Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

The trouble with Evangelion is that due to its ‘dark’ and philosophical nature, the show leads itself very well for over-analysis. Consequently, those who are fascinated by the shows unique take on the genre can spend hours theory crafting and writing essays on the genius of its content, whilst ignoring the actual problems of the show. ‘The idea of Evangelion is greater than the sum of its parts’ – This statement acts as both a summary of my thoughts and also a demonstration as to why this show has become so divisive amongst viewers. Many will read the statement above and find that it makesa poignant analysis of the show, whilst also being just vague enough to be open to interpretation. Others will read the statement and find it pointless, a collection of noise that sounds smart at face value but under analysis of what its actually saying, reveals itself to be effectively meaningless – Both outlooks are true, and both outlooks are false. You could make a solid case for either side of the argument and both would sound somewhat intelligent either way… This is Evangelion in a nutshell.

Now as to which side I align with, I would say that I fall under the latter. I think that Evangelion is a brilliant concept that could have been the masterpiece that it’s made out to be; however upon close scrutiny of the shows story and message, I believe it falls under its own weight due to poor execution.

Story:
To put it bluntly Evangelions story is a mess. So many crucial details are left poorly explained and underdeveloped that in my opinion the show goes past the point of ‘ambiguous and interpretive’ and into the collection of noise side of things. Does the show want to tell you a story, or does it want to tell you the idea of a story. I believe that a lot of fans relish in the vague nature of Eva’s storytelling, spending hours piecing all the symbolism and scraps of information together to form a somewhat logical idea as to its narrative. This is a fine approach to take as Eva provides just enough detail for a narrative to be derived if you desire it enough. However personally I can’t help but see the vague details and reliance on symbolism as a cover up for how weak the underlying story actually is. Why do pilots have to be 14? Why is the spear so important? What is the motivation behind Seeles objective? Why does Shinjis father choose the human instrumentality project specifically out of all the available ideals? What on earth are the black and white moon? Etc… Even looking at parts of the story that were attempted to be explained, the reasoning given occurs so quickly and is so vague in nature that it doesn’t help to solve the problem. If you asked me what Adam is or what the angels motivations are, I’m sure I could give some symbolic answer, but do I really know… not a clue. I’m sure if I paused frame by frame and spent 30 minutes analysing the ten seconds of dialogue spouted by Kaworu before his demise I could create a somewhat conclusive idea but at that point I have to question the motivation of the show. My point is that Evangelion doesn’t really know what its story is. It attempts to cover up for this by having a vague approach to storytelling and relying heavily on symbolism as explanation for its events, leaving the specific details to be derived by the fans. Whether this approach is lazy or genius will come down to the viewer.

As a side note I would also like to take a moment to mention the shows pacing. In the first half its somehow too slow and too fast at the same time. Way too many episodes are spent wasted on Shinji doing nothing but feeling sorry for himself whilst avoiding all the characters that desperately need development like Rei for example. Yet the show manages to also feel too quick due to how under explained and vague most of the important details are as mentioned above. Between Post Asuka introduction and Pre Kaworu introduction I will say that the pacing is actually fine for the most part, this is also where the show gets into a steady groove and flow between episodes and where the quality rises for a while but of course this work is undone by the laughable ending sequence. Now some sympathy does need to be given for the ending as its clear the budget was at 0 by that point but regardless this is a critical review and it should be no surprise that I find the ending to be a painful rushed mess that does a terrible // non-existent job of tying up loose strings.

Overall Evangelions story sits in a weird place: It’s too poorly explained to actually make any sense by just watching the show alone, yet its also not ambiguous enough to be a true interpretive experience akin to works like ‘Angels Egg’ for example. Either spend the time to actually explain important details to the viewer or go all the way and be fully ambiguous symbolism. The strange mid ground that the story exists in its current state doesn’t commit to either and ends up feeling lost between the two.

