Anime, Manga and Otaku stuff

[Tarnsman]

I have always considered Evangelion to be incomprehensible, impenetrable, pretentious, and awful. Having watched all the episodes and the movie as well as Rebuild, I stand by my statement.

Sounds about right.

[DoomRater]

I gotta gt back into Hajime No Ippo. I left off the animated series right after Ippo took the belt from Sendo since that was all I could find subtitled at the time. New Horizons should cover his journey to the world belt...

[4thcharacter]

I have always considered Evangelion to be incomprehensible, impenetrable, pretentious, and awful. Having watched all the episodes and the movie as well as Rebuild, I stand by my statement.

It's one of those anime that have the best opening themes though.

[koopanique]

(One of) The problem(s) with Evangelion is the ending.
I mean, both the anime AND the movies endings: the catastrophic anime ending is clearly due to the fact that the studio didn't know how to properly managed their budget (a problem they again encountered with KareKano, which is nonetheless a masterpiece), and the movie ending is just nonsens.
Don't get me wrong, I know there must be some kind of rational explaination for this ending but heck, I hate when it leaves the viewer to go to its own nonsensical world. Many, many animes suffer from this. Too much is too much.
The soundtrack was great though. The OP was cool, too.

The characters are unsufferable. The simple fact that only 14-years old can pilot mechas is barely bearable, it would have been fine if the characters weren't so... prompt to make me angry. I can't even say they're outrightly bad and even I can see they tried to flesh them out a little bit, but Shinji's always depressing mood is horrible to stand, Asuka is actually MADE to be the unnverving girl, and Rei simply holds no purpose (except for a plot twist at the very hand). The only character that is redeemable is the guy that plays piano with Shinji at the end, but I don't even remember his name.

[4thcharacter]

Didn't Hideaki made the anime wonky and seemingly "unstable" because he was depressed when he made them? And he hates otakus and anime fans in general too.


Speaking of best OPs, Mirai Nikki has one. But that anime left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.

[wildweasel]

Evangelion feels like it was never meant to be popular. It was probably meant to be a merciless takedown of the massively-overpopulated mecha genre, right down to the underaged pilots, disturbing amounts of nudity, and the utter psychotic breakdown of an ending. It seems like the sort of production that is trying to say, "That thing you like is bad and you should feel bad."

[Big C]

It did a shoddy job of it---it made Shinji as annoying as he was pitiable, it made Rei into a lust object for an entire generation despite ostensibly aiming for the opposite, and Gendo has a lot of admirers despite him being the designated asshole of the series.

Evangelion has a nifty, almost Lovecraftian premise---using weapons we can barely control that we reverse-engineered from enemies we barely understand in order to fight them---and has both nifty mech action and some genuinely freaky monsters, but oh dear Lord the human characters are such amateurishly-written bags of dicks.

As for Rebuild, it has its own problems---but at least they made Ramiel REALLY FUCKING METAL while they were at it.

[Tarnsman]

Evangelion feels like it was never meant to be popular. It was probably meant to be a merciless takedown of the massively-overpopulated mecha genre, right down to the underaged pilots, disturbing amounts of nudity, and the utter psychotic breakdown of an ending. It seems like the sort of production that is trying to say, "That thing you like is bad and you should feel bad."

So Evangelion decided to give a massive "fuck you" to the industry by just doing what Tomino had already been doing for the better part of two decades? Examining Evangelion through the lens of mecha is completely missing the point. The show is about the characters. The ending was not "we ran out of budget" the ending was what the story was meant to tell. It's a broken fourteen year old boy accepting his individuality and learning to love himself. If the ending had anything to do with budget or telling mecha fans to go fuck themselves, then the ending wouldn't have arrived at the same conclusion as the no budget TV ending in the big budget movie ending. Furthermore the ending is not a "breakdown" but a build up as the climax of Evangelion is Shinji learning to accept himself. He is himself and he is rejecting the idealist paradise of collective existence that is instrumentality. He is accepting humanity for all its strengths and flaws.

Which honestly fits in line with many mecha endings. Sometimes the happy ending results in your wife turning into space dust, or the universe resetting, or you falling into a coma because you defeated Jupiter Cock, or the entire world turning into a drink for astronauts.

[koopanique]

The ending was not "we ran out of budget" the ending was what the story was meant to tell. It's a broken fourteen year old boy accepting his individuality and learning to love himself. If the ending had anything to do with budget or telling mecha fans to go fuck themselves, then the ending wouldn't have arrived at the same conclusion as the no budget TV ending in the big budget movie ending. Furthermore the ending is not a "breakdown" but a build up as the climax of Evangelion is Shinji learning to accept himself. He is himself and he is rejecting the idealist paradise of collective existence that is instrumentality. He is accepting humanity for all its strengths and flaws.

Yeah. Meanwhile I still think there is a problem with both the anime ending and the movie ending, and while I can (kinda) see what you mean about Shinji accepting himself, the means to reach that conclusion in the anime are clearly awkard because they had no money left. I'm talking about the two last episodes. Then they did have money to properly end the show with the two movies... and, well, it was a spectacular ending for sure, but not one that made very much sense. If it's actually a tale about accepting oneself, I'm sure it could have reached the same conclusion with a much less WTF-inducing ending.

Anyway, I haven't see all the other Eva-related animes (You Are Not Alone, etc), so maybe I'm still missing out on about the why of the how of the endings, but frankly I don't want to watch them.

[YukesVonFaust]

To me, it's gotta be Saber Marionette J.
when i saw Episode 10, or 11, i saw Soldiers wielding MP40-like guns.
and then i made them in sprite form.