Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Spoiler free~ Story: 10 In my opinion NGE has a fantastic story. It's so deep, and so complex. There are a lot of themes of trauma and detachment that are explored brilliantly. From the start, it's very much in the psychological genre. Without giving anything away, I'll say that there is also so much symbolism that can be analyzed. NGE is set in a futuristic and post-apocalyptic world, so in that sense it follows the standard, but otherwise the plot takes on a very, very unique feel. For the first few episodes, the viewer has to be really patient I'd say, because every episode seems tobe a separate short story but starting from the 12th or so episode, it really becomes insanely interesting. Like my friend said to me it took her 3 months to watch the first 5 episodes but maybe 2 days for the last 9. I think that is really representative of the momentum of the series, where in the later chapters, a deeper layer is revealed and becomes the driving force of suspense.

Also a lot of controversy surrounds the ending, but I really think that Gainax just ran out of animation money, so if you skip episodes 25 and 26 (these are the ones that people complain are not even completely animated) and go straight to End of Evangelion (which is in canon with NGE, and is episodes 25 and 26 taking place over 2 hours), then you should be much more satisfied.

Art: 8
The art is old, so I would say that I went into it not expecting much. But some aspects were pleasantly surprising. For example, the Angels were so varied and created with unique traits so that it never felt like I'd seen the same design in another anime etc. The EVA movies 1+2, I've heard are literally exact reanimations of the anime series with a higher budget, so maybe if animation is a big deal, watch those?

Sound: 6
NGE has actually really laughable sound at some points, like these extremely odd uses of classical music, but otherwise it's a good soundtrack. The same battle music, this pounding timpani thing, is actually played in each episode over and over again, when they encounter an Angel, but it comes to be a kind of good repetition because it helps you feel the fear of that encounter. Even though there were maybe at least 10 instances of the same music, I never got tired of it. I wouldn't worry too much about the sound in general because it's only one or two scenes where it's really bad, otherwise they do a good job. With this show also, I also wondered whether the disjointed music might have been on purpose.

Character: 10
I love these characters. I love Shinji, I think he's deep and realistic and he's very identifiable. The rest of the cast are all extremely well wrought out characters as well. Each one has such a distinct personality that it's impossible not to care about them. People criticize the animation maybe, but I don't think people can really criticize the characters of NGE because they are just so human and complex. Personally, I also love that this series has a lot of strong women.

Enjoyment: 10
I think that I was watching NGE, thinking of it as a classic. I think it ended up being actually really enjoyable to me, personally and I ended up being way more involved than I thought I would, mostly because I fell in love with these characters. I think that if you're open minded and see what the show does well, then I think it can definitely be a really great experience!