Characters:
I’ll start by saying that Misato and Kaji are by far the best characters in the show. Misato is the only character that has complex psychological issues that actually don’t feel like they were added just to hammer home trite philosophical garbage like a lot of others in the show. Her problems feel very real and her character is probably the most tangible, Misato feels like a real person and not just a conduit for the authors views. Now as for Kaji, I initially disliked him. I assumed he would just be a surprise roadblock villain by the end and boy was I wrong. His relationship with Misato is incredibly nuanced and the episode in which they both return from drinking and Misato opens up to him about her father was incredible. He also has the best line in the show which is the answer phone after his disappearance with the words ‘if I see you again ill put into words what I couldn’t 8 years ago’. Im paraphrasing but I think this moment deserves a lot of praise and it’s a good example as to why I find the show so frustrating. It has clear moments of brilliance and nuance, yet the majority of time is just spent wasted, spouting the same psychological nonsense over and over again with zero subtlety.

Going from the best developed characters to the worst, next is Rei. Rei is so criminally underdeveloped in the show its borderline insulting. I think I read somewhere that Rei is supposed to be a joke about how vapid most waifus are and I really wouldn’t be surprised if this was the authors intent. Which is why I can’t even fathom how Eva is renowned for having this huge waifu war when both characters are so laughably lacking in meaningful development its astonishing. Literally all we get from Rei is a few blushes here and there to show that she’s not completely a robot and a weak psychological element that’s stapled on at the end in an attempt to cover up how redundant her character is. That’s it. Maybe its just the hindsight of time but characters such as Violet Evergarden or 2B from Nier have shown how effective emotionless characters can be in an emotional story and going back to characters like Rei just shows how shallow and underdeveloped she is in Evangelion.

Next up is Asuka and I will say that at least some care is spent making her character not completely awful but certainly by the end of the show she has diminished into a mouthpiece to spout edgy psychological nonsense from the author. Just because a character has deep emotions, that does not mean that they therefore are a deep character. Asuka is written to be completely binary in that she’s either hating herself and everyone around her or she’s being cocky and arrogant. There is no in-between and consequently she comes across very forced as she lacks the nuance and subtlety of characters like Misato for example. She does have one brilliant scene in the show which is when she reaches out to Kaji as he’s leaving the apartment and suddenly the upbeat façade breaks and we see the lonely girl trapped inside. This level of subtlety is not demonstrated at all past this point however and again it is a failure of execution on behalf of Evangelion.

Shinji is a strange character. He kind of just exists… Its not that I dislike the character itself its more that I dislike how much attention and focus he gets in the show. I think its pretty undeniable that shinji is by far the least compelling character in Evangelion, yet for some reason the show insists on giving him the most spotlight and run time. The first half of the show is definitely the most painful for me and that’s because its just shinjis repeated psychological battle over and over. At least towards the end the situations shinji gets himself in actually advance the plot or add to the worldbuilding of eva’s and the like, but in the first half this just isn’t the case and it drags on for so long. Another point I would like to make is that Shinji isn’t even that likeable as a character. He clearly does want to help people to some extent and the show does a somewhat decent job of asking whether this comes from a place of empathy or just self-ratification, but the issue is that whenever Shinji is in trouble or seemingly might die, as the viewer I just didn’t really care any where near as much as the show wanted me too. - Although I have been seemingly very critical of his character so far I would like to say that I do forgive Shinji somewhat as its clear that he is meant to be a self-insert for the viewer. These types of characters are often difficult to make compelling when you have a plethora of other intriguing characters. Finding the balance between individuality and relatability is very challenging but even so the execution in evangelion leaves much to be desired.

