they're really a good person deserving of love. They may even consciously degrade themselves to avoid the impact of falling from people's expectations of them, and then use that wounded dog image to try to get people to comfort them. That's besides the point. It shouldn't matter if you're a weak coward, because that is no reason to hate yourself. It's not about spinning the way you look at things. It's about developing an accurate hold on reality. It's not about avoiding getting hit, it's about how much you can get hit and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done.

NGE's, and by extension Anno's problem, lies in focusing on the external--- defining the contour of the self by the spaces left by the contours of others. Roughly speaking, NGE is saying that we shouldn't close ourselves off to others and presents Shinji as a boy who is burrowed deep into a self-enclosed pit of despair that he needs to get out of. Here's the thing though: Shinji isn't actually isolated. If he was truly isolated, he wouldn't be depressed. If there was no one else in the world, then there wouldn't be anyone for him to look at himself from their POV, and thus he wouldn't feel shame. There wouldn't be anyone to uphold a societal standard determining who's worthy or not, no father figure to leave him. Then, the only thing for Shinji to do is eat when he's hungry and sleep when he's tired. If he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences of that mistake but he'll just learn from it and not do it next time. There's no shame in that mistake because there's no one to shame him. But because he keeps thinking about what other people think of him and his worthiness/value relative to the world, he's actually extremely entrenched in society in terms of worldview. In doing so, he holds steadfast to a concept of shame, thus leading to self hatred, which isn't really hatred based on his own standards but hatred based on society's standards. The final episode says that Shinji must look outside of his own narrow perspective, but the perspective of worthlessness wasn't his to begin with; it was his father's.

NGE can't get over the false idea that if you are flawed you deserve to be hated, or simply, that it matters at all if no one likes you. Because Shinji can't accept that he can be both a weak coward hated by all AND still have self worth, NGE has to put together this wishy washy perspective argument that just says he should just look himself from a different light to try to deny facts that he can't accept or else he'd kill himself. For all its overthinking, psycho-analysis, and philosophical/religious references, I can't help but think it's utterly misguided on a fundamental level. It has no concept of inner light. The concept of saying yes when the world says no is completely foreign to it. I don't care how much philosophy, psychology, and religion it crams in. The core of NGE is explained in the last episode, and when I got what it meant, its thinking is quite juvenile. It felt like an empty shell devoid of strength of spirit. "Rise up young boy and make yourself a legend"? That never happens.

Of course, it would be unreasonable and downright insulting to have Shinji, Asuka, and Rei recover from their traumas and live happily ever after over the course of 26 episodes. I understand that for many people depression is something they struggle with for years. However, at least indicate some sort of progression for the characters instead of just spending 26 episodes unraveling them. At the very least, spend the last third easing the characters into walking on the right path towards recovery, perhaps by allowing them to seek out help, comfort one another, and see a glimmer of hope. They're still broken people, but at least they've found some means of slowly rectifying that. Just because you have the answers in theory doesn't mean it's easy. Application is a different story. The hardest things to master in any discipline, much less life, are frequently the simplest things. And for something like developing inner light, that may take a lifetime. But doing what NGE suggests? That will take forever.

Some may say I'm unfairly criticizing the show because of my personal expectation that it should have answers, and that's a fair criticism of my criticism. However, even if a discussion doesn't yield any satisfying answers, it can still be a great discussion because it gives everyone interesting ideas to ponder over for years to come. I didn't find that in NGE. Its ideas about self-perception and self-worth remained fairly static over the course of its run. Like I said, it all comes down to caring what other people think of you. Perhaps it has philosophical insights and admittedly I have little philosophical background, but that's not the main point and what use is this philosophy if it can't even help improve your mental health?

EDIT: I found out after I wrote this review that Hideaki Anno at one point after he made Eva considered killing himself because people on online message boards threatened to kill him. To be clear, cyberbullying can be a serious threat to mental health and cannot be brushed off lightly. However, this does confirm my understanding of NGE's overall spirit. People who I've talked to about the points I raised in my review contend that NGE isn't about what others think of you but rather about an individual's self image and place in a society where everyone is imperfect and also experiencing similar problems of their own, causing them to hurt each other and contribute to inaccurate reflections of the self. And that NGE is ultimately saying to develop inner strength by loving yourself regardless of what other people say. I'm saying NO. Not only does the text not support that, but NGE does not have that wisdom in it because Anno clearly doesn't. Anno cared so much about what online randoms thought that he seriously contemplated suicide. If he had applied the principles of NGE that supposedly shine a light on depression and help people move forward with it, then he would've thought that hey, these guys have problems of their own--- MASSIVE problems like threatening to kill someone and thus their impression of me should be taken with a grain of salt.

