Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

This was a rather tricky programme to review. Great pains were taken to avoid spoilers so if you're a fan of Eva, please don't take umbrage with me for not going in-depth with certain areas. If you happen to dislike Eva or feel that it's overrated, I'd still encourage you to read through this entire review. Feedback is greatly appreciated, as always. On another note, this review will NOT cover Evangelion's religious symbolism at all. I tried to in earlier drafts of this review, but they just made the review much longer and more tedious than they needed to be. The last thing I want totalk about before I go into the review is the current state of Evangelion's licensing. Unfortunately, Neon Genesis Evangelion is currently unlicensed. It was originally licensed to ADV Films before its inevitable collapse and then the license was transferred over to Section23 Films. Unfortunately, the license expired in mid-2012 and the show has since gone out-of-print with the official DVD releases of the programme priced as high as $300 on Amazon. I am aware that Evangelion was also licensed by Madmen Entertainment in Australia, however I'm not too sure if Madmen Entertainment still holds the license.

The best we can hope for is Funimation to pick up the show and give it a Blu-ray release in honour of Evangelion's upcoming 20th birthday in November of 2015. If you wish to watch Evangelion, you'll either have to settle for bankruptcy and buy the DVDs for an absurdly high price, torrent it, or watch it on a site like KissAnime or what have you. Sorry, that's just the way it is. ;-;

***

"Evangelion" is a name that you've either heard of in the past or have just read about now since you're reading this review. Arguably one of the most influential and yet most controversial anime series of all time, this is a show that you'll either love the hell out of, viscerally hate, or just watch once and then go on to cut your wrists and black your eyes so you can fall asleep tonight and die (please tell me you get the reference). Okay, that's not really fair but it's still something to be said that virtually EVERYONE who goes into Evangelion comes out with something different.

Now, a lot of people say that this show is nothing more than pretentious garbage and that interpretation certainly is a valid one, given that there are some moments where this show feels like it gets up its own ass. BUT, that's not entirely the case. I don't really care how much of a pretentious fanboy I sound like when I say this, but in order for you to "properly" appreciate Evangelion, you'll have to understand the mindset of Hideaki Anno when he went on to create this programme.

Now, I'm not completely filled in on his back-story, but this is how I understand things went down around the time Eva was being produced: Anno fell into depression for four years, he became disillusioned with the otaku lifestyle, among other such things. He was angry and he needed an outlet to vent out his frustrations. Seeing as how he was an animator, he decided to come up with an anime series that would basically just be one big "FUCK YOU" to whomever he pleased (which at the time were the otakus whom he's grown to despise) and would just ruin the very things that specific group loves.

The concepts behind this programme were simple: what would happen if we took real people and forced them into similar situations that happened in any Gundam and/or any harem show? Not only that, but what would people realistically be like if a post-apocalyptic situation occurred? What would happen to the son of a man who lost his wife and was appointed to be head of an organisation which deploys giant robots to fight some unknown threat? How would common anime archetypes translate into the real world? Combine these ideas with a frustrated animator with a lot of pent-up rage against a community of people whose lifestyle he became disillusioned with plus extremely stressful work conditions and what you'll get is Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Neon Genesis Evangelion was a project that was seemingly destined to do two things: tank horribly and either worsen Hideaki Anno's depression or drive him to suicide. Gainax's poor accounting practices at the time basically meant that Evangelion was given a very small budget to work with (which was almost completely exhausted before the final two episodes were made; more on that later) and the general consensus at the time was that Evangelion would get cancelled within 5-10 episodes. However, their assumptions couldn't have been further from the truth. Evangelion was a huge success, and what probably kept Gainax from going out of business at that point in time. Why was it such a huge success? I don't know, but I'm guessing because it effectively took all of the mecha and harem tropes and then completely subverted them.

Have you ever wished that the world you lived in was more like the anime(s) that you love so dearly? Let's say for example you're an avid fan of mech shows, would you wish that your life would be similar to the main character's life in your favourite mech show? I mean... YOU GET TO PILOT A GIANT FUCKING ROBOT. Instant respect from the common bystander, girls with low self-esteem and questionable morals may very well end up dropping their panties at the sight of you, and once again: YOU GET TO PILOT A GIANT FUCKING ROBOT. Remember the MEGAS XLR theme? “You dig giant robots, I dig giant robots, we dig giant robots, chicks dig giant robots.” Well... sometimes it's not always like that.