Shinji’s father on the other hand is atrocious as a character. I was constantly waiting for the reveal that would explain why he disregards Shinji to the extent that is shown and unfortunately this answer never came. The problem with this is that it creates a giant plot hole as there is no reason this manipulative intelligent figure would just be an asshole to his own son who he relies on to pilot 01. It makes no sense from Shinji’s fathers’ perspective that he wouldn’t try to wrap Shinji under his thumb and ensure that he is mentally sound to pilot the Eva’s but no. Even after finishing the series I’m not sure I could do a good job explaining why he favours Rei so much over Shinji, this like many other aspects of the show is left underdeveloped. I’m not even going to touch on the ‘human instrumentality project’ as I think pointing out that this was rushed and poorly explained would be way too obvious – If I need to read a damn Wikipedia article to even have a chance at understanding key lore of the show then that’s a failure as far as I’m concerned and unfortunately this is the case for the vast majority of ideas in the show.

Akagi and her mother are… okay? They are written to a fine standard for the most part with some insightful scenes, I particularly liked the idea of the magi being based around the three aspects of her mother’s personality, that was a smart touch. Both love plots leave a lot to be desired however, we don’t see what lead either of them to fall for Gendo and the show doesn’t utilise this to expand upon Shinjis father’s personality either which I think is a missed opportunity to show the manipulative side of him. Also why was Akagi made to strip in front of Seele, is this another moment I need to add to the list of Wikipedia searches?

Lastly, we get to Shinji’s friends / classmates and this is probably the most baffling aspect to me. For a show with such an intriguing world and complex ideas it spends such a lot of time on the mundane relationships with his classmates who are ultimately redundant. The class president is well realised and her love plot with Toji felt believable, however any impact is taken from this due to Toji surviving the evangelion attack. It’s not like he has any meaning in the series after this point as he isn’t seen again so I see no reason as to why he wasn’t killed off in the attack. Not only would this have made the class presidents love plot much more emotional it would also have solidified Shinji’s fathers ‘ends justify the means’ type ideals. Shinji’s tantrum afterwards would also have felt much more deserved as it would have been clear that he was unhinged after the loss of his close friend whereas what we are left with in the actual show feels much more forced. Speaking of Toji, the show does nothing with his internal conflict of choosing whether or not he wants to pilot the Eva, sure don’t expand on his clearly fraught internal dilemma and instead just show some shots of him playing basketball and frowning. Also no one tells Shinji Toji is the fourth child because… Plot. Camera guy also just disappears after the first half and has no relevance to the story past his introduction, maybe he appears in the movies or something but as for this series here I feel like this was a big mistake as once again so much time was spent in the beginning fleshing out his character with Shinji. With a world as confusing and dense as Evangelion either have characters that are relevant or don’t include them at all and instead use that time to explain the shows ideas more clearly.

Music:
I do not really have anything to say about the music, its fine for the most part. The op and ed will always be infamous and rightly so as they are both great. The one comment I will make is that if I have to listen to another scene with the same loud bird chirping sound effect droning on in the background, I might lose my mind.

Concept / Conclusion:
Normally I wouldn’t have a section for concept, but I believe it is worth mentioning as it’s a big reason as to why I have rated the score as high as a 5 (mediocre) given the shows many flaws. At the end of the day Evangelions execution is poor, there’s no two ways about it. So many aspects are left underdeveloped that I just can’t ignore the issues and go with the opinion of the crowd in saying that Eva is a 10/10. Now if this were released in 2020 it would be getting a 3 make no mistake, but considering the show was released in 1995 and considering how much of an impact it has had on anime as a whole, Eva can’t just be dismissed as an entirely bad show. I truly believe that if this show was produced nowadays with a high budget by the same team it could even be the 10/10 that everyone keeps saying it is; This is because the underlying concept of Evangelion is actually really good, its just the execution that fails. Focus less on Shinji, expand all the other characters, explain key plot details carefully and this show could really be something. I believe this is why so many people overlook the problems with the show and instead focus on the idea of Evangelion rather than the show that we are ultimately left with, because the concept hidden underneath all the rubble Is pretty great especially for its time.

I will end this review in the same way I started it: ‘The idea of Evangelion is greater than the sum of its parts’. This statement is true and its also false. This show has meaning and it’s also just a collection of noise. Thankfully, opinions are allowed, and we can all have a constructive debate over the internet as to which side is correct isn’t that right guys… right? Thank you v_v