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Neon Genesis: Evangelion (NGE/Eva/Shinseiki) starts as a rather interesting mecha anime, it being unlike most others. Only young teens can operate the super-strong, impressive, and stunning mega-robots called Evangelions (Eva) in the fight against Angels, the bizarre mighty creatures attacking Earth. The beginning contains unique and interesting elements that give NGE the potential to be an amazing anime.

Sadly, the creators chose for it to be horrible. In almost every episode some more intriguing plot is introduced, often by arbitrarily throwing in some vague concepts without further explanation. This would've been fine if any of these plot threads/concepts were ever explained. Instead, the show just moves ... on to the next episode, introducing some more confusion without ever answering any of the questions the viewer may have.

Somewhere halfway the mecha anime spirals into some experimental post-modernistic atrocity, of course, one of the defining properties of post-modernism is believing that knowledge is not certain or objective, often pushing seeming standards we have established as the human race. This CAN be very cool, like with the design of the Angels. However, the creators also decided to push the definition of good storytelling and character writing. Watching NGE is like reading a book with 10 chapters of which chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are ripped out, which is definitely NOT cool. There's a tipping point in the show after which in every episode you will think to yourself: "How did we get here???". They'll introduce certain plans or events which seem very important and defining for the show, the climax even you could say. They'll then state that there exists a set of steps required to execute/reach these plans or events. They'll however not mention what any of these steps are, and then suddenly, plan/event X has happened, no buildup, no climax, it has just happened. How? An epic fight? No. It just happened.

For what is supposedly a mecha anime the fight scenes are nothing special, they're also short and quite sparse. If you're looking for action, you won't find it here.

The characters are infuriating, they do not act as normal human beings, and for most people, in order to be able to connect on an emotional level with a character, one must first recognize these characters as valid humans. The characters in NGE are just too unbelievable, there is no way people like these could exist in real life, and if they did, you'd want them to perish. All the main characters have severe parental issues as if the writer couldn't possibly imagine a person not having any. And they're so emotionally incompetent you want to beat some sense into them. They undergo very little character progression, and thus become stale very quickly, turning into a huge frustration. Witnessing certain characters doing the same infuriating shit over and over again gets old really fast. Some of the characters are portrayed as just being the issues they have, rather than also being human.

As the anime progresses it becomes noticeable that money was running out; certain scenes are repeated up to 5 times, consecutively, especially towards the end, where it'll just be a text appearing for .5 seconds, followed by a character philosophizing, on repeat. Some call this a genius piece of art outing the philosophy known as post-modernism, to many it will feel like what it is, money ran out, and they had to make something that looks like one's DVD player repeating because of a scratch on the disc.

The ending is arguably the worst part of NGE, some people argue it's amazing for being so abstract, complicated, and philosophizing about complex human emotions and thoughts. To me, it is just a horribly failed experiment, dramatizing and exaggerating basic human thoughts that are poorly processed by unrealistically incompetent people.

NGE is a mecha anime on one end, and a philosophical/psychological anime on the other. It failed on both ends. Regardless of the impressive piece of art some people consider it to be, it is simply not entertaining, which is what anime is supposed to be.

If you love banana taped-to-the-wall art for the deep meaning behind it, you'll love this anime, if you don't, I advise you to stay away from it.

On another note, the animation quality is fine, and the audio is really good, when watching this anime I can really recommend doing so in 5.1 surround.

Animation: 7
Sound: 9
Characters: 1
Story: 2