Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Review – Glass Reflection

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Neon Genesis Evangelion. Why am I even making a video for this? I can describe Evangelion in two words, and do you wanna know what those two words are? It’s shit. No seriously, final verdict It's Fucking Shit, with a rating of negative infinity out of zero, recommended anime being School Days and Boku no Piko. That’s it, I’m done here. Until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – stay frosty.

...Of course, I can’t actually have that as my review, because that would make me A) an elitist troll, B) a liar, as Evangelion is actually a fantastic deconstruction of the mech genre, or C) a pussy little bitch who runs away from reviewing heavily popular anime, and I am none of those things. At least, I don’t think I am. Anyway, it’s time to review this thing. Ladies, gentlemen, and others, my name is Arkada and welcome to Glass Reflection. Today, Neon Genesis Evangelion, the original TV series. Okay, let’s jam.

The Setting

Set in a pre-apocalyptic alternate universe, the world of Evangelion is under a constant threat from “Angels”, mysterious Lovecraftian-like beings that appear, basically out of nowhere, with the intention of – as far as we know – destroying the entirety of the human race. So like any anime that intends to be a traditional “good vs. bad” show, the human race has created an organization called NERV and a collection of giant robots, known as Evangelions, to fight the oncoming threat.

And of course, by some unwritten rule in anime law, all the pilots for the Evas are not highly trained professionals skilled in combat, but rather a group of inexperienced fourteen-year-old children who must now save the planet or else we all end up destroyed in a cataclysmic event known as the Third Impact. Of course, unbeknownst to basically freaking everyone, there is a secret society bent on the completion of the human instrumentality project in order to bring about a new age of human evolution. Confused yet? Don’t worry, it gets worse.

The Characters

Starting off there’s the case of Shinji Ikari. Shinji is the lead protagonist of the Evangelion series and resident whiny, little bitch. Having lost his mother back before he can remember and being heavily neglected by his father Gendo, the world seems to have taken great pleasure in beating the crap out of this poor little Japanese boy. He has never really had any purpose or meaning in his life until his father, finally finding a use for him, calls him to NERV Headquarters in Tokyo-3 to pilot a giant robot and fight aliens for the good of mankind. Normally, this sort of development would have a character grow into a more heroic and world saving role, but of course this is Evangelion and Shinji Ikari is our introduction to an entire cast of characters that are all equally screwed up in their own special ways.

Shinji himself suffers from major psychological issues, including a massive guilt complex that makes him believe that every bad situation he has ever been involved in, regardless of his actual influence on those situations, is entirely his fault. This gives him a self-worth comparable to most modern JRPG protagonists, minus the ability to occasionally have a backbone every once in a while.

He also suffers from the hedgehog's dilemma, as he is unable to form meaningful human relationships without getting emotionally damaged by the very relationships he is attempting to form. This of course makes him even more of a social introvert than Satou Tatsuhiro from Welcome to the NHK, and it becomes a reoccurring theme with Shinji that instead of facing his problems and not blaming himself for basically everything that goes wrong, he prefers to just run the fuck away. If only he could have actually stopped blaming himself for everything and grown a backbone every once in a while, he would have been a much better character overall. But instead, we got what we got.

Next up is the case of Asuka Langley Soryu, a character who is so incredibly different from our whiny protagonist, while suffering from almost the exact same problems. In contrast to Shinji’s introverted-ness, Asuka is much more outgoing, even sometimes annoyingly so, with an attitude of extreme smugness and superiority to cover up her similar anxieties. As the pilot to Evangalion Unit 02, she appears in episode 8 showing off her impressive piloting skills and is completely badass at everything Shinji seems to have difficulties with – a fact that she continually taunts him with.

Her anxieties begin to come to light as the show progresses, as her mental state requires her to receive continual praise from basically everything otherwise her self-worth begins to drop down towards Shinji levels. On the whole though, between the three main Evangelion pilots, Asuka seems to be the sanest. Well, as sane as you can get for being a character in Evangelion anyway. Yes, she has a messed up childhood and really doesn’t have the best of experiences during the show itself, but anytime I think back on her character as a whole, I remember just her badass moments of awesome, making this German vixen one of my favourite female anime characters.

And now we have the case of Rei Ayanami. As a character, Rei is not much to talk about without getting into the heavily spoilerific aspects of her character, as she, for the majority of the show, remains shrouded in mystery. We know that she is the test pilot for Evangelion Unit 00, has some sort of personal connection to Shinji’s father, the current NERV commander Gendo Ikari, and she also allows people to check off funky coloured hair on your Anime Wildcard Bingo Sheet. Like seriously though, blue hair and red eyes? And no one thinks this is unusually or creepy at all? No one? Huh.

