Just watched this and the movie. It was the first anime I've ever watched besides DBZ like 15 years ago

Just watched this and the movie. It was the first anime I've ever watched besides DBZ like 15 years ago.

Started good, ended bad. Writing-wise.

To tell the truth, I REALLY enjoyed the 'monster of the week' and 'slice of life' episodes. The overarching mystery of the EVAs, the committees, NERV, second impact, and the Angels slowly got revealed up to the 22nd episode and that was fine. It was a good balance of the mech action, teen drama, and conspiracy. But then Anno just decides to throw it all away with THE WORST final 5 episodes I have seen of any show. What he gave us wasn't really any more complicated to understand than The Architect speech in The Matrix: Reloaded. What I absolutely hated was how it was like he saw a few Jodorowsky films and just went overboard trying to get that surreal visuals and some extremely repetitive philosophy.

Episodes 25/26 are especially bad. I'm not saying the messages aren't intellectually stimulating at all, I'm just saying that it's another rainbow sequence from A Space Odyssey. Too long when the audience already gets it.

The movie was a much better finale to the series in my opinion and I don't mind the liberties it took given the plot direction.

Comparing the first and last episodes, it's a night and day difference. I can't help but feel like Anno might have intentionally made a fun, slice of life mechsuit teen anime and then went out of his way to destroy it and all the redeeming qualities of it. Like he wanted us to get attached to these characters and this world and then flick a switch and say that your stereotypical shonen anime genre is actually just garbage, now here's my take on Freud.

youtu.be/aPyQ6dHsG3I

^This affirms my belief that he has a disdain for the style of the earlier episodes of NGE and the goal of the series was to deconstruct the genre

Laziness, lack of money, or a smartass director, I think NGE is wasted potential.

Eps 1-21: great

Eps 22-26: a man who loves the smell of his own shit

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/9pWFg32smBQ
youtube.com/watch?v=5jyTf1ZU0vI
youtube.com/watch?v=WKnVaDwUg5s
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I actually kind of agree with this. I love the show as a whole, but the slice of life type episodes were actually my favorite. I don't like it because it's "muh deep" or "religious symbolism", but I really like the characters.

Yeah, and to be honest the conspiracy and lore behind the scenes was still though provoking and fun to follow. Even Rei's self-reflection monologue in episode 14 and Shinji's when he gets sucked in the shadow were good. Hell, Asuka's self-reflection was good too if not the most predictable of the three. In Asuka's case though, she just goes catatonic and ends up being basically sidelined for the rest of the series, no character development at all.

William Faulkner is my favorite novelist. I love his works and the ways he portrays things like the human consciousness in writing and the inner psyche of his characters. But it was done very well and fit the plot and story perfectly. The last few episodes of NGE are just a mess and the movie only barely redeems some of it in my opinion.

Are the other movies any good? Heard they are just retellings of the original series but the characterization is better. Asuka is actually likable past her first few episodes, for one.

>Death & Rebirth
Just a retrospective put into OVA form. Retells the series in it's entirety & doesn't add anything substantial to the lore (aside from alternate opening scenes for episodes 21 - 23); and those scenes are kept intact & readily available if you watched NGE's Platinum Perfect BR release anyway. Entirely skippable, although it did use this theme as an intermission:
>youtu.be/9pWFg32smBQ

>Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11
It's a remake of the series that ends after Operation Yashima. Covers the same ground as the series with very few deviations (Kaworu stuff), but is worth the watch simply for seeing the world of NGE done in fully reanimated high-def.

>Rebuild 2.22
Here's where shit begins changing. Continues on from the fallout of the Ramiel battle through till the end of the fight with Zeruel, following the show's events with some fairly major changes. Adds a new character (Mari) who is fairly annoying but whatever. The ending, which is the most polarizing aspect of the film, marks a major deviation & sets up Rebuild 3.33.

>Rebuild 3.33
The most polarizing thing Anno has done to date. Everything has changed. Following a hinted at Impact event triggered by Shinji, the entire world has been left in ruin; a time-skip finds a comatose Shinji picked up by the newly formed organization led by Misato. Everyone is pissed at him, yet won't explain a damn thing about what happened to the world. He eventually gets picked up by a Rei & begins working with NERV alongside Kaworu, Rei & Gendo.

The movie is extremely divisive due to how everything changed. We get very few answers as to what transpired & everything is bleak as fuck. What frustrates the fans even more is the massive amount of time it's taking to finally the 4.44, the conclusion of the Rebuilds. As of yet, we don't know if the events of 3.33 actually happened or if it's just one of the possible outcomes related to the end of 2.22.

so are the rebuilds their own set of alternate universe canon, or the new official canon since its being made by Anno himself?

Didn't he just throw in the symbolism because he thought it looked cool and didn't expect it to be popular outside of Japan?

