How did you first get into Evangelion?

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I usually go for limes over lemons, considering that they tend to be more vanilla-y than their counterparts.

[ChaddyManPrime]

I think the only thing of his I read was UtT. Cute, but I'm not into AU stuff when it comes to Eva. I give it a "meh" and move on.


Maybe not specifically lemons, just ones with that content. And they're there, you just have to search harder...

Oh dear...very poor choice of words.

Ass-kissing will get you nowhere with me, pal.
Thanks for the shout-out.

LT is dead and gone, I'm sad to say. DS is mostly dead these days, but a lot of the old LT archives have been moved there (thank your deity of choice). Never heard of Fanbards, but MM...not that's a place I've not been to or even heard of in a very long time. I think some of my oldest stuff is still there...

SPOILER: Show

Oh, most of them are still around....just under the name Rx7 (yeah, the Home/Bodies guy). I can't remember the specifics of why (this was a long time ago, y'see), but he either transferred the assorted one-shots/lemon-related series to the new name or just removed them altogether (as in the case of any lemon side-chapters to his non-porn stories). Good thing I copy-pasted Deviance ch1.5 all those years ago, it's nowhere to be found elsewhere anymore and it's sweet enough to kill diabetics.

Like most of the things associated with the old days, I think that's done and gone. Shame, too: there were always at least a few nice ones every time that came around.

UtT is probably the only one I kinda thought was okay too.

You're welcome Good Sir

Oh after LT got shutdown DS got shutdown a little bit later. DS came back as Fanbards.net.

SPOILER: Show

I really didn't read Home/Bodies too much, I was kinda upset at the way they introduced the Asuka/Shinji relationship, oh and made Hikari into something less than human (I really hate when they turn women submissive). I loved Breaching The Garden Gates and The Masks We Wear though. I'm talking about his real old stuff though, when DS was still new. I liked Lonely Hearts (The only thing I can find is Zentrodie's hilarious MSTing of it) and another one called Tea for two or Tea with Lemon, something sounding like that.

Yeah I miss the contests, they usually produced good work.

I usually go for limes over lemons, considering that they tend to be more vanilla-y than their counterparts.

My favorite Lime is Holding Hands or just for the sake of funny the Ramen series, maybe Shinji The Casanova if I am remembering correctly.

[AngelNo13Bardiel]

...I think you and I were cut from the same cloth.

SPOILER: Show

-Yeah, I wasn't the biggest fan of H/B (then again, I never have been one for harem fics...either taken seriously or silly).
-BtGG is permanently part of my top 5 favorites when it comes to lemon, not surprising that it was an inspiration for HAO.
-I was under the impression that many of his pre-Rx7 stuff weren't available any longer, to be honest.

I'm still big on HH and StC, they're classic. Not immediately familiar with this Ramen series, however. Perhaps you'd send a PM with a link?

I usually go for limes over lemons, considering that they tend to be more vanilla-y than their counterparts.

This. Just because you've crossed the line of how much detailed anatomical description you're going to include doesn't necessarily mean you have to become tremendously kinky. Sometimes, normal can be just as good...provided you've put in the appropriate amount of writing legwork.

[ChaddyManPrime]

...I think you and I were cut from the same cloth.

SPOILER: Show

-Yeah, I wasn't the biggest fan of H/B (then again, I never have been one for harem fics...either taken seriously or silly).
-BtGG is permanently part of my top 5 favorites when it comes to lemon, not surprising that it was an inspiration for HAO.
-I was under the impression that many of his pre-Rx7 stuff weren't available any longer, to be honest.

I'm still big on HH and StC, they're classic. Not immediately familiar with this Ramen series, however. Perhaps you'd send a PM with a link?



This. Just because you've crossed the line of how much detailed anatomical description you're going to include doesn't necessarily mean you have to become tremendously kinky. Sometimes, normal can be just as good...provided you've put in the appropriate amount of writing legwork.

