Neon Genesis Evangelion Sucks
“Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン, Shin Seiki Evangerion?), commonly referred to as NGE, Eva, or Evangelion, is a commercially and critically successful, influential and popular Japanese anime that began in October 1995;”
“A titanic and compelling show. The most controversial series ever made. The greatest anime of all time. These are just some of the things you will hear if you mention Evangelion”
” Mere words cannot do Eva justice. Neon Genesis Evangelion is just incredible. I am in asolute awe of its genius and depth. I loved the combination of religion, philosophy, and science fiction. This series stands as the best anime ever.”
“Evangelion is a genius work of storytelling. The way it can make 26 episodes make one great story with the most definite solution to a problem (mankind) I have seen yet, makes me feel really happy inside.”
“If u had to pick among all of the Japanese anime ever created… Neon Genesis Evangelion has to be one of, if not THE most influential animes ever created. “
These are just some of the things people are saying about NGE on the net. Its basically a global worship of it. And I can go on until tomorrow finding quotes.
It baffles me though. Why??? Well, I think I qualify as an almost veteran-level Otaku now. Just some of what I’ve seen and continue to follow include :
- Sailor Moon
- Dragonball/Z/GT
- Inuyasha
- Cowboy Bebop
- Jigoku Shoujo
- Death Note
- Naruto/Shipuuden
- Fooly Cooly
- Rurouni Kenshin
- Bleach
- Yu Yu Hakusho
- Elfen Lied
- Tokyo Majin
- Gundam Wing
- G Gundam and..over the Carnival holidays..Neon Genesis Evangelion
So I’m no n00b. However, I’m yet to see what’s the big deal about NGE. It isn’t deserving of most of the worship of anime fans as its been subjected to, and for crying out loud, stop saying its the work of a genius.
I really did try to like NGE, after having read some of the above comments about it. But I tried and failed, as not only does NGE not live up to its hype, but I think it SUCKED, to the point of, after watching all 26 episodes and the movies, being angry for wasting approximately 1000 minutes of my time.
NGE is a mishmash of religious symbols with inexplicable, very loose or even non-existent connections to the actual storyline, bundled together with a cast of some sick, seemingly sociopathic and weird characters, plus a large dose of confusing science fiction. And I’m not just deducing all this based on the fact that after much thought, research and second viewings of episodes that I still don’t understand what the fuck most of what was injected into the story means as it was said :
Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool.
- Kazuya Tsurumaki, Assistant Director of Neon Genesis Evangelion
“Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we’re offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for any Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the ‘all-about Eva’ manuals, but there is no such thing. Don’t expect to get answers by someone. Don’t expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers.”
- Hideaki Anno, Director of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Not that I needed to find quotes from the people that actually thought up NGE to support my opinion, but wow. “Find our own answers”? Sounds like lecturers who come to class, don’t do anything remotely relevant to the actual course they’re lecturing for, and then when students complain they say that they’re not into spoonfeeding.
Calling evil robots names of angels from in the Bible, including the scene of a 14 year old masterbating over an unconscious girl and having vague endings isn’t “classic” to me. The Human Instrumentality Project is a bunch of artsy-fartsy bullshit that makes no sense to anyone not fond of thinking in the extreme abstract. Anno urges us to find our own answers because he himself has no answers for the very thing he created. Viewers on the other hand see NGE, not understand half of it, and thus equate this misunderstanding and vagueness to a great work of art. I appreciate the fact that the characters were complex, but who really cares? Is this a soap opera? Is it really a selling point to say that they’ve taken an extraordinary amount of screen time delving deep into the psyche of….animated characters? The protaganist, Shinji Ikari, is as annoying as they come. In the final episode/movie, he behaves like such an absolute pussy that it was painful to continue watching.
Its stated on Wikipedia that
“Hideaki Anno, the director of the anime series, had suffered from clinical depression prior to creating the series, and the psychological aspects of the show are based on the director’s own experiences with overcoming this illness.“
Um, I guess that meant he just injected his own crazy talk he used to mumble to himself when he was depressed or high into the dialogue after they ran out of money towards the end of the series (“There were serious budget and schedule restraints in the later episodes of the series”) and needed something to ”to help distinguish” EVA from…well other anime that make sense. Interestingly, the themes of the last several episodes reflect the preceding sentence.
All in all, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a bunch of bullshit, on a level as verbose as its title, designed to wow us into thinking it should be placed on a high pedestal over other anime as one of outstanding artistic integrity, when in fact its just an average mecha anime, thinly veiled with nonsensical messages pulled out of Psychology textbooks and Religious texts, injected with the “personal experiences” of its director, at an attempt of making it much more that it actually is.
Naruto » Neon Genesis Evangelion Sucks said,
April 5, 2008 at 10:22 am
[...] The Undisputed Truth wrote an interesting post today on Neon Genesis Evangelion SucksHere’s a quick excerpt“Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲ [...]
Wikipedia » Blog Archive » Neon Genesis Evangelion Sucks said,
April 5, 2008 at 10:33 am
[...] The Undisputed Truth wrote an interesting post today on Neon Genesis Evangelion SucksHere’s a quick excerpt“Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲ [...]
viekevie said,
April 6, 2008 at 1:17 am
Where are your old blogs? I’m intrigued.
masteroftheundisputedtruth said,
April 6, 2008 at 4:37 am
archives of old blogs are on the right viekevie, if u mean old blogs as in those on another site, i deleted them ages ago.
