I’m not sure why people are obsessed with Evangelion, what happened to make it some sort of “meme anime”? I never found it to be remotely popular while growing up, or even in the early 2010s when I did a lot of anime watching
I think what made it the “meme anime” was that Evangelion was the first anime to really go all-out on merchandising. You could get evangelion curry. With sonic that’s kinda funny, but when the anime is some weird spiritual allegorical thing, you get kind of a whiplash. Going from watching Shinji “god I’m so fucked up” to seeing them all smiling on a pack of oreos is jarring and kinda funny. It made people on the early net post the merch and share pictures of it, which led to making memes about the merch, which led to memes about the show itself.
Madoka is the Evangelion of magical girl anime. It’s the one that people approach like “ actually, this one subverts the tropes of GENRE,” but the genre has been doing the “damn, it’s kinda abusive to expect a kid to be a hero” since the 70s (if not earlier).
It’s really annoying when people are like “why are these kids saving the world in children’s media?” The whole point is to give the kids a power fantasy they can project into while showing good moral actions. The shows that deconstruct it like eva or madoka are useful because society does place a lot of pressure on kids to solve their parent’s problems(or the world’s problems more generally) and these shows can be used as an example of that, but it makes sense kids wanna see other kids like them with the power to protect themselves and others.
Same goes for people who think it’s stupid when Goku makes friends with most of his former antagonists, like Piccolo or Vegeta. It’s YA fiction, they’re trying to teach these kids that you can find things in common and make friends with people that you used to dislike!
People will never forgive steven universe, a children’s show about tolerance, forgiveness, and talking through your problems, for ending without the child killing his family.
Promised Neverland and Made in Abyss
I’m not sure why people are obsessed with Evangelion, what happened to make it some sort of “meme anime”? I never found it to be remotely popular while growing up, or even in the early 2010s when I did a lot of anime watching
A show called made in abyss about exploring a maiden’s abyss is not as god a pun as it seemed years ago
I think what made it the “meme anime” was that Evangelion was the first anime to really go all-out on merchandising. You could get evangelion curry. With sonic that’s kinda funny, but when the anime is some weird spiritual allegorical thing, you get kind of a whiplash. Going from watching Shinji “god I’m so fucked up” to seeing them all smiling on a pack of oreos is jarring and kinda funny. It made people on the early net post the merch and share pictures of it, which led to making memes about the merch, which led to memes about the show itself.
But that’s just a theory
honestly, I’ve found revolutionary girl utena did everything evangelion was trying to do better. but it was aimed at girls so no one talks about it.
It has a better movie than Evangelion, too.
Madoka is the Evangelion of magical girl anime. It’s the one that people approach like “
actually, this one subverts the tropes of GENRE,” but the genre has been doing the “damn, it’s kinda abusive to expect a kid to be a hero” since the 70s (if not earlier).
It’s really annoying when people are like “why are these kids saving the world in children’s media?” The whole point is to give the kids a power fantasy they can project into while showing good moral actions. The shows that deconstruct it like eva or madoka are useful because society does place a lot of pressure on kids to solve their parent’s problems(or the world’s problems more generally) and these shows can be used as an example of that, but it makes sense kids wanna see other kids like them with the power to protect themselves and others.
Same goes for people who think it’s stupid when Goku makes friends with most of his former antagonists, like Piccolo or Vegeta. It’s YA fiction, they’re trying to teach these kids that you can find things in common and make friends with people that you used to dislike!
People will never forgive steven universe, a children’s show about tolerance, forgiveness, and talking through your problems, for ending without the child killing his family.