WhatwasIthinking.co.uk

* please note that this post does contain harsh language and may - WILL - offend fans of the series *

Right, so I guess most of you know Neon Genesis Evangelion (if not, read the Wiki page). Basically, a very good friend of mine from the good old uni days warmly recommended me that anime. And in fairness, when it started I did quite enjoy it. The drawing style was very well executed, the overall feel of being in future Japan fighting against ‘Angels’ looked very well and the soundtrack was this nice mix of classic and electro-pop as many animes have it.

So why did you not like it, Alex?

Well for starters I do oppose work done by someone who half-way though thought it would be a great idea messing the whole story line up thanks to losing funding and allegedly turning insane. If you lose funding then stop working on a project until money frees up. State your case, seek funding elsewhere. This is how every project works. Even anime.

Half way through the season we all notice a shift in the quality of the episodes as well as the tone of the series. Not only does out main hero have personal father-son and ‘The world hates me’ issues, but also does one of the heroines begin to think about her dead mother half-way through a fight with one of the angels. Seriously, she could not have picked a better time, her mech (I know they are called Eva’s, but an Eva is something beautiful [Adam and Eve, or 'Eva' in German], and these mechs are far from that) refuses to work, she cries, our hero has self-existence issues. Hows that for a cool story line?

What else is there…oh yes, how about the fact that in episode 16 (I may be off here and it is ep 15 or 17, then again I don’t really care about too much to want to watch it again) one of the mechs has the idea of going berserk. Wow, I may be off here, but wasn’t this screened in afternoons for a younger audience? Great idea!!! What about the semi-sex scene a few episodes later?

Let’s have a look at the characters and the story line…sorry, I meant that thin thread the episodes try to connect each other in the second half of the series. We are greeted with a lot of personal story lines, but nothing does actually move the story forward. I remember the story being something along the lines of “Defend Earth from the Angels”, then again I might have misread it and it should have said “Let’s save Earth - no wait, let’s all have our own emo-problems and turn fucked up!” Oh come on, thanks for that!

Right then, let’s think about the episodes called ‘Death & Rebirth’ and the ‘End of Evangelion’: In a futile attempt to save something from the anime’s original story line (and to keep the fans not that pissed off with the studio) the studio thought it was a good idea to mess about a bit more. Great, now we see the hero jacking off to the heroine (who is in a coma - I am amazed that no institution of over-protective whiny parents or individuals wrote a long letter to their senator, major, whatever) and after some random fighting, crying, shouting, dying, razing, killing, maiming, making ones body explode….well after some time of that the hero tries to strangle the heroine and (obviously at this point) fails just to be greeted with the word “useless”.

At that point I felt really bad - mainly because I realised that the hours I put into that anime would never come back, that I have wasted precious time of my life on watching something with so much potential, just to see it get fucked over by the studio and its ever so slightly ’socially misguided’ director.

Dear Mr Sadamoto, I am sure you had only the best in mind for this series, thank you for ruining it.

Lastly, I am sure that I offended 99% of all anime-fans, and this was my intention. Instead of crying like babies, think about what I wrote first, and then try and tell me you didn’t feel cheated.