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Evangelion went out the way it had to go out, sincere, haunting, and touchingly beautiful. The movie isn’t perfect, it is certainly confusing at times, convoluted, and tends to let characters go on long monologues, but that’s partly why I fell in love with the series to begin with. Other have complained that the ending lacked meaning, but I disagree. I would argue that it’s just as meaningful as the other endings to the series, this time focusing very much on themes of resilience and growth. Learning to bend without breaking, adapting to the cards that life deals you, and having the audacity to triumph ... in the face of impossible odds. The film isn’t for everybody, some people will not like it, but it is a true piece of art and it absolutely redeems the lacklustre ending of 3.33 when watched in sequence. One of my greatest fears was that this film would struggle to bridge the gap between the void of nothingness that 3.33 left us in and the satisfying ending the series deserved. I sincerely believe that it succeeded in this.

The last thing I want to highlight is the absolute quality of the English dub on this and the Amazon redub of all of the prior rebuild films. This dub is the single best dub of any Evangelion media ever. Even though the cast is largely left untouched compared to the Funimation dub of the first three rebuilds (and some are still around from ADV’s NGE dub). This is the first time that it felt natural. Spike Spencer and Tiffany Grant, whose performances of Shinji and Asuka I’m nostalgic for, but not typically not a huge fan of, absolutely killed it on this one as did most of the rest of the cast. Credit also goes to the studio for letting them swear and use coarser language that isn’t typically found in anime dubs. Moments like the pilot yelling F*** as his helicopter got destroyed in the opening minutes of 1.11 really add to the realism of the dub and help it sound like it was written for English instead of being a translation from Japanese. (Though, all that said, they kept “four-eyed crony” in from 3.33 which killed me a little bit every time they said it…)

Overall, I’m incredibly sad to see such an iconic series finally end. Honestly, I feel a little empty inside. Eva has meant so much for me in my times of darkness for the last seven and a half years and now it’s really done. But I really believe that this ending is going to age well. It felt definitive, final, and whole, with all of the artistry that I have come to expect from Anno. Bravo. And to all the children: Congratulations.

I find myself struggling to write this, largely because I absolutely adore this series. It is much easier to review a series I didn't care for and list off merits and faults. As I see it, with Evangelion there are two types of people with regards to this show, you either hype the show up, or you complain that the show is overhyped, I'll try to be neither for the sake of objectivity. Oh and probably some minor spoilers, no details I promise.

Story: The story overall is fantastic, it follows a 14 year old boy Shinji Ikari as he pilots the Evangelion unit 1, essentially ... a giant mech, to fight the angels, creatures of unknown origin that one by one launch their assaults on NERV, the organisation that oversees the Evangelion project. He is joined by fellow 14 year old pilots Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langly Soryu. Why 15 year olds? Well in the words of the series, "We must use fourteen year olds." Works for me. As the series progresses it moves more and more to focusing on the characters as they... Erm... Well... Develop... Instead of the battles with the angels. Oh and I'll talk about the ending towards the end... It's special...

Art: Was phenomenal! Well, I mean when they were drawing the battle scenes... Those were really something. The level of detail there is truly above and beyond. As for the rest of it, it's mostly still good! But well... There were problems. Curse you limited budgets! There are numerous instances of characters holding things over their mouth to speak, which for the most part isn't too distracting, but two scenes in particular stand out. In both of these they play a static image for far too long with only background noise playing, one is at the train platform and the other is in an elevator. The other point where the art really slides is at the ending but more on that in a minute.

Sound: The theme song is a classic at this point, even Cartoon Network's "Regular Show" did a spin off of the opening sequence. Personally I love the rest of the songs on the soundtrack as well. Shiro Sagisu is a fantastic composer and his songs fit very nicely with the mood. This is one of the few shows that I've watched with the dub track as well as the subtitles and it is actually pretty good. It struggles at the beginning, but after only a few episodes the voice actors really start to match their role.

Character: Shinji is not your average protagonist with confidence and all the answers. Rather Shinji is a coward who has to remind himself "I mustn't run away." He is balanced by Asuka, who exhibits confidence to to point of arrogance, and Rei, who was designed to fall into the uncanny valley, but has actually spawned off her own character type. Most everybody gets frusterated with Shinji and initially hates Asuka, but part of the beauty of this pilot team, from a story point of view, is that they're imperfect, they don't have all of the answers, and this conflict of personalities causes clashes. The characters all have depth to their personalities which is only revealed as the series progresses and this depth is impressive in itself.

The Ending: This is one of the original Gainax endings, endings that leave you confused and oftentimes disappointed. I will admit that after the last episode I sat staring at my screen slack-jawed where I said to myself "what the f*** did I just watch." The art for much of the episode quite literally appears to be black sharpie on printer paper. I don't want to go into the details, but in essence it's an abstract ending and nobody understands it for sure. If you're looking for something a little more concrete watch End of Evangelion... Though that has its own set of questions. That being said this ending is one of my guilty pleasures, Anno always says that Eva must mean something different to everyone and watching the ending and finding out what it means to me is something I enjoy doing.

Conclusion: I love this show, however I recognise that other people have different views and that the ending can be disappointing. All in all it was hugely influential, it is an effective deconstruction of the mech genre and it is massively hyped. Because of its infulence, everybody should watch it, if not only to catch the references that are scattered across other shows.

Minor spoilers? Maybe? From like episode 1. Seriously like from the first 30 seconds.

Full disclosure: I dropped this series after episode 11, I can't speak for what happens after that, but from what I hear from people who are fans of the series it is more of the same.

Story: In short, it's non existent. But neither is it episodic, it is a loosely strung together series of "historical events" written as if each country was a person. I'm a history buff who is especially interested in the 20th century, so I honestly expected this series to be a fit for me, but I was sorely ... disappointed. WWII is a situation where there is plenty historical irony ripe for the picking, but this show neglects to even approach that, instead relying on the characters quirks, which would be fine except for that the characters are countries. Additionally, the axis powers are pretty heavily promoted as the more appealing side, so..... Honestly, the best part was what they call "Chibitalia" and I'm not normally a fan of stuff like that.

Art & Sound: These were both fine, I use subtitles exclusively so I can't speak for the dub. The art was nothing spectacular, but nothing was terrible either.

Characters: The characters are terrible. Each character is created cantering on one or two stereotypes. I'm not an overly sensitive person, but... Well I'll put it this way, if an American firm put these characters out on a mass scale, every cultural association would be up in arms. Allow me to demonstrate with America. If you believe the series Americans are: stupid enough to suggest creating a giant super hero (we're not), always eating hamburgers and drinking bladder buster sodas (we're not), and still bickering with Britain over our colonial heritage (this one was the most ridiculous even as of the 1940s). This ignores the ridiculousness of the actual history of America's involvement in WWII, which they twisted and corrupted. Unless you're German or Japanese, your character is based off of a negative stereotype (until episode 10ish France is also an exception).

Conclusion: Allow me to summarise:
Historical content is barely existent
Praise heaped upon the axis countries
Negative historical stereotypes
Why do people love this series? I don't know, but the reason the friend that originally recommended it to me gave (aside from it being "historical") was that the boys were cute... Not really having an eye for things like that, I will neither confirm or deny, but there are definitely some yaoi undertones. Very very strong undertones.

Recommendation: I'm struggling to reccomend this for anyone.... I really do miss the appeal. I guess the fit of for people who A) Enjoy yaoi, B) don't mind derogatory national stereotypes, and c) Know enough history to laugh along at the "historical" references, but either don't understand or don't care about the nuances of each event...

The series is presented in 12, 3.5 minute episodes which made it easy and quick to watch and fairly low commitment. The question then becomes what it will try and accomplish. Here, I believe that they tried for too much. In 42 minutes it tries to include something at least bordering on a harem, comedy, and fan service (more on this later), all while trying to retain some aspect of the military theme presented in the title. All in all, it is fairly successful in the comedy department, but the series still comes across as kind of disjointed, in reaching for so much the story ... behind it is occasionally lost (although this can be partially forgiven due to the format) only to finally be regained in the last episode in what seems like a final attempt to tie the antics, especially those later in the series, into the main plot.
The biggest downfall of the series however comes in its excessive use of fan service. I think it's only appropriate to quote the English subtitles from episode nine when I describe parts of the series as "boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs." Yes, many anime have the same sort of content, but a minute in a half hour episode is a lot less significant than a minute in a three minute episode. Now carry that time through nearly every episode. The sheer proportion of time they spend on showing breasts bouncing or panty shots, feels like they are dragging the viewer through the fan service and harming the story.
This is a good segue into the art of the series, nothing is really spectacular or noteworthy except for the character designs and, well, they're all over the place. The male characters are nothing spectacular. There are three chibi characters (all female) and then a few more female characters done in the same style as the males and then designed for maximum sex appeal. The lack of unified art style is distracting, especially at the beginning when only three characters were introduced. I guess the saving grace is that once they introduced the other characters they stopped trying to do panty shots of the chibi characters.
As for the actual development of the characters it was really two stories. On one hand the female characters and one of the male characters were well developed (especially for the length of the series's episodes). By the end of the seriesI had a pretty good idea of what each of the characters were like and I even ended up liking most of them. As for the other characters their lack of development would be forgivable except... One of the undeveloped characters was arguably the "protagonist." The guy who was at least partially responsible for the whole series to occur is a blank slate. Based on calling out the type of panties a girl is wearing when he sees them (among other things) I can only come up with pervert to describe him.

All in all, "Military!" is not terrible, but I wouldn't call it particularly good either. If you're looking for a quick, easy to watch comedy and don't mind sitting through lots of fan service go ahead and watch it. Despite its flaws it manages to be decently enjoyable and while definitely not a must watch there's no need to blacklist it