“What do you think you’re doing to my brain?!”
That’s my line, fucker!
Welcome to Brain Damagd: Yoshiyuki Tomino’s mentally handicapped answer to Evangelion. Comparing the latter to the former is comparing Hyperion to a satyr. Perhaps that isn’t strong enough to indicate the sheer gap between the two, or what an utter waste of time it is for those not seeking to witness every single Tomino, mecha, and post-Eva anime out there.
The writing is more detrimental than a lobotomy, and more nonsensical than lobotomizing an infant. Their horrendous Eva-inspired attempts at biomechanical pseudoscience and Gundam-inspired attempts at terminology, are as convoluted as they are nonsensical and inconsistent. The show is also spectacularly blunt to the point of telling you exactly what a character is like constantly despite how obvious it is just from the interactions, yet next to none of these characters have any real consistency. Half of what “characters” say and do, particularly early on, directly contradict what was told and shown to us prior, as early as the end of episode 1. Hell, the “characters” can’t even be called caricatures, let alone what I put in quotation marks, with the exception of a fucking scientist side-character and a boring yet remotely competently-written purple-haired girl. None of the rest have concrete personalities and all of them dramatically at the drop of a hat, often within the same scene. This is especially problematic at the beginning, not only because this is where it is most prevalent, but because this is supposed to be the first impression, where we get to know these “characters”.
Whenever they even try to give these characters backstories and conflicts, they come from the most hackneyed and unforeshadowed of places, and that’s excluding things done offscreen. Then again, this series has a real penchant for introducing things right out of thin air. Not only do the aforementioned characters engage in excessive last-minute flashbacks as a result, but they also reveal themselves to humongous hypocrites...and we’re supposed to root for the protagonists when they suffer from this almost exclusively. The main protagonist (and yes, none of these cunts deserve to be named) is the worst offender of this, going from kissing to harassing the female deuteragonist -whom he barely even knows let alone seems to like- in a split second, constantly, and goes from acting like an insufferable jackass to an idealistic kid who can’t even get his reasoning straight for why he defected from an organization he previously white-knighted like it was his girlfriend -not like he had one to begin with but damn if they’re gonna try to make him seem like an actual human being worth keeping alive-. Then again, this is partially because they constantly try to play coy with why he left and make it such a mystery, much to the obvious detriment of absolutely everything. He is honestly one of the worst protagonists in anime, and out of all the nothing characters who leave next to no impression in your mind, he stands out simply by virtue of being toxically broken and hateful.
Maybe Tomino should have thought twice before trying to do Eva backwards.
The visual presentation is unfortunate as well. The mech designs are bland and generic, without any thought into making them look like anything other than unmarketable drones. The character designs are, if nothing else, pleasant for most part, and they are generally on-model, even if actual animation for both the characters and mechs is somewhat limited, if not incredibly awkward in some cases. Fight scenes are downright horrendous, especially since in these particular sequences, shots almost never flow into each other, and they either have very stilted and limited animation, or try the kind of shorthand that could only ever work in DBZ. Even outside of fight sequences, the editing is generally horrible and nonsensical. Whatever CGI techniques they used such as trying to make ocean water CGI, is almost embarrassingly done as well, but that is the least of the visuals’ problems when the show can rarely do rain in a way that isn’t mortifyingly obvious that they drew lines and moved them back and forth for ten seconds. When your opening sequence begins with a borderline laughable static moving background effect, you know you’re in for a production misfire.
The music is honestly the least atrocious aspect of it, not that it says much, as even Yoko Kanno couldn’t operate at full capacity. The music is largely, and said music often doesn’t fit when it tries to be more than just stand-in fluff, particularly in the first half. The OP theme is barely any better, and while the ED theme is probably the best piece of music here, it is hardly memorable past the first 10 seconds. The voice acting is also subpar at best, with line delivery that ranges from mediocre to terrible for a majority of the characters. Then again, the script they have to work with is honestly abysmal, so much so that some things just could not work, regardless of acting quality.
Brain Damagd is honestly a bothersome experience that stops being bizarrely horrible and just becomes a slog filled with a detestable and borderline nothing cast, and a narrative that works on absolutely no level. Even the audiovisuals are not worthwhile. I wouldn’t even recommend screenwriting enthusiasts to go in for a full autopsy of this disaster, or recommend it to anyone who desperately needs to suffer through every post-eva show out there. I'm not even sure why I’m talking about it or why I watched it; this braindead travesty is an absolute waste of time that should have never been made, barring its ridiculous concepts and some laughable moments. To be perfectly fair, there were moments when the show clearly tried to be meaningful and even human, but they are mere blips in a sea of embarrassment. Unless you plan to watch every Tomino, Post-Eva, or mech anime out there, or watch this with friends, you’re probably better off not acknowledging this show’s existence, unless you want a cheap laugh here and there.
Wait, what do you mean it’s not called Brain Damagd?!
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