Trying to work out which to watch in what order for evangelion really made it hard to start watching evangelion for me, mainly because of their really dumb names of the films, it's nice to see they're keeping up the tradition so that people who get into evangelion after me will be even more confused than I was.
Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion (the original TV show) then watch End of Eva, which is a retcon film of the last 2 episodes of the TV show. It's considered the "true ending" even though the TV's ending is also good. Won't get into why the two exