Contrary to most other commentators, I deeply hate this series.<br /><br />It starts out looking interesting, with mysterious aliens and giant robots, and I kept my hopes up until the very last episode. At the end of it, I still didn't understand what the alien attacks were all about (maybe I missed something, who knows?), and realized that I had sat through 26 episodes consisting mainly of the characters' own self-hating, selfishness and self-pitying. It actually flips between alien/robot fights and these dark, depressing blinking-on-and-off scenes where one or more characters can just say or shout "I hate me/you/it" 10-12 times in a row.<br /><br />I can't really see either Shinji or Asuka (two of the main characters) showing growth or change. (Nor can I see any of the other characters learning or growing either, for that matter.) I wanted to kick them and tell them to get a bloody life during the first episodes, and the feeling didn't change during the last ones. Shinji truly possesses the kind of helpless hopelessness that makes people angry rather than charitable, and Asuka is such an infuriating know-it-all that I wanted to smash the TV screen every time she came into view. Oh, and more than anyone else, these two hate everything, and say it veeeeeeeery often.<br /><br />I'm otherwise a big fan of animé and manga, and never before have I disliked one so much. I read that the series creator/writer wrote this while suffering from a depression, and I can believe that; it made me depressed to watch it. Is that the aim of this series? I'm honestly asking. Is it designed to make the viewer confused and annoyed? And if suffering from a depression, why just not write a book or biography about it, instead of mixing it up with aliens and mecha's? This alien war plot, as far as I could tell, lead to absolutely nowhere.<br /><br />Finally, since I'm truly fascinated by how many people claim to love this patchwork of dead-end plots, I can't help but wonder how many of them actually find it good, and how many say they do because they've been told it is.