Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion. Just by saying that name, almost any anime fan will go into an extremely cautious silence. The weight of that series, among fans and haters alike, cannot be underestimated, as it's influence on the anime industry and anime fans is enormous; chances are that even if you hate the series, you can't deny it's positive influence on the anime industry, considering that chances are that you may even have something that was influenced by this series on your favorites, even if you immensely dislike the series in question. Now, my opinion is a fairly different one from the vast majority of people who watchthis series. I'm already seeing a plethora of "Not Helpful" votes just by giving Evangelion the score I did, considering Evangelion is often referred to as a series that is either considered well above average among the greatest achievements in the history of anime (which it is, in a certain sense) or a complete pile of pretentious garbage that a pack of elitist wannabes hype to drill into the heavens that is unworthy of being compared to the series it influenced.

In any case, enough of me talking about that and onto the review:

Story (5/10):
I'm already seeing eyebrows being raised. But let me clarify something before I give my opinion: I am aware that Evangelion is meant to be a deconstruction of the mech genre. I am aware of the various themes it was trying to handle, ranging from Freudian psychology to Christian symbolism to the Hedgehog's dilemma to Social Darwinism (to some extent, anyway).
Everything I said sounds good, right? The series however, assumes instantly that you know all of these themes and will make sense of it if jumbled together, which leads to an extremely flawed and contradictory form of storytelling.
Allow me to explain what I mean. Series should know how to show a story, while providing minimal, but necessary information in telling a story.
This series assumes that instead of telling a story, the viewers will make up the story for it, ruining most of the credibility the series had going for it.
And onto the show aspect; the series loves placing irrelevant symbolism at the wrong times.
Such as when the angels get defeated, a giant cross (or multiple giant crosses) with no meaning whatsoever appears.
Or making characters act completely out of character and unrealistically (I'm looking at you, Asuka) just to emphasize it's themes, forgetting that if the viewer doesn't connect with the character in question, any point in it's themes are deemed irrelevant to the casual viewer.
Seriously, this series could have done so much more with it's themes, but instead resorted to randomly tossing in big words and jumbling it's themes together in the hope something would make sense to the viewer, leaving a mildly interesting story with interesting ideas (with absolutely no idea how to execute them) and a miserable excuse for an ending that in my opinion doesn't make any sense whatsoever, although I'm not entirely sure how anyone can make sense of that ending personally even after watching End of Evangelion. But that's a review for another time.

Art/Animation (6/10)
The artwork looks quite interesting and well-done for it's time, and the mech designs as well as the detailed Lovecraft-styled Angels look pretty damn good too.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the animation during most of the series, as it randomly fluctuates between looking absolutely gorgeous during action scenes to looking absolutely terrible most of the time. This lead to some rather...questionable scenes to say the least, including the ending, the infamous train scene and the countless times (No, for those who haven't seen it, I am not joking) character's mouths were covered and the frame would stay completely still for around 2 minutes.
The exceptional artwork is therefore put down by the extremely low quality, inconsistent animation, hence the low score.

Sound (7/10)
Decent voice acting and soundtrack and an amazing opening.
All right! Everything is perfect!
Until we get to the classical music. No seriously, the classical music ruins the atmosphere so badly it's not even funny (OK, I jest, I find it bloody hilarious, especially in completely still scenes). Who's idea was it to randomly insert classical music in the hope people would make sense of it?
It loses what would've been a perfect or near-perfect score thanks to this problem I encountered.

Character (4/10)
Where do I start?
The three children are all annoying, angst-ridden, irritating and serve later in the series as tools to advance the themes and plot of the story. The character that falls victim to this the most is Asuka, who has (mild spoilers) feelings for Shinji yet changes personality to be jealous of him off the drop of a hat, which emphasizes the theme in question in all the wrong ways.
We never discover the motives for some of the characters for acting as they did, which for several of these characters is a huge mistake considering how important they are to the advancement of the plot.
A huge shout out however, to Misato Katsuragi, who was easily my favorite character and the most consistent and most lovable character of the show. Sure she has...problems, to say the least, but she is the only character who stops me from giving this section a lower score. If only all the characters were as well-written as her...

Enjoyment (4/10):
Ultimately, I feel Evangelion is a completely average mech anime with interesting ideas but one of the poorest executions to those ideas, due to underdeveloped characters, ill-fitting music at times, low quality animation and lackluster storytelling, which I found greatly hampered the show's great moments and throw it off from what it could have been to complete mediocrity.

Overall, I give this series a 5 out of 10. Lord have mercy on me.
Thank you for reading my review! Feedback is greatly appreciated!