More importantly though, Rei is the iconic emotionless doll character. The irony of this is that Evangelion’s creator Hideaki Anno originally designed Rei to be someone who existed on the other side of the uncanny valley, attempting to be an example of just how creepy and inhuman an emotionless-like doll can be. Instead though, she ended up becoming her own freaking character archetype that has since exploded and is responsible for a vast number of attempted clones, all with the same emotionless behaviours, though with some characters getting far better developed than Rei herself. Maybe Anno shouldn’t have dressed her up in a sexy skintight plug suit, I don’t know.

The last character I’m going to talk about directly is Misato Katsuragi, the operations director in charge of most of the Angel battles, as well as the mentor to the Evangelion pilots, regardless of her qualifications as an adult role model. Her personality allows for changes depending on the situation, as she is able to be calm and collected during a mission, but also to be more carefree when she’s off the clock.

Like everyone else in the show, she suffers from her own personal trauma, mostly stemming from being a survivor of the Second Impact, the catastrophic event that originally introduced the Angels to the human race. This gives her psychological symptoms very similar to both Shinji and Asuka, though her methods of coping far exceed theirs, allowing her to appear far more upbeat than more or less any other character in the show. This seems to be one of the more admirable factors of her character, as even though at times she is as emotionally broken as everyone else on the show, she still has the sense to make sure those under her care are safe. Well, as safe as letting them fight the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, anyway.

If I was to attempt to continue to explain all the other characters, I would be here all day, as the complete range of mental nitwits far exceeds that of what is able to be talked about in a short review such as this. The vast number of character interactions and relationships in the show deserve far more than just brief mentions, so I’ll let you experience them yourself when you get to see them. But just know that they are all emotionally broken in some way, shape or form, even if they are only background characters or those with very little relevance to the overall plot of the show.

The Story

To say that the story of Evangelion is amazing is like saying that Twilight sucks. The majority of the community know this fact to be true, but there is a small yet radical portion of the community with an opposite opinion. This is because, unfortunately, Evangelion is also the subject of immense hype. Like any anime that has been placed on a pedestal by some to be considered for the award of greatest anime that has ever existed, anime fans going into Evangelion for the first time might come out of it saying that it wasn’t that great because it did not live up to the hype created by its fans. However, if you’re one of those people that can look past the hype and take the show at face value, considering that it originally aired back in 1995, then you should be fine.

The main focus of Evangelion has always been on its characters and their development. Every character presented in the show has interesting aspects that the viewer would like to be explored, and the show obliges them, though usually in a fashion that raises more questions about the characters than it answers. Although, in addition to that, Evangelion also follows a standard mech anime with a “monster of the week” type setup. Any given episode will have a new Angel appear and the characters come up with a new way to defeat the threat that culminates in a quick battle scene before the Angel explodes, usually in a symbolic cross-like fashion, before the episode ends and we do it all over again next week.

But, as the show progresses, the usual tropes from mech anime start to deteriorate, usually in correlation with the mental health of the main characters. Plot elements get introduced that quickly make the show change from a show like Mobile Suit Gundam into a more darker representation of the genre in the same vein as Madoka Magica and, to a lesser extent, Digimon Tamers, all of which being examples of shows that heavily deconstruct the genre to which they belong. This is further proved when the show places less focus on the battle scenes between the Evas and the Angels – though they are great spectacles – and more on the real meat of the show, focusing squarely on the characters.

The Ending

Now normally, I don’t like discussing a show’s ending to the extent of giving it its own section of the review, but my philosophy is that the ending of any show is paramount. And in the case of Evangelion, it is my belief that its ending is what stopped it from being truly great. It’s fairly well known that during the latter half of the show’s production, money started to run short. I could argue that the production staff knew about this eventual shortage from very early on, otherwise we would not have had immensely riveting scenes like the train station one in episode 4 where literally nothing moves.

The flaws in production value slowly start to manifest as the show continues, with increasing amounts of fan service and nudity being used in an attempt to keep viewers distracted from the flaws that were becoming larger and larger the closer the show got to the end. The final two episodes is where all animation quality gets thrown out the window due to lack of budget and the show ends on a less than ceremonious conclusion that, well, kind of pissed off a good number of people.

Sure, a lot of people have taken the ending and said that it was intentional and adds on to the show’s already existing religious symbolism. But I take such thoughts with a grain of salt, as the lack of funds is a much more logical explanation for what happened. Besides, Hideaki Anno must also have thought that the ending was bad. Why? Because if he didn’t, he would not have tried to remake it…twice.

