Well, finished watching The End of Evangelion.
That was more what I expected from the series proper ending in terms of being laden with metaphors and wrapping up plot threads, at least. It's interesting insofar as it does the same as the actual anime series ending, just differently. Not with a different outcome, just... differently.
Regarding the final ending, that might just be the happiest choking someone scene in the history of entertainment, unless I'm completely wrong about what this was meant to express. Not sure if others will come back from Instrumentality / the weird metaphysical soup of life that everyone's floating in at the moment.
Because if not, then these two broken characters that have only just learned to move on and accept themselves and each other will become our new Adam and Eve, and oh boy mankind, you're in for a world of trouble if that really is the case. At least it's not as ridiculous as the exploration of solipsism of the original ending because in this case it's your own perception that only creates a separate, discrete you, not your perception that creates everything - but it's still, and I apologize to people who might like this particular part of philosophy, this is such a mind bendingly ridiculous concept for me that I just can't take it seriously.
More on this maybe later, not sure yet. I've already said a lot about it, and honestly...
I positively hated everything with Lars in it before season five, almost everything that was about Onion, and disliked the hipster gang, by far and large. And that food war episode. It really didn't help that the interesting story and character bits ground to a dead stop for these kind of episodes. Sure, Steven Universe doesn't stoop as low as SuperS does by virtue of not having a pedophile horse romance or an allegorical rape gang (except for Jasper and her forced fusion with Lapis, which was really uncomfortable and I have no idea how they got that past Cartoon Network when they had to fight tooth and nail for the gem marriage), but especially from season three onwards, these episodes were just about as interesting as a SuperS one where only Chibi-Usa and Usagi show up.
You're right about the 11 minute short form animation format helping in such a case. At least it's over quickly.