This episode was what founded my need to watch the rest of this series. Anything that mentions the Hedgehogs Dilemma is something worth keeping an eye on. Especially if it's in a "post" apocalyptic mecha action/philosophical anime.
Randomly seeing this on Youtube has prompted me to return to this series. While personally not my most favorite of anime series, it is very hard to deny that it is worth watching, and has pretty well founded itself as one of those series that you just can't get around not watching. In fact, while talking with a friend about some animes, then I thought I was pretty well versed (I was not at all) and didn't know what he was talking about when he brought up Evangelion. To this he responded,
"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I was dealing with someone who had watched anime before."
Nick H.
I am not exactly sure why, but it is just one of those 20ish episode series that you need to watch. I won't go into plot at all, because the setting is kind of described, and by episode 2 you'll be rolling with it as much as you need to be. While not terribly coherent, it is....engaging.
In a recent IGN list of top 100 animated series, Evangelion ranks fairly high gaining positive reviews because it was something for an adult audience that they could get their heads around and think about. This is another series, almost similar to Code Geass, but even more dark in nature. The series was written supposedly while the author was either in a great depression, or was writing about a time in which he was. This comes through in the work very very well. Despite there are a few short comings in character development, and the plot is one that never truly gets explained, and the movie (a remake of the original ending) just complicates things more and more. However, I can't get too mad at this series because it does rather faithfully bind itself to an examination of what makes the mind break, how people tick, more or less a psychoanalysis of almost each character appears at some point in time.
Having just quickly watched a few episodes to get myself back into the swing of this series, I remembered something. How surprised I was at how the robots fight each other. They are more like cyborgs, having proteins and muscle fibers combining with the mechanical. As they fight, there is a very animalistic and frantic ferocity that I was very unused to seeing. It was almost unsettling. Just... so desperate. On that note, especially with the remake (I think they even changed the mouth animation so that it synched with english dubbing now from the looks of it. Awesome) there is always very very smooth transitions and movement. There are very few sweeping super realistic, HD landscapes that have been in the last few animes I've talked about, and mainly stays in its 90's style of anime. I also remember color choices and palette played a large role in how I responded to this series.
A large amount of symbolism and hints toward religion is thrown in at the heapful. It didn't occur to me the first time watching it, but take particular attention to how the Eva's (Mechs) act and are viewed throughout the series. If I had more time to write this I might give a drop the the philosophies and theories that strongly influenced this piece along with some of the other Freudian views that are discussed throughout the series. It is a great mind work, FUNimation is coming out with great HD versions pretty soon on youtube, and while not something I personally want to watch more than twice, there is, again, no denying the influence, and philosophy that is hardwired into this anime.
A pattern? And this is in just one episode.
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