Fans of the show have a lot of reasons to like NGE. The surrealist genre deconstruction makes great use of Biblical motifs, and the series does a lot of work to give stakes, pathos, and risk to what would otherwise be very mundane issues that come with adolescence. And that is, ultimately, the point.
Take away all the bizarre imagery and pretentious metaphors, and what's left is very simple: it's a story about children being afraid of, and resisting, adulthood, and how that fear destroys them.
In this series, the ultimate power is that of the Evas, of motherhood, and Instrumentality, the end result of great evil that only the oldest and most terrible adults want to occur, is the complete loss of individuality through absolute intimacy. There's a reason the scenes we get inside the Tang as Shinji connects with Misato, Rei, and Asuka are centered around sex.
There's not enough room to properly analyze all the ways this show illustrates the fear of adulthood and the fear of sex, but the bottom line is this: this show related so well to teenagers in the 90's because it takes all the problems of being a teenager and blows them out of proportion to the point of literal apocalypse.
That's not to say it's a bad show, but your ability to enjoy it depends a great deal on how well you can relate to the characters, and that depends a great deal on your personal maturity. Without the anime trappings, Evangelion is a story about a bunch of teenagers being their shitty teenage selves because none of them are mature enough to do otherwise. I mean really, what's more emblematic of shitty, selfish teenage behavior than complaining about how hard your life is while you don't realize it's your mother doing all the hard work for your sake?
That being said, the anime trappings are definitely intense and make for a pretty kickass show. It's a very complicated and flashy way of telling what would otherwise be a very simple school story, but it's still worth a watch.
It's About Growing Up
Fans of the show have a lot of reasons to like NGE. The surrealist genre deconstruction makes great use of Biblical motifs, and the series does a lot of work to give stakes, pathos, and risk to what would otherwise be very mundane issues that come with adolescence. And that is, ultimately, the point.
Take away all the bizarre imagery and pretentious metaphors, and what's left is very simple: it's a story about children being afraid of, and resisting, adulthood, and how that fear destroys them.
In this series, the ultimate power is that of the Evas, of motherhood, and Instrumentality, the end result of great evil that only the oldest and most terrible adults want to occur, is the complete loss of individuality through absolute intimacy. There's a reason the scenes we get inside the Tang as Shinji connects with Misato, Rei, and Asuka are centered around sex.
There's not enough room to properly analyze all the ways this show illustrates the fear of adulthood and the fear of sex, but the bottom line is this: this show related so well to teenagers in the 90's because it takes all the problems of being a teenager and blows them out of proportion to the point of literal apocalypse.
That's not to say it's a bad show, but your ability to enjoy it depends a great deal on how well you can relate to the characters, and that depends a great deal on your personal maturity. Without the anime trappings, Evangelion is a story about a bunch of teenagers being their shitty teenage selves because none of them are mature enough to do otherwise. I mean really, what's more emblematic of shitty, selfish teenage behavior than complaining about how hard your life is while you don't realize it's your mother doing all the hard work for your sake?
That being said, the anime trappings are definitely intense and make for a pretty kickass show. It's a very complicated and flashy way of telling what would otherwise be a very simple school story, but it's still worth a watch.