I think it was alright, but it truly is a classic anime. Like most of you are saying, Shinji was annoying. So was his father. The girls complained all the time. Except Rei, but I mean Asuka never shut up and was just mean to everybody. The girls had potential, but it just seemed there were a lot of conflicts between all the characters. And then the ending was...well you all know. Out of place. I just skipped a whole ton of in the last episodes cause it was the same. I understand it's a reflection of the trauma, but at the same time, it's got to make sense and show what truly happens to everyone. End of Eva just seems so unrealistic...even in that anime, nothing what happens in the end seems at all possible in that world. So idk, overall it's good. The plot and action is cool, but towards the end it really falls apart.

Amazing how people can miss that. It makes me wonder how much thought they've really put into this "classic" if they don't see that as the lynchpin holding the entire series together.

IMO, that's far and away the most interesting portion of the story. Too bad that so much of it is lost because of whiny emo characters. Then again, it's the old "east vs. west" debate... the Japanese like different characters than westerners do a lot of the time.

That's exactly why it isn't deep though.  It's very straightfoward with a bunch of other bullshit on top for people to choose their own theme if they don't like the original obvious theme that couldn't be more spelled out unless he went "i'm so depressed" every 5 minutes.  (Which, he practically did.)

It would be like if someone made a simpe "rescue the princess" type game, but everyone was named after different different mythological and religious symbols all over the place... it would still be just about "rescuing the princess" with a bunch of red herrings out there as pretentious slight of hand.

Sounds like you described The Legend of Zelda or Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

Haven't played Muramasa...

As for the legend of Zedla... is there a bunch of religious and mythological refrences there?  I haven't really caught any but i haven't played it much since Majoras mask.

Even so... I'd say yeah, Zelda is very shallow when it comes to the story.  It's a simple story that's about what all Nintendo games are about.  The gameplay.

Link's first shield design was just a cross.

Ocarina of Time had some Muslim music in one of the temples, and then they took it back out of the non-Japanese versions of the game so it didn't offend any non-Japanese.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was originally titled The Legend of Zelda: The Triforce of the Gods in Japan.  Wikipedia mentions all the changes for the American version:

The whole Triforce is a symbol in many religions including Shinto and Norse mythology.  The 3 triangles making a big triangle symbolizes 3x3=9, which symbolizes the maximum potential for humans, as close to perfection as we can get (10 being God, 9 being how true and pure a hero Link becomes by the end of each game).

But none of this is important in the game.  It's just a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo 'cuz it's cool.  Without the censorship, Zelda has used Christian, Muslim, Egyptian, and Norse-or-Shinto references.

Muramasa on the other hand, is an awesome mishmash of every Japanese myth and legend mixed together.

I don't see anyone actually breaking down that stuff too often however. Unlike NGE where most people take the religious bullshit as the main point of the story and talking about how important it is.

Additionally borrowing stuff from other religions to play as a fictional religion is normal so people get that it's a religion.

VS something like NGE where EVERYTHING is named after either something religious or older anime for no reason... except to intentionally confuse people.

NGE is kinda like... Too Human for example.  What did Too Human actually have to do with Norse Mythology?  Not much from what people have told me.

For a better example.  Lets say we take "From Russia with Love."

Now name James Bond, Jesus Christ... Dr. No Set and Kronstein Balder.

It's the same movie with a bunch of pointless religious stuff and names heaped on top

It does nothing to enhance the story at all and just serves to confuse people and make them look way deeper then they should about something that is very simple.

It's not used like in Zelda where it's used to make a fictional religion more recognizeable or Muramasa where the mythology is actually connected in some tangiable way.

Yeah Second Impact will get explained later.

And yeah, that whole angel and MAGI episode is really weird. You'll learn more about Ritsuko's mom later too.

But now you're halfway through the series, and this is when it gets really crazy and starts speeding up. You're either gonna enjoy the wild ride or hate all of us who recommended it and piss on our graves.

Yeah the whole consciousness/identity/solipsism plot is really cliche now. The philosophical ideas have been around for thousands of years, and it's been written about in several sci-fi books for several decades, but didn't get super-popular with the mainstream pop culture until Evangelion in '95, Serial Experiments Lain in '98, and especially The Matrix in '99.

Wait... are you saying that you DON'T hate Shinji? Ok.

Anyway, I didn't like this anime much at all. Just felt like it was trying to be deep when it was pretty shallow.