Anime has been a huge blind spot for me. I knew about Dragonball Z and watched a good amount of it in college.
But I also knew about Cowboy Beebop, which I had no interest in.
This anime passion was lying dormant in me until my youngest said that they wanted to go see Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero in 2022.
It was a fun movie that served as a good introduction to the series and genre.
Before I knew it, they were completing DBZ: Kakarot and starting to look into other anime and manga franchises. We took them to the library, and they learned about One Piece and read and watched almost the entire series.
They then showed me Jujutsu Kaisen, and I was back in.
I was impressed by not only the quality of the animation but the story telling. It was like when I first learned about PC games and knew there was whole other world out there I wanted to explore.
My Story
I love my movies and TV Shows.
With streaming services blowing up out of control, there is content out there for everyone. But, I also love my podcasts. I listen to “Get Played” so frequently that I actually decided to pay the $5 to hear more from Nick, Matt, and Heather.
Their Patreon episodes vary in topic, but they used to be Anime watch discussions.
The first set of episodes was about Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The name seemed familiar, and I might have watched the end of the series in college because I heard it had an insane conclusion.
I saw that it was available on Netflix and that it had giant robots. I was in.
I watched episodes 1 and 2 and listened to the podcast to follow. It was then that I learned that this show was one of the host’s favorites and something they rewatch once a year.
The Show
I continue watching two episodes at a time to keep in sync with the podcast’s watch along. The show if fairly dense, and the podcast helps keep me understanding what’s going on. I’m getting a little lost on all the characters, but I love the action and can tell there is some lore being built up.
The show is set in the future where earth has experienced attacks by these titans (known as Angels). I quickly see how much one of my favorite dumb movies, Pacific Rim, is stealing the plot from it.
There is a group of kids that pilot the Evangelions to defend Earth. You get to see some action and interesting “wait what’s happening?” plot points. I was through episode twelve when I heard one of the podcasts hosts say, “this isn’t really even Evangelion yet.”
I was thinking there is some fun little twist that occurs in the last third of the series. But, I was wrong, the show goes to a whole new level. The movie then does a great job of combining the first and last portions of a series into a perfect conclusion.
I don’t want to go deep into the series, because I don’t want to spoil anything for readers. This is just meant to be a hype post for how great the show is and how glad I am that I saw it.
But Wait There’s More
This series was so popular in Japan that even after the perfect concluding statement, the fans wanted more. So there have been four more feature films that have been released. These are known as the Rebuild of Evangelion.
But that is for future me to see.
