okays dokay ...
Neon Genesis Evangelion is definitely a classic. It was the first major deconstruction of the giant robot genre and creates both a breathtaking and completely disturbing picture of a during the apocalypse world.
After the first episode, I don't think that's a spoiler.
The three main characters (especially one of them) were the original source for several now common character archetypes.
Well written, well animated and ... well ... uhm .. let's address your comments!
First, you need to know that Gainax was not in the greatest shape during the production of Evangelion. First, they had a LOT riding on this series. Second, they spent so much of their budget on the first episodes that they literally ran out of money to finish the series - thus the style and nature of the ending completely changed as they scrambled to cobble together something from nothing
Plus they kept running into deadline issues ...
Second, the series director Hideaki Anno was in a state of deep depression when he created the series. This is no joke. Deep clinical depression and from what I've read here and there was that he wasn't being treated for it at the time. This did not bode well for the on-screen life of ANY of the show's characters. Now, take budget problems, schedule deadlines and add clinically depressed director who couldn't figure out how to end the show and of course things were bound to go sideways.
And then, almost unexpectedly, the show became a hit - not just a hit hit, but one of the biggest hits in the history of anime.
So a couple of things happened.
Gainax was able to afford to create a more satisfying ending. On the plus side, that gave us
"Death and Rebirth" a full-length movie providing an edited version of the first 24 episodes of the TV show + 27 minutes of new animation that became the opening sequence of
"The End of Evangelion" a second movie, released at the same time, which brought the series to a more satisfying ending...
...for various definitions of satisfying while firmly maitaining their place as the source of the now infamous
"Gainax Ending" trope.
In other words, yes, the last two episodes of the series are weird. The last scenes of End of Evangelion? Just as strange, but different
More recently, they've done a four movie re-boot of Evangelion.
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redoand the upcoming
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0The last film is scheduled for release in 2020. Hideaki Anno said that the series reboot, now that he is properly dealing with his depression, is a re-do of the Evangelion story giving the characters a second chance ... without their lives being influenced by his previous condition.
Okay, fine. The characters are more stable, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but this is still Evangelion!