My Anxiety for Evangelion

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VUX
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My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby VUX » Wed Aug 14, 2019 12:45 pm

I first watched Eva when I was 15 or 16 years old, and my first experience...wasn’t the best.
I originally vowed to never watch the show again, because it made me almost depressed.
So for awhile, I tried to forget that the show even existed, and focused on other things.
That was, until this year, when I watched the Rebuild films.
My love for Eva re-emerged, and I now enjoy it.
The problem is that when I think about or watch it, I get this pit in my stomach, a feeling that takes days to go away, and frustrates me greatly.
I just want to be able to enjoy the show without feeling this way.
Has anyone ever felt this feeling before, and if so, how do you get rid of it?
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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby Blockio » Wed Aug 14, 2019 6:34 pm

I do actually get that feeling from time to time when I rewatch/replay a show/game that is either quite dark/serious or very dear to my heart. I guess it comes from some sort of nervousness along the lines of "But what if your favorite show isn't all that great" or "what if the show is actually just a misery compilation".
To get rid of it I usually just have to go ahead and watch the damn thing, so all those little details I had forgotten about come back to me and refuel the love for the show/game
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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby Zoop » Thu Aug 15, 2019 5:06 am

I saw NGE around the same age, and had the same feeling.
But I thought it was awesome. Never before was a movie/series able to hit me that hard.
Especially EoE, I felt it in my soul, it changed me, and at first I hated it.
After a while, I noticed I couldn't help but to keep thinking about it, little details popping up "what was that about".
Starting watching it again to see if I missed things, which I did, a lot!

Eventually it faded away, but for some reason it popped back up, don't remember why, but I decided to activily start searching for answers wtf that series was about, and thats how I found EvaGeeks.
The more theories I read, the more it intrigued me. The ending still sucked, but it all started to make more sense until I could finally appreciate and accept the ending.

And now, all of this is starting over again for NTE and I'm so excited for the final movie. It doesn't really matter how it will end, could be contrast to NGE and have a decently happy ending, or just go the same way and brutally dismember our most favourite characters on screen. I don't care which way it goes but I know I'm gonna watch it a hundred times paying attention to every detail.


So yeah, I get where you are coming from. But I think it's awesome that such a surreal fictive story could hit me that hard.
It's not a feeling I'm looking to get rid of, I'm a bit masochistic in that way.

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby Celepito » Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:02 pm

Yeah, I feel the same anxiety.

I think the reason why I feel this is that I like the characters, and during the course of the show, they suffer. So it feels like I am torturing the characters I like by making them go through the whole thing again.

At least, thats my take on it anyways. I haven't really found a way to combat that, my sister wants to watch NGE and NTE with me (her first watching), and I have been putting it of for nearly two weeks now because of this. :sweatdrop: (Though the current plan is to watch tomorrow.)

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby Maxwell Li » Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:42 pm

Well, I have only watched NGE recently( TV, EOE and rebuilds). All I can say is that the kind of feeling you mentioned is very common, I experience this kind of depressed feeling whenever I finish a masterpiece, be it fiction, anime or other tv series. However, for NGE, this kind of feeling is particularly strong for me, and I am still experiencing it right now. It is a mixed feeling, not only depressed, but also the feeling that you might not be able to encounter something that legendary in the future.. Well, all I can suggest is to watch something else, and maybe think positively about NGE. Personally I love the ending of EOE as I don't view it as a sad ending. Although all the ppl except Shinji and Asuka became LCL, it doesn't mean they are dead. On the contrary, they eliminated the A.T. fields between them and were able to achieve some kind of real reconciliation. Thinking in that way might help you.

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sun Aug 25, 2019 12:05 am

Find a specific artistic element to admire about the show and focus on that for a while. (Cinematography, score, animation, etc.) It’ll help you to take your focus away from the visceral experience of watching the show, placing it more towards enjoying how all of these different elements come together to tell a story. It’s not that it helps you become emotionally detached from the show, but rather it gives you enough distance from the immediate reactions in order to help you have more control over those emotions.

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby Rei IV » Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:34 am

I can't say I've ever felt anxious watching Evangelion BUT there is, in my case specifically, always a sense of unease, dread and the feeling of being uncomfortable once we hit the 16th episode because we know what happens after that. Evangelion becomes a entirely different show. The End of Evangelion takes that aforementioned unease, dread, and the feeling of being uncomfortable to a whole another level as well.

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby 天使 | Nyo | 天使 » Fri Sep 13, 2019 3:03 pm

As someone who suffers from anxiety pretty bad (no meds or anything, I think I more or less create/have created all the fear myself), I didn't really feel afraid about watching the show necessarily. I actually ENJOYED it because of how depressing and serious it all really was. I liked it for how real everything was (most notably in the characters, who are all screwed up in their own ways.)


I wouldn't say I felt at least a little uncomfortable until the first signs of all the psychological stuff (like with Asuka's Breakdown and stuff), even then, it was more or less me being morbidly fascinated with how more and more broken the characters were all becoming. I guess I just like that sort of edgy, serious stuff like that because it brings you back to reality (and to those watching who are adults, back to when you were struggling with yourselves as teenagers, wondering how we'll operate in the world in the future, I know I've been feeling that way right now.)

I guess I just feel a little differently about this show than some of you other guys. We all are preceive this show differently! :shrug:
Yeah, I change the things I'm interested in on a dime. Seriously, one day I'll be playing SMT, the next day it's VRChat, then it's just whatever I'm feeling like playing at that point. "Oh wow, you're uhhh...something that's for sure." -Anyone who meets me for the first time basically.

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby VUX » Tue Apr 12, 2022 2:25 pm

Holy shit, I posted this awhile ago.

Well, things have changed in the years after I posted this.

To put it bluntly, after watching 3.0+1.0, Evangelion doesn’t give me anxiety anymore, because it wasn’t a traumatic as EoE was and it gave the characters what one could potentially call a “happy ending.”

I actually enjoy the series now way more than I used to.
"When life gives you problems..., get into the robot!"

"We VUX wanted peace with humans, until they day that insult was thrown"
"Where's you're ogrelord now laddeh?" Drek

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Re: My Anxiety for Evangelion

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Postby C.A.P. » Fri May 20, 2022 7:49 am

Gonzo strikes me as the only Muppet who would totally get invested into Evangelion.

In all seriousness, my relationship with the anime has always been complicated. It never got as anxiety inducing as some of the other members, but there was still a lot of strong emotions felt ever since I got into the anime all those years ago. What started out as a curiosity became an obsession. Which turned into hatred, but then cooled into respect. Then for a period it was in this area between "sorrow" and "memories of the past."

But like you, 3.0+1.0 giving me a "happy ending" put away a lot of some of those feelings away. Now I find myself enjoying the experience in a way I couldn't all those years ago.
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