Anime Discussion Thread - Page 4571

Uhhhh, I don't think it's that accurate to describe Eva as something with tons of drama.

The original NGE TV series is, I feel, divided into two parts. The first half is a sort of episodic show about a young boy with a serious case of "I'm a pussy" who pilots a robot to defeat alien invaders, referred to as "Angels." The show operates on a monster of the week format and, for the most part, displays some pretty unique ways of taking down the Angels. There's character development here and there, but the primary focus is on finding inventive ways of tackling each Angel, which all have varying abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. If there's drama, it doesn't really take any significant role in the story.

At one point, though, I think the studio behind NGE started running out of money, and Anno was also undergoing a serious case of depression. At this point, this is where the show just takes a massive nosedive for a lot of people (or alternatively a huge boost depending on what you like) because the episodic elements go away and whole episodes are spent on panning shots, minute long silences, and long, drawn out monologues, some to do with philosophy, others with the main character's psychological state. Again, not that much drama, but admittedly more than before.

All of this culminates in a final two episodes that bear no resemblance to the animation quality of the first 10-14 episodes. Some people hate it because they feel it's been reduced to philosophical pandering that's just trying to be deep but in reality is just pretentious garbage (which is pretty credible considering that Anno threw in a bunch of Christian symbolism along with other religious icons specifically because they, and this is paraphrasing his words, "look cool"). Others think that the ending is great because it's a great example of solipsism and the main character's development through various motifs and his role in the story was really well developed at the end.

I think when people say that Eva is a must watch, I think people say that because it's such an influential and simultaneously controversial anime (in the West at least) that it'd really be a shame not to watch it. NGE may not have invented a lot of tropes, but they certainly brought a lot of them to the forefront and definitely exaggerated a ton of them in the process.

The first 12/14 episodes are also super fun and have some of my favorite monster of the week type episodes I've seen, and the way that NGE shows the people in the show just preparing to fight the Angels was super well done. Anno is a superb director in his own right and his ability to place his "camera" at certain angles and highlight a character through a still alone is pretty impressive, imo. NGE might be worth a watch for some of those elements alone.

End of Eva is also my favorite anime movie just because I loved how weird it got. + Show Spoiler [NGE] +.

edit: also don't talk about eva too much in here

pretty sure 90% of the vets hate it with a passion :3