![]() ![]() I totally understand why it would utterly blow the minds of the kids who saw it on the initial run-it was aired in Japan as children’s TV… it’s anything but. The story gets completely lost in his self-explanatory symbolism, drawing from Christianity, Kabbalah and Shinto alongside other religious beliefs. It’s clearly a autuerist, work but you can also tell he is making it up as he goes along. The mythology around the creator, Hideaki Anno, who clearly had some kind of mental breakdown during the production, is used to shore up the alleged depth of the work. The film gave some answers, but also poured more fuel on the fire of confusion. The final two episodes were so controversial, and left so many people bewildered and disappointed, that they decided to make a feature-length reimagining of those episodes. I’d rather read some 150-page Albert Camus book than watch a goofy, melodramatic mecha anime show that lasts 26 episodes plus with a feature film. It touches on all of this, but in such a high-school fashion that at the end of the day it’s so obvious. The show and the film are considered a complex and layered look at depression and existential dread. It then follows a fairly routine monster-of-the-week plot until about 15 episodes in, where it becomes increasingly surreal and the inner psychology of Shinji and his fellow pilots Rei and Asuka take over the story, culminating in the phantasmagorical final episodes, and especially the film The End of Evangelion. The protagonist, Shinji, is recruited into a shady organisation known as Nerv by his father, Gendo. The initial plot is a fairly simple science fiction story set in a post-apocalyptic world where teenagers pilot giant robots known as “Evangelion” into battle with “Angels,” who are some kind of extra-terrestrial beings hellbent on destroying humanity. However, the hype for what is a 20-plus-year-old show and film it is so prevalent that I wanted to see it for myself. But it’s simply not the pinnacle of the artform-that would clearly be something from Studio Ghibli or Satoshi Kon. It’s something that escaped my consciousness till fairly recently when I noticed it was a favourite of a close friend. Neon Genesis Evangelion and its follow-up, The End of Evangelion, are considered by legions of fans to be the pinnacle of the artform known as anime. ![]()
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