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I saw it (and the ending movie) when I was a teenager in the 90’s. I found the movie to be one of the most depressing things I’d ever seen at the time, because…

Other than that, I really liked it. Since then, I’ve seen much better anime, but Evangelion is still great and a classic.

Sigh….

Queues up theme song

Fantastic artstyle. Weird as fuck movie. Still hands down the best themesong of any anime.

I watched a lot of anime in the 90s but I had to get all of it by VHS hunting through weird hole in the wall fan stores and doing loans/trades with friends. I use to browse the website anipike (the anime turnpike) to learn about animes because it had nearly all the anime in existence listed as well as summeries and pictures. It was a roll of the dice rather the tape would be Japanese, fan dubbed, subtitled, fan subtitled, or just a random copy someone made. Wild times. I don’t even think I saw all of NGE because getting incomplete sets also common.

Definitely wasn’t my first. I liked the ideas and most of the presentation. But holy fuck do I hate that whiner shinji. Like I kept hoping he’d get better but he was unbearable to the end. 7/10 concept 3/10 execution. Really don’t want to watch it again.

You ran out of ink too, didn’t you, ya bastards?

Personally I like to compare it to my favorite anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena, as they both have some surrealist themes and weird symbolism and homoerotic undertones with some normal episodes but overall being a mindfuck. I kinda see Evangelion as the shounen version and Utena as the shojo version, and I’m more into the latter but a lot of that is just which aesthetics you prefer.

Utena vs Evangelion, see, practically identical 😆

All I remember is the intro song.

OG series and the story retold both let me in a state of wtf. Its damn good - even though I do Like the first telling/ Timeline in the OG more.

Theres a Lot open in the end that is unclear and makes you think. Its hard to follow fully through and its definetely nothing to rush in a bingewatch.

Saw it in it’s original run. Blew my mind and I basically became the Evangelion guy for a cuple of years. I don’t think any other media influenced me more that than.

Nowadays I can’t stand it. Have some nostalgia for it, but it’s like please stop.

I watched it around the time that it was current, and had seen quite a bit of it’s contemporary anime by that point. Lots of iconic scenes and moments, until the ending goes completely bananas. The end was / is beyond my comprehension, with way too much symbolism (I assume) for me to follow.

Of course I’ve seen it. I was a teenager and it was the deepest thing I had ever seen. I don’t like the new ones.

only clips of the rebuilds, which is more or less similar. the angels apparently are more deadly in the new ones. there is a new series in the works.

I can’t remember exactly when I first watched it. Within a year or two of the pandemic though. I was solidly an adult.

It was not my first anime, but I still would not call myself an experienced anime watcher or anything. I watched it because I really liked Kill La Kill, looked up the history of studios Trigger and Gainax, and saw that this was one of their core franchises. And I saw Evangelion’s cultural impact on Japan being compared to Star Wars in America, so I figured I shohkd watch it.

I think its great. It starts off with relatively high-budget episodes, showing off smooth animation, cool and unique-looking mechs and great sound design (I watched the Netflix English dub, which had a bigger budget than the original). The kaiju they fight are pretty unqiue looking too. I’m also a sucker for other cultures appropriating western culture, so I love all random christian imagery they toss in unattached to any of its original meaning, just to appear “foreign” to their Japanese audience. It hits a lot of the mech anime tropes, complete with an animal mascot side character for comic relief. The 14 year old girls are a bit too sexualized for me, but I kind of get they were trying to sell this to 14 year old boys so… Eh. And even though its 14 year olds, they don’t spend a whole lot of time lingering on school life which is nice.

After the first few episodes it slowly shifts to the point where calling it a mech anime is an inside joke. The pacing is incredible and refreshing, and I think has aged even better when compared against most modern media that is edited extremely quickly to hold people’s attention. Beyond that… Well I could make a wall of spoiler text but I just recommend watching it yourself. I will say that this is a rare case where the sexualization of young girls is an actual artistic choice with meaning to it beyond just creepy horniness. Although I still think that’s mixed with an element of marketing that is a bit gross… Its complicated.

I also feel like I need to say I don’t take it too seriously. The psychological aspects are largely based on Freudian theories that were debunked decades or centuries before. I also often see Shinji used to represent introverted people, and I disagree. There’s a common trope of characters like him, who I would categorize as either extroverts who are bad at being extroverts or introverts written by extroverts trying to imagine what introversion is like. For reasons, I think Shinji is the latter.

Since then I’ve watched it a handful of times again. I showed it to my wife and it became her favorite anime, and she even got a tattoo based on it. We have watched the rebuilds a couple times, and they’re… Okay. I don’t think they stand up on their own, but they are more accessible for people who don’t have the attention span to watch the original.

Aesthetics? 10/10

The actual show? The most boring watch of my life.

Loved it. Didnt like the last episode.