Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

As a pretty recent Anime fan, I felt it was necessary to check out all the series that many would consider Must See shows, and of course Evangelion is one of them. From what I have seen from others, the show seems very polarizing, some loving the show, some hating it. I seem to fall more toward the loving it, but the show is not without fault. Story The story of Evangelion is what makes it stand out among other Mech anime, turning what could have been a generic, plain, monster of the week show into something different. I find the story of Evangelion to be veryinteresting, and is what kept me going through the show most of the time. It has many twists and turns, especially in the latter half and it does a good job of keeping you hooked in. That said, I personally found the story quite hard to follow in the latter half of the show and found it quite confusing. What hurts the story the most is ending. While I won't go into spoiler territory, it is incredibly unsatisfying and leaves the viewer with many unanswered questions about the ultimate fates of the characters, and I feel it seriously hurts the story. This problem was rectified by the movie End of Evangelion, which I feel gave good closure to the show, but this is a review of the show, not the film, so the score is based on only the show.

Characters
As well as the story being what hooks the viewer in, the small but varied cast of Characters are also very interesting. Each one is given a back story and is fleshed out and there is a lot of psychological evaluation of all the characters, giving people an insight into their minds. That being said, while the characters are well written and developed, most of the main cast is quite unlikable. Shinji is constantly whining, Asuka is always an annoying bitch, especially concerning Shinji and Rei is almost robotic. While there are good, in depth reasons for why each character acts the way they do, they still aren't very likable and it makes it harder to relate the the characters and care about them.

Overall
Overall, it's not hard to see why Neon Genesis Evangelion got so popular and why it is so polarizing, even almost 20 years after its début. The story and characters are very deep and complex, if not somewhat hard to follow, making it a very engrossing show to watch, even if it is let down by it's initial ending.