Evangelion Afterthoughts

Years ago before I got into anime, I've always been curious about this particular character  (the chick with short blue hair ) that I saw everywhere in town. This ubiquitous character left me wondering about her importance. Why is her action figure available in every single anime shop? When I first started using the net during the 90-s, I can still recall how often images of this character or the name "Neon Genesis Evangelion" appear in my search results. It IS rather odd because I was actually searching about something else. It is inevitable, even most forumers would use characters from Evangelion as their avatars / signatures.

Fast forward to 2004. The advent of my newly found addiction. Finally I discovered the "mystery" behind the ever popular Evangelion. Since it's quite an old anime (released in 1995), I had no interests in watching it. It was till 2009 when I downloaded it. The whole file is 10 gb and I managed to download all 26 episodes + 3 movies in less than 24 hours, via torrent of course. Impressive. Then I realize, this series must have really really hardcore fans who are willing to seed the files at such rate. This speed is considered quite good for Malaysia's broadband. Well, I finally watched the whole series together with its movies. In fact, I just finished End of Evangelion about 30 minutes ago.

Never in my life have I cringed so much just from watching an anime. I'm serious, Never. I was so ludicrously overwhelmed by what this anime has to offer. At first glance it looks like some stupid mech anime, which I don't really dig but I still ended up watching it just to find out for myself why the strong fanbase? After watching it, no doubt it is truly an anime which has successfully revolutionized the anime industry. I can now see where most animes draw their ideas from. It's so obvious. Since the animes that I've watched are those made after 2000, I have to say that after I watched Evangelion, other animes that I've previously watched are all child's play. I kid you not. It utterly changed my perspectives.

WHY? It's deep and it's serious and it's dark and I can go on and on about why this anime is such a masterpiece. The characters are all designed well, physically and personality wise. The show does not just touch the characters on the surface, there's a lot of character development/exploration going on. The main thing, its storyline causes viewers to keep analyzing and think think think. It's not a stupid child cartoon where the line between good and bad is clearly drawn. Difficulty in comprehending its ending is what virtually every single viewer faced out there. Despite its dino-age release date, there are still active forums on the net where users discuss the ending. Oh, and I was saying, it's not some crappy mech anime. In fact, it's not really mech. There's a whole lot more to the anime. In addition to all the greatness, there's a great deal of psychological factors involved which might be disturbing. The voice acting enhances the overall experience and impact of the anime. There were many scenes that made me cringed like crazy because of the VA.

I don't wanna sound like I'm fangirling because I'm not but  I'm merely stating the fact that it's brilliant. Evangelion is a bona fide anime and I think every single person who loves anime should watch it, that is if you haven't. Or maybe if you think anime is childish, watch Evangelion, it's an enigma. I believe most people out there only watch stuff like Naruto or Bleach and other newer animes but seriously, watch Evangelion. NGE is vehement on so many levels.