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I haven’t delved too deep into the weirdness of anime, but probably the most confused I ever felt watching an anime was the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I originally watched the series when I was in high school and couldn’t really follow what was happening in the final couple episodes. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that there is probably some deeper meaning here that I am just too dumb to understand…
…and I still think that. I am sure if I really wanted to read explainer articles or watch more of the many Eva-adjacent things it would make more sense, but I am happy to just not fully understand it. I am content with appreciating it as an influential piece of art within the genre and move on.
It’s not that deep. They got the rug pulled from under them when the studio slashed the budget. Instead of doing an ending they wanted, lots of action, with bad animation, they instead rebelled with a rewrite ending that used intentional vagueness and ambivalent philosophical storytelling that let them use their resources to focus on art design and keep the cool factor up. Tons of stills, but really pretty. That’s why a lot of the last sequences are just artsy backgrounds with only voice overs, there are several seconds of just white paper, etc. This however proved widely popular and the writing was vague but interesting enough to fuel hundreds of hours of video analysis and thousands of words essays.
The other factor was the mythological treatment of biblical imagery, which was rather new and unique at the time.
Reincarnated as a vending machine was absurdly fun.
That series wildly exceeded my expectations. I am so glad to see it got a second season and I will be right there to see where it goes next.
If anyone’s curious what the one from OP’s picture is it’s called Angel’s Egg. Seen it a few times now, very slow, dark and quiet. I love it.
Furi Kuri and Kuuchuu Buranko.
Furi Kuri is a favorite for some but a lot of the images didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I like TheCynicClinic’s video essay on the series though.
Kuuchuu Buranko is also really weird. The narrative is easier to follow but it uses a lot of weird animation techniques. You can probably describe it to be visually psychedelic. It introduced me to Denki Groove though.
Huh never heard of FLCL being called Furi Kuri.
Yeah I had to look it up and was like “oh yeah, FLCL”. But I do remember it was pronounced that way in the anime.
