Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion
(BACKLOG) Couldn’t put this off forever huh? Love it, hate it, heard of it or not, Neon Genesis Evangelion remains of of the most controversial anime of the 90’s, a show that deconstructs the mech genre, delves deep into the psyche of its characters, has more pretentious symbolism than I care to list, and all this leads to one of the most infamous last two episodes in the history of anime. Some declare it a masterpiece, many say it’s complete sh*t, but I’m going to do my best on telling you guys what I made of of the strange show unraveling before me. And forheaven’s sake……
Fast forward 15 years after the cataclysmic event known as the Second Impact wiped out half of the world’s population. Huge mysterious alien beings known as Angels have appeared in Tokyo, and since Earth’s military forces are no match for these alien war machines, the Japanese government do what they typically do in such a situation: establish a secret military force known as NERV who build giant mechs named Evangelions to combat the threat. But by some arbitrary rule of anime, the pilots of the Eva’s have to be 14 year old children, one of those children being Shinji Ikari, the last person on the planet who you would chose to save the world from horrifying alien monsters. The show then follows an Angel of the Week type setup; as Shinji whines, Tokyo gets destroyed a few times, and we witness a downward spiral of all of the characters sanity meter’s. But as the show wears on and typical mech stereotypes begin to peel away, it becomes clear that something huge is going on behind the scenes, and a truth about the Angels, NERV, and the entire nature of the Evangelions is waiting to be revealed that could ultimately mean the end of the world.
Now, all of this makes the set-up to Evangelion so goddamn interesting. I was completely immersed in the story, the characters, the mystery behind the Angels, and I found myself ready to commit; all Evangelion had to now was blow me out of my seat…..and then it begins to go wrong. You see this series is infamous of its ending, and for good reason, because for all these interesting questions Evangelion raises it never seems to answer to a satisfying degree. OK, let me get something straight, standard definitions aside, there is a big difference for me between a complicated plot, and a convoluted one. Something can have a complicated plot, in fact, I love complicated plots, but there’s something wrong with your plot being needlessly complicated. Evangelion adds on so many subplots that it’s hard to keep count, everyone of them needing a lot of explanation to make sense. Evangelion has enough religious symbolism to write an entire book of symbolic pretentiousness, these things being added to an already grand and confusing plot, so by the time the last 5 or so episodes are rolling, you, the viewer, will have about 1,000 questions, and hardly any answers.
This is ultimately Evangelions downfall. It gives half truths, ones that you really need to examine in order to piece together some kind of meaning from the story they come from. It gives you a couple stems to work ideas, and then says “right, you work out the rest.” And I’m sorry, but this is not OK. Sure you can have different experiences every time, have a different outlook on the series, even realize a piece of the plot makes sense when it didn’t before but even me, who had a great deal of knowledge of the series’ plot and twists and symbolic meaning before I ever watched the show, could hardly work out what the hell had happened by the end of the series. Sure, after thinking for awhile, and with some of the movie’s help(see End of Evangelion) I think I know mostly what happened…..I think.
In the end, for the amazing plot it had going for it, Evangelion never tells you what happened, why everything happened, how. After watching the show, the follow up movie, the Rebuild Movies, reading multiple interpretation and reviews, and thinking on my own for quite awhile, I still don’t know what exactly happened.
And again, that’s just not OK.
Christ, have I still not got to the characters? Right then, let’s start with our protagonist Shinji Ikari. Having lost his mother at a very young age and being heavily neglected by his father Gendo Ikari, this leaves Shinji with a confidence and mental state so low that he can hardly even function on his own. So to everybodies great surprise I”m sure, when Shinji is chosen as the pilot for Evangelion Unit 1 and tasked with saving the world, he just elects to run away. It kind of becomes a running theme(sorry) with the series; Shinji deciding to try to run away from his problems, and it’s not like I can’t see where he’s coming from. He already had a crappy life, and now he’s being told to pilot a giant mech he’s never seen or heard of before in order to fight ungodly terrifying creatures, but the problem here is that Shinji never really changes. Almost through the entire series, Shinji continues to whine and say how nobody cares about him. If he had ever grew confidence with his victories over the Angels and actually grew a backbone, he would have a been a good character, but this really never happens, all the way up to the end of the show. OK, there is a part like halfway through the show where he starts to develop relationships with his teammates and grow confidence, but due to a truly traumatic event that I won't talk about it detail, that get stunted pretty quickly.
Asuka Langley Soryu is the redheaded German pilot of Evangelion Unit 2, and pretty much the exact opposite of our unconfident awkward protagonist. Appearing later on in the show, Asuka is a skilled pilot of the Eva Unit 2, and has a head that’s too big for her own good. She has a very outgoing personality, is much more socially adept than Shinji is, and this, combined with her condescending tone of voice, can make her even annoying at times, even if she does become kind of a badass during the Angel fights. As the show continues through, her anxieties come to light as her backstory is revealed, which I’m not going to spoil because course it’s completely horrific, but just trust me, she’s as emotionally broken as basically everyone else on the show, and I think you’ll like her by the end.
Honestly, even though the cast of this show is actually quite large, I’m going to restrain talking about them. I’ll just say the interactions and relationships between these characters are some of the most interesting I’ve ever seen, so I’ll let you experience them for yourself when you go watch the show for yourself. And yes, you should go see the show despite all i’ve been saying, if just to experience this interesting and mentally broken cast. Problem is though, despite how well written they all are, none of them are particularly likable, being all equally terrible people in their own right, but I think if you can look past that, you’ll begin to appreciate their complexity and motivations.
It’s pretty much general knowledge that the budget for Evangelion was extremely small, and leads to a very tightly handled show. Nothing really moves much when an Angel battle isn’t occurring; the characters faces are covered in shadow, a still frame is shown playing ambient noise etc and it becomes really frustrating after a while. Though you can see why. because when an Angel battle is occurring, everything is moving in unison, and the battles become freakin’ awesome. Unfortunately, as the show progresses, the animators decide to skimp even more, and this leaves the Angels battles severely underwhelming. One is defeated in a goddamn montage, one battle lasts literally a minute, and one is just a giant shadow so not much animation to worry about there. Even the music just sees either unfitting or underwhelming, leaving these battles lacking impact or tension when they’re occurring; not making these battles against awesome alien monsters as cool or epic as they really should be. Granted, there is a pretty cool fight near the end, so that’s something, though the last two episodes rid that satisfaction pretty quickly…
The rest of the soundtrack is really very forgettable, and not just this, but many songs are repeated, especially this one slice of life jingle that got stuck my head for a ridiculously long time. I’m not really left with much to talk about from a technical standpoint, which is such a shame, because if Evangelion had had the budget to do what it wanted, it would have made up(to some degree) for its other faults. But unfortunately, we got what we got.
A show like Evangelion is really one that you draws your own opinion from, and mine is one of thousands out there. But what really is my opinion on the show? Well these problems and all this aside, I think I liked Evangelion. The tragedy of it though, if it handled its plot well, even with all the technical issues, it really could have been masterpiece. All I can say is to just keep these points I’ve made in mind, when you go see the show. And if you can appreciate it for what it is, I can go tell you to watch it all. This series, End of Evangelion, the Rebuild movies, so when Evangelion 4.0 brings this legendary franchise to an end, it will make complete and perfect sense.
And maybe I’ll sprout angel wings and fly,
Final Verdict: 7/10
P.S: A point to you if you realized all the unnecessary religious terms I used. Kind of a analogy for the show really.