"Evangelion is a Mindfuck."

[Dream]

IIRC you weren't around when gchristinsn made his threads, but they were an upmost pleasant affair, and while he didn't explicitly tell us all to go to hell or that we were stupid, i remember some of the stuff being just as bad or at least as frustrating.

It is true that the quote was rather direct, but i feel it was more humorous rather than mean-spirited, and gchristinsn did kinda earn it.

[Bagheera]

Pay him no mind, he has proven immune to such quaint concepts as "courtesy," "kindness" and "not being an asshole in everything he says."

Seriously, dude. Stop being a fucking dick. Your post had nothing to do with whether or not the show is a mindfuck. Instead, you just targeted someone who wasn't even talking to you, and did one of your oh-so-clever little Bagheera-isms. Now I'm returning the favor.

Do you really expect this to accomplish anything? It's not like hypocritical ranting is gonna make me take you seriously, so what's the point?

[Elect G-Max]

Evangelion stays pretty sane for 15 episodes or so, then goes into turbo-batshit-mindfuckery mode when characters start trying to pull human souls out of a Sea of Dirac using phase waves that get trapped in Klein space and so on. EoE is like the show not just raping your mind, but ejaculating all over it.

Here's a good litmus test: if the fans took over a decade to piece some stuff together, then it was a mindfuck.

[Madonna]

The storyline of Eva made sense to me on first viewing, it was the motivation behind some of the character's actions which left me a tad perplexed.

To me Evangelion is neither avant garde or conventional, yes part of it was made to appeal to a large audience however it has complexities that you won't find in a lot of the other mainstream anime. It struck a good balance between the mass appeal of the action sequences, and the more complex existential nihilistic theme that is evident throughout the anime.

[CCri]

when i was a kid, the animes i watched before i encountered Evangelion were pokemon, DBZ, and ranma.

So yeah, MASSIVE mindfuck. lol

[Koneko_Hime]

I don't think it deserves that title. Going into it at first you're thinking ok! when are things gonna start getting out of whack, then you keep going hey this isn't so bad, this is quiet entertaining and really good. On the surface it looks like a regular mecha series then as you go more in like episode 14, which almost made me quit the series, that was truly a mindfuck. I know it was a clip show, but that's when things start getting wacky. Even episode 16 wasn't so bad, even though it would seem confusing, it really wasn't to me it was easy to understand, kind of out there a little bit but understanding. I think the best episodes of the series so far since I'm watching the series the first time around, is 7-13 then 15 and 16 since that's where i watched last. I still don't know if I wanna watch EOE though I think I may just finish the manga up on that then the rest of Rebuild. it depends how I feel about the ending of the tv series.

[Ænimal]

I don't think it deserves that title.

perhaps you should watch the series episodes through episode 24, then depending on your level of willingness to get mindfcuked either EoE or 25 and 26. Either way it's gonna happen

don't worry, you'll feel better afterwards; if not, there's always booze

i'm just kidding, it's really not that bad (so i keep telling myself)

[Jurrasic]

Nah. Dead Leaves is stupid and gonzo and over the top, but I had no trouble following the basic narrative I admit things got a little weird when the caterpillar came out, though. But even to this day I still don't know what the hell happened in FLCL. I should probably watch it again.

Firmly with Bagheera on this one. Dead Leaves was way over the top, but understandable enough. FLCL was not only confusing, it had a much greater sin to me. It was IRRITATING AS FUCK. I honestly could not complete the series when I attempted to watch it the first time.

I will try again one of these days, just so I can bag on it properly. Who knows? It may watch better the second time around. Gantz was like that for me. First time, meh. Rewatch a couple years later, FAR better.

[Stillborn]

Firmly with Bagheera on this one. Dead Leaves was way over the top, but understandable enough. FLCL was not only confusing, it had a much greater sin to me. It was IRRITATING AS FUCK. I honestly could not complete the series when I attempted to watch it the first time.

The first time I've read about FLCL in magazine, I was pretty hyped. It souned really cool.

When I finally watched it few years later. I was just disappointed. And irritated.

