Is this the original or the remake?
By remake do you mean the reedited episodes that were in the anniversary boxset or... ?
Well it’s not. It’s a great show.
I'm a big Eva slut but I'm not sure I would call it a great show, objectively. There's a lot there and it's an important one, to be sure. The animation and drawing style are not among the best or most distinctive, budget cutting is pretty obvious at points. The story and tone goes off the rails somewhere after the midway point. The mecha/kaiju/1960-1970 homage & super cool SF visuals of that fortress city of the first half of the series has always been a joy in rewatch : it's light, it's spot on, it has just the right amount of weird ideas, playful grandiloquence and genre perversions Gainax excels at. Once everything (both in the story and actual show production) start going into that abyss of despair, it's really hit-and-miss in execution no matter how thought-provoking, subversive and intellectually interesting it can be. It's not the best thing Gainax did, it's maybe not even their best TV show.
Now, granted, the series turning dysfunctional and mad is what makes it so distinctive and a memorable flawed jewel instead of a serviceable above average show. But it's maybe not for everyone. And that TV ending... It's a wee bit shite in hindsight. Not-writing-death-threats-to-the-creator shite (well nothing is, really, but you get the point) bit it's pretty obvious it's the botched result of a team that wrote itself in a corner while running out of steam and money. I'm not in any way spiteful about it, failure is part of creation and it's what makes Evangelion what it is but I think fans tend to have a pretty heavy rose tinted pair of glasses to be able to see it and think it's a writing master plan imbued with philosophical wisdoms for the ages.
End of Evangelion is a great film however.
I don't think the roughness of Evangelion excludes it from greatness. If anything to me that roughness is what separates the show from most anime. That roughness is what makes the show have personality and feel like more then a simple commercial product. Of which it is and for sure has become, but I watch Evangelion every so often. That last time I watched it was when the blu ray rips came out and it was amazing. But I was also surprised like I have been before that the first half is also great. Now as a teen I liked the 2nd half because oh that's where it gets weird. People often see the first half as "oh just typical mecha" and it is. It has it's monster of the week crap, but even the first half the characterization is strong. I'm not going to use the lame word of "deconstruction", but it does read like a show crated by people who grew up with mecha anime and are playing with the conventions and thinking to themselves "man it would actually suck to be the teen forced to pilot this crap by the mad scientist father" and from there you have characters like Misato and so on that feel real and have actual relatable problems. It's one of the few anime that to me has actual characters with actual adult issues. Now don't get me wrong, it's still a geeky pop culture show about robots, but there's lots of nuance and good storytelling in the show. People get lost in the symbolism and what does it all mean and that stuff is all shallow bullshit. Meant to be stage dressing for the themes the concepts allow the show to explore. The Human Completion project is whatever, but not what the themes it conveys are. It's a show about people unable to be close to each other, because getting close is really hard. I don't know, every time I watch it I think it's anime honestly above other anime. You see shows try to do the Rei and Asuka shit, but they are not waifus in Eva. Yeah they were marketed as such after the fact, but Rei is creepy. Shinji is drawn to her for weird reasons. It's not romantic, he's kind of jealous and also weirded out by her. You are not supposed to want to fuck Asuka, she is a messed up girl. Misato is a character constantly worried if she's trash or not, this is'nt attractive.
And beyond that the show is pretty well directed. Most of the Eva seens are done with a lot of energy. The world is brought to alive with a lot of detail, good art direction, and solid world building.
It's why I hate the movies. The world makes no sense. The conflict, characters, and action they seem so.........anime. You've got shitty big boobed characters there to sell shit talking about nonsensical "the smell of your blood" crap. Like it's straight form some other lame anime. The world in the 3rd movie makes no sense. How does Nerv even operate? They spend a lot of time talking about how Nerv and world works in the tv show. Characters like Mari don't exist. An Evangelion being destroyed is a big deal. The movies are everything I dislike about modern anime.
It's the roughness that makes it age better then Rahxephon. Rahxephon is such a manufactured show that it becomes boring to watch. Everything feels planed out and characters like Quon and Haruka and so on feel like arch types. There because this kind of show needs it. They also don't have much beyond Ayato. The character's feel like they revolve around his problems. Evangelion is a weird show and it seems like it's constantly pulling shit out off it's ass and the characters feel more real, like they have more going on. Misato's struggles are not easily conveyed into a clean arch. I'm not sure she even get's resovle other then I guess she finds personal peace at death. That feels more real to me then the clear cut plotting for the character's in Rahxephon.
And in the end Evangelion is the iconic show. It's got iconic music, designs, imagry, pretty much everything. Every basically non Gundam like mecha show seems to borrow from Evangelion. It's a true classic.
I think it's a great show. Not a just because I watched it as a depressed teen. That's Rahxephon and that show was great for me back then. Now, not so much. Evangelion they as a depressed adult is something I can still relate to. But not even that I can appricate what feels like a lot of heart that went into it's production. Even the lame Jet Alone episode has cool scenes, animated cheaply, but creatively.