Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a story about absolutely nothing. So many people want to act elitist and get indoctrinated into the "premier anime" society by acting like this anime makes any sense. Conceptually this anime is incredible. The story is engaging and the world building is next level. Sadly, we don't live in a perfect world where wonderful stories and character design magically appear from nowhere. The characters are essentially depressed teenagers that are riding on massive robots with the entire world at their mercy. The story attempts to create a deep psychological connection with the viewer and dramatically fails by making unrealistic and unrelatablecharacters. Furthermore, they live in a futuristic metropolis that vaguely has connections with real life Japan while completely neglecting any sense of actual passage in time.
The story has no many plot holes it makes it impossible to understand this anime without watching 20 different youtube videos all compiling random stuff from the unreadable wiki and ruining the series before you even finish it due to not understanding the intent of any of the characters and what the actual heck is going on. There are a myriad of terms that would be very interesting and apply good context to the show, but no explanation is given and viewers are given the impossible goal of finding it within the hours of meaningless animation. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Combing through this show is past insanity, deriving meaning from the ending is beyond that.
The sound design and art of NGE are a good time capsule to the older styles of art. Sound design is done with thought and the voice actors are extremely talented. Character design is very thoughtful and "anime features" are not exaggerated as they commonly are in modern animation.
If you are to watch this anime please care for your mental health and refrain from deriving meaning from nothing.
4/10, for now and forever.