Poll: Your prefererred Evangelion ?

[xmbts]

I liked the first 20 or so episodes of the original. Before comprehending it becomes a mess. I liked the rebuilds at first but then the last 5-10 minutes of the second one turned me off the whole thing.

Something about the science lady standing out looking up at the sky reciting some prophecy while a giant naked adolescent girl with an angel for a head made me think. "Yeah I don't really care for this anymore. :v"

 

[Nazgual]

Well the original series turned into pretentious bullshit so not that one. I'm waiting to see if the Rebuild series does something more interesting with the conclusion.

 

[Grach]

they are all incredibly boring and annoying.

its the characters really.
why does anybody trust a guy like gendo with anything?
does noone question the whole seele thing?
they had that lance thing that gibs angels and didnt use it?
and wtc happened with that rebuild timeskip stuff where they suddenly went baywatch nights on us?


gah. watch eureka seven and see a dumb brat grow a bit.

No one trusts Gendo, not even Seele. They just use him because he wants to cause instrumentality and needs the same things Seele needs to start it. That's why they invade NERV's headquarters in End of Evangelion.
Misato in fact questions all of this and spends a lot of time digging around. It was hidden behind a ton of UN sealed documents.
They didn't use the lance bacause they needed it in one place to start instrumentality. They eventually use it to kill an Angel thats in low orbit.
Finally, 3.0 Sucked (Major) Balls.

OT: I prefer the original series. The Rebuild series went waaaay too far in my opinion. I haven't read the manga though, I've been told it's better than the series and the movies.

 

[Talaris]

I vote for the Rebuild films definitely, but keep in mind I haven't seen 3.0 yet, and 4 isn't even out, so I'm just basing this on 1.11 and 2.22.

The ending (at least where 2.22 is concerned) felt more satisfactory by focusing more on the story and keeping things simple, rather than including psychological rantings and pseudo-religious imagery in search for a deeper meaning. On a more personal note, I suffer from and am being treated for depression, and seeing the way Shinji acts in EoE, and the way that film sensationalized his emotions, I just found really hard to watch.

Yes the original series had more complexity, but the way it held its cards close to its chest and rarely explained plot points just made me feel confused and annoyed too often. Perhaps knowing a lot of the story already when watching the Rebuild films helped, but stripping out some of the original plot points really helped the pacing, and in my opinion keeps the viewer involved rather than feeling out of the loop.

 

[Angie7F]

I have to point out that the original anime series and the manga are both separate work.
You cant say that the manga is the original of the anime for Evangelion.
Any how, I like the original anime best because it is eerie and asks crazy philosophical questions.
the rebuild is great with all the graphic enhancement and new stories but it lost that crazy adolescent depressed feeling

 

[bearlotz]

I notice a pattern emerging with the people's votes regarding the Rebuild series: those who haven't yet seen 3 hold the Rebuilds in high regard, while those that have seen 3 (myself included) tend to have a slightly different take on it. Just a thing I noticed, maybe worth looking into.

OT: I've seen the original series, EoE movie, and the Rebuilds, and I think the original series was the best of them.

What I love about Evangelion is how it starts off fairly down to earth, or at least as down to earth as a show about giant mecha can be, then progressively gets more full of mind-fuck the further it progresses. It's not until you're about two thirds of the way into the series that stuff really starts getting weird, and all the real mindfuckey stuff is weighted towards the end when everything is collapsing.

...the original series, for all its production hell, felt effortlessly paced with the writing and the weirdness. It felt like one long descent into hell

This about sums my thoughts up. When explaining the series to people I usually tell them "this is a mecha show in the same way that Batman movies are nature documentaries". The original series was a character-driven pot-boiler that uses the setting as window-dressing for the real story. The audience is hardly given any information about Seele, Instrumentality, or anything else really because you don't need to know any of that to get the point of the story, although I didn't really appreciate that during my first viewing.

 

[Sunrider]

Aw man, and I thought this was about which giant-ass robot was the coolest.

EVA-01, no contest!

As for your actual question, I dunno. I don't really read manga, and I still haven't watched the movies, so I'll withhold my opinion until all of them are released.

 

[Hawkeye21]

I've seen the original series and glanced through rebuild movies and manga... I have to say I am going to go with "Other". There is this doujinshi "Re-Take" which wrapped it up for me so perfectly, none of the canon endings ever came close to it. If you haven't read it DO. It's a bit... hentaish sometimes, but in a way that makes sense, and writing is kinda sweet actually.

Spoiler: SPOILER WARNING

 

[mitchell271]

I hugely preferred the movies. That said, I didn't they were very good. I'm a part of the small anime nerds that didn't actually like Evangelion. It got preachy, I despised most of the characters and it just bored me. The fights were interesting though.