I believe we are too

SPOILER: Show

Breaching The Garden Gate, Body Heat, The Masks We Wear, Phoenix Rising, and Pride are my favorite lemons of all time.

That is disappointing to hear about Random's work

Strike Fiss always made good work.

[Guy Nacks]

BtGG and 6 Days are tied in my mind for my favorite lemons. They're both extremely well written and keep the characters the closest to their TV-series counterparts, while having some truly erotic scenes.

Changing Seasons was good too and it's damn shame it was never finished.

I find that the best fanfics and lemons for me keep the characters in character, (i.e. Shinji is not a gigolo)
and are in-universe, though eva action scenes need not be involved.

[Mr. Tines]

Umm... topic?

[ChaddyManPrime]

Umm... topic?

Sorry about that Good Sir, I kinda got distracted.

Anyways that was how I was introduced to Eva.

[AngelNo13Bardiel]

Ah, sorry, just one last bit to comment on before I quit this conversation.

SPOILER: Show

Breaching The Garden Gate, Body Heat, The Masks We Wear, Phoenix Rising, and Pride are my favorite lemons of all time.

Yeah, we definitely have strikingly similar tastes.

SPOILER: Show

Also, only partially relevant, but worth putting out there since you mentioned PR: shortly after it was first uploaded, Red Horseman (I didn't even know he was still around) favorited Hands All Over. I shat bricks, as one would expect.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

[H-MangaEnthusiast]

No good story behind it.

I just watched a shit load of anime... like... over 800 by now... I just happened to come across it...

[El Squibbonator]

I have a book on the role of robots in Japanese popular culture, and it had a short section on Evangelion. A lot of it was laughably inaccurate--it was clear the writers had never actually seen the show--but it was described in an interesting enough way for me to decide to watch it.

[Mike Mars]

Well, it all started about a year and a half ago. I was at my Uncle's house and he proposed that we watch Evangelion. Now I had seen snippets of the movies during screenings at anime conventions, and though I liked the little bit that I had seen, I had never actually took the time to sit down and watch them. So I agreed.

He opens up his computer and pulls up the file, and he starts playing Evangelion.... 3.33.

Having not the slightest clue as to what was going on throughout the entirety of the movie, I asked my Uncle to please explain to me what was going on. Unfortunately all he gave me were the typical "Eh, you'd have to watch the series to understand it." answers.

After the credits started to roll and the preview for 4.44 had played, my Uncle got up from his chair and walked over to his shelf of DVDs and pulled out a large box with eight DVDs in it and another lone DVD case next to it. Once obtaining these DVDs, he made his way back over to me and placed them down on his desk.

"If you want to understand what you just saw, take these home and watch them."

I raised an eyebrow and looked at the DVDs he had laid out before me. It was the entire series of Evangelion, along with End of Evangelion. Well, I wasn't going to pass him up on his offer, so I agreed and took them home.

Once I started to watch the series, I found myself lost in how great it was. I actually ended up marathoning it in a single day. I was hooked, and I couldn't believe what I had just seen. Afterwards I went onto Evageeks and looked more into the series, discovering that the movie I had watched with my Uncle was actually apart of the Rebuild series, and it was actually the third in the series.

"Oh." I shrugged. "Now it makes sense why I didn't understand it. I hadn't seen the other movies, so I had no context to go by."

So I got a hold of 1.11 and 2.22, sat down, and watched them back to back. I thought they were pretty good, not quite as good as the original series itself, but now that I had seen them, that meant I could go back and tackle my old nemesis, 3.33...

With the context of both the original series and the Rebuild series under my belt, I was quite astonished to see that 3.33 actually somehow made less sense than the first time I watched it with no context at all.

"If you want to understand what you just saw, take these home and watch them."

Never before, and never sense have I been told such a lie, but then again, it is the lie that got me to watch Evangelion. So I guess I can't be too mad.

