Why do people always seem to want to equate 'disturbing' with 'good' these days? It's a strange tendancy, I've found. From the way it sounds, I don't think I'd ever want to see it - why need your mind be messed with like that? There are better ways to expand your mind, I should think. It is true that much modern western media is rather simplistic, but not all, nor need it be disturbing to give one new insight.
Me, I'll stay away from it as best I can. If I want something that gives one pause and contemplation, I'll go read Shakespeare or Sophocles or Homer. Not the worst death, not the wickedness of Atreus, is this bad. And if I want to be a little disturbed, I'll go read Petronius, but even he doesn't seem to be like this. I have never understood why people are so interested in seeing this sort of thing.
For anime, heck, I'll stick with Miyazaki. Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky... those were good films. They were in most every way superior to what western animators make. But this? I guess I have to ask, why? What dose it benefit me to see things like this?
What's so good about this disturbing is that it happans in your mind, dear Dan. This show is as insane and crazy as you are. It's all about getting around the psychological barriers, the 'invisble things between people' as Yui Ikari at one point states in End of Evangelion, and being able to live with people, although the pain and horror of rejection. The fear to be forgotten, the fear to be useless, the fear to not have a purose and to never be loved or recognised is one every human goes through-and if those sentiments get the better of man, and we all fall to despair, the world will truly end in the single most horrible and terrible way.
Those 'creepy mindrape scenes' are scenes were the character explore their psyches (or have their psyches explored) are all but them asking themselves the question. Remembering and understanding things about themselves, striving to get passed their issues. The world isn't all peaches and cream, people harm one another, and the Anime surrounds an issue called Hedgehog's Dillema-When two Hedgehogs try to come closer, they harm one another and slowly develop fear of come together. NGE approaches this problem and tries to explain how to deal with it-'I am I. I am nothing but I. And If I can love myself, why can't others love me?'. This is the dillema everyone ponder, and in that regard it passes the greek plays which tell you 'BELIEVE IN GOD AND THE WORLD WILL BE A HAPPY PLACE!'. People need to deal with their own problems, and this Anime is the greatest piece of art to try and explain that. Like the show's craziest song (in my eyes) says... 'It all returns to Nothing, it all comes Tumbeling down...'. These are the feelings of a man who feels he has no purpose, and these are the feeling Anno tries to convey and in this case, cure. People like it so much because they actually feel it. People DO feel this lonely, but I never saw a man being questioned by a Sphinx.
EDIT: To emphasis, this is how the Evangelion guys would of fared in a 'normal' non-Second-Impact world.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bdFSrVezd0A&search=Evangelion%20Episode%2026Amusing perhaps, but I'd rather see Shinji fighting Angels than peeking up on skirts and getting slapped for getting Morning Glories.
