Trash Taste Talk About Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Recap / Main Plot

The video is a Trash Taste-style discussion about Neon Genesis Evangelion, covering:

• how different viewers react to it on first watch versus later,
• what the “Evangelion experience” is really about (emotion/psyche more than plot),
• and how later installments—especially End of Evangelion and Evangelion 3.0/1.0/4.0—left people divided or emotionally wrecked.

A running theme is that Evangelion doesn’t behave like a normal story: it’s less about providing clean answers and more about forcing you to sit with themes, confusion, and interpretation.

Highlights, Key Reactions, and Jokes

• “Monkey mode activation / forget monkey move on” One host jokes about not caring enough to dig for deeper meanings—essentially choosing to “turn off” analysis so they can move on with life. It’s contrasted with people who love over-analyzing Evangelion.

• Challenge/complexity debate They argue whether Evangelion “challenges” you:

  • one side says it’s challenging because it makes you reconsider how you consume media and interpret themes,
  • the other suggests it’s less “challenging” in an enjoyable way and more that you’re expected to process it emotionally.

• Friend stories (how people get pulled into Evangelion) Several anecdotes:

  • Watching Evangelion expecting it to be a Shonen like Naruto, then getting hit with depression and adult dysfunction halfway through.
  • Another friend tries Evangelion and later finds Death Note, with the implication that Evangelion often acts as a “gate” into darker, more psychological anime.

• New Evangelion movie / “can’t move on with my life” They briefly pivot to reactions about the new movie—a major event people have been tweeting about. One person compares it to the mortifying feeling of witnessing a death in the family: intense and hard to put into words.

• Mid movie vs. polar opposite of mediocre They quip that reviews are mixed, but the movie is described as the opposite of mediocre, and difficult to boil down to “good or bad.” One host jokes about needing a very high “IQ” to understand it, leaning into pretension for comedy.

• The “unsatisfied” consensus They revisit how:

  • the original TV ending left many people unhappy,
  • End of Evangelion is treated as the alternative “real” conclusion,
  • and 4.0 is so different/denser that it doesn’t “feel complete” in a satisfying way unless you’ve done heavy follow-up (manga, previous content, etc.).

• Canon/ending lore (absurdly funny framing) With jokes, they explain how multiple endings came to be:

  • the TV series ending is framed as constrained/budget-limited,
  • fan/author pressures supposedly led to additional material,
  • and they emphasize that End of Evangelion is the ending people most often reference, while 4.0 is acknowledged as conclusive—but not neatly comforting.

• Watch order breakdown + comedy about movie structure They outline a rough watch order:

  • TV series → then movies (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0)
  • 1.0/2.0 are described like bridges/cliffnotes or re-edits of parts of the TV.

They also joke that 2.0/3.0/4.0 are essentially reshuffled, with 3.0 and 4.0 feeling “completely original.”

• Language barrier experience One person describes watching 4.0 with subtitles and struggling badly because:

  • Evangelion throws technical terminology around,
  • there’s a long gap between watches,
  • and even understanding their own language doesn’t guarantee understanding.

They joke that even fluent viewers can still get lost.

• Bigger thesis: Evangelion is “emoting” more than storytelling Their converged viewpoint:

  • Evangelion isn’t primarily about logical plot comprehension,
  • it’s about Anno expressing emotional/psychological experiences.

They compare it to Bojack Horseman: both handle broken characters and self-worth, but Bojack is easier to follow while Evangelion hits harder emotionally—and sometimes feels irrational.

• “Quiet taste / overhyped expectations” One person says Evangelion only “clicked” later in life—when they were mentally in a bad place. Another counters that expectations (hearing it’s deep) can block enjoyment if you want a conventional arc or closure. There’s also a recurring joke that you can’t find “true” ending satisfaction unless you do extra research or process it with someone else.

Notable Points About the Ending / Closure

• People often say Evangelion doesn’t give closure in a traditional way.
• End of Evangelion can feel awesome first, then unsettling once your brain starts asking what it actually means—leading to existential dread.
• 4.0 is described as a “full stop” and “you won’t believe it until you see it,” but it may require manga/expanded material to fully decode.

Personalities Mentioned (from the subtitles)

• Joey
• Connor
• Conor (likely the same person as Connor, spelled inconsistently by auto-captions)
• Joey (again)

(“Trash Taste” implies additional hosts, but only these names appear clearly in the subtitles.)