[Kendrix]

With the context of both the original series and the Rebuild series under my belt, I was quite astonished to see that 3.33 actually somehow made less sense than the first time I watched it with no context at all.

... Q kind of does that, occassinally...

[stern]

I have only 2 posts on this forum but I'll indulge myself a little.

I got into Eva when I was 14~15 years old (now I'm 25). I was using Kazaa or Morpheus at the time, searching AMVs until I found one of Rob Zombie, a band that I never even liked, and decided to dowload it. The battle of Asuka with the mass produced evas left me completely amazed. This is the video for reference.
I then decided to watch EoE, it took weeks to dowload fully. The movie didn't made a single sense to me but I enjoyed how "artistic" it was, specially the masturbation scene hit very close to home. I watched the anime, loved. I read a lot of stuff, theories and analysies before they were organized like nowdays. I watched EoE again and again and again. I was completely fanatical by eva at the time.

At this time I was also very much into Nirvana, Sylvia Plath and equally "depressive" stuff. It sounds silly now, but to someone who was 14 years old I don't think they together with Eva were very good influences, not completely. Maybe influenced or even trying to emulate Shinji I was very passive in life, specially in relation to girls and friends. So when I grew up and saw how silly of a person I was being I became bitter with Eva, considering it "emo", whiny and stupid.

But then came the first and second rebuilds, I was already old by that point, in my post-adolescence, and having nothing better to do I decided to watch them with my now ex-girlfriend. She found the first one boring but found the second one completely amazing and she herself became an Eva fanatic. I watched this a bit from a far, but I slowly came to enjoy Eva very much and see it with a completely different point of view from what I had before.

And finally, when I watched the third rebuild my mind was completely blown. I know that some people don't like it, but for me... The complete plot twist and how it in a sense is a reference to us, long time fans, revisiting a corpus of work after a decade, the protagonist mirroing the same confusion that we feel... I found that amazing. Of course it has some typical animesque irks (like the idiot ball moment) but they are ignorable.

[Rosenakahara]

Tons of people telling me how bad its was, im not joking, Shinji got so much crap from people i know i HAD to check it out...........i do not regret that decision, however my first experience with eva was with 1.11.......................safe to say i was confused as hell about what all the names they kept dropping were, so before i watched 2.22 i went back to the series and then when it got to episode 4 (i believe) i had at that point basically looked at Shinji and said: "this is me, who stole my soul and put it in this character?", seriously as sad as that might sound to people to an extent the eva characters feel like parts of me, probably due to the fact i have chronic depression bouts and so did anno when making eva :P but episode 4 is probably my favourite episode in the series for that one scene where the train leaves and Misato is just looking sadly at her car, and then you see Shinji is still there, it was a freaking beautiful scene without much dialogue and it didn't need much, and then Asuka showed up................Asuka quickly became one of my favourite character in anime ever, i dont know maybe im just a sucker for a tsundere with character depth as deep as some crazed fans pretend the plot of kingdom hearts is.

Then i watched End of Evangelion (i had seen asukas death scene in a top 20 most brutal anime deaths list on YT but had forgotten about it swiftly so even though i had technically seen it before the scene still left a massive impact on me) and...........i cried, mostly because Asuka was so happy before it happened, then after the mindscrew and the catchiest suicide song ever i literally said outloud "wth did i just watch!?"(dont worry i understood it when i went back to it later)...............then i moved onto 2.22 and 3.33, to avoid spoilers for the 2 people on here who have not seen it i will just say (warning unpopular opinion incoming) 3.33 is my favourite piece of evangelion material.......like ever.
I then decided to marathon the series again just to pick up on info i missed the first time with the new info i had gained from EoE and rebuilds (like first time i missed that Rei was the soul of lillith and Asuka and Shinji's very subtle relationship (?) and the show and movies became one of my favourite series like ever, and i still pick up new things each rewatch! god i love eva

[Mr. Tines]

then i moved onto 2.22 and 3.33, to avoid spoilers for the 2 people on here who have not seen it

As one of those two people , I have to tell you that the spoiler policy got lifted a year ago following the Japanese home video release. And, boy, was I glad that I could stop being almost the only staff member on that subforum.