Yes

I'm never not going to post this every time I see that picture posted:

Kaworu is in that picture 3 (three) separate times.

Not sure. More of a parallel, as the core events (up until 2.22's end) are all basically the same. But again, until we get 4.44 we don't know how relevant 3.33 was as a whole. The only retconning one could claim would be EoE being the series' actual conclusion.

>Asuka is likeable

Get a load of this loser. Do you have to have 'likeable' characters in something for you to relate with?

That's nice, now take this shit back to Sup Forums

Evangelion & DBZ have always been Sup Forums
Sorry about the butthurt, newfriend. Cry harder

I'm not looking for someone to relate to, I'm just saying that Asuka's character development hits a brick wall in the original series where she becomes depressed and outright hateful towards her former friends and pilots. Then she gets her own background story which is nice and could help flesh her out, but she just ends up suicidal after that and does literally nothing for the last 5 episodes and most of End of Evangelion

just more wasted potential. she ends up very poorly written, when she started as an interesting foil to shinji and someone we could empathize with and understand her rare, emotional moments with the expectation that more was to come.

It's been shilled here long enough by f/a/ggots to confuse some dumb fucks like you, you mean.

>I dont like X
>S-Shill!
And I'm the one who's confused

Also,
>shilling IPs from 1989 & 1995

You got your own board for gook toons, user.

And yet you sit here, voluntarily posting in a thread you hate...

Protip: Shift+click=hide thread

Pretty much spot on, was a fun show, then went off the rails at the end. EoE was half fun/ half meh

Gotta practice occasional board hygiene otherwise we'll have people settle here that think throwing in german names and pointless christian symbology is deep.

What's it with this autistic shit that attracts manchildren?

>at no point was the faux depth even mentioned in any of my posts
It's "symbolism" you inept twat

I thought the end was cool from a lore perspective and the movie was great but I agree 25-26 definitely could have been more interesting. I didn't like how they made Misato into a slut in the last 5 episodes and it seemed like the writers walked into the end saying "hey what's the most fucked up story we spring on the audience out of nowhere?" Ritsuko's story came out of nowhere and then there was the whole thing with Shinji jerking off on a comatose girl out of nowhere

If they redid the first few episodes with those plotlines and the final tone in mind it would have been a lot more interesting instead of being a standard harem/mech show that changes halfway through.

I loved the movie though. The visuals were awesome.

It's a sequel.

...

...

>It's an "Shit we ran out of money just freeze on this frame for a full minute and we'll pretend we did it to invoke emotion" episode

yeah, i mean i knew that and sorta wanted the series to get darker towards the end, and while I did expect some more straightforward answers about men, monsters, machine, and the mind, it really just was about men and... another version of men. with a little bit of mind that got regurgitated way too long.

I wish the story took a different turn around episode 20 or so after shinji reawakens from the berserk unit 01. A turn that could still include the mech action, teen drama, character development, political intrigue and conspiracy instead of the massive dark turn and seemingly out of place actions by everyone.

But i will admit that the movie was the best finish to the way the story DID end up.

Well personally I can never ever perceive the Rebuilds objectively since they are what started me on the series(if your wondering i started watching it about 4 years ago). I just find the animation to be so well done and the story to be somber which contrasts with the only few anime I've watched(I don't really like anime that much anymore). Also the Asuka scene really makes me sad.

Why do people act like the end goal wasnt the ending we got? It was pretty clear there was a plan from the beginning

Pic related is episode one and I feel like people always forget

>Well personally I can never ever perceive the Rebuilds objectively

what did he mean by this?

>go to Neon Genesis Evangelion subreddit
>it's full of Anno dick suckers and think he is a genius and can do no wrong

when the man himself admits he has no idea what he is doing i think its time to stop deifying him

Is the series available to rent anywhere online?

He means he watched the rebuilds first so he will always look at them as the way Evangelion is supposed to be

I think it's on steam? You are better off just torrenting or streaming it

i thought they ARE the new official canon

This shit is overrated. Tries too hard to be "smart", but is mostly just a thinly veiled excuse to stroke that giant robot fetish japan has. I don't see the appeal.

kek

The fact that big robots are barely relevant to the plot for the movie and last episodes really shows how much Anno hates the giant robot fetish japan has.

I'm gonna assume this is the Kino anime thread so I'll ask here.
I've been wanting to get my dad into good anime like Evangelion but I'm concerned if I start him off on it it'll turn him off anime completely.

What's a good gateway anime?

They are a spinoff timeloop. Just like the manga and japan only novel.

>Evangelion is complete and utter shit, as is all anime. It's either completely shallow pandering garbage or pathetically half assed "philosophy" that offers nothing interesting to say about anything. Evangelion is perfect in how it blends both of these extremes so very well.

