Spoiler-free review

Review in brief:

A numeric rating has no hope of encapsulating the original Evangelion experience. While it pulls off a striking character study with a bizarre presentation few other titles would so much as attempt, it comes at the cost of many basic elements some viewers consider vital to both animated works and stories in general. Carrying little about what you personally think of it, yet carrying greatly about what you think of yourself, it’s an abrasive personality best suited for a specific introspective partner.

Review in full:

Over 25 years after its airing, Neon Genesis Evangelion still has an enigmatic air to potential viewers. Some who have seen it herald it as anime’s ultimate masterpiece, others deride it as an incoherent mess, and people on both sides occasionally act like it’s all one giant meme. Perhaps if these people could stop arguing about it and its waifus long enough to just state its primary goal more often (to be a character study centered around the hedgehog’s dilemma), there would be less unnecessary confusion and vitriol surrounding the series’ first entry. Granted, the concept has more going for it than such a simple statement might suggest and there are other ideas at play, but that central notion would go a long way towards setting up what kind of anime this is; introspective to the extreme, perhaps to a fault depending on what you watch anime for, with much more than its colorful mechs becoming mere window dressing by the end of the TV series.

As for what NGE does focus on, we can start by looking at the main characters. Shinji Ikari needs no introduction; the timid, weak-willed teenage male lead is a staple of the medium. What makes him stand out is the authorial intent behind those traits. Thrust into a sequence of dire scenarios he has next to no control over despite seemingly being the only one with the power to avert catastrophe, Shinji’s ability to cope with his inner demons quickly becomes just as important as the alien war he is ensnared within. In this way, NGE functions as a critique of the “chosen one” trope, questioning the fairness, effectiveness, and other practical concerns in regards to the common hero story convention. Two other mech pilots, Rei & Asuka (as well as their field commander Misato) also follow this development path, though all with their own traits, problems, pacing, and results within the anime, all interlaced with the other leads. They are the living heart of the anime, with Hideaki Anno’s then-depressive mindset heavily but gradually poured into them. As these four characters push and pull each other along while the war rages on, an unorthodox yet complex character study surrounding their growing issues unfolds.

However, this “troubled development” process doesn’t pan out so well where less attention is given. There is only disappointment in watching Gendo Ikari get boiled down from a harsh yet mysterious enigma to just an obsessive sociopath when his cards are laid bare, and by the time the third character becomes some combination of sexually frustrated & scornful, the very notion has worn its welcome. At such points, the entry-level Freudian discourse NGE occasionally drops becomes especially grating, with the “every thought & instinct derives from wanting sex & death” viewpoint being no less laughable now than it was in the 1990’s. There are also some characters that have a hard time fitting into the plot as a whole. Fuyutsuki’s purpose as a character is lacking despite time being put into explaining his circumstances, and while Kaworu is intriguing, he shows up way too late to care about him as easily as the plot demands without a major attachment to Shinji.

Perhaps in this moment, the time spent on jokes and filler was regretted.

That all said, characters belong to stories, as much as NGE wants otherwise. The story here starts off pretty good, with subtle worldbuilding in spite of the split between the sporadic mecha-based action and the constant interruptions to look closer at the characters. Disappointingly, it steadily drops off until the plot merely serves as a goofily predictable (and thus drably unimpactful due to how serious it takes itself) backdrop to the character study. The story's stakes are poorly utilized. Proclaiming that a plan has a 0.000000001% chance to work (an intentional Japanese wordplay pun, mind) quickly becomes code for "it'll work first try". When plot-relevant losses do occur, they're nearly always so mild that they’re spilled milk compared to the surrounding damages (decimated armies, fleets, cities, etc.) that are usually ignored, or were things that came & went so fast that they bear little impact. As the character study relies on story events to drive it forward, the tonal dissonance hampers its impact for anyone paying moderate attention to the plot.

Yet more bothersome for the story-focused viewer is where the plot’s very believability becomes questionable. Some characters are trained for years to be mech pilots, while Shinji was given cello lessons instead for no discernable reason. SEELE is at once portrayed as lording over NERV yet helplessly irrelevant, and their Dead Sea Scrolls may as well have been called the Author’s Convenience if not for the Abrahamic motif. Most damning is how the character-focused dilemma NGE wants to put at the center of its world could have been solved in just a handful of episodes if NERV, a massive global entity with the power to do such things as sequester an entire country’s electricity on a whim, had bothered to hire even a single psychiatrist to monitor the mental wellbeing of the teenage mech pilots it piles the fate of humanity upon. Are there possible reasons for these questionable points? Sure, in End of Evangelion, but the TV series prefers to ditch the plot entirely and end on a PowerPoint presentation about how brow-beating mentally afflicted people with repeated, pointed messages is good psychoanalysis. For the record, I recommend never trying this in real life.

