The Anti-Escapism Themes of "Neon Genesis Evangelion"
(reelrundown.com)
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Yea, I think it's really the last couple episodes where people get lost. Without watching the movie as well that would be incredibly hard to piece together.
Right, I could understand a Japanese person getting messed up watching it as it aired and not having the full collection. Same with US in the West seeing it on Adult Swim back in the day (did the movie even air there? I don't remember seeing it ever).
But that's 15+ years ago, so people relying entirely on their ancient memories without ever finishing the series are foolish.
Not sure I follow your train of thought there. Anyone can watch it for the first time at any point, and watch as much or as little of it as they want. We aren't bound to TV schedules and release dates. I feel as though you're trying to invent situations in your head that make it easy to look down on people who may or may not even actually exist.
My point being that if you came away massively confused because you were watching it as it aired, that makes sense. EoE came out over a year later in Japan from the end of the series, and I'm not certain if it ever aired on US TV. Without the complete package, it can be hard to understand the finales.
I was giving benefit of the doubt to people who call it incomprehensible that they hadn't watched the entire series at once, and their understanding was piecemeal of childhood TV watching and then watching the movie years later.
Right, and at the same time you deny the benefit of the doubt to everyone else, despite the fact that there is no reason at all to expect they binge watched the entire series + movie.
I'd guess that's where the "meme" originally came from, people having just watching the original series and giving their reactions. Over time people just latched onto that idea and exaggerated. That's ok for random comments but I agree if someone is going to sit down and write a thesis on how incomprehensibly deep the themes of Evangelion are, they had better have watched all available content first.