Gladly conceded. I will admit it was above-par by anime standards. And looking over my previous post, I've realised how my review of NGE was barely-coherent raging babble. So I'd like to take a minute, just sit down there, and I'll try to make some sense.PurpleRain said:
Yes, the script has its moments, and occasionally the characters will manage to be interesting through their thick coating of messed-up-ness. However, I think the problem stems from one word: 'deconstruction'. Deconstruction is, in theory, the technique of taking a genre apart and showing its faults or exposing certain elements that would make no sense/cause catastrophe in real life, via a story. In practice however, it's the technique of 'oh goody let's throw angst at the screen'.
NGE is a deconstruction of the mecha battles genre, and as such shows the grimdark far future of giant robots hitting each other. Parental abandonment, emotionless clones, fear and loathing in Las Tokyo, etc. This may have been effective, except that 1) I don't care about mecha battles and 2) instead of properly exploring this strange deconstructed world, as Watchmen does, it drags us down to wallow in its misery. Instead of sympathising with its tragic characters, you want to break a chair over their heads. Instead of crafting its own story, we get some nonsense about angels and cloning. Instead of building the story to a natural conclusion, the final episodes are a Moviemaker presentation on how Shinji should just suck it up or something. Also I can't get over that fucking penguin.