Ultimately, NGE expects viewers to fully invest in its main characters yet also devest in the surrounding story to get the full experience. As much as people argue about whether the characters are good or bad, human or insane, et cetera, the real argument that happens in each viewers’ mind is which is more important: the story of how Shinji & Co. struggle to find their own worth, or the story of how shady organizations use bizarre mechs to fight more bizarre kaiju in their quest for “instrumentality”? One is given center stage to be memorably realized, while the other is swept off to the side and left jarringly incomplete. Despite NGE’s heights, it’s not unreasonable for viewers to expect competence in both, for if viewers aren’t quickly enraptured by the characters, there is plenty of plot confusion to push them away from such engagement.

Now, it is worth noting that this imbalance is at least partially due to what amounts to sabotage by committee, mostly in the form of broadcasters forcing retcons (both during production and the initial airing) hard enough to effectively change the story's concept by the end. However, there were also many deliberate choices made that hampered the anime's cohesion, including the addition of filler episodes despite the constraints and deciding halfway through the original airing to dabble in psychoanalysis in place of even attempting to finish the story (until End of Evangelion anyhow). The resulting incohesive maelstrom sees some people find ample enjoyment in dissecting the plot threads of NGE to try and form a coherent structure with enough mental duct tape, though others may be frustrated that this process is practically necessary to tie much of the overarching narrative together, especially without other media in the franchise.

Does this still frame evoke every emotion the whole scene needs? Yes. Could it have done so if it was held for six seconds instead of 64? Also yes.

No troubled production is complete without wild quirks in production quality. While not studio Gainax’s first or last instance of this, NGE is their most infamous. The visual display takes a similar path as the plot, with a standout first impression largely thanks to Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s excellently thought-out designs that are appealingly peculiar without forgetting the little mundane details that make them whole. Tatsunoko Production was also brought in to perform heavy lifting on the action animation, and their efforts see Sadamoto’s creations weave and flow about as fittingly as they could have.

That said, action is not the main purpose of NGE, and there are also numerous static moments which only get more numerous and more static as the anime proceeds. In time, even moments where still frames make sense are drawn out laughably longer than they need to be, and by the end Sadamoto’s designs are so simplistically sketched that they aren’t just detached, they’re devoid of the character intricately tied into them. Some would argue that the later narrative’s esoteric reasons for taking the visuals in this direction fully justify it, but the average viewer cannot be blamed for finding that reasoning insufficient when taken to such an extreme. One common criticism that is overblown, however, is towards the manner in which Abrahamic symbolism is used throughout. While it is true that it was only chosen for “looking cool” and for Ultraman references, it does tie disparate plot elements together in a way that can help some viewers make more sense of them, so it’s hardly a fruitless endeavor.

The soundwork has its quirks too, though perhaps due to NGE’s character-centric nature they are more to its benefit. Not only is there exceptional SFX work and Japanese voicework, but this title is one of a lucky few that English speakers who prefer not to read their anime have more than one dub option to choose from. Most prefer the non-Netflix dub, but you’ll likely find at least one to be worth your time. The music has its odd choices too (looking at you, discount James Bond tension track) but there are an appreciable amount of memorable tracks as well, especially the iconic OP and ED pieces which fit this anime like a glove. Like everything else involving NGE, there are still those who find too much fault with some of the cheesier tracks and quieter scenes to see the praise as reasonable, but as an anime that seeks to provide emotive character moments the reasoning behind its more questionable sound decisions are probably the easiest to accept.

Verdict:

The ambition, passion, and pain that went into the Evangelion TV series are easy to see, but it’s all sentimentalities towards a project that bit off more that it so much as committed to chewing. While it's far from a pointless watch thanks to how well its main characters are realized, the later episodes resemble a proof of concept more than any sort of finalized product story and animation wise. Standalone, there’s little wonder as to how it became many of the things Hideaki Anno was trying to critique with it. Nevertheless, this anime has valid appeal for introspective viewers who seek complex characters above all else, and there’s still End of Evangelion to consider if one desires a somewhat more structured conclusion (or Gunbuster if one may prefer the general idea in brevity).