So, before we begin: I want to be very clear that I have never seen Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) before. I wasn’t allowed to watch it for a very long time because it was wildly inappropriate for a young child when it was released in the United States in 1998. I would have been about six years old, and though I was into anime back then, I didn’t actually know what it was or how to look for stuff that was similar to what I enjoyed. I relied on Toonami a lot back then.

When I finally had the ability to watch it on my own (i.e., when I was in college), I decided not to do so because it was not available in the United States on a platform that I could easily use. I didn’t have a television set or a DVD player in my school laptop, so I relied upon streamed episodes, and unfortunately, the only websites that streamed NGE were shady Chinese streaming sites that left viruses on your computer and took forever to buffer.

Why go to the trouble for something I probably wasn’t going to enjoy? I mean sure, there were a lot of people who claimed that I wasn’t a true anime fan because I didn’t watch NGE, but who cared about them? I knew what I was. I knew what I wanted, I knew what I was into, and NGE seemed so stereotypical to me at the time that I couldn’t even pretend that I would enjoy it for its own sake (though of course it was only stereotypical because it influenced all the other anime that came after it). If I watched it, I would be doing so for the sake of stating that I did it, and that wasn’t good enough for me to risk destroying computers that I could barely afford in the first place.

Now, however, I am 27 years old, Netflix has released the entire Evangelion series on their streaming service, and I no longer have an excuse to avoid it. I guess it’s time to stop procrastinating and earn that nerd cred.

Commonly asked questions:

“If you’re such a nerd, why haven’t you watched Neon Genesis Evangelion?”

(or, more insiduously: “You’re not a nerd, you haven’t even watched Evangelion! You’re just one of those girls who pretends to be a nerd to get attention from men!” – please note, this has actually been said to me)

I’m gonna be real with you for a minute: I’m a nerd for the things I like. The only reason I ever gave a fuck about nerd cred is because I was made to feel like I couldn’t interact with the things I like without it. And truthfully? I don’t like anime like NGE (though of course I know that there isn’t a lot of anime like NGE in the first place).

NGE is categorized as a Seinen Mecha anime, roughly speaking, though it could be mistaken for a Shounen anime. I don’t like Seinen or Shounen anime. I don’t care that NGE is a deconstruction of anime in that genre; the fact that it is still extremely popular among people who like Shounen anime means that it will suffer many of the same pitfalls. The target audience seems to demand it.

(Plus, while I haven’t seen NGE, I also do not live under a rock. I know what the Rei Ayanami Clone is. The fact that I can say that and y’all likely know what I’m talking about is probably a good indication of why I’m hesitant to trust something like this.)

I’m not saying I dislike all Shounen anime. I got burnt out on the Shounen/Seinen manga genre really quickly when I was younger because Shueisha was the most easily accessible manga company available to a young American with a limited budget, and Shonen Jump was much more reasonably priced than Shojo Beat. We’ll have to make a separate post about this later, but for now, the only thing you need to remember is that Shueisha published Shonen Jump, which was a magazine priced at $5 that was released once a month back in the early 2000s. It was basically the only way I was able to consume manga until I was about 14. It got to the point where it was more common for me to dislike a Shounen anime than it was for me to like one, so there was a long stretch of time where I didn’t consume any anime or manga at all.

I can’t think of any reason why I’d invest time and energy on something I probably wouldn’t enjoy, especially since I’ve disliked so many other “critically-acclaimed” anime in the past. I especially wouldn’t have done so when my free time was precious, when I was tired all the time and needed something to smile about just to get me through my day. Why would I waste my time on something that seems rough and pretentious to me, especially when it would require me to risk a lawsuit and potentially fry my laptop for months at a time? Fuck that noise.

Question 2: “Why do you dislike Seinen/Shounen anime so much?”

So, in order to answer this question, we do sort of need to explain what Seinen and Shounen are, what they seek to do, and what actually happens.

Seinen and Shounen are different words that mean similar things. Seinen and Shounen both are typically used to imply that someone is a young man; however, whenever someone uses the word Shounen, they are typically referring to someone who is aged from about 10 to 17, whereas the word Seinen is typically used to refer to young men who are approximately aged 18-30.

Thus, when I state that an anime is in the Seinen or the Shounen genre, what I’m saying is that the anime is specifically targeted towards boys and young men. In many cases, it becomes obvious that the producers of the anime don’t give a shit about women at all. I think they honestly believe that women wouldn’t like what they have to offer, and so they don’t even attempt to humanize us in the work they create.

Even the Shounen anime I enjoy sort of proves the rule. For instance, I enjoy Dragon Ball because of how three-dimensional the women in the story were, but I absolutely cannot stand Dragon Ball Z. I enjoyed the Yu Gi Oh! manga in the first arc, and then slowly started to lose respect for it when Anzu was relegated to a side character. Even the shows that I enjoy (Yu Yu Hakusho, Fullmetal Alchemist) sort of prove the rule, because I enjoy the parts of them that are not like other Shounen anime series.

I’ll discuss anime that’s targeted towards women in a later post (this one is getting pretty long), but a lot of men don’t like Shoujo/Josei for the same reasons that I don’t enjoy Shounen/Seinen, and that’s fine. I don’t blame them. All I’m saying is that I didn’t want to explore NGE because I knew that in all likelihood, I would probably not enjoy it, and my feelings on that topic are valid.

And before you ask: No, it does not actually matter that Hideaki Anno is close friends with Kunihiko Ikuhara, who is the creator of one of my favorite shows. From what I’ve heard, that friendship didn’t influence his style in any positive way whatsoever.

Question 3: “What kind of anime do you like?”

As I’ve stated many times before, I prefer anime that’s targeted towards women. In Japan, this largely falls under the Josei/Shoujo genres. If I do watch Shounen anime, I tend to prefer anime that falls into the comedy or action category. Things like NGE, which get really dramatic and sad, tend to weigh really heavily on me, and until very recently I had no time to gather my energy and move on with my life after watching something so sad and draining. I knew I couldn’t devote that kind of emotional energy to something I would dislike.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll prove me wrong. I doubt it, but there’s a first time for everything.

Question 4: “Well, if you don’t like NGE, what’s your favorite anime?”

Revolutionary Girl Utena. It’s right up there with Serial Experiments Lain (one of the few exceptions to the rule that I mentioned) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I have a lot of shows I enjoy, however, and I’ll be the first to admit that some of them are cheesy as hell and have some problematic undertones.

Something to Remember:

I am probably going to criticize the shit out of this anime. At the very least, I am going to criticize the shit out of the ending, which I’ve heard is some bullshit. I am not, however, criticizing your tastes, your experiences, or anime as a medium. I am opinionated, I am argumentative, I can be a little combative, but I am not cruel. If you remember this, I think we can all enjoy ourselves a whole lot more than we would if you start filling the comments section with hateful rhetoric about how Women Aren’t Really Nerds Anyway.

Okay? Okay. I’m gonna fucking regret this, but let’s do it anyway.