I really wanted to love Neon Genesis Evangelion, and for about eight episodes in the middle, I did. Unfortunately, the series attempted to do too many things at once and soon was crushed under its own weight of emo, drama, and conspiracy. I still like the series, but it could have been so much more.

My biggest problem with Evangelion is that it wastes time. It wants to do a lot, but it spends so much time retreading the same ground that it never gets around to finishing what it starts. We all know Shinji’s emo, unfortunately the writing staff didn’t think we could figure this out as episode after episode revolves around him getting depressed. This would be fine if they weren’t simultaneously trying to focus on other characters, poorly-implemented religious imagery, conspiracies, and giant robot battles.

Not even Gendos awesome pose saved him from the clumsy second half of the series.

If they decided to just not have another episode where Shinji ends up all alone and sad until he is praised for piloting the Eva well, they could have focused on other things. Around episode thirteen it started the downward trend as the writers seemed to realize they only had half the series left. When they revealed Gendo and his room of old guys are orchestrating the angel attacks it felt really clumsy. They had been dropping small hints throughout, but just coming out and being “yeah we should probably do this to stick to the plans laid down in the dead sea scrolls” just felt really awkward.

The second half of the series felt awkward in general, they may have been going for that, but that doesn’t make it any better. It feels awkward in the wrong ways, like they were trying to cram as much as possible in the final thirteen episodes. This feeling of hurriedness is coupled with a sense that they forgot which parts they had already established. I can respect that Shinji coming out of his shell is the major focus of the series, but the we got the part where he isn’t happy. They could have cut down on scenes of his self-loathing just a little bit. We especially didn’t need the final two episodes devoted entirely to repetitive internal monologues. Those two episodes could have been done in three quarters of an episode without losing anything vital.

Only one person in this picture actually matters in the end.

Before all that though, they again start throwing other things at you that aren’t as related to Shinji’s emoness, making you think that they might be important. To the writers though, those moments are merely there to distract you while they plan how Shinji will become further messed up. They even introduce lilims into the story before completely ignoring them. They also completely ignore Shinji’s friend who piloted an Eva for one episode before disappearing from the plot. I could understand if they were trying to tell the story from Shinji’s perspective and Shinji didn’t care or know about those things, except they often show things that Shinji doesn’t care or know about.

As the final two episodes began I knew nothing was going to be resolved. What I didn’t know was how much of my time they were going to waste. Seeing recycled animations as Shinji talked to himself for over 20 minutes was not what I was expecting. They at first switched between characters, once again clumsily trying to focus only on Shinji while desperately pretending to be an ensemble show.

Towards the end of the final episode when they started discussing new things and having interesting dream sequences, I was finally back into the show. Non-boring things were happening, they were going to crude drawings rather than recycled animations, and no more bleedingly obvious revelations like “Shinji, you hate yourself don’t you?”

CONGRATULATIONS

As everyone sat around saying “Congratulations”, my opinions were mixed. On the one hand, I thought it was a good ending to Shinji’s story, on the other hand I was angry because they had falsely set up the other characters as important people who were going through issues similar to Shinji’s. The show likes to act like Shinji was the only character that matters while simultaneously spending entire episodes looking at the rest of the cast. If they had done this in 13 episodes focusing just on Shinji, I probably would have loved the series. Shinji still would have irritated me, but it would have been a good, albeit confusing story about Shinji coming out of his shell.

Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s problem is that it just can’t decide what it wanted to be. A story of a sad, lonely kid coming to accept who he is; an ensemble story about how people deal with pain, inadequacy, and other deep personal issues; or a conspiracy surrounded series of robot battles with religious overtones- the show tries to do all three at once at the expense of all of them. As much as I enjoyed many aspects of the show, the implementation felt very poor. It is a good show, just not the great show that so many people make it out to be.