Evangelion kind of disappointed me, especially after I binge read the wiki and learned the backstory. There's so much potential to the setting and the lore, and the direction is ambitious and impressive, but the actual series is hampered by a tired monster-of-the-week format for most of its runtime.

It also fails to provide a coherent explanation for many of its mysteries. There's a sense of madness that pervades the latter half of the series, a growing tension that I don't think was intentional - more a product of the stresses the production team went through. In any case, the plotting and pacing become a confusing mess.

Whenever I think of Eva, I feel a deep sense of… unsastisfaction. I think that the Rebuilds were a huge missed oppurtunity. They had a chance to clean up the plotting and pacing issues while retaining the manic-depressive vibe of the originals, but they failed abysmally on both counts. I'd kill for some alternate universe version where Anno worked with an editor and some kind of continuity expert.