The Animation

This is definitely an area in which Evangelion tended to fall harder than most in some respects. I already mentioned the financial problems that affected the animation quality as the show neared to a close, though honestly at times I feel like Gainax knew their budget from the get-go and skimped basically wherever they could. One common production shortcut that a lot of shows like to take is restricting character movement so that only a character’s mouth needs to be animated. Evangelion goes a step further by having many scenes where the character who is speaking has their mouth either covered, or off camera, so as to further skimp by not even having to animate the mouths moving.

Though just because they skimped does not mean that they didn’t make up for it later on. For every scene where basically nothing happens animation-wise, there’s another where everything moves in completely awesome ways. The battle scenes specifically deserve particular notice for being some of the best animated scenes for any anime of the time. So while yes, there are times when the animation is kind of nonexistent, it makes up for it later on with a bang.

The Sound

In terms of the overall soundtrack, Evangelion is nothing extraordinary, minus one or two tracks that stand out for interesting reasons. One of my favourite songs from the entire OST is a song called “Decisive Battle”. Fun fact though is that this song puts Evangelion up alongside Death Note, Full Metal Panic, and Big O for having a song that was heavily influenced by an already existing composition. Take a listen to the opening of Decisive Battle, and then compare it with the James Bond theme 007 Takes the Lektor. But hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

The dub for Evangelion can be a little harder for people to handle than most; while overall I personally applaud the entire cast for their performances, I do admit that the actors seem to take their time settling into their roles, and there are moments early on in the show that are wince-worthy in how some of the lines are delivered.

The only other notable thing as far as sound goes is the opening theme, and Evangelion’s OP gets a lot of love, appearing at the top of a lot of people’s lists for the greatest anime opening in existence. While I will admit it has its merits, I would never put it up that high on a list myself. Sure, it’s a catchy song and all, but do you know what else was catchy? The Black Plague. Just because it’s catchy doesn’t mean it’s good. Also, if you ever have the time, go ahead and look up the translated lyrics to the opening, then keep in mind that the entire song is about Shinji. It’s kind of hilarious.

Final Verdict

Considering how old the show is getting nowadays, it might be harder to describe it as a modern classic, but its influence and popularity is fairly unmatched. There isn’t much more to say that hasn’t been said, while still avoiding spoilers in some form or another. Now I could have written an entire section on the religious symbolism that takes place within the show, but let’s be honest. If you’re not overly religious yourself, then the majority of this symbolism will go right over your head and have no effect in your enjoyment of this show as a whole.

I will however give a recommendation to skip the final two episodes of the show in favour of instead watching the original film End of Evangelion. Of course, you are free to watch the original ending if you wish and you probably should watch it at some point just so you can understand what all the fuss is about when people mention it in conversation. The story continues in the film, though the ending still lacks the answers you might be looking for.

Also, when you do get around to buying the show – which, if you are a self-respecting anime buyer, you should – for the love of Haruhi, don’t buy the collector’s tin, because this thing is a piece of shit. You can’t even get your fingers inside to pull out the DVDs. And due to how slippery the individual cases inside can be, when you flip it over to try to get them out, half the time they fall all over the place. So long story short, just buy the thin pack or something and you’ll be much better off.

With all that in mind, I have meticulously calculated values for the categories of story, characters, animation, sound, and my own personal enjoyment, and – after having its DNA analysis confirmed blue and having Holden declare “It's an Ange-ru” – has me awarding Neon Genesis Evangelion with a score of 8.06 out of 10 and rating this show Certified Frosty, a rating reserved only for the best of the best and those shows too important to ignore.

At the time of this video, the show has previously been licensed by ADV Films, but is currently available from Section 23 Films since ADV nipped off to the back and died. It is also available from Madmen Entertainment if you happen to live in Australia. For everyone else, you’re shit outta luck as it’s not even available for legal streaming at current, besides possibly Netflix or something. As far as alternate anime recommendations go, I’ll be quick to mention the possible Evangelion clone RahXephon. Though if you’re wanting something a bit more upbeat, then I would also highly recommend Gurren Lagann, as it is a fantastic anime also done by Gainax.

And lastly, since I know it’s going to be brought up in the comments, I will get around to talking about the Rebuild of Evangelion movies at some point, most likely when they’re actually finished and released in English. Though I will always recommend that you watch the original series before going on to watch the rebuild movies. Yes, the rebuilds are basically just a retelling of the show and – in some cases – they do things a lot better. However, the original series has a lot more groundwork, more character interactions and developments that the rebuild movies don’t have because of running time. Besides, if you get to watch the show first and then watch the movies after, overall you just get to watch more Evangelion, and what’s wrong with more of a good thing?

So with that, I leave you. Until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – stay frosty.

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