What are critics saying about the long-awaited final film of the storied anime franchise?

Polygon’s Aaron Stewart-Ahn has written an excellent piece on the famed anime filmmaker.

Since its 1995 debut, Evangelion has become one of the most popular, influential, and controversial anime titles of all time.

The first Evangelion walks a tricky line between appealing to otaku without feeling like a shameless cash-grab.

The live action tokusatsu short film was made with traditional filmmaking techniques.

Silly, cheesy, and fluffy — and unashamedly so.

That’s what this series has done to me, reducing me to a doe-eyed awkward teenager who gets that gooey feeling in my stomach.

More than anything else, Evangelion’s focus is on the hopes and dreams of its characters, as well as their fears and weaknesses, and their attempts to overcome them.

To say I completely fell in love with this series is a bit premature, since I’ve only seen the first 6 episodes. But I’ve definitely got a crush.

If you want to start getting into Evangelion, this is not, I repeat, not the place to start.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is controversial, action-packed, muddled, exciting, confusing, and maybe even profound in a way that most anime you see isn’t.