>In EoE everyone sees Rei before they let go of their self
>Shinji sees her just before he gets sucked into NERV
every time I watch the episode I wonder if that's the intention / if he was planning that far ahead

Ghost in the Shell maybe. Especially if he has seen it in the public eye recently at theaters and stuff.

People are stupid. They even forget where nge comes from (ideon and childhood's end). So you're right, the ending was planned from the beginning, at least most of it.

The fuck? Giant robots may not be a huge plot point, but they are relevant as fuck to the series in its entirety. Nearly every episode has them.

Though, I will admit that I find most anime insufferable. I have a list of things that I absolutely despise in anime, or even in general, and this one fills many of them. The most prominent are kid heroes, cutesy anime faces, and super powers.

Akira? for a few people I know that's the only anime they've seen

> It's either completely shallow pandering garbage or pathetically half assed "philosophy" that offers nothing interesting to say about anything.
explain

Cowboy Bebop is my personal favorite. The Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X OVA-prequel series Trust & Betrayal is a very close second, though the actual series blows.

It's simple. Evangelion has shitty godzilla fights and sexy outfits and what not and then the last five episodes are "dude, what if social interaction as painful as it may be was worth it in the end?"

Fucking garbage. I shit on Japan.

>Japan only novel
I don't think Sup Forums is ready for the ass-backwards rediculousness that is Evangelion Anima

>last five episodes are "dude, what if social interaction as painful as it may be was worth it in the end?
It's like that from the beginning. What else have you got?

>I have a list of things that I absolutely despise in anime

VERY interesting! Tell us more.

I already did.

Gunbuster (from Anno's pre-depression days) mirrors the first few episodes of NGE but ends up going a more conventional route.

The ending is absolutely gorgeous and is satisfying as fuck, so you might enjoy it more

I would have more but the series was such an enormous waste of my time that I forgot most of it.

That was at the top of my ideas list to be honest. Good recommendation.

That can probably work, since it's just a movie.

Cowboy Bebop is good, didn't think of it because there's not really an overarching story which I think makes for an easier sell.

Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin anything is probably too weeb for someone's first anime.

Keep the recommendations coming anons.

Then why are you here talking about something you hate? Isn't there a better use of your time than discussing a medium as tepid as anime?

>I made this arbitrary list of things I tell myself I'm not supposed to like so when they inevitably show up in shows I'm watching I can throw my hands in the air and pretend I have a justified reason to be outraged


I had a stepbrother growing up who was like you. He would bitch and moan any time something with a talking animal was on TV, and if someone told him to shut the fuck up he would say something along the lines of "Dude I HATE talking animals!". Okay. We get it. You are a nitpicky cynic. Fuck off.

I mean that an overarching story makes for an easier sell*

>It's like that from the beginning.

the beginning with shinji accepting himself and being an EVA pilot is not even close to the level of pretentiousness it gets to towards the end

>Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin anything is probably too weeb for someone's first anime.
The actual series, yes. Have you seen the OVA? Shit is cash.

youtube.com/watch?v=5jyTf1ZU0vI

The story is engrossing, mature and violent as fuck, and if you like history, it is a pretty solid entry in to the politics of the Shogunate era.

Why do you want to force your father into anime rather than have him discover it organically? You are a fool for this. I hope he does turn from it forever and leave you unable to talk about it with anyone in your family.

Though he's a huge Ultraman fan.

If the angel appearances were more spread out and there were a lot more slice of life episodes or character backstory episodes or episodes where the EVA had to do something besides fight an Angel like disable the walking nuke robot, this would be considered the GOAT anime.

once you hit episode 17 or so, you know the good times are NEVER coming back

Nigger, no doubt you whine and shitpost about a ton of crap posted here, so don't act like you aren't a cynical nerd either. That's all Sup Forums is.

Dude you don't even know what Sup Forums is like now obviously. It's a bunch of moe little girl type shit, those guys are straight up faggots. NGE is absolute kino compared to what those guys are interested in.

I just hope he doesn't become like me. I used to hate anime for arbitrary reasons just like him, then watched Gurren Lagann and Eva around nine years ago and now I want to kill myself for becoming the very thing I used to hate

There is a film term for that called "diverting expectations". The beginning of the show is supposed to ease viewers into thinking this is a run of the mill mech show with run of the mill mech conflicts. As the show goes on it becomes more and more apparent that the Eva's are not something someone would want to pilot. The dark truth of things begin to come out and yea, becoming an Eva pilot becomes a bit more pretentious. Why wouldn't it? More than halfway through the series and suddenly the Eva pilots are getting it worse than any other character.

