"Masterpieces"

This review is from: Neon Genesis Evangelion: Platinum Collection (DVD)

This series began with a simple, almost stupid concept involving giant mecha-Angels attacking New Japan and little kids who can sync up with Evas to fight them.

The mere logic and mechanics behind these battles is infuriating in how ridiculously off-the-wall bat**** insane they are. It seems like in every single battle with every single angel, without fail, one or all of the Evas is brutally and gruesomely damaged almost beyond repair, and every little scheme or superweapon developed by NERV has a chance of success dangling near the 1% mark. It started to become a running joke for me to laugh when a gigantic super-laser that would suck up half the country's power supply to fire one shot had something like a "0.00000018167%" chance of success, and they just go "fire it anyway", and it somehow works on the second shot.

But the real shining star of the series was the character interaction, particularly between Shinji, Asuka, and Rei. They had adorable moments together, and lots of school-aged sexual tension that never got raunchy or disgustingly over the top.

Then around the early-middle of the series, this sort of interaction started to lessen, as the characters became less well-rounded, and more stereotypical caricatures of their sex, and then later of mental illnesses.


Shinji went from a shy, sweet young boy desperate for his father's attention, to something resembling a schizophrenic who lives only for praise, and then when he receives said praise, he accuses the praisers of lying to him just to make him go and fight in the Eva.




Asuka was my favorite character, and she was most like me with her sassy attitude and hitting people-ness. Then they start digging up this backstory of her mother going insane, and beginning to think a doll is her actual daughter Asuka, and ignoring the real Asuka as "that other girl", culminating in Asuka coming home from school to find her mother has hanged herself and the doll.

It would have been interesting to explore this effect on Asuka IF and ONLY IF it had been properly researched and gone into minor psychology from which Asuka could overcome this problem or fall to despair from it.

Instead, she just goes crazy, moping around like Shinji, and generally acting "decidedly" unpredictable, in that her actions seem to be only motivated by plot convenience.



Rei Ayanami had a chance to be someone who would stand out, who would somehow, despite not being an individual (spoiler alert) would somehow break out of that shell with Shinji's help and establish herself as her own person. This entire subplot was being established every time Shinji tried to emotionally connect with her.



Misato Katsuragi was humorous and interesting enough on her own, but then they give her an unresolved-relationship-end thing dealy with that other guy. This had the makings of a typical romantic comedy-drama, but since the whole series devolved into a series of caricatures of mental illnesses, she becomes insane and obsessive and a cliche' stereotype of a "hysterical woman".


The Blonde woman (whose name I forgot) simply goes insane, and thinks her mother's spirit lives on in the Three Magi machines, and starts to talk to them like they're her mother. Also, she was apparently raised with "traditional japanese values", which means she believes women are a completely different species from men, and thus somehow it is impossible for them to relate.


Everyone else who was formerly a real character simply becomes a canvas upon which a depressed artist paints what he believes to be real and relevant portraits of the worst of humanity, but only show that this artist has not done his research, and has no experience with the human condition to understand how a person falls to their bad experiences, and what they do to overcome or get run down by them. Everyone in this series is simply a convenient prop piece for the artist's bitter message on how humanity is trash.



But that is including the "End of Evangelion" ending.

The original show earns one star from me for its ending, one which should have been kept. In it, Shinji, in a surrealist sort of place, struggles with his internal demons, and eventually overcomes, realizing that he has control over his life, and he is suddenly surrounded by all the characters of the series, applauding him overcoming his whiny man-child emo shell and becoming a real, well-rounded person once more.



The messages in this series had great potential, but were poorly executed by a storyline which seemed to have been either written by entirely different people mid-way through, or was being steadily transformed by a depressed director who was probably not involved in the final episode, judging by how he went and changed it in "End of Evangelion".


Either way, despite the good character design, initially great character chemistry and development, and initially interesting concepts and philosophy, it completely fell apart from its message, and became gratuitously overbearing and pretentious, with a severely narrow-ranging view of the sexes, and rather childish sexism you expect in disillusioned pubescent adolescents without a proper guiding hand in their development.