Character, definitely! @_@

I like absolutely none of the characters from NGE. Yeesh... they're all so psychologically damaged... Shinji is either in love with a clone of his mother, a girl who treats him like dirt, another boy, or with his own hand; Misato is an alcoholic with both a father complex and a not so hidden case of liking teenage boys; Rei is a walking, talking doormat to anyone who wants to use her; and Asuka is just a complete and total stuck up little @&#%&^%$ with serious self-esteem issues.

Ugg... the story was ok, but not a single main character in the series was likable for any stretch of time greater than 5 minutes. I wanted to like SOMEBODY enough to care whether they lived or died. Instead, I just wanted them all to die.

The best thing about Neon Genesis Evangelion was actually in the Love Hina Manga.

Larry

Keitaro: Nothing really matters anymore.
Naru: (Punches the crap out of him) Don't get all "Shinji" with me!
-Love Hina

gosh somebody got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning!
Thats a very cruel comment how you said you wanted them all to die! ;_;
it's so un-Ah! My Goddess of you!

Ah, but in the world of NGE, all the angels are bad! Different universe, different rules.... like I said, I tried to like the characters, I really did, but just about at the point you could say that a character was cool, they did something totally dispicible or disgusting. Ug... I really can't stand any of the characters from NGE... well, except the spy dude who you're forced to like so you can be depressed when he gets shot!

Larry

You do make a very good point... it is hard to like the characters of Evangelion (ESPECIALLY Shinji!), but it's easy for those of us with our own psychological damage to *relate*, on some level, with at least one of the characters.

wadda ya mean? i like Rei Ayanami i think she's a very good character, anyway not all the NGE characters are bad, the three operators, the ones in the brown uniforms, seem like decent people.

Heh.

Heehee

Bwaaaha ha ha ha!

That's like defending the Backstreet Boys as performers by saying that one of their Roadies is a nice guy! They're all minor characters... I'm addressing my comments toward the main characters. You can't use Aoshima to condemn all of Ah My Goddess, so you can't use these little minor bit parts to defend NGE (not with me, anyway).... you're digging at the bottom of the barrel on this one...

sorry, but that's just too funny.

Larry

im using what examples i can, since you seem to think the whole cast of Evangelion are warped, whereas if you think about it they act just like normal human beings with good and bad points, just that you seem to take more notice of the bad points more.
You may think Rei Ayanami is a "doormat doll" but in the end she rebelled against her superiors (although the result is questionable) and in one episode she sacrificed herself to save everyone else from the enemy.

Anyone who acts like Shinji did in the EoE movie while Asuka was lying there comatose is one sick puppy, and that's just another in the long list of reprehensible actions performed by the main characters of NGE.

Every single one of the main characters is psychologically traumatized in one way or another beyond my capacity to sympathize with them...

That includes Rei... she's a clone designed to basically be a replacement for Ikari's dead wife, and they established that she has a father complex for Ikari, while also having feelings for Shinji, who just happens to be, in the twisted manner of the Evangelion universe, her own son. Sorry, I don't care if someone reaches into your chest and wiggles their hand around, killing everyone on the planet is an extreme overreaction.

Even when they act relatively normal, few of them display qualities that make me consider them good people. Misato comes closest by far, but she's carrying around enough baggage to need her own semi.

Larry

i think youre overreacting a bit with regard to NGE, there are many more anime with "sicker" characters. ever seen Violence Jack

I don't watch those either... Hey, like the NGE characters all you want, no skin off my teeth. All I'm saying is that I don't find any of them to have enough redeeming qualities for me to sympathise with them (except for the spy dude... but he was cool because they were gonna kill him and they made him sympathetic).

I have to have a least one character I can mostly like in an anime for me to really care about it, and none of the main characters of NGE fit the bill for me. I've never been impressed by the whole "the world is messed up, so I'm gonna be even more messed up" kinda brand of storytelling that has become so popular in recent years (it was done well in the movie "The Crow", I have to admit). Yes, there are anime out there that are even more disturbing and twisted than NGE. I don't watch those either. I can't bring myself to care about the characters. I want to have at least some interest in them. Other people obviously feel different... otherwise NGE wouldn't be one of the most hyped (over hyped in my opinion) anime series ever. That's fine...

All I'm saying is that as far as I'm concerned, none of the characters in NGE are sympathetic (just pathetic). I'd rather watch something (almost anything) else.

Larry

time to call it a day and wrap this whole NGE character debate up! time to continue on with the main thread topic!

I don't like Asuka. I'm sorry. She was my least favorite NGE character by far. Second worst was Maya (or whatever that lesbian NERV worker was called). So that's pretty bad.

IDK, Asuka was spunky and all, but after she got pwned by that stupid bird angel ended it. For the last few episodes, until the final congratulations, Asuka was as useless as Teri Shivo. Pretty damn useless.

Misato was the best character. She had a sense of justice, and helped Shinji out at hard times. Her death was by far the saddest, and was the only reason I bought EoE (which was one of the scariest things I ever saw). Next was Kaji, for his uniqueness.

Side Note, Rei wasn't all that bad of a character, and you could see her strength in EoE when she rejected Gendo in the beginning of Complementation.

wow that last post was exactly one month after my last post! i love it when an otherwise cold thread gets revived like this!

LOL...I just couldn't stand someone cutting down Rei's awesomeness, while praising Asuka's patheticness...