#also i stress english-speaker cuz italian and latam got a bunch of classic sr stuff but faithfully translated

[antimnemonic]

i think tbh that the idea of neon genesis evangelion being a deconstruction of mecha or whatever is an english speaker perception. dark themes are not alien to the genre at all. but for several decades, mecha was mostly released in english was by chopping it up and changing the story, making it more kid friendly to english-speaking audiences. and while the colorful gaudy iconic super robots were originally designed to just look cool, ppl drew parallels between them and mainstream superheroes, and decided that super robots must also be upstanding heroic citizens. so the perception of super robots became this archetype of like, shallow ridiculousness with no complex plots and everything wrapped up in a neat moral at the end. tbh i think there was also an element of xenophobia wherein media of foreign origin is just perceived as lesser. fast forward to the 90s anime boom, and NGE seems completely original and of an unheard complexity — sparking endless arguments about the meaning of elements that were, by the creators admission, put in for shits n giggles