"Congratulations!" - My Thoughts on "Neon Genesis Evangelion"

I had the pleasure of rewatching Neon Genesis Evangelion, the TV series. The famous animated series is set in Japan after a giant impact screws up the Earth and beings called Angels start attacking the city of Tokyo-3. The only defense against these supernatural monsters are Evas, giant organic robots piloted by 14-year-olds. The first time I watched the series, I was told it was one of the greatest works to come out of Japan ever. As you can imagine, I rejected it because it didn't click with me. But I wanted to give it another chance after 5 years and everything fell into place and I have some thoughts on the matter.

1. I applaud the series for delving into serious character issues. Sometimes a writer might implant a problem in the character that will easily be resolved in a matter of one or two episodes, such as an image problem. However, in Evangelion, the psychological problems are well ingrained. As opposed to what we're constantly fed through pop culture, these problems are NOT easy to fix and take time. Even from the beginning, we are clued into these character flaws that don't become prominent until the stress of fighting for their lives cause characters to break down. Killing monsters, despite being the enemy, builds and builds this tension until at some point the characters snap. They can't handle the pressure. And although the end of the series completely focuses on the mental degradation of the characters to the point of absurdity, it's nice to see an action series acknowledge the limitations of humans' abilities.

2. It saddens me that the show lost majority of its budget near the end of the series. Due to controversy over the disturbing violence of Episode 18, the show's budget was cut as opposed to the series being banned outright. The amount of reused images and wide-shots is noticeable once you observe closely. Many images have mouths intentionally obscured so the artists only had to make the still image and not the moving mouths. That is how bad the budget cut was. At the same time, it set itself apart from other animated series for using longer shots. To stay on a static image for over 20 seconds with little to no dialogue is unheard of, even in movies. But one image will last with me forever: Shinji decides whether or not to kill the last Angel. His morality is so conflicted that you merely have a shot of his robot holding the Angel. It lasts more than 30 seconds -- maybe even a minute! -- before it finally shows the fate of the Angel. Each second we wait, it's like our insides are churning, awaiting Shinji's action. It is so hard to watch because we know it's killing Shinji from the inside. But then you get to the last two episodes where you can tell all funding was lost. It abandons the story completely, delving into the enigmatic Human Instrumentality Project, leaving many of the series' mysteries unresolved. The last two episodes pose interesting psychological quandaries on identity and abandonment, including a sequence where the entire reality of the series is reoriented into a typical high school life, giving Shinji a glimpse of the life that could have been. Not only are these two episodes mostly composed of reused images, it downgrades to still drawings and then lines and then finally nothing.

3. Each Angel adds amazing depth and complexity. Instead of each enemy being only "stronger" or have some obscure ability, they evolve. The weakness of the last Angel is fixed in the new Angel and with each new situation, it becomes more and more difficult to kill them. As it becomes more difficult, the damage of each attack becomes greater and greater until the final Angel comes around and its nearly impossible to tell if everything will go okay. Oh yeah, and the fact that the series takes risks with its conflicts and characters, we never know if all will turn out well in the end. That unpredictability is something much needed in TV and movies today. Few directors and writers know how to correctly toy with an audience, make us doubt we know what will happen.

Now that I enjoy the series immensely, I actually look forward to watching the final film, "End of Evangelion", the director's answer to his fans' eager questions. I originally scoffed the movie as "absurd" and "unintentionally hilarious in its pretentiousness." What new perspective will it give me?