Neon Genesis Evangelion (Original Series and Films) (1995)

29 March 2020

Evangelion is an older anime series from 1995, where teenager Shinji Ikari is contacted to pilot a giant robot. The robot (Evangelion unit 01) is owned by an organization called NERV, run by Shinji's estranged father Gendo. Shinji fights alien monstrosities called Angels that appear out of nowhere and are trying to get into NERV HQ, and as he defends the base Shinji starts to wonder what NERV and his father are doing. While Shinji has these adventures he interacts with coworkers, classmates and fellow Eva pilots, and kinda learns how to interact and function in society. In the meantime his experiences fighting in the Eva get increasingly dark and difficult for his average self to handle.

To me it's hard to like the main character because his moodiness is awful and persistent. More often than not he opts to being a potato instead of trying to work out his issues during the series. But his interactions with other characters and his personal growth across the series is sincere and interesting. The story is really fascinating here, as the many layers of this story peel away slowly and you learn about how the characters changed between present day and a dramatic event 15 years prior called the Second Impact. It can get a bit strange as there's a layer of religion that seems to get injected in the story halfway through, but trying to decipher it all keeps it really engaging.

I should mention this review is with a hard asterisk on the original series end. The original final episodes suffer from animation shortcomings and abstract storytelling that makes this a very disjointed finale and weird ending. This is course corrected with The End of Evangelion, which seems to address the series ending more directly. I also watched this series on Netflix, which I heard made a few minor changes to the original series (so people that have seen/remembered it originally may have feelings about the differences). Death(True²) is mostly a recap show with some cut parts added in.

All that said, this series stands out for its relatable and intriguing characters, its deep story line and mythos, and its storytelling not shying away from uncomfortable or unnerving situations. The only thing that bothers me about the series is when the animation/story seem to pause, which seems intentional but is also sometimes clunky. They've been redoing Evangelion starting in 2007 so I'm curious to see if that fixes some of the [minor] issues I have with the original. 9/10