"-There is only one truth that is your truth. That's the one that's formed from whatever point of view that you choose to view it from. It's a revised perception that protects you.
-That's true, and one can have a perspective that's far too small.
-However, a person that only see things from the perspective that they choose to see them from.
-One must learn to judge things via the perceived truths that one receives from others.
-For example, sunny days make you feel good.
-Rainy days make you feel gloomy.
-If you are told this is so, then that is what you believe is so.
-But you can have fun on a rainy day as well.
"
Whatever their criticism of Anno were, their position should have been immediately dismissed once they started to plan murder, but Anno doesn't have that moral standard in him. His moral standard is solely based on "the truths perceived by others". This is not me saying that Anno has failed to live up to his own words but rather that he lived up exactly to his own philosophy, which supports my interpretation of what NGE is saying. This is using the creator's real life behavior to contextualize what NGE is really about. Maybe Anno did really mean to say love yourself and think less of what other people say and he just wasn't well practiced enough with this philosophy? Nope, because when asked what kept him from committing suicide, Anno said that he was afraid of the physical pain of dying. Not "I should love myself". Not "I shouldn't care what others think." Not "I'm flawed but that doesn't mean I should die." Thus it is highly unlikely that NGE was EVER saying any of those things because doing so would have required Anno to know those things. Instead, taking into account this context it was always saying that you should get a better gauge of other people in order to love yourself better, and it was ALWAYS about denying one's flaws rather than accepting them and not letting your flaws lead to self hatred. All this indicates that the show has a lot of knowledge, what with Jung and hermetic gnosticism and whatnot, but very little useful wisdom. Its talk about society and self is ultimately way too focused on other people, which evidently does not help Anno's depression. For all its talk about "loving yourself" the mindset of NGE has always been deceptively toxic.

"I hate myself, but maybe, maybe I can love myself. Maybe my life can have a greater value. That's right! I know more or less than myself! I am me! I want to be myself! I want to continue existing in this world! My life is worth living here!"

Inspirational, legendary last words but the show has no basis for saying this, none of the prerequisite understanding, so they're just empty, and it shows itself in Anno's reaction in this case. Normally you can't involve the creator's personal life so much in an analysis of the work, but in NGE's case it is clearly an extremely personal work, which allows for such methods of analysis.

Look, I have no problem with praise for NGE as a work of art on many levels that can resonate with many people and impacted the industry for years to come, but like I said before, it is not a moral or spiritual work at its core and that is what I value the most in a work that deals with the issues that NGE does.
END EDIT

Music: Besides the OP and ED, the only piece I liked was Rei I, which is just a darker version of a superior piece from Nadia done by the same composer.

Art: Needs no introduction. The Eva designs are anime icons. They did a great job with the organic shaping of the armor. The complexity in the heads is composed of structures that are well fit together. The wing flairs on the Eva shoulders are great forms that accentuate the thin verticality of their bodies. All in all there’s a very aesthetic flow to their designs.

So that’s Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s great for its identification of the problem along with its great mecha designs, inventive worldbuilding, solid episodes, and scenes with great direction. However, it ultimately fails to provide satisfying answers, and is mired in repetition, mirroring the mental state of its creator.

There is hope, though. The answers that NGE lacks can be found in the highly underrated story of Twelve Kingdoms. If NGE is the confused, tortured teen trying to make sense of life, then Twelve Kingdoms is the older, more mature gentleman that has seen it, conquered it, and made peace with it. Twelve Kingdoms actually has a moral standard, a backbone:
"If others betray me then that is their wrongdoing. I will trust Rakushun and I will keep trusting others no matter how many times I get betrayed." Hedgehog's dilemma solved.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, if there was a single anime I think should be taught and analyzed in English class for teenagers, it would be NGE, because no doubt there are a lot of Shinjis, Asukas, and Rei's out there in one form or another and NGE is very useful for opening up the road for introspection.