Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
ChrissyKay
Mod Edit: This review may contain spoilers.
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People have been fighting over the merits of Neon Genesis Evangelion since its conception, engaging in an endless bloody war to decide whether or not the series is a masterpiece or overly-pretentious filth. Writing a review for Evangelion is pretty much just adding fuel to the fire, giving one side or another some extra ammo with which to demolish the opinions of the opposition. For that reason, I've decided to do something different with my Evangelion review. I'm actually going to write two reviews, one heralding Evangelion as a masterpiece and the other condemning it as mediocre bilge. I've put my full effort into both of them, trying to make each compelling. I believe that both reviews get down to the essence of why people either love…
Read at the sourcekarlstein12
"Endeth mine life, f'r I hast committ'd the sineth of watching Neon Genesis Evangelion." - karlstein12 2k15.
You ought to be living under a stone all this time if you are reading this review in order to understand or what is Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's a show every anime fan knows of.
Although I've known this show for quite a while I needed the help of the Internet and some dank ironic meme pages to go an actually give it a shot.
NGE starts off like almost any other typical Mecha anime you see these days but soon transcends all the barriers any anime at the time had the audacity to. We get into the show with a 14-year old teenager named Shinji Ikari, who is called over to a mysterious organization "NERV" who is fighting beings known as the "Angels" who are trying to invade the city o…
Read at the sourceSNKFanboy
Neon Genesis Evangelion is the worst anime I've ever watched, and let me tell you why. First of all, the character development. Shinji remains stagnant throughout the entirety of the show as a scared little boy, with no balls. He never comes to realize the responsibility he has, and instead simply acts immature for the sake of seeming realistic. Asuka is an arrogant bully suffering under a depression after having a messed up childhood; and Rei is more of a robot than a character. Other side characters like Gendo and Misato do receive some nice backstories however, that doesn't help the weak main cast.
The story is average at best, consisting of episodic monster of the week battles against angels. Later it is revealed why this is so, all being a lead-up to Gendo's plan of human instrumenta…
Read at the sourceLoveLikeBlood
Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most well known anime of the 1990s. Whether someone recommended it to you or you happened to read the name in passing, Evangelion is a name that’s impossible to escape if you’re a part of the anime community. However, with its fame also comes controversy. The show has got to be one of the most divisive anime ever made. Many love it and consider it to be one of the greatest anime to come out of the 1990s and others consider it to be a pretentious mess with irritating characters. Well based on the score I’m pretty sure you can see which category I fall under. So without further ado let’s dig in.
The show is basically set 15 years after a global cataclysm and revolves around a secret organization called NERV which combats mysterious creatures known as An…
Read at the sourcekasigah
I realize that I'm likely painting a target on my face with this one, but here goes. Please read to the end, as my recommendation may surprise.
The biggest sin of NGE, in my opinion, is wasted potential. Be warned, I'll be touching on spoilers here, though I'll try to avoid any actual plot developments.
Story: 5
The story of NGE actually starts off rather strong. Eldritch abominations are attacking the world (primarily Japan), and only might mechs known as Eva-Units can defeat them. The only catch, only certain children can pilot these mechs, and doing so requires mental synchronization with the machines (in other words, if the robot's arm gets ripped off, the pilot gets to feel it). I love this premise, and it proves a great deconstruction of the genre. The problem is that eventually th…
Read at the sourceChrolloDevJS
Overhype, thy name is Evangelion.
Since I started watching anime, it seemed that all anybody could do was talk about how amazing this show is. In a sense, they're right. When one watches this show, they must see it through a lens of how revolutionary Evangelion was at the time, and how largely it influenced anime. However, this review isn't about that. This review is about how enjoyable this anime is to watch. Evangelion is well-written, full of symbols, and smartly deconstructs the mecha genre; however, it is pretentious, at its best underwhelming, and at its worst a complete waste of time to watch.
Let me preface this by saying that I am not a fan of the mecha genre. However, I was assured repeatedly by fans who swear by this show that this show is a psychological thriller at heart, an…
Read at the sourcedefunctmaluser
This was a rather tricky programme to review. Great pains were taken to avoid spoilers so if you're a fan of Eva, please don't take umbrage with me for not going in-depth with certain areas. If you happen to dislike Eva or feel that it's overrated, I'd still encourage you to read through this entire review. Feedback is greatly appreciated, as always. On another note, this review will NOT cover Evangelion's religious symbolism at all. I tried to in earlier drafts of this review, but they just made the review much longer and more tedious than they needed to be.