You see, MEGAS XLR takes the optimistic route. However, Evangelion is thoroughly entrenched in pessimism. Every single character in the show has some deep-seated psychological trauma, and I do mean EVERY character. From the Eva pilots to the commanders at NERV and even the random bystander who had no dialogue, every single person in Evangelion is fucked up in the head. Why is everyone like that? Because of the eminent threat of death. The entire world as people once knew it was completely destroyed, leaving many places to be desolate wastelands. Half of humanity's population was eradicated with the only traces of their existence being grave markers. Whole cities are wiped off the map and the survivors ended up being forced to relocate. 15 years of relative peace then gets interrupted when the mysterious Angels start attacking, seemingly for no apparent reason.

One rather bizarre thing to note is that you can't really tell that since the first 15 or so episodes of Evangelion do follow a rather typical mech show formula... albeit with a special twist thrown in here and there. Jovial and upbeat music is a rather frequent sight, we get to see common harem tropes at work, etc. Hell, Evangelion actually kind of felt like a feel-good mecha/harem show (in a vein similar to Full Metal Panic!). BUT... then came along Episode 16, and then you got to see how fucked up and morbid EVERYTHING about this show is. We get to see that Shinji's lifestyle isn't a real sex fantasy, and the women in Evangelion are actual women with real problems who DON'T need a penis to feel like they're worth something. We also learn how thankless being an Eva pilot really is.

EVERYONE'S livelihoods are directly linked to the success of the giant robot pilot. Under such conditions, you wouldn't receive the praise and the respect of the people for being a pilot. If you fuck up, you're directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds upon thousands. If you succeed, you get nothing because that's what you're supposed to do. Let's not forget the fact that this EXTREMELY heavy responsibility is being placed on the shoulders of teenagers. Why? Well, it's never properly explained why but truth be told, there's no need for any explanation. Hideaki Anno wanted to create a show that would subvert common mecha/harem tropes, and one thing that a lot of mech shows at the time had in common was the fact that the pilots were very young OR had deceptively youthful appearances.

The whole point of Evangelion is to show what would happen if we took three teenagers and forced them to not only deal with the burdens of society and their own adolescence, but also having to pilot a giant robot in order to SAVE THE WORLD where the threat of their own deaths is always a very real possibility with virtually no sympathy whatsoever. An explanation as to why our pilots are adolescents would certainly be appreciated, but it's not outright necessary to the plot. With that said, let's take a look at our characters. Evangelion's got a wide variety of characters, each with their own varying degrees of depth and relevance, but let's just take a look at our three mecha pilots and their overseer.

Fans of Eva and pretty much anyone else who's ever taken a cursory look at the Evangelion franchise as a whole will pretty much come to the same conclusion about Shinji: he's a whiny, useless little bitch boy who runs away from everything and well... yeah, he's guilty as charged. But why is that? Keep in mind: he's supposed to be what our lead mecha pilot would realistically be like given the situation he's placed in. His father abandoned him so that he can work with some government organisation he's never even heard of and his mother's dead. Obviously there's going to be some abandonment issues at work but it's not just that.

The first time he's seen his father in umpteen years, and Gendo tells him to get into a giant robot and fight against some unknown threat with absolutely no prior notice, no training, or anything of the sort and there's a good chance that he may very well end up being killed. How else is he supposed to react? Is Shinji supposed to be ecstatic that he'll be piloting a giant robot? NO!!! I don't care what you say, if it were you in that very position, you sure as hell would do exactly what Shinji's doing. I mean, piloting a giant robot is cool and all, but if you have to pilot a giant robot at such short notice with no training or anything of the sort against an unknown threat that may very well end up killing you, common sense dictates you having to think more than twice about this.

