CONGRATULATIONS, MADOKA.

So, a coworker and I just finished a weekly 2 hour chunk by 2 hour chunk viewing of Evangelion, End of Evangelion, and the first two Madoka films over the course of two months.

Obviously, there's some comparisons to be made.

What are your feelings about these stories? In comparison to each other?

My initial thought is that, metaphorically, the two shows are diamonds. Beautiful. Meant to be treasured for a long time. Madoka's 12 episode run is a perfectly cut diamond. Evangelion is a bit rougher, but larger and purer.

I completely understood PMMM's plot and thought it was expertly crafted and executed, not something I can say of any version of Evangelion's story.

That said, Evangelion felt like it was populated by real people. Real people in fantastic situations, sure, but the dialogue writing felt natural and characters' personalities felt more real. Madoka's characters are fantastical, which has its own appeal, but Eva's all have more capacity for depth.

And for all the 3deep5me reactions, the Evangelion writing team put a lot of effort to include interesting meaningful connected references to religion, psychology, philosophy, and classic science fiction.

Madoka's art is incredible, consistently. Every episode (of the bluray at least) is visually stunning.