The last thing I want to talk about before I go into the review is the current state of Evangelion's licensing. Unfortunately, Neon Genesis Evangelion is currently unlicensed. It was originally licensed to ADV Films before its inevit…
Read at the sourcektulu007
Neon Genesis Evangelion is probably familiar to most of you. It's a well-known series from Gainax written by Anno Hideaki. It's also an anime I never got all the way through before this point. I tried several years before I wrote my first review when I was watching a bunch of anime because they had Hayashibara Megumi. I got through Nuku Nuku, Blue Seed, Saber Marionette, the Slayers, Love Hina, Bakuretsu Hunters and some others. Evangelion was the only series I couldn't get through. The characters annoyed me more than any cast I'd ever seen and the story was pants. In the end I got to that episode where Shinji and Asuka have to time their attacks using DDR, and no I don't know which episode that is numerically, and the sheer stupidity of that plot point resulted in my looking up the plot s…
Read at the sourcesushiisawesome
Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Just by saying that name, almost any anime fan will go into an extremely cautious silence. The weight of that series, among fans and haters alike, cannot be underestimated, as it's influence on the anime industry and anime fans is enormous; chances are that even if you hate the series, you can't deny it's positive influence on the anime industry, considering that chances are that you may even have something that was influenced by this series on your favorites, even if you immensely dislike the series in question.
Now, my opinion is a fairly different one from the vast majority of people who watch this series. I'm already seeing a plethora of "Not Helpful" votes just by giving Evangelion the score I did, considering Evangelion is often referred to as a series that…
Read at the sourceLemmy7003
Evangelion is widely considered one of the most influential anime created in the 1990's, if not of all time. It is extremely well known for it's brave attempts to turn the mecha genre on it's head, it's deep character development, and it's unorthodox storyline. Created by acclaimed studio Gainax, and written by both praised (and sometimes hated) writer Hideaki Anno, Evangelion has been called a masterpiece by anime fans. Does it deserve this praise.
Simply, yes.
Story: One of the most well known aspects of Evangelion is it's story; it is simply unorthodox, as it does the process of not feeding all of the story the viewer; it drip-feeds it, giving the viewer only half the story, or sometimes giving scenes without any context. For some anime, this would be a disaster waiting to happen, but…
Read at the sourceriver37
This is the anime that made me fall in love with anime and rejected everything else-movies, friends, TV, family etc.
This is the anime that launched millions of dedicated fanboys and countless obsessions.
And this is the anime that has an unbeatable level of character depth and symbolism.
So lets get down to the basics:
Story-10: There's nothing I can say to prepare you for the level of depth in the story, although giant mechs being piloted by anxty teenagers who are fighting against giant monsters has been done over and over again, no over anime can even compare to the deepness of the symbolism in the series and more importantly the psychological struggles of the characters. Though the first 15 episodes are action focused and like I said earlier, have been done before, from episode 16 on…
Read at the sourceAnomio
People who watch NGE usually feel 3 reactions afterwords: They loved it, they hated it, or they didn't understand it.
Before I talk about why I love this series I have to list the flaws. 1) Due to budget issues some episodes were... not exactly episodes. Watch the show and you'll know what I mean. 2) The main character comes off as a whiny coward. 3) Repetition.
With that being said, I love this series with a passion. Philosophy, violence, themes of growing up, puberty, the conflict, the (extremely) well developed characters, overcoming low self-esteem, etc., etc., etc. They are all the things I love and they are the things that make Evangelion stand out as a series.
Now I'm not going to lie, if you can't look past the flaws and if you are a happy person who considers everyone with emot…
Read at the sourceLindle
Neon Genesis Evangelion is perhaps the most popular anime of all time, trumping the majority of anime franchises, and is often considered to be the best anime of all time. Needless to say, it isn't. Not even close. Although it certainly had the potential to be, it just didn't live up to it. Which isn't to say Evangelion is bad, no. Evangelion is actually very good in many, many ways. The problem is, it counteracts this by having some horrible problem in another way.
The premise of Evangelion is set in 2015, set 15 years after the apocolypse, or "2nd Impact" wiped out half of humanity. I do love when a show claims Judgement Day will happen in the near-future, and gets ultimately proven wrong. At any rate, humanity is 15 years later being attacked by these things called "Angels", for some r…
Read at the sourcenategator
Hugely experimental and thankfully unique, Evangelion is a roaring failure.
