Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hugely experimental and thankfully unique, Evangelion is a roaring failure. Yeah, there might be spoilers but I'll try to stay away from them. After watching several series, I finally ran across something that I actively disliked. Maybe if you are a (shudder) person who enjoys a nice bit of Camus to go along with your nightshade cocktail, you will really dig this series. Otherwise this one is going to be painful. STORY: Evan starts off moderately interesting. For some convoluted reason a teenager is the only one who can pilot a super-mega-awesome-gigantor-robot for some convoluted reason. We've seen it before -- it allows thetarget shounen audience to have characters they can identify (i.e. lazy kid) get to play the hero instead of someone more realistic -- say a 30-year-old ace captain with years of conflict experience and (more importantly) some emotional maturity. But hey, not like this is the first time. So we get the normal mecha-on-mecha action sequences, which are kinda cool, and the expected teen drama stuff. Oh, and some daddy issues, because what is anime without a justified hatred of one's parents?

AND THEN THE SERIES LOSES IT'S FREAKING MIND

There is no better way to put it. I read on wikipedia that the person responsible for this travesty of philosophic trite had a bad batch of depression, and it shows. Anytime sci-fi has to double back to religious fantasy, it fails. I "got" the story but I hated it. Around this time the series shifts to adult themes over shounen, which is kinda cool. But since everyone was afraid of losing their jobs at the time (per Wikipedia "but also partly because by this point, production had begun running out of funding and failing to meet the schedule; this collapse has been identified by at least one Gainax employee as the impetus for Evangelion's turn into metafiction...") they decide to spew out a bunch of woe-is-me-the-world-sucks garbage.

ART: Art here is decent. Not great, but decent. Since this was a 90's anime, this is very excusable. At the time, the art had to be fantastic. Thank god I started watching anime now than back in the day.

Sound: Passable. Nothing great, nothing too easy to beat up on.

Character: Anyone who tells you that they liked the characters is lying (a) to themselves and/or (b) to you. All of them, especially the protagonist, have extremely annoying qualities (whinny, self-absorbed, withdrawn) that begin to drag on one's nerves. The protagonist particularly sucks -- 4 weeks of basic bootcamp as Gomer Pile would have given him something to really cry about.

Enjoyment: There is a reason why this series almost bankrupted the company. This is not what all anime should be, entertaining.

Overall: I was really looking forward to this anime after hearing such great things about it. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is so well-regarded. I think it's because if you are the type of person that thinks the same as as some of the characters, this anime will sing to your soul or something.

Sometimes classics are deserving, sometimes they are not. This anime is the latter.