What would movie critics think of Evangelion?

[DevRei17]

You know, critics like Roger Ebert, etc. Just curious.

[Sachi]

"Neon Genesis Evangelion? Bah, I've got two words for Neon Genesis Evangelion: WTF?"

[DevRei17]

"Neon Genesis Evangelion? Bah, I've got two words for Neon Genesis Evangelion: WTF?"

Who would say that? Ebert?

[The Eva Monkey]

I'm fairly certain Ebert would speak positively of it.

But you won't see many critics taking the time to review Evangelion, being an anime, it's still too fringe.

[Xard]

plus it's tv series

Of course you could show them only EoE but...

my my, I'm sure it would be hilarious experiment

[scarmullet]

I'm fairly certain Ebert would speak positively of it.

But you won't see many critics taking the time to review Evangelion, being an anime, it's still too fringe.

Dont be too sure, Ebert reviewed "grave of the firefiles" and gave it a good review.

[Xard]

I'm fairly certain Ebert would speak positively of it.

But you won't see many critics taking the time to review Evangelion, being an anime, it's still too fringe.

Dont be too sure, Ebert reviewed "grave of the firefiles" and gave it a good review.

Grave of the Fireflies:

a) it's Ghibli
b) it's one film, not over decade old tv show with mechas

[Allemann]

Movie critics nothing, but you always have animation festivals where artistic animations are appraised.

[Guyver Spawn]

I'm pretty sure Ebert will like End of Eva, or Eva 1.0. He does have a odd taste in movies since he give The Mummy III higher then Fight Club (WTF?).

[Joseph the PRPD]

I'm pretty sure Ebert will like End of Eva

It's a bad idea watching the end of a series without watching most of it.

[Uriel Septim VII]

I'm pretty sure Ebert will like End of Eva

It's a bad idea watching the end of a series without watching most of it.

Hey, it's in media res, except this time you aren't making any references to previous events.

[Merridian]

Hey, it's in media res, except this time you aren't making any references to previous events.

Absurdism rocks.

[Allemann]

It's a bad idea watching the end of a series without watching most of it.

You can watch Rebuild without it.

[Joseph the PRPD]

It's a bad idea watching the end of a series without watching most of it.

You can watch Rebuild without it.

Rebuild isn't in the same continuity as NGE so of course you can watch Rebuild without it.

[esselfortium]

It's a bad idea watching the end of a series without watching most of it.

You can watch Rebuild without it.

But watching Rebuild is just as bad of an idea with or without the series to accompany it. ;)

[Eva Yojimbo]

I'm almost certain Ebert and Maltin would like it; both are two of the major critics that have celebrated and promoted the best that anime can offer. I've had tremendous success introducing NGE to cinephiles who are usually just critics that don't get paid for their criticism. In fact, the response has been almost entirely positive with only one person thinking it was "good, but not great". Many others have had reactions ranging from revelational to, in the least, an extraordinarily high appreciation of it. IMO, the cinematic community is really the best target in terms of "Elevating NGE's status" because it's the one that's shown the most openness and positivity in accepting it.

[Xard]

It's a bad idea watching the end of a series without watching most of it.

You can watch Rebuild without it.

But watching Rebuild is just as bad of an idea with or without the series to accompany it. ;)

Rebuild is great. You're not

[Guyver Spawn]

Ebert is also the same guy who thought the Live Action Spawn movie was better then 1989 Batman movie. Who knows what he thinks on NGE.

[Lucretius]

But watching Rebuild is just as bad of an idea with or without the series to accompany it. ;)

[cogitoergosum]

I just finished watching Roger Ebert on Grave Of the Fireflies (1988) Japanese Anime Masterpiece on Youtube. There are a few things that i would like to quote to better present my speculation of what Roger Ebert might think of Evangelion if he watched it:

“Well of course every time you look at a cartoon of any sort, it's unrealistic. No bunny looks like Bugs, no mouse looks like Mickey and the people in the world that we live in don't look like the people in Grave Of the Fireflies. In addition to that, Japanese anime in particular likes to use extremely plastic faces, very big eyes, and that's a style and I think you have to get accustomed to it as a style; I think it would be wrong to say: well I don’t like this movie because the eyes are too big; actually the reason that eyes are so big in Japanese anime, as I understand it, is because they were influenced by early Disney pictures and they felt that by exaggerating the features they were making the characters more saturated with personality. [. . .]. In the case of Grave Of the Fireflies and any anime film, as far as I’m concerned, what happens is the emotion is underneath the art. It doesn’t matter that these don’t look exactly like people that we see in the real world because you quickly begin to read them as the people in the real world of this movie, as the characters in this movie and we identify with them, and with their predicament, and with their personalities, and with what they try to do [. . .]. I think to me if the story is working, and the characters are involved, and if the artistic imagination is there, and if the eye is there than those other things simply become stylistic details that become less important as the film goes on; you know you're not looking at the whole film just on the basis of some abstract idea of technical excellence; you are looking at it in terms of its excellence as art and art doesn’t always depend upon how many frames a second or whether this was done or whether that was done, it depends upon how it makes you feel."


I think that from these three excerpts we can speculate that at the very least Ebert wouldn’t discriminate against Evangelion for its unorthodox animation style. However I really can’t tell what Ebert would think about NGE. Even if he overlooks the superficies of Evangelion I don’t know what he would think of the characters. It’s possible that he might find the characters’ personalities to be too “unrealistic”. Also, even if Ebert or other famed film critics were to give Evangelion a try they might not notice some of the subtle details that are found in it because of time restraints. Ebert seems like a busy guy who has probably watched like thousands of films and he wouldn’t have the time, like most people in this Forum do, to “analyze” it. In any case even if Ebert disliked Evangelion after watching it, this is in no way a yardstick to measure Evangelion’s merit, as the saying goes: "art is the eye of the beholder."