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The 1990s was an awesome time for anime since Neon Genesis Evangelion was released around that decade. A lot of anime fans went in expecting a routing but quirky mecha anime but by the end, they were probably in need of some immediate therapy after what they've witnessed. The anime has no shortage of disturbing moments.
That's because Neon Genesis Evangelion is a kaleidoscope of psychological horror and a philosophical monologue under the guise of a mecha anime. Anyone who looks is risking their innocence and optimism. In hindsight, that's to be expected in an anime where traumatized children are forced to fight apocalyptic beings. It's just that these moments can be a little too much for anyone's fragile and tender emotions. Rebuild movies are excluded to keep things simple.
8 Shinji Is Forced To Pilot An Eva Unit
This isn't just Shinji being told by his father to do a suicidal charge against certain death. There are also several layers of deeper meanings and fractured relationship dynamics going on here. For one, Shinji's massive parental issues stem from Gendo being an absent and completely useless father.
Then he becomes present again as soon as he needs a pawn, in this case, Shinji. It also sets a precedent of what to expect in the rest of the anime. Shinji's no wide-eyed and boisterous shonen MC whose willpower takes care of everything. No, he's just a mentally-scarred boy, which makes his crying and protests to his estranged father all the more relatable and realistic.
7 Unit 01 Goes Berserk
Pretty soon, NERV finds out just how taxing it can be for an Eva pilot to control their units let alone have them fight much more dangerous threats. More than once in the original anime, Unit 01 moved on its own and ignored its pilot completely. While this did ensure victory more often than not, it's a haunting subversion of the mecha trope.
In Shinji's very first fight, he supposedly lost control, and Unit 01 went berserk, leading to a rather agonizing moment for Shinji as he watches in horror while the robot he controls rips apart a monster. The viewers, meanwhile, could almost feel Shinji's anxiety as he's expected to pretty much undergo similar or worse situations as the anime progresses.
6 Unit 01 Nearly Kills Toji
But it wasn't enough for just Shinji, Rey, and Asuka to bear the weight of controlling the Eva units. Their friends also had to share the suffering. Toji comes to mind as one of the most heartbreaking collateral damage victims of NERV's mathematical lapses Without going too much into detail of how that happened, Toji became the pilot of the experimental Unit 03.
Except, Unit 03 got possessed and became the 13th Angel with Toji still inside it. Shinji had his doubts and was reluctant on taking down Unit 03, so his father took control of everything and forced Unit 01 to slaughter Unit 03 down to the dummy plug. Of course, Shinji has a front-row seat to his friend getting crushed by a robot, complete with a bloodbath enough to flood the streets.
5 Every Decision From Gendo Ikari
If there was one person whose mere existence in the anime is disturbing, then the award goes to Gendo Ikari. Shinji's father's motivations were never clear and it doesn't help that he's the most heartless person in the entire franchise. Gendo has no qualms about sacrificing his own son and demeaning him whenever he's unfit for Eva combat.
Gendo's reasoning was that he's scared that he might raise Shinji wrong in the absence of his wife and the boy's mother. Well, in the end, he fulfilled his own fears about child-rearing successfully as he chose to abandon his own son instead of being there for him at the very least. Simply knowing that some people like these exist even in real life is disturbing enough.
4 Asuka's Memories
Fans of the franchise were quick to hate on Asuka for her abrasive behavior but once her past was revealed, everything was excused as she has proven to be mentally tougher than Shinji. Thanks to Asuka's fight with the troublesome angel, Arael, she got a familiar taste of her troubled past.
Everything about Asuka's disposition in Neon Genesis Evangelion has to do with her mentally ill mother. As a child, Asuka witness her mother's depressing downward spiral where she no longer recognized her own daughter. Asuka's mother also committed several suicide attempts the last and most successful of which, Asuka witnessed. Not exactly an ideal childhood, to say the least.
3 Asuka's Death
In the film, End of Evangelion which caps off the original series, Asuka Langley was pitted against numerous mass-produced Eva units which are different compared to the piloted ones. As usual, the fight was intense with Asuka screeching and struggling as much as Shinji in his own fights against angels.
However, the difference here is that Asuka dies and her manner of death isn't pretty or glorious. After her Eva Unit gets impaled through the head, the Mass Production Evangelion units ganged up and started ripping out the former's entrails before levitating high and then impaling it several more times. Asuka was inside throughout the whole butchering and was consequently annihilated.
2 The Third Impact
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End of Evangelion took what's so nihilistic about the anime and multiplied that by ten. It's supposedly the actual ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion after fans expressed dissatisfaction with the anime ending. Really, maybe fans should have kept quiet since the ending movie only made things more depressing by proceeding with the Third Impact.
It re-imagined the series' ending where everyone on Earth pretty much failed to prevent the Third Impact thanks to Gendo Ikari's shady plans to reunite with his dead wife. Never has there been a more beautiful and classy apocalypse thanks to the "Komm, Susser Tod" song which was played in the background while the Third Impact is happening. Even the song itself was cheerfully pessimistic as the title literally means "come, sweet death" with the gloomy lyrics sung in a catchy and jolly tune.
1 Shinji's Relationship With Asuka
As if the Third Impact wasn't enough, the two ending films also treated Asuka like a punching bag. Out of all the characters, she sustained the worst injuries and injustices. For one, there's that infamous hospital scene where Shinji "relieves himself" at the sight of Asuka while she's in a coma.
Oh, and after the Third Impact, Asuka is miraculously brought back to life along with Shinji is a post-apocalyptic beach where the latter strangles her thanks to some ambiguous motives. In any case, there's plenty wrong with Shinji's relationship with Asuka as the two try to cope with their situation in the most dysfunctional and destructive way possible.