[pwhodges]

When I read people's criticisms of anime that I know, I find I nearly always learn more about the critics than about the anime! (Reading about people's reactions to [C] has this effect particularly strongly, I find.)

Go on, folks; if you haven't got it before, watch FLCL again until you do!

[Stillborn]

When I read people's criticisms of anime that I know, I find I nearly always learn more about the critics than about the anime! (Reading about people's reactions to [C] has this effect particularly strongly, I find.)

Go on, folks; if you haven't got it before, watch FLCL again until you do!

I believe, I get what FLCL is about. That doesn't mean I'm less disappointed or irritated.

[Nyanlathotep]

So I just finally finished reading Finnegans Wake and I can confirm that NGE is not a mindfuck.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

So I just finally finished reading Finnegans Wake and I can confirm that NGE is not a mindfuck.

Note to self: watch Finnegans Wake. Would you make a post in the appropriate thread on its subject matter? ;)

[Jurrasic]

When I read people's criticisms of anime that I know, I find I nearly always learn more about the critics than about the anime! (Reading about people's reactions to [C] has this effect particularly strongly, I find.)

You think so? I think what you are really doing in this case is not "learning" about the critic as much as "assigning the critic into a slot of one of the pre-assumed archtypes that you have created in your mind."

[pwhodges]

Well, I don't have any pre-conceived stereotypes of anime viewers yet, as I've not been around the field long enough. If I find a number behaving the same way, I may categorise them together in my mind, which I suppose is how stereotypes are born - but observation comes first.

[user-02]

I'm a johnny-come-lately to this thread, but I have to say, a lot of you guys are asking the wrong question. To ascertain whether something is a mindfuck, you shouldn't ask "Well, was my mind fucked with?" Instead, you should ask if the work is intentionally and irreducibly opaque.

A mindfuck is something that is designed to be provocatively perplexing, with the additional connotation that it has no right interpretation or answer. A zen koan is a classic example. "If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" is a mindfuck. One could argue that "Solaris" (the original, not the Clooney remake) is a mindfuck. The film "Un Chien Andalou" is a mindfuck. "Finnegan's Wake," as someone pointed out earlier, is a mindfuck. The music of the band Animal Collective is often mindfucky. Surrealist art is often mindfucky. David Bowie and the Talking Heads get pretty mindfucky. Etc., etc., etc.

I'd argue that Eva is not a mindfuck -- not because I am not confused by it, but because the work seems to have a perfectly logical internal framework and a "correct" interpretation. The finer details of that interpretation are still being debated, but that doesn't mind a right answer doesn't exist. Eva is a confusing series, and it's an ambiguously resolved story, but it's not a blatantly impenetrable work.

[Grimmjow]

I'd argue it's pretty subjective in the first place to define what a "mindfuck" is in the very first place. That being said, I wouldn't really call the original series a mindfuck. It had some surreal imagery, but the plot was fairly simple to follow. EoTV, without the context of EOE is very confusing because the plot just takes a full stop and we move into psychoanalysis of the characters without much explanation of how this occurred. But once again, it's not really a mindfuck. Most of what is said or seen in EoTV isn't that surreal or bizarre.
I would say that the End of Evangelion comes the closest to a mindfuck of any of the series. If many of us were honest, many of us on the very first viewing of EoE probably said, "What the hell was that?" With all the creepy frames popping up everywhere, the strange symbols, GNR, choking, sexual imagery, and so on, it definitely screwed with my mind.

But like I said, that is subjective. For others, they were probably able to cut through much of it to get to the core and after multiple viewings it is much easier for me to see what is really going on.

[Kendrix]

Of course it'a mindfuck.
And quite a good one, too, my brain definitely climaxed.

[Squigsquasher]

Of course it'a mindfuck.
And quite a good one, too, my brain definitely climaxed.

I do not have words for the level of win in this post. You, miss, have just won the internet. And made it into my signature.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Whenever you take a few years to think about something, it usually ceases to be a mindfuck. I'm sure that first-time viewers would be more inclined to agree with the mindfuck statement than we would.