>once you hit episode 17 or so, you know the good times are NEVER coming back
That's the point

Eva had the best finale of any series ever made. It was different and esoteric, but it was a beautiful climax and ending to the series. It distilled the main themes of Evangelion, and wrapped everything up in a way that was unique, and forever memorable. I feel like people who don't like it just didn't get it, or are just trying to be contrarian. It was the kind of ending that makes you think for awhile, about the show, its message, and your own response to it. So few shows ever end that way, especially now. It's also the kind of finale that I can come back to at different points in my life and react differently to it.

Such a goddamn masterpiece.

Pleb.

I have very little interest in anime to begin with, so I'm not missing anything I couldn't live without. I know what I like and I don't need to test it to prove myself wrong.

Yeah man! I really fucking hate anime and moeshit. When are we getting MANIME back?!

I too enjoy wasting my time in threads about things I hold no interest in.

1-21 when youre an anime fetus
22-25 when youre alan moore

the only problem is eva should have been 52 eps

I'm only saying I like Evangelion. That's all that fuckin meant.

Just here to shitpost and share my excellent opinion, of course.

Someone calls your beloved medium boring and you act like a sarcastic autist. Grow up.

Eva is pretty good but like this guy mentioned: Anno's earlier work, Gunbuster, has an even more satisfying ending. I think it's just as great as eva and doesn't get the credit it deserves. Gunbuster doesn't really have the philosophical and esoteric part because Anno needed to be in that depressed state of mind to make something like eva.

>He enjoys Evangelion

That new thor tho!!!

I would like to point out that I have actually seen this entire series, and the movie (EOE), so it's not like I didn't give it a chance.

Bitches

Diverting expectations is just a shitty way to try to make your work a critical darling

>Oh boy, you expected superheros saving the day? Nope! They're all fuck ups and shit
>You wanted magical girls? Here, enjoy suffering
>I do love me some messed up children causing massive damage and suffering psychological breakdowns to save humanity in giant robot suits

It's just trite garbage and while it has a place in fiction it should not elevate a work.

I've actually been meaning to watch Gunbuster. So while I can't comment on its ending, I just feel like a conventional ending can't have the same impact that Eva's had. A conventional ending might be extremely satisfying and tie everything together nicely, but they tend not to make you think as much. Eva's ending made me think for a long time, I still think about it, and I still love discussing it. It made me rethink the entire series, and it made me think about myself. No other finale has had nearly the impact on me.

Again, I admit that I am a sucker for unconventional endings though. I'm also one of the few people I know that is a big fan of the Sopranos ending.

Anything sounds trite when you boil it down to a single sentence and I know you are smart enough to know that.
Diverting expectations isn't inharently good or bad. Just because you memetexted some examples of it doesn't mean you can brush it off as nothing

>Giving something as terrible as Evangelion and indeed the medium of anime a chance

You are like a child. You don't need to view things to hate them. You don't need to understand something to condemn it.

SUBVERTING

lol, jesus, you're trying really hard.

And I bet you were one of the first in line to moan about Ghost in the Shell, Ghostbusters, or numerous capeshit.

DECONSTRUCTION

Gunbuster and Eva have common themes but they're entirely different. You can't really say one is better than the other because of this. I think the animation in Gunbuster is better than Eva but again, it isn't Eva. The endings are entirely different but just as good in their own way. They're both wellrounded and wellcrafted shows and that's apparent.

Of course not. I didn't care one way or the other. I have studied trends in film to know that such remakes and spells are the way of such things. If I was in the nineteen fifties I would not complain about monster movies or westerns. Regardless of that. I still didn't need to watch any of those examples to know that they aren't worth shit

Fuck you OP but fair enough.

After the Bardiel episode where Eva 1 graphically destroys eva 3 Anno got a warning for exceeding the classification with violence.

Then there was the Zeruel episode where Eva 1 ate zereul.

The budget was slashed completely so alot of the final episodes were long pauses and still frames.

I still like it because the series is JUST about Shinji's state of mind and the robots come a distant 2nd but that's a bias eva fag perspective so I understand if you don't buy that.

>I have studied trends in film

>watching a meme show like Evangelion
>not pure anime kino like Cowboy Bebop
youtube.com/watch?v=WKnVaDwUg5s

Nice argument

This man right here.

user, what the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm not forcing him into anime. If he doesn't like it, he doesn't like it. Eva just isn't a beginner friendly anime and you really only get one shot at recommending a medium like that to the older crowd.
Have you never recommended a genre to someone before?

Again you parse my words carelessly. By study I mean I have been alive enough time and aware of the trends in media to understand that cynical reboots, saturation by a specific genre of the market and poor adaptations are nothing new.

>Have you never recommended a genre to someone before?

No, because I don't give enough of a shit about what other people should watch and neither should you

Make him watch Naruto until the end of the Zabuza arc, then tell him the anime got cancelled.