Huge ass picture, but doesn’t it look so nice and colourful??

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=49

I was really scared about watching Evangelion. I put it off for the longest time, but the boyfriend won out eventually. I’d seen RahXephon (supposedly a rip off of NGE) a few years back, and I didn’t understand it at all, so I was pretty sure the same thing would happen here.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the first 20+ episodes of this anime are actually fairly normal (barring some psychological issue scenes that were really more boring than disturbing). I watched the first half of the series in trepidation because I was so sure it was going to go crazy on me any moment now. Strictly speaking, I don’t think it turned terribly bizzaro until the last two episodes. I didn’t actually watch episode 25 and 26 from the series, because TJ warned me off them. I haven’t seen Death and Rebirth either, although I read on Wikipedia that they’re mostly the same thing. I might go back and watch it for completeness because I’m compulsive like that, but anyway…

I don’t think there’s any real point trying to describe the plot, because the finer points are just way too complex to summarise, and I’m sure my readership of 5 either (a) have seen it or (b) have no intention of doing so. Philosophy aside, I really enjoyed the story for the story itself. The show doesn’t do a very good job describing some parts of the plot – there’s only so much you can do in 26 episodes – but Wikipedia and TJ (with his wealth of internet research) took care of that. More importantly I think the story telling was absolutely excellent. I’m a huge sucker for good story telling. It is one thing to have something meaningful to say, but most anime fail to put any thought into how it is said. In this respect I think FMA, Ergo Proxy and Saiunkoku are the only other ones that managed to do this to some extent, but they’re not my favourites for nothing.

The main character is ok, he got pretty annoying at some points, and he’s in pain for most of the last few episodes so there’s a lot of yelling and crying. He’s your typical confused kid who spends most of his screen time berating his own incompetence and his inability to sleep with any of the girls in the show. But it’s ok. I sympathise with him. If I had to watch all these crazy alien things tearing other alien things apart I’d flip out too. The character I liked most was probably Misato. Partly because her little love story was so sweet *sniff*, but mostly because she’s just about the only person in the show who isn’t really screwed up. She’s proof that not everyone with an effed up childhood has to be emo. o.o-b

Being not a philosophy major like dear TJ and not having gone through clinical depression, I guess I failed to appreciate all the really esoteric stuff. But I definitely liked the overall message of the story (even if I still think they could’ve done better at connecting it with the earlier episodes in the series). I thought the ending was really well done (another differentiator from most anime). The very last scene was so poignant. I almost cried. I like!