LogFAQs > #914571457

37. Neon Genesis Evangelion
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@xp1337

In a lot of ways, you could consider NGE to be my first real anime. It was the first one I watched that wasnt broadcast on TV, and probably the first one that aired late-night in Japan? My cousin had the DVDs, and was a big fan of the show, so I borrowed them from him, and I quite enjoyed it. The DVDs had both dub and sub on them, so I got to try them both, and realized that Japanese voices are always superior to English voices. Despite its darkness, the anime felt pretty inspirational, too. I feel like it kinda made me for determined to persevere in general. I didnt actually start watching much anime until several years later, with Haruhi, but who knows if I wouldve gotten there without watching Eva first.

As for the show itself, its pretty much all good. Shinjis an annoying protagonist at times, but intentionally show, and he sometimes gets good development. I wish this aspect was more consistent, actually - sometimes it feels like Shinji or another character will get development within an episode, and then thatll be ignored later on. The show kinda feels like its stuck between having a serial plot and being episodic. Mostly thats not a detriment, since the overall plot is quite neat, and the episodes can be awesome. The dancing episode was the best one. I enjoy it a whole ton. The rest of the characters are cool, though I do somewhat dislike Gendo as a villain. Hes portrayed as super intelligent most of the time, but he does a lot of dumb things. Misato is great as a side character, Rei is super interesting as one of the first girls of her type, and Asukas generally awesome. The show gets pretty great once she arrives. Unfortunately, it falls apart at the end, once Gainax ran out of time and money, but thankfully we got End of Eva to fix that, which is great. Has awesome animation, fantastic music, excellent fights, and works as an excellent conclusion to the series. Kom, Susser Tod might be my favorite insert song?

Lastly, to comment a bit on the movies: The first is basically just a high quality remake of the first few episodes of the series, and its quite good. The second goes its own way, still following the series to some extent, but has Asuka doing all sorts of awesome stuff, and its amazing. One of my favorite anime movies period. The third is its own thing completely, and while it has some compelling sequences, it makes some strange choices, and has a frustrating ending (I was okay with it, but it still rubbed me the wrong way a bit). More unfortunately, it was really boring. I feel like theres a 45 minute sequence in the middle (of this 96 minute movie) where basically nothing happens. Kaworu was never my favorite character in the original series, but he was alright, and he didnt do that much. Here, hes just terrible, because he does absolutely nothing and takes up a ton of screentime. It was a really frustrating movie after that greatness of 2.0. When it does have action scenes its good, and Asukas scenes are good, but there arent enough of those. Also Mari always seems like such a cool character, but after three movies shes still done basically nothing. Blah.
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