Evangelion for me tries to be this ostentatiously complicated anime, which it succeeds at doing but hides behind the curtains which behold none other than content you'd think came out of r/im14andthisisdeep. Most of the characters here from what I remember seemed to just have either daddy issues, existential crisis (at 14 as well), or some high school type love problem, also imagine leaving the fate of the world to some 3 teens. Needless to say, the bases of the characters weren't entirely interesting, or just downright memeable, however, I will give props to the characters' representations and progression as what I believe to be an idea in the form of an individual. Whilst I have come out not remembering most of them and what they have done, namely due to the tedious directing and prolonged dialogues, I do believe they had at the minimum, some decent development as the people they were acting as.
As for the actual storytelling, I thought it was pretty unique for the most part, though, again, presented with flamboyance, well more like it was boring the anime directed itself too much on the characters. I should comment on how the story is somewhat strange as well in direction. In that, it has that nothing-happens-s.o.l-type-narrative for the first 15 episodes, which were all just plain and only existed to set the foundation, even though 15 episodes for doing so is kinda a stretch. Episode 16 is when everything gets psychedelic, from here on after, you will be getting seizures as you ascend to understand this keyboard spam of an anime. To be honest, I wasn't expecting something so slow to be seen in Eva, though given how I have seen Cowboy Bebop, I will just keep in mind that 90s anime aren't all as they seem to be.
The anime overall is this interesting idea in the narrative department, but that is all Eva seems to be, just some idea, confused at times as well. It goes left and right but doesn't seem to want to go anywhere at the end of the day. You will just remember it as that one deep anime, I would imagine no other story device here would make one love Eva for everything else, it is built on ideas and principles but actually has nothing for them other than the raw flesh of sludge that wasn't rendered to a substantial extent. I'd imagine the same is true for characters, people will remember Rei for being the original kuudere edgelord, Shinji as that guy who never got in the robot, Asuka as that annoying little shit, Misato for her Misato Mondays (and apparently every day).
The audiovisual side of things were pretty impressive, I don't have a large library of info as to what the general appearance of anime at that time was like, but if I had to guess, it would either be ancient moe or this. Eva does a pretty damn good job at its visuals but I can find myself a reason to give it something as high as masterclass status, it's good, very good, just not enough. Here's what I mean:
^ok but who is saying no to this smile tho?
I've gone on far longer than I should have, was probably just my reviewer instincts calling to me to write more than I would have liked to, though AL's hot review function was probably another reason I didn't dip out as fast as I thought I would have. Anyways, I wasn't too big of a fan of Eva, I suppose it was just because it felt dumb and dishonest in what it was trying to be, slapping a ton of bible references seems to be something people like as well. Symbolism is cool, but I don't care about it if the story is mediocre. I would still recommend Eva to everyone I know, I seem to be one of the few that doesn't particularly find the anime all amazing, but I can understand the appeal.
This review is long overdue but that is my nature, I can only improve from here, which I very much intend to do soon. At least I got my review done though. I was also going to write something on EoE since I watched that as well, but I didn't really care enough about it so much so I'd write a whole review on it. Maybe one day, but who knows. The movie was just visually good though, some of the aspects to it was actually somewhat meaningful so I liked the references whenever they arise, but again, nothing particularly groundbreaking, in my opinion at least.
Let's just call this a 50/100 and EoE an 80/100. Sounds about right.
If you want an actual good sincere story and characters, with grandiose ideas and intriguing philosophy, watch Madoka Magica:
(I promise it is really good and it isn't keyboard spam)
#####I'd say The Promised Neverland too but that went to shit very very quickly. The manga is good enough tho.