(warning unpopular opinion incoming)

It was the second Rebuild that had the vocal hatebase here; whereas Q got an overall positive response.

[Rosenakahara]

As one of those two people , I have to tell you that the spoiler policy got lifted a year ago following the Japanese home video release. And, boy, was I glad that I could stop being almost the only staff member on that subforum.

It was the second Rebuild that had the vocal hatebase here; whereas Q got an overall positive response.

Really? im not sure i get the hate for any of the movies, i loved 2.22 and 3.33, i just didn't love 2.22 as much :P you sure it wasn't just shippers mad that this series is Rei and Shinji instead of Asuka and Shinji?
Because that's the only place outside here i have heard of people not liking 2.22 :P plus 2.22 had a callback to his and her circumstances and the nostalgia whore in me loves that.

[Mr. Tines]

Really?

Yes really. Look at the dates on this thread -- http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/9701/Rebuild-is-not-your-daily-two-minute-hate/

To get a flavour of what went down try here -- http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/11561/Debate-the-quality-of-Rebuild-here-1/

[Rosenakahara]

Yes really. Look at the dates on this thread -- http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/9701/Rebuild-is-not-your-daily-two-minute-hate/

To get a flavour of what went down try here -- http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/11561/Debate-the-quality-of-Rebuild-here-1/

you know for eva fans some of those responses make me laugh, like the one about the aquarium being pointless.............yeah thats the sound of someone who didnt get that scene, but i dont really want to start an argument so i'll stop before i start ranting :P

[Orkki]

My first exposure to NGE was via my brother yeas ago as an young adolescent. Not so surprisingly, it became a shocking curiosity, but it was till much recently that I got my hands on it and gave it a "start-to-finish" look. Actually, I got through the original series and EoE only a week ago. It was till after watching some of the rebuilt series by, yet again, the initiation of my brother that I decided to buckle down and finish what I had barely started back in the day.

I watched NGE in marathonic doses and my gut reaction has yet to be settled. I got a little drug by the dark and depressive story and found different parts of myself (and people in my life) in many of the characters. Though against the crushing body of hideous darkness, I tasted the faint but sweet nectar of hope. I joined these forums in the hopes of deciphering the story but found that there is little consent on anything concerning a specific "meaning". Quite conversely, yet with a grain of hindsight I learned that the ambiguity works well to surface a reflection of the observer. The light in the valley of darkness that I saw in NGE was the hope I saw in my (and any alike brethren's) struggle in life. For "when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you", it seems.

In case you're wondering why I see NGE (or at least the characters) with a hint of optimism. Well, NGE explores depression quite well. Not talking for everyone here, but anything less than the abysmal choke of self-loath during a hardcore depressive period is like a glass of ice water in hell, for all I know. To me, the "uncharacteristic" gestures of Asuka and Shinji in EoE's ending scene represent a change in the usual pattern of psychological defenses—meaning that they came back from Instrumentality with some hindsight on each other and the fundamental insecurities that lay beneath. All in all, there's a newborn chance of truly treating the roots of their problems that mere isolation and introspection don't suffice to achieve. What comes to the world at large, at least the "armageddon" is a done deal. All in all, hell if I know—but that's the beauty of it.

P.S: Just realized there's two different topics specifically; one for "initial feelings" and the other for "how you got into the stuff". Oh well, I gave two answers in one here. I apologize.

[DieHardjagged]

I catched through Ads on the German Channel VOX, that they would Broadcast Evangelion, the first Episode was then shown @27.11.2000 and since then i got hooked on Anime.
Of course i recorded them on VHS, but i lost them all after we moved.