"Evangelion is a Mindfuck."

If I had to describe EoE to someone those would probably be the words I would use. The original broadcast series in itself up to the last few episodes were rather light hearted until it grew close to the end.

The TV series was straightforward for the most part but some bits of EOE I had to think about before I fully "got" them.
Now serial Experiments Lain on the other hand....that truly was a mindfuck!

it was mindf*ck when i was 11 years old.

watched EoE and that didn't help matters.


i'm now 26 and i still relish the awesomeness that took me years to understand - and not even fully at that :w00:

FLCL is literally about a young man coming to terms with his erections. It's pretty simple once you get that part figured out.

Honestly, it depends on your definition of "mindfuck." Will Evangelion make you shit your brains out your ears like you'd just seen a shoggoth? Probably not. Can it be upsetting? Definitely.

A primary example would be the full version of Asuka being mentally assaulted by the Angel Arael. A singularly discomforting and harrowing scene. It's probably one of the most awful moments in the entire series, though End of Evangelion cheerfully competes.

I was talking to buds and being a guy who likes the original of a franchise I'm much more preferential to it then the new one in Rebuild. Avoid potshots at it in this thread. So what'd you guys think of it?

The show to me was not much of a mind fuck, but more of a character study. The only exception being end of eva which was purposely a mind fuck.
The reputation that the show gets sprouts from a misunderstanding of the final episodes.

NGE always felt as having pretty much complete sense to me, even in the supposedly more mind-fucky parts (The Final episodes and endings, Ep 16, etc.)

In fact i always felt it made more sense than other more straightforward series, if that makes any sense.

Perhaps calling Eva an utterly mindfucking series is an overstatement. There are some things there that you really shouldn't deeply analyze because 1) you're just willingly jumping into a black hole and 2) even Anno said some things there are just plain bullshit (i.e. doesn't have a deeper meaning at all). However, I maintain that it still is a 'mindfuck' by definition.

A mindfuck, I think, is something that makes you think, period. It may shake your previous beliefs, it may teach you something new, or it may make you speculate on a particular topic. Eva definitely made me think and speculate, but there are things in there that didn't need much speculation, such as the Christianity references.

I guess it all boils down to if something makes you go "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!?" then you can call it a mindfuck. It doesn't mean that you can't completely untangle or comprehend all its ~mysteries.

TL;DR I think it is.

I first watched Eva when I was in elementary school and it didn't confuse me at all. I guess I was more willing to rationalize the bizarre imagery in the movies(which I watched before the TV ending) and the final two episodes as metaphorical rather than strictly representational.

I didn't think it was that confusing the first time I saw it either(though one could say that the last 2 episodes did catch me off guard). I personally find stuff like Tenshi no Tamago to be way more confusing myself.

If every episode was as psychological as the last, say 5 or 6, then I'd consider it a mindfuck. But the majority of the show isn't that crazy.