Craze said,
April 24, 2008 at 7:51 am
So what you’re basically saying is:
“Evangelion sucks because I’m to stupid and/or lazy to try and understand.”
Quoting the creators about how it’s possible to create your own meanings is a cop out. Yes, Evangelion wove a wide range of bullshit into its science fiction and drama, but that’s what sets it out from the pack. The fact that Evangelion has such wide appeal even now stems from the fact that it IS possible to put the puzzle of possibly random bullshit together into a fair semblance of order, with a few things here and there left for speculation and your imagination. Some people actually LIKE having a puzzle to put together, and not many animes do that nearly as well as Evangelion did (or Serial Experiments Lain…though that’s another discussion entirely).
masteroftheundisputedtruth said,
April 26, 2008 at 4:19 am
I’m not familiar with Serial Experiments Lain, but thanks for identifying it as something similar to NGE so that I won’t waste my time on that either. Its not that i’m averse to stories that leave some things to the user’s imagination. I liked the Matrix and the Da Vinci Code. I however did not like the ending of the Soprano’s which was similarly PRAISED by some people as NGE was, as being overly “artistic”…why? For being totally vague? To me the directors of the Sopranos and NGE are the ones who copped out…but to each his own I guess.
Greypowered said,
May 1, 2008 at 10:40 am
Hello!
Like you, I’m quite an old anime watcher (I literally grew up with animes in the 80’s and 90’s) and I must say that on my first watching of NGE, I was also completely puzzled and did have the feeling that the creators simply combined a classical mecha-series with a bunch of far-fetched Christian religious symbols that they don’t even seem to understand themselves. I also went into searching what meaning there could have in linking such antic stuff as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Japanese science fiction future and couldn’t find anything, because probably the authors have only a very vague clue about these Dead Sea Scrolls. Then, I realized something that made me find the whole series interesting from another angle. All the babble about Christian (and also quite a bit of Buddhist) symbols, alongside the weird science and well, plot line, is just there to divert us from the main issue. It’s actually something that one can find quite often in cinema and literature. In my opinion, the main theme of the series are the relationships between the characters, who all have some kind of violent trauma in their life, and the not-so-far-fetched issue of integration in society. As you pointed out, Hideaki Anno has had some real psychological troubles in his life. To be more precise, he and his comrades at Gainax have all been otakus at one point of their life and they simply found a useful inspiration in this experience to run a successfull animation studio. Thus, the only somewhat “deep” meaning I could really find in NGE is a sort of message to other otakus telling them that they should get out of their bubble and meet the world, no matter how painful this could be. From our point of view, this might sound like a huge waste of cellos and energy, but if you consider the dimension of the otaku issue in Japan in the mid-1990’s (and NGE was made for Japanese audience first and foremost), then, it becomes more understandable that a whole team would want to make a series dealing with such social problems.
So, I somewhat agree with you that calling NGE an absolut master work simply because one doesn’t understand half of it, meaning that it should be a mark of high art, is of course absurd. However, I have been able to find a lot in it that makes me think of it as an important series, actually both in artistic and commercial terms. But it’s definitely not my favorite anime and I’m not about to worship it as the best of the best in all times!
As for Serial Experiment Lain, it is true that the plot line is also confusing and it is actually somewhat difficult to identify with the main character. However, I wouldn’t shy away from it simply because it is complexe. If you are interested in the way commercial products can account for some contemporary issues, especially that of the relationships between human being through the Internet, then, you might want to check it up. But you don’t have to watch the whole thing either, if you don’t feel like it!
P.S.: One of my favorite series is Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex. Not the easiest plot lines or even characters, but I think it is easier to see where the stories goes than in NGE!
unexplained_anomaly said,
May 2, 2008 at 11:45 pm
thanks for the comment Greypowered. I’ll check out Ghost in the Shell when exams are over. I’ve been hearing about for a while but it never appealed to me as it seemed too…marketed towards men as it contains all that unnecessary female nudity..but then again Bleach is filled with women with big breasts so..
Greypowered said,
May 3, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Hello!
The female nudity in Ghost in the Shell (GITS) happens more in the 2 movies than in the series, although I would say that they emphasize more the “feminine” attributes of the main character (Motoko Kusanagi). However, they come as a contrast to her very “male” and dominating temper, with the result that both somewhat cancel out each others to leave the impression of a quite charismatic and out-of-the-ordinary female character. The 2 GITS series are quite long (over 30 episodes each), but I think they are well-made, both from a scenarist and a technical point of view. But it does require a lot of concentration, because there are several stories intervowed. So, yes, you might want to wait until exams are over.
Good luck for these tough moments!
masteroftheundisputedtruth said,
May 4, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Sounds interesting, thanks. Will need luck desperately
TORU said,
May 17, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Your site is the best!!
Please link to this site.
http://evangelion-nerv.blogspot.com/
not closed minded said,
May 29, 2008 at 12:24 am
put your helmet back on, and go help dora find her little fox friend. “Sounds like lecturers who come to class, don’t do anything remotely relevant to the actual course they’re lecturing for, and then when students complain they say that they’re not into spoonfeeding.” you are the worst. think for yourself. adapt.