Yeah it’s correct, but if I may offer an alternate plan:
Simply don’t watch Eva.
I’ll watch Eva instead of going to therapy and you can’t stop me!! (Neither can my doctor)
I’ve wanted to try Evangelion but I have no idea what’s the right way to watch it 😂
Just watch it through, or the way like from that pic. End of Evangelion is an alternate version of episodes 25 and 26, and the rebuild movies are meant to be watched afterwards
Not necessarily an alternate version. The End movies shows >!what’s happening outside of Shinji’s psyche.!<
- Original series (all 26 episodes)
- End of Evangelion (optional, but recommended. This happens chronologically at the same time as Ep 25 and 26)
- Everything else (optional, not recommended)
The OG series is the story Anno wanted to show. Some fans wanted a more concrete ending, so Anno gave them a concrete ending in EoE. Then some fans wanted a happy ending where Shinji gets the girl so Anno said fuck it, sold out, and made a series with a happy ending where Shinji gets a girl. But now some fans want a happy ending where Shinji gets the right girl so Anno gave up on them as lost causes and went and directed Shin Godzilla.
I disagree. There’s a YouTube video essay series that breaks down the timelines and I really like their interpretation. Each Eva is the story Anno wanted to tell at each point in his life, as he grew and became a healthier person. Anno wanted the darkness when he was younger. Anno wanted the hope as he got older. I’ve watched all the Evas and I think I actually like the rebuilds more.
I wouldn’t bother with anything weird, just watch the series through and then the movies in release order. It might not be “optimal” but I don’t think it needs to be. You can skip Death, though, since it’s just a recap (there was originally a year between the end of the series and EoE)
Evangelion is sorta important culturally and historically in anime, but honestly I wouldn’t call it good, even though it was one of the early ones I grew up on (along with Ranma 1/2 and Rurouni Kenshin).
I have the opposite experience, I only watched it a couple years ago and thought the hype would totally kill it for me, but I actually ended up really enjoying it and EoE in particular stuck with me. I loved the idea that love is born of the risk we take of truly being known by other people.
I will say that the quality of the Netflix dub probably helped a lot. I know they changed some translations which kinda sucks, but overall the voice acting is so much better. No hate to Spike Spencer, he’s obviously a very prolific voice actor, but I think his performance of Shinji is at least part of why people thought he was so whiny. We were originally going to watch through the rebuild movies dubbed, too, but it was so bad we decided to switch to sub.
TV series: You have to skip the first season, it’s a slow start and kinda shit. Go back to it later, except for S01E07 and 08, those are necessary to understand the story arc.
In S02, watch E03,04,05,08,11 and 02 in that order. Still drags on but there are some memorable moments. S03 is great. Except for the ending, skip that. And it all goes downhill starting in S04.
But if you stick with it, S07 is bearable again.
Best series of all time!
I personally recommend watching all of GoT in order, not because it’s good, but because you won’t appreciate the flawless genius of S8E3 without the other 7 seasons of context. It’s a slow drag through those 7 seasons, but once it picks up in the last 5 episodes, it’ll all be worth it, I swear. There’s so much character development packed into those episodes that they’ll seem like completely different people!
I bought and read the first comic, watched the first series, and called it good.
Honestly, if I’m told that I need to watch something in a weird order in order to enjoy it, I just drop it from my watchlist. There’s plenty of good media to watch, I’m not gonna do that stupid shit.
I mean, you can just watch said series in release order as well if optimal order is too much work
(but I do get the sentiment. I’m just thinking of Steins Gate. Watching it and then Steins Gate 0 is a perfectly valid watch order, but since Steins Gate 0 expands on a certain event that just happens in 1 episode in the original into an entire season [and adds a whole bunch of narrative weight by doing so] theres an optimal watch order that has you jump to Steins Gate 0 slightly before ending Steins Gate original and then finishing Steins Gate original after you’ve finished Steins Gate 0)
My friend insists Battlestar Galactica has a crazy order. His partner wants to watch it and he got irrationally angry (at the show, not at her).
I guess she watches it without him now. He refuses to even discuss it. I like to poke at him about it occasionally.
Not this extreme, but Always Sunny I couldn’t get past the second episode. Gave up on it until someone told me that I can just completely ignore the first season and start on season two. Actually got into the show like that, never gone back to try and watch the parts I missed
I thought you were talking about Jojo for the first half and was ready to defend part 2.
no shit. that’s exactly how everyone talks about the series I need to watch.^^
Yeah, I can get into a series if people say to skip the first couple episodes/seasons because it takes a little to figure itself out (like how you can skip the first season of Parks and Rec and miss nothing of importance), but weird watch order is not something I’ll bother with.
With American comics, it’s not even the shattered continuity, it’s that availability is a mess because some of the franchises are so ancient and collectible.
If I want to read through One Piece from the 1997 start, my library probably has/can inter-library loan all 105 volumes, or I can go to mainstream retailers and get any I’m missing without a huge fracas.
If I want to read Batman from the 1940 start, I’d better hope some of the rarer issues come up at auction in the near future AND that I can mortgage my house to afford them.
I’m amazed they never put out a DVD-ROM collection that’s “Everything Marvel/DC did prior to, say, 1990, as PDF scans” just so mere mortals have a chance to enjoy the experience of completionism.
Yep. I first saw what he is asking for over 20 years ago. They sold them at a gas station by my house.
https://archive.org/details/batman150/Batman 001/
also this lol
I was surprised about that figure of 105 volumes for one piece, so I googled it and it was 109 (probably just what came out since you last heard about it). I was expecting that number to be like a thousand or something.
DO NOT ASK ABOUT HOW TO WATCH FATE/MONOGATARI
Literally just watch Monogatari in release order. It’s out of chronological order on purpose
Any time is fine, as long as you’re in a bathroom, a stairwell, or the woods.
Fate is pretty easy nowadays. Just start with literally any series made after 2011. They’re all self contained stories that explain the premise within the first few episodes.
We’re a long way from the old days where you had to read the VN if you wanted to have any idea about what was going on in the UBW movie.
Just start with Zero. It’s a prequel that lays out the narrative devices of the series while being a pretty neat story in itself.
But after watching Zero anything else from Fate is just weird.
Like adults murdering each other with magic and famous people makes some sort of sense. Kids doing that is just… stupid. I tried the Stay/Night, UBW many times, and it just doesn’t hit anywhere near as well as the Zero did.
I’m just going to pleasure myself with this fish.
Monogatari was much harder for me to keep track of IMO, Fate content you can start off with most of what’s available (vanilla Fate, Zero, Extra, Samurai Remnant, Prisma, Grand Order). I’d only not recommend Hollow Ataraxia or Apocrypha first.
Where typemoon is concerned, Kara no Kyoukai is more headache inducing
Oh, but the power of American superhero comics is that you can just start reading them wherever. Sure, there is deeper lore, but you’re not required to know all that. There’s this bat-dude, see? He punches crooks and does awesome shit in the night. There’s also a bunch of wacky villains. See? Just go read it, you’ll pick up the rest of the details as you go along!
And I also love a lot of European comics because most often they have a pretty good balance between complex writing and manageable size. And publishers here tend to be more lenient toward artists making one-shot kind of comics, without any expectations that it’ll become the next endless blockbuster cash-cow property.
Still, I do like how most of the manga series are like “OK, here’s the beginning, here’s 20 or whatever volumes, here’s the end.”