Yeah, there might be spoilers but I'll try to stay away from them.
After watching several series, I finally ran across something that I actively disliked. Maybe if you are a (shudder) person who enjoys a nice bit of Camus to go along with your nightshade cocktail, you will really dig this series. Otherwise this one is going to be painful.
STORY: Evan starts off moderately interesting. For some convoluted reason a teenager is the only one who can pilot a super-mega-awesome-gigantor-robot for some convoluted reason. We've seen it before -- it allows the target shounen audience to have characters they can identify (i.e. lazy kid) get to play the hero instead of someone more realistic -- say a 30-year-old ace captai…
Read at the sourcePlun
Neon Genesis Evangelion has been known to divide audiences. And despite its love for giant robot battles and generous use of fan service, Neon Genesis Evangelion is unarguably one... of the most influential sagas in modern anime. In the history of anime no series has sparked more debate than Evangelion. For every viewer who's enthralled by its mix of classic anime action, convoluted philosophy, psychological angst, and religious imagery, there's another who finds it pretentious and ponderous.
If you are unfamiliar with Neon Genesis Evangelion and have yet to watch it for the first time, you're in for a real treat it truly is an emotional roller coaster. On the surface, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a basic mecha series with a host of teenage pilots controlling monstrous beasts called Eva’s.…
Read at the sourceVenneh
WARNING: This is going to be a very long review, as there's a lot of content to cover. Bear with me, please. Also, note that I watched the remastered version of the series, and the Revival of Evangelion (which contained only the Death segment of Death and Rebirth, combined with the End of Evangelion). Also, this review may contain some SPOILERS.
Title: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Manga, Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion has, at this point, three manga incarnations. The first, which shares the same title as the anime, was released to drum up interest for the anime TV series, though originally publishers thought that it was too out-of-date to actually earn money. It was authored by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (famous for his character designs for the .hack series and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), and…
Read at the sourceTheLlama
One of my absolute favorite things about this anime is how they have implemented lots of references to old religious symbols and characters; and how it's all done. They make the series into something more by doing this; it gives it a unique feel that I still haven't seen in other series.
The story itself is made up of pure awesomeness. It has a mix of mecha (which of course includes action), slight romance, and psychological elements, and especially the latter. It progresses nicely as the episodes pass, and we get to see more back stories, more psychological struggles, and lots of neat fighting. The thing that drags the story down is the two final episodes - they're very confusing. Though I'm able to understand many elements of the end now, when I watched this series half a year ago, I d…
Read at the sourceArchaeon
Since so many people have requested this over the years and as there's a new system in place I'm adding my 2009 review for this series which was originally posted on my blog here on MAL. The 2007 one was written in response to the obtuse fans that were here at the time, and it will remain after the review as removing it completely would serve no purpose.
It's also a reminder to me of something important.
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Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most debated animes in history. Some would argue that there are numerous hidden messages in the show, while others argue that it simply plays up to a certain puerile idealogy of the world. Whatever the case may be, NGE e…
Read at the sourceCitizenGeek
Note: this review is spoiler free.
Hugely experimental and wonderfully unique, Evangelion is a roaring success.
The basic, initial, plot goes thus: a 14-year-old boy named Shinji is called to NERV (an organization charged with defending mankind from extinction, no less) by his estranged, seemingly cold and calculating father. There, his fathers' first words are an order to pilot an immense robotic machine, the titular Evangelion, and fight against the monster that's attacking Tokyo-3, the city under which NERV has it's headquarters. These illusory 'monsters' are called Angels and are seemingly invincible - traditional weaponry, even in the year 2015, has minimal effect upon them. Only the Eva 'biomechs', which can be piloted solely by certain selected 14-year-olds can stop them. This [i]…
Read at the sourcePolaris
STORY:
Neon Genesis Evangelion... one of the most controvercial animes of all times, with legions of determined fans and legions of convinced haters this is one anime that hasn't gone by without leaving some feelings behind and so how can we not recognize it's value.
There are a lot of guys that say Evangelion was a great mecha/action anime for it's time but the confusing and boring ending and the fact that Sinji is a very weak character pulled down the anime... in my opinion they just didn't get the show at all... that is the beauty of NGE, the story is to deep for some to appreciate for a reason, I'll give you a hint... it doesn't have anything to do with robots, fighting, love, or heroes...
NGE is actually a story that uses action, mecha and pseudo-religious symbolism to advance philo…
Read at the source