End of Evangelion is probably one of the most perfect conclusions to a series I've ever seen.

@JosephNotASlav@poa.st It's astonishing how many people didn't understand what the ending implied. I consider NGE an excellent filter anime partially for this reason.

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st They get caught on the trippy imagery and the emotional shocks

@JosephNotASlav@poa.st it's an amazing standalone work as well. I never watched the series until long after I saw EoE (multiple times).

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st i consider it a filter anime too. if people like nge, then they are gay

@natsock@pleroma.nobodyhasthe.biz @JosephNotASlav@poa.st I like Evangelion for how trippy it is/the characters but it’s also hella depressing, which makes sense given Anno’s issues

@tengumatingpress@poa.st I've always thought it was strange how NGE has garnered this reputation as a 2deep4u anime when all of it's themes and message are presented in a really straightforward way. I mean hell, in the last few minutes of EoE the Shinji/Rei/Kaoru monologue straight up sums up the entire thing in a few sentences.

@JosephNotASlav@poa.st I've seen more than a few people who hate NGE because they watched it and it wasn't 3deep5them and assumed the show was for pseudo-intellectuals. I don't understand it myself, but in doing so they've made wild assumptions like Anno thinking Instrumentality was actually a good thing.

@RoyalJohnny242@poa.st @natsock@pleroma.nobodyhasthe.biz I think it's depressing in a more fleeting way. The series ends with a message that is honestly very uplifting.

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st i hate it cus shinji is a fag. never even watched it cus shinji is so gay

@RoyalJohnny242@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st I'm sure I felt depressed when I watched it for the first time, but now I see it as a mindfucking Jap take on Terror Management Theory. https://youtu.be/Joalg73L_gw

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st it's mostly a result of posers pretending they found it DEEP and MEANINGFUL which gave the animu a certain reputation. Then you had either contrarians or disappointed people who watched it with high expectations - and then bashed it for being pretentious (which it was to a degree) and overblown.

@takao@shitposter.club @JosephNotASlav@poa.st People throw around "pretentious" too lightly imo, I don't remember the series acting like it was super important or somehow touched upon themes nobody had ever considered. If you didn't like its stabs at philosophy that's fine, but I wouldn't characterize it as pretentious.

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st it was pretentious in the sense of Anno throwing shit together mostly because it sounded cool, and then cobbling a narrative around it.

@takao@shitposter.club @JosephNotASlav@poa.st I've never heard anyone use pretentious that way.

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @takao@shitposter.club The only aspect I think can be fairly criticized as somewhat pretentious is the series' usage of Christian imagery.

@JosephNotASlav@poa.st @RoyalJohnny242@poa.st same, not because the message is particularly joyful at all, but that it portrays the suffering and terror of the characters (and the audience in kind) as inevitable and generally manageable.

@JosephNotASlav@poa.st @takao@shitposter.club Fair, but everyone involved admitted it had no real meaning and was only put there because it looks cool and exotic to the Japanese.

@takao@shitposter.club @tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st im watching this in the gif now

@takao@shitposter.club @tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st also i think that is pretentious, thinking stuff just sounds cool, in a chuunibyo sort of way

@jd@cdrom.tokyo @JosephNotASlav@poa.st @tengumatingpress@poa.st humuhumu

@jd@cdrom.tokyo @takao@shitposter.club @JosephNotASlav@poa.st I think the "ey this looks cool, idk what it means but I'm putting it in" is too grug to be pretentious.

@natsock@pleroma.nobodyhasthe.biz @RoyalJohnny242@poa.st yeah. If I had to put the message concisely it would be: "Living life means painful things will happen, but you can get through them anyway."

@tengumatingpress@poa.st @JosephNotASlav@poa.st @takao@shitposter.club i think you make the mistake of thinking pretentious has to be smart but most of the time it isnt, since a lot of the time it is grug as hell as anyone with a brain wants to be understood actually. pretentious can be intelligent and obscurantist, but it can also just be obscurantist and a sort of meaningless aesthetic of intelligence.