Err... I know NGE is voted number 1 anime in Japan but I still don't get it. The whole series is too depressing for my taste. Besides, its plot development is horrible. It piles suspense upon suspense until the whole story disintegrates under the weight of it all so it had to close with an ending that leaves everybody saying WTF.
Actually whole plot IS understandable, it just requires huge amount of brainwork. I still remember how hard it was for me to break puzzle of NGE for the very first time.
And have you seen End of Evangelion? It's true ending of NGE. Eps 25/26 shows what happens in peoples minds during EoE. EoE shows what happens in "real world"/or Instrumentality in bigger scope than Shinji. EoE is made from original scripts of episode 25/26. Explanation for - ermm - weird tv ending consists 3 parts: 1) Money and resources were gone. Gaiax always overuses their resources in beginning and the fact that budjet was heavily cut because of brutality of ep18 and 19 didn't help at all 2) There wasn't time. Related to first one. 3) After all the sensation EVA created showing that brutal ending in tv (they were already in big pool of **** because of brutality, sickness and darkness that invaded ending parts of NGE) was quite impossible thing to do. This is minor reason though.
I like series storytelling and plot develppment. e.g How NGE deals with subconsious is still best method I've ever seen. Same thing is with many allegorical scenes (like Rei and Asuka in elevator) and how serie uses contrast of voices. A lot of important information is given in such things as tv news (for example tv forecast in ep 7). This is also one reason why NGE's fansubs are much better than official texts. Official ones leave things like that untranslated. Overall storytelling is fantastic, thoubh I won't babble about that anymore. I could talk about this for ages so I just shut up for now.
Plot development works fine until the very ending. And once you manage to figure it out it alla suddenly comes clear.. at least for me. It took 2 or 3 times of watching whole series but I managed to "break the puzzle". It pills supsense over suspense, yes. Then comes horrible wtf ending. Yes, if we're talking about tv-series (although I kinda liked that ^_^ ) original. If talking about EoE, no.
Oh, and if you guys really want to try something hard to understand watch Cat soup. It's postmodern and surreal short film from year 2001, has won some awards too. It's awesome but... well, just watch it.
At leat Kiro-kun must see it, since it has teh catz. :D