Rei or Asuka?

Normally I would ignore this sort of thread, but I just finished re-watching Neon Genesis Evangelion and End of Evangelion, so figured I'd chip in. The main 26-episode run is a pretty decent show, and certainly one of the more tolerable anime I've watched as of late, with characters having motivations you can understand, plus depth and something approaching well-realised mindsets. It's a bit extreme, with how paralysed with indecision Shinji gets, or how "tsundere" Asuka is, but then so is the situation. What the characters are not, for the most part, is likeable. Makes sense, as they're teenagers, and are generally dealing with long-term trauma, loss and the end of the world, but they're often selfish, over-reactive and unpleasant. The exception, as you've alluded to, is Rei, who is strange in her own ways (being a series of clones of somebody's dead wife would do that, I suppose... If I understood her origin correctly!), but placid and follows orders, even sacrificing herself for the good of the team when she sees she can't be rescued. A team of her (entirely doable, if the "soul" they mention could be replicated into the spare bodies) piloting a few EVAs would've been very effective at keeping the angels at bay, compared to Asuka's uneven performance and Shinji often being bailed out by Unit-01's frequent berserk sprees.

Saying all of that, Misato is by far the most well-rounded adult main character and has a cool car, her own place, enough spare income to keep an exotic pet and a couple of teenagers under her roof and knows how to party/unwind. I would suggest that, ethics of running child soldiers aside, she's the best character and probably an earlier example of a strong woman in anime. I've deliberately avoided the whole "waifu" angle, and won't meet the show sexualising the 14-year-old girls on it's own terms (c'mon Japan...), as I'm just not that guy.


The guy I am loves a good giant robot fight, though. Is there a similarly mature (as in, not full of childish characters and with a bit of a look at deeper subjects) series that does giant robot fights well? I've seen ID-0 and Aldnoah Zero on Netflix, and they were kind of what I was looking for, and (spoiler alert?) Attack on Titan kind of scratches the itch too, but a lot of other stuff like Kuromukuro seem to be built around irritating characters swooning over the main guy. A problem I have with a lot of anime, to be honest.

I did like the Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. The first half is indeed a great bit of scheming and ends very well. The latter half did go crazy. It's a shame Lelouch of the Resurrection never made it to Netflix, as I could do with more of that.

GitS:SAC was pretty good, but it does rather fall back on some strange anime tropes. Particularly with the mini spider tanks (I can't remember the names). They absolutely didn't need to have female child voices and personalities, but... Japan, you know? Still, it's a good sci-fi setting with some strong characters. The films generally work better for me.

Black Lagoon would be one I'd recommend. The setting is very over the top, but I think there's some maturity to the characters, even if a lot of the violence is low stakes for the intensity.