Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

After 3 days of a marathon on information about neon genesis evangalion (NGE) through reddit, youtube and evawiki, I've come to a conclusion to give the given score. Now I truly understand why this anime is one of the most debated anime in history. With the score of mediocre, it might lead you to a misunderstanding of thinking that I feel that this anime is mediocre in general. WRONG. Its a complete love hate relationship with this anime where there is nothing remotely mediocre when watching the anime. Its either I HATE this part of the anime or I LOVE it. This anime is trulyan emotional roller coaster that I'm unable to digest or fathom immediately after finishing the series and the movie, End of Evangalion (in this review i will review both but I will only focus on the story and character part for the movie). I'll start with the positives of the series as its the easiest to judge because its more objective instead of subjective.

Art and animation: Given the time that this anime was created (1995) and also with low budget, the art in general is well done with bright colors and unique "robot" designs. However, the animation in some part of the series can be seen as a shortcut as it often shows still images and just talking in the background. I understand that the director wants the viewers to appreciate and encapsulate the given moment but some of the parts just didn't work. I do appreciate that some still images really caught my eye and really suspenseful at the given moment.

Sound: For me, this is where the anime shines. Voice acting was realistic and brilliantly acted by all of the actors. The acting made the characters feel more alive with screams, laughs and even moans feel really realistic. There's nothing much to say about the opening song of the anime because its fucking bomb and very catchy. No wonder it’s one of the most recognizable OP anime songs of all time. Sound design in general is very good with "robot" sounds, crashing and bombing feels also very realistic. The music during the anime was brilliant. It even has classical music included in the anime and the music accompanying the scene was very jarring. Unexpected at the least. Just beautiful and magnificent. It gives you a sense of why the fuck is this music accompanied with his scene but the more you listen to it the more fucked up it gets, which is good for me (you need to watch it to understand it, it’s really hard to explain "fucked up" in this sense).

Now, the most critical and controversial part of the series. The characters and its story. I think it is important and also easier to combine these 2 sections together instead of separating them as both factors correlate with each other in this series. Before I dive into it, this isn't your typical mecha robot vs aliens type of anime where there is a shit load of action, its completely different and its more like a psychological horror type of show. Note that the director has gone through depression while directing this anime. Thus, as expected, there are a lot of depressing moments in it.

I am one of the few who quite enjoyed this kind of anime where it digs really deep into the human mind and psychological moments. These moments are scattered throughout the characters and each of the characters have their own depressing causes, loathsome moments and nihilism. These emotions are obviously very negative, but it really shows how humans can be so weak and dependable. Most importantly, the reason to them acting this way is logical and did not act out of character. HOWEVER. And this is a huge but. These character developments only happen after going through half of the anime where the first half of the anime focuses more on "robot vs aliens". Now, the first half of the anime... continuing on to the characters. There were close to none in terms of character development and due to that, I find some of the characters very annoying because we do not get the fundamentals of why they behave that way and this happens for almost 12 episodes. And to the story of the first half of the anime. What can I say... it’s boring at best. Every episode just repeats the same story where robots fight new aliens every new episode and it really gets worn out after a few episodes. Sure they included SOME (really minor) character developments and introduced some new characters, they really did not connect the characters with the story at all, which is why I gave the story the worst rating. The story tries to tell a typical "robot vs alien" and the end of the world kind of cliche and includes the mindset of the depressed characters but it really fails at connecting the main story with the characters, which also brings me to my next point the pacing. The pacing is horrible. It’s all over the place. Some scenes feel like fillers to me without even progressing the main plot of the story (most of them are robot vs aliens scenes). And after going through half of the anime, it just suddenly turns into a completely different anime and focuses on the mind of the characters and how they think. For me, the jump is too much to swallow and I would rather it to stick to developing its characters from chapter 1 OR focus on the story. Speaking about the plot of the story, there are plot holes everywhere and it is really hard to understand. I get how some directors decide to include ambiguous scenes to make the viewer imagine the outcome with their own imagination but on this instance it doesn’t work for me. These ambiguous moments are mostly related to the main plot on the story and its a huge risk to make the plot as "abstract" as they did, which is why I needed to go through like a dictionary for NGE in order to fully understand what the fuck is going on in terms of the main plot. But, I really, REALLY loved how the director showed how a depressing person thinks and illustrates in a manner of reflecting his own behaviour. Dark, emotional and demoralizing moments like these gave me the urge to continue watching NGE. Its brilliant and relatable. I don't want to get into the ending too much and spoil it for you but I actually think the ending of the original series AND the End of Evangelion (EoE) is on par. To summarize how the ending pan out, the ending of the series is much more abstract, weird and unclear whereas EoE shows a much clearer outcome. Given the low budget, I actually think they nailed it. Even though the ending was created as if by a high school art animation student, it was still immensely beautiful to look at with mesmerizing art and animation with its deeper meaning behind it, which the director clearly tries to convey but its obvious that he does not have the budget. So, well done to both the ending.

Long story short, while the idea of NGE is excellent where it tries to combine psychological horror with a mech story, it fails at telling the whole story smoothly due to poor pacing and plot holes. It feels as if i watched two completely different animes after going through half of the series. Tons of information were squeezed into the later half of the series where the first half of the series feels so stagnant. Still, what an emotional ride of an anime. Even though I gave a low score, I highly recommend everyone to experience this anime as it is unique and in a class of its own. If you don’t care about the plot and the story, you would definitely love this anime as its excellent in its character development in the later stages of the anime. If you have already watched it, congratulations!