I\'m not sure why you seem to believe that pastiche = bad. Going by that logic, all of Tarantino\'s movies are horrible.
Just sayin\'.
I don\'t. I explicitly said it worked for Gunbuster down at the bottom. I just don\'t think it\'s enough to sustain a full 26 episode TV series. Anno had to bring something of his own to the table as the story was winding down and he couldn\'t just keep referencing Mazinger or Ultraman or whatever. The audience would get bored of that anyway; they\'ve seen the same shit in countless shows in the 70s and 80s. And what did he decide to bring? Two episodes of characters discussing a single concept of human psychology in a black void. I would honestly actually have preferred him to keep referencing stuff if that\'s the best he could do.
Though I strongly disagree on how unemotive Shinji is and the notion that he can’t act decisively (make up his mind, maybe) and that it’s just one issue that’s discussed there, but the claims of unoriginality, which I’m not familiar with, definitely piqued my interest. Thanks, I’ll definitely look into it.
Anno (and Gainax generally) is well known for being very open about his otaku loves and influences (take a look at this old science-fiction anthology![](\"https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif\")
). But you are not tracing well what he was drawing from. Asuka is based on Tetsuya in Great Mazinger, with his angry outbursts, need to be best, inferiority complex, and having to fight several mass-produced Evil Knockoffs of his robot. Rei is not Chirico, he is stoic from being a trained soldier, not inexpressive out of lack of human interaction (the end of the Ramiel fight struck a chord with me). Shinji is superficially the inversion of the hot-blooded hero codified in later shows than Mazinger; but the three pilots are also Anno\'s fear of others, fear of failure and fear of doing mistakes personified.
Zambot and Ideon (and Gundam) are precursors, but they are more plot-driven, with the fighting being the main story rather than a background for the character drama. In this respect Macross may come closest. Just look at how many spin-offs there are of Evangelion with no giant robots fighting monsters, compared to just about any other mecha franchise.
But even aside from the characters, Eva struck audiences with fights they had never seen before. As you say, all those shows except Votoms had badly extended budgets, needing constant stock footage and toy-friendly robots. Gainax\'s money problems are obvious in the show, but they kept making some of the most impressive fights of the time no reused animation. Armisael gave \"visceral action\" a whole new meaning. The Evas themselves are curved, stooped, and scowling, fitting their role as enslaved humanoids (whereas the Ideon is a generic articulated machine, entirely unsuited). Anno\'s directing is a another area of genius, and in a show that\'s all about miscommunication, means other than dialogue have to convey the cast\'s state of mind. Digibro made a video on his channel all about looking at the tricks used. The fights themselves convey character, such as in \"Dance as if you want to win\" where the Angel\'s coordination contrasts with the lack of it in the pilots\' lives.
In sum, liking the characters is a very subjective topic (and if you can\'t relate to them, you could consider yourself lucky that you\'ve never known the same crushing depression), but its influence and originality are clear.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
My personal theory is that Shinji, Rei, and Asuka were all based on Anno, not just Shinji. That’s why Rei doesn’t eat meat (because Anno doesn’t like it either) and Asuka is short-tempered (like Anno was, according to his creator page here, before he got married).
Actually Shinji was probably based off of Noriko from GunBuster...if she never evolved as a character.
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Much Less Interesting than it is Made Out to Be
4 and 1/2 years ago, I reviewed this show. Since then, I've become infinitely more experienced with mecha shows, and I can now say that NGE barely has an ounce of creativity in it and is mostly known for being in the right place at the right time and having just the right mixture of elements from prior shows to get people excited. Anyone saying otherwise has likely not watched older shows, probably due to an aversion to archaic animation.
NGE follows a very basic Mazinger Z template. Shinji is basically Tetsuya with the hot blood turned way down and the daddy issues turned way up. Asuka is a repackaged Sayaka. I'm not as sure where Rei comes from. I'm guessing Chirico Cuvie from VOTOMS. Either way, they go out and fight Angels the same as any mecha beast. Once a week and whatnot. And then they start ignoring the mecha fights and focusing heavily on the main characters (who were never really interesting to begin with) as their psychological issues accelerate, as they would in Zambot 3 or Ideon, and we get an ending evocative of both shows in the movie.
And that's what the show boils down to, Mazinger Z + Hideaki Anno's depression simulator. Not a premise that endears it to me. But of course, originality and premise isn't everything. What about execution?
There is one thing I'll give NGE credit for: the Angels. They have some really neat designs and many have more interesting abilities than you'd normally see in a standard MotW. The computer virus Angel was brilliant. Other than that, NGE relies a little too heavily on its characters, and with the exception of Misato, fails to make any of them compelling or interesting in my opinion. Shinji is a depressed, underemotive kid with parental issues and an inability to act decisively, leading him to make poor, half-assed decisions that keep him in the miserable state he's in for the whole series. This makes it very difficult to like him. Realistic? Maybe. Interesting? Absolutely not. You always know what he's going to do. Asuka is basically the same character, just replace "unemotive" with "overemotive and bipolar." Rei is largely unemotive, and while she changes more than her two peers, it's hard to notice or care given how little she actually expresses. And everyone else is just background noise. What action is there is passable, at least.
Hideaki Anno is a man whose directorial strategy is to make a pastiche of all the things he liked as a kid. This really worked for something like Gunbuster, where the setting and the release of each separate OVA episode lent the format to an almost vignette like atmosphere, not to mention the length being just right for what Anno wanted to do. NGE shows that this strategy wears thin on a full length anime, at least as far as mecha are concerned. In the future, I may watch Nadia to see if it holds true there as well. As for influence, NGE alone is not responsible for much, as its elements had roots in much earlier shows. It is not recommended.