Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion
26 episodes of him whining, and an ending so bad, they had to remake it as a movie. People like Evangelion for the same reason people like Emo music: It's angsty and intensely emotional. A lot of people call this a "deep" show, but intensity is not depth. Intensity is not story. Intensity is not plot, or character development. If you take away the emotional intensity of mostly the main character, and look at everything else in Evangelion, what you get is mostly not much. 2 Dimensional characters that don't really develop or grow past their signature character flaws which are the sole aspects of thecharacters. But flaws are not all there is to being a person, and we never see anything else except for those, and all the secondary characters essentially exist just to further the main character.
The plot itself is pretty basic, and has huge amounts of elements to it, that are never really explained. What are the Angels? What is SEELE's motive for doing what it does? How did Evangelions come into being? There are lots and lots and lots of huge plot holes that are never really explained or addressed. Fans of the show will say that that's being profound. But if the idea of profundity is simply having a bad plot, and then covering it up by cranking the emotional intensity up to 1000%, that's not "depth" to me, it's just bad writing.
Anyone can do that. Movie director J.J. Abrams is fond of telling a story about how he bought a "Mystery box" at a game store as a kid, and never opened it, because he felt the "mystery" was more profound than finding out what was in it. And as a result he commonly has put important plot elements into his movies, that he never addressed, thinking the "mystery" is more important. But some people actually found one of those same boxes he bought, and opened one up, and found that inside was just a bunch of cheap junk that the store couldn't sell so placed inside a "mystery box" to make it more marketable. In other words, the "mystery" was just a marketing ploy.
The same is true here. Plot holes are mistaken for profundity, and then covered up with a blanket of emotional intensity. People are so distracted by all the screaming that the characters are doing, that they fail to notice that the rest of it is just kind of bad.
This show was groundbreaking mainly because of that emotional intensity. It was the first show to really "go there" in an anime in terms of how intense the emotional level is. And because of that, and how unique it was, it had a huge impact on the anime industry. Additionally, people who really resonated with that angsty feel, really didn't care about the other aspects of the show, and just resonated with the angsty, over the top emotions of the main character.
If all you care about is emotional intensity, this is the show for you. But if you want true depth, true character development where characters actually *grow*, and move beyond their flaws; if you want a well-constructed plot with a story: this probably isn't the anime for you.