He runs away from his problems rather than confronting them because truth be told, that's a relatively normal response. Think of everything I just mentioned: his pre-existing psychological trauma, the burdens of society and adolescence placed upon him, his ESTRANGED father using him as a means to an end, having to pilot a giant robot and combat mysterious beings that may very well end up killing him, all the while having to put up with all of that with virtually no sympathy whatsoever. All things considered, he's got balls for actually getting into the damn robot in the first place. When he does run away, he always returns. Sure, he can run away in the midst of an angel attack like anyone else would. But when he's confronted with the reality of the situation: where mindless destruction occurs and innocent people get caught in the crossfire, he inevitably comes back to save the day because he knows that he can put an end to all of the madness.

When you take all of that into consideration, Shinji isn't as unlikeable as he might seem. HOWEVER... I will concede that Shinji can get rather intolerable at times (alongside Asuka for reasons I'll explain later). That's his biggest character flaw: yes, he's empathetic and my sympathies really do lie with him for a good chunk of the show. HOWEVER, his constant complaining gets rather irritating after a certain point, and you're just begging for him to shut the fuck up and do something. Thankfully, we get a heaping helping of catharsis whenever Shinji overstays his welcome in the form of seeing Shinji getting his ass handed to him by Angels and the like. Okay, well he's not an incompetent Eva pilot in the slightest (quite the contrary) but I just can't help but feel immensely satisfied seeing Shinji get his ass handed to him after I just watched him do NOTHING but complain. But, I digress.

Now we come over to Asuka Langley Soryu, the Second Child. Now, Asuka actually makes her debut rather late in comparison to the other Eva pilots (Asuka shows up in Episode 8, rather than the pilot episode like the others) but regardless, she still manages to make more than enough of an impact on the story while not faltering a bit in her characterisation. One of the second biggest complaints I hear about people who don't like Eva is the fact that Asuka is an intolerable tsundere bitch. You know what? You're right on the money with that one: Asuka was specifically designed to get under your skin and make you hate her. Hell, she gets under my skin 5 times out of 10. But why is this?

Well, given that Shinji is what our lead mecha pilot would realistically be like, what sort of trope(s) is Asuka meant to tackle? Well... I've got a faint idea of what Asuka is supposed to be: she's supposed to be the embodiment of how tsunderes would actually be like in real life, while also being the complete polar opposite of Shinji. While Shinji is passive and introverted, Asuka is aggressive and extroverted. Did I forget to mention that she's also a combat prodigy akin to Mikasa Ackermann from Attack on Titan? Despite all of this, she suffers from almost the same kind of psychological trauma that Shinji suffers from.

Her aloof and confident exterior is just a mask for a gaping inferiority complex that rivals that of Mello's from Death Note. She's a combat prodigy because piloting Eva-02 is the only way for her to ever feel validated. She lives for the praise of others, and thus can't stand it whenever someone steals her thunder. When Shinji and/or Rei save her from being killed by an Angel, she takes umbrage with them because it's not the angel she lost to, it's Shinji/Rei that she lost to.

Being such an obnoxious tsundere half the time, it's only natural for her to end up like Shinji whenever she overstays her welcome. What do I mean? Well, whereas Shinji just gets roughed up by the Angels or what have you, Asuka gets taken down a few pegs if she ends up overstaying her welcome and it's just so cathartic to see her squirm whenever Gendo, Ritsuko, or Misato are favouring Shinji or Rei over her. With that said, she's also the most entertaining Eva pilot to watch given that she's great at combat and if nothing else, some of her banter with Shinji et al is rather amusing to say the least.

With so much hostility built up toward her comrades, one would expect her to not show any compassion whatsoever. BUT, that's not the case at all. Remember, Asuka is a tsundere (a rather extreme one, but a tsundere none the less). She's got an aloof exterior, but people keep forgetting that loving interior of hers... which is quite understandable since it never really manifests itself all that often but when it does, it's certainly going to catch you off-guard. The most bizarre thing is that she's 14 years old, yet she's constantly throwing herself at her "keeper," Ryoji Kaji who is quite literally twice her age. It might seem off-putting to you and you might dismiss it because it's okay in Japan or some shit like that. HOWEVER, THIS WAS ACTUALLY OFF-PUTTING TO JAPANESE VIEWERS TOO!!!! But strangely enough, her "deredere" characterisation always manages to come into play whenever Asuka is around Kaji.

So, you might think that Asuka only shows this other side of her personality to Kaji BUT you'd be sorely mistaken. You see, as bizarre as it might be... Asuka and Shinji actually have a thing for one another. The problem? They're both completely fucked up in the head. Did you honestly expect their relationship to resemble something out of a feel-good romcom ecchi harem? Oh fuck no. This is Evangelion! Whenever one side tries to make a move on the other, the other pushes them away. Asuka's aggressive attitude is what's keeping Shinji from approaching her. However, Shinji's withdrawn and passive personality is the very reason WHY Asuka lashes out at him. It's the perpetual dance of hedgehogs... which actually brings me to something I forgot to mention earlier.

Considering the fact that almost EVERYONE in Evangelion is fucked up in the head, it's only natural for them to be unable to form any sort of healthy relationships. This leads to something known as the "hedgehog's dilemma." When it's cold, hedgehogs tend to huddle together for warmth. The problem is the fact that the closer the hedgehogs get to one another, the more they risk hurting each other. Character relationships in Evangelion work the exact same way, especially given how fucked up everyone is in this show. As much as you'd probably hope for Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Misato, Gendo, Ritsuko, or whatever other character(s) you've grown attached to actually improve/grow as characters, that will NEVER be the case. That's one of the more depressing aspects about Evangelion, which is such a shame given that I grew quite fond of Shinji despite how unbearable he can get. But, I digress.

Now we have Rei Ayanami... aka Hideaki Anno's greatest success and greatest failure. Rei Ayanami is one of the most interesting things about Evangelion. You see, Hideaki Anno created Rei in order to demonstrate just how creepy an emotionless doll character would be. HOWEVER, that wasn't the case at all. Instead, Hideaki Anno pretty much created the prototypical moe girl. Rei was so popular to the point where other programmes ended up creating "clones" of her, each with their own varying degrees of depth and/or development with some clones (i.e. Yuki Nagato from Haruhi) getting better character development than Rei herself ever received.

But why is Rei so popular? Well, my inner cynic tells me that given how Rei is submissive, doesn't talk back, and the like, perverse otakus took to her because they now had material to work with for their rape fantasies. HOWEVER... while I did find Rei to actually be rather creepy when I actually did stop and think, there were many moments where she was portrayed as a helpless victim (did I forget to mention that she pioneered the bandage girl aesthetic?), and I genuinely did find myself wanting to protect her. You know... I can't help but wonder how different Rei could've been if she wasn't always wearing a cast/eye patch/bandage and didn't get herself into situations that would evoke a protective instinct.

Now, as strange as this might sound... I actually could find myself relating to Rei, even if only a little. Maybe it's because I'm introverted and I don't really talk to people I don't know all that much but it's still something to be mentioned. The bizarre thing is that Rei herself actually isn't emotionless, but rather she doesn't know how to express them until Shinji asks her to smile to express gratitude after saving her in Episode 6. Okay, well... compared to how bizarre the rest of the show gets toward the end, I guess this is actually relatively normal. It's still something to be mentioned, though.

The last character I'm willing to talk about is Misato Katsuragi, who actually witnessed and lived through the apocalypse that set the stage for Evangelion. Now, as a survivor of the Second Impact, you'd think that she'd also have some deep-seated psychological trauma and well... yeah, she definitely does. However, in comparison to Shinji and Asuka, Misato is arguably the most well-adjusted of them all. She's jovial when she needs to be and serious when the situation calls for it. She also provides all three Eva pilots with much-needed emotional support... although they rarely capitalise on said emotional support.

Misato is quite likeable, and she really does help prevent the show from turning into a teenage angst-ridden melodrama. HOWEVER... there were quite a few things I found rather unnerving about her character. For example, the way she introduces herself to Shinji is with a picture of her bending over with her right hand making a peace sign... with an arrow pointing to her cleavage. However, just like how Kaji is twice as old as Asuka, Misato is twice as old as Shinji. Of course, Shinji doesn't really display the same sort of... "attraction" to Misato that Asuka displays to Kaji.

After this, Misato tries to behave more like a motherly figure to Shinji... while still hinting that Misato is a potential love interest for Shinji. You know... it's not the subliminal Oedipus complex that disturbs me. It's the fact that Misato is actually attracted enough to a 14-year-old boy to actually send a picture of herself in such a pose to make the first impression and yet somehow ignore all of that JUST to be a motherly figure to him. It also doesn't help that End of Evangelion further complicates shit like that, but let's cross that bridge when we get to it. So, as good of a character as Misato is... she just creeps me out (moreso than Rei, which is rather surprising).

Taking a break from all of that rambling about story and characters, let's get on with one of Evangelion's biggest flaws: its animation (or lack thereof... asterisk). While the art direction is pretty damn good and everything as a nice amount of detail put into it, the actual animation can just get downright lazy and there are some decisions where you'll just find yourself wondering "Really? Was it actually necessary to animate something so pointless as that?" So in some respects, the actual animation feels vaguely reminiscent of Gantz, although it was never quite THAT bad. However, there's a LOT of points in the show where you can quite obviously tell where they cut corners... or rather took out a chainsaw and cut huge segments out of.

For example, there are a lot of segments where the camera is zoomed into the characters face, so they don't have to animate anything but the mouth movements. HOWEVER, there are MANY instances where Gainax actually had the mouths covered, obscured by light, or just plain out-of-focus so they don't even have to pay to animate the mouth movements. Fun fact: Gendo Ikari's signature pose is a direct result of the lack of budget this show had! Almost all of his appearances where he had any dialogue of relevance, his hands would be covering his mouth so Gainax wouldn't even have to pay to animate the lip-flap movements.

There are also an annoyingly high number of points where we end up staring at still frames with nothing but ambient noise playing in the background for almost 3 minutes (I'm looking at you, Episode 4)! You know... if they were just doing this shit because of a corporate mandate for episode length, they could've just done us all a favour and just let us stare at a black screen for 3 minutes in silence. That would've been a million leagues more entertaining than making us sit through 3 minutes of Shinji staring at Misato while ambient noise was going on in the background, only for Shinji to say "I'm home" and then cut to the end credits.

There's also no shortage of segments where they ended up re-using the same few frames of animation in the earlier episodes where it was all jovial and shit. But, I can't really hold that against Evangelion since many anime series I watched that came from the early 90s (i.e. Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing) ended up doing that at some point or another. Eva just happens to do it on a more frequent basis across a shorter period of time. With that said... it's still rather off-putting, but then again I grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s where anime was starting to actually have a budget so hell if I'd know.

Another bizarre thing to note about the animation itself is the fact that there's no shortage of fan service available to the point where Tiffany Grant, Asuka's English VA would say that there would be more fan service in the next episode during the next-episode preview at the end of the one I just watched. You'd think that the fan service would be used in such a way where it would actually be used to keep everyone's interest in the show while the animation budget slowly went away, right? You'd be sorely mistaken. As early as the first episode, we get treated to out-of-place shots of Misato's ass and breasts among other such things. HOWEVER, the fan service almost entirely dissipates by Episode 16 as the show gets increasingly morbid.

I know I spent a great deal bitching about the how lazy/odd the animation gets, BUT thankfully Gainax manages to make up for it in almost every single episode... except the final two because of reasons I'll get into in a minute or two. Basically, the vast majority of the budget was spent animating the Eva battles, and the remainder of it was spent on everything else. The Eva battles are perhaps some of the most entertaining fights I've ever seen in any mecha anime I've ever seen, and my guess is that if Gainax gave Evangelion a bigger budget, THIS is what the rest of the show would look like. So I can't stay TOO hard on the animation.

However, that lack of budget REALLY affects the storytelling to such a negative degree that you can't even begin to imagine. I mean, we get so many stills and walk cycles of Shinji to the point where it becomes tedious and you just begin to lose interest in what you're watching. The most infamous example of how bad the lack of budget affects the storytelling is the final two episodes. Basically, there was virtually NO budget left for these two episodes and the vast majority of it was spent re-using animation and having a good chunk of the episode animated in pencil... I shit you not, that actually did happen. Basically, nothing gets explained (directly) and there's a quite obvious lack of resolution.

Now, it's not like these two episodes are pointless since they do provide quite a bit of character insight and if you pay close enough attention, you start to get a faint idea of what just went down in the real world, since these last two episodes take place inside Shinji and Asuka's heads. HOWEVER... this was such a drastic change of style to the point where fans of the programme quite literally mailed death threats to Hideaki Anno/Gainax (some of which actually do show up in End of Evangelion). Suffice it to say, this was the programme that Gainax ended up developing their infamous reputation with how they end their shows.

Hideaki Anno and Gainax did eventually go on to produce Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion which is how the final two episodes of Evangelion were supposed to be (according to Hideaki Anno), but that didn't come by until 1997 and I don't even want to imagine how long it took for Manga Entertainment to license the movie, dub it, and distribute it only to go out-of-print a few years later. As far as endings go, I have to give EoE its own review but I will say this: it does a MUCH better job of resolving the story of Evangelion while still retaining that sort of "what the fuck am I watching?" atmosphere that Eva is known for.

The last thing I want to talk about in regard to Evangelion is the audio portion of it all. Now, the OST for Evangelion doesn't really do much to stick out and with the exception of the opening and a few tracks that play whenever shit gets REALLY morbid, there isn't really going to be much that would stick out in your mind unless you pay an unusually large amount of attention to what you listen to. The OP track, "Cruel Angel's Thesis" is a beloved classic and with great reason. It's matched with visuals that perfectly flow with the tone of the song and if nothing else, I find myself humming it at the most random of times. The ED however is nothing more than Muzak you'd hear in an elevator of a classy hotel or something, so there's that.

Now we come to the most interesting part of Evangelion: the English dub. This is a pre-Bebop dub, so you might think that this dub is shit. However, that couldn't be further from the truth. With the exception of the first four or so episodes, the entire dub is quite well-cast and executed. The reason why I left out the first four episodes is due to the fact that it was quite obvious that the VAs were getting accustomed to their roles and as such, there are quite a few segments of the first few episodes that sound... off, to say the least.

Now, I can't put too much blame on the director of the dub since he/she does smooth things out rather early on. HOWEVER, Evangelion 1.0 which happens to be a retelling of the first six episodes has the same cast as this dub, but it doesn't sound anywhere near as off as the first four episodes of the TV series. To be fair, the Rebuild of Evangelion movies are licensed by Funimation and they do a great job of their dubs while the TV series was licensed by ADV Films: a company that doesn't really seem to have a standard for dubbing quality given that so many of the things they've licensed (i.e. Elfen Lied, Azumanga Daioh, 5 Centimetres per Second, Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal) have dubs that vary quite a bit in terms of actual quality.

Spike Spencer does an excellent job of voicing Shinji, as does Tiffany Grant voicing Asuka. What I love about Grant's work as Asuka is the fact that she's fluent in German. Why is this important? Because Asuka herself is German and there are a few points where she speaks in German. That's a nice little touch and it's the small things like this that make me smile. However, my favourite performance would definitely have to come from John Swasey voicing Gendo Ikari. He does a great job at capturing just how cold and emotionally distant he is from Shinji and he plays off of Spike Spencer quite well in scenes where Shinji and Gendo have a lot of dialogue together. As for everyone else, they do a great job with the roles they've been given so props to ADV for not making a dub that's complete shit in the mid-to-late 90s.

On the whole, Neon Genesis Evangelion is certainly an experience that NO ONE should miss out on. This is one of those shows that has a reputation for being one gigantic mind fuck, which is true in some cases, but the story itself is rather easy to follow... it just gets rather tedious in the beginning because Gainax. Is it as great as people say it is? Oh fuck no. Is it a pretentious piece of garbage? Pretentious on occasion, but garbage? HELL to the fucking NO. If you seriously want a good idea of what Evangelion is like, you should just do yourself a favour and watch it.