Neon Genesis Evangelion

All together, these 26 episodes had everything to be epic, but unfortunately, in my opinion, they end up failing to do so. Some talk about budget cuts during the series, others say the director, Anno Hideaki, didn’t have the ability to perfectly channel his ideas to the screen. Well, I go with a bit of both. If at the 18th or 19th episode I was completely amazed, towards the end I started to fill a bit disappointed. Still, in 1995/96 Neon Genesis Evangelion redefined the idea of Anime and came to influence many others that were released in the following years.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a futuristic mecha-based Anime, which instead of focusing in the fantastic battles or in the aesthetics of the whole thing, tries to shift the attention to a deeper level. A great deal of importance is given to the development of the characters and how these mature and interrelate with each other during the plot. Central to the whole story is the analysis of the human psyche and subconscious, with Freudian theories of Ego and Super Ego playing a major role here. There is also a big religious connotation throughout the series, but I would say that most of the times these lack objectivity and are rather more superficial.

As I mentioned before, the characters are extraordinarily well constructed with lots of depth into every each of them, and the way they develop during the series is just amazing. The whole story is also very interesting. In the 21st century Earth is being threatened by these alien creatures - the “Angels” – which can only be stopped by an organization known as NERV. This organization created these giant robots known as Evas, which can only be piloted by few chosen children. The plot than evolves into discovering some secret, mind-twisted and greedy projects of NERV that attempt to defy God’s power by creating an ultimate form human android, capable of thinking and acting by itself – the previously mentioned Evas. So far, so good. The first half of the series let us know a bit of the daily life of the chosen children and let us meet all the different characters of the series and know all about their personal dilemmas. Meanwhile, we get to watch some cool and intense action scenes between the Evas and the “Angels”.

The second half of the series starts off well. You start getting more involved with the characters and their emotions, and you finally start asking questions to solve the big puzzle that is being presented to you. This is where Anno Hideaki gets too ambitious, and I would say, a bit pretentious. This was also the time when the budget for Evangelion was cut. It is said that because episode 19 was way too graphic and brutal, even for the Japanese TV, the sponsor decided to bail out. The original ending just leaves a lot of stuff unanswered as if we were missing some pieces of a puzzle, being controversial enough for Hideaki to create an alternative one released afterwards in DVD. Anyways, towards the end you get the feeling that you’re going repeatedly and excessively deep into the same old characters problems. The central characters are broken into pieces in a huge sequence of introspective recycled scenes that are just too much to arrive at the ending climax.

All in all, this is definitely a must-see anime, which unfortunately gets stained by a sequence of final episodes that leave you with the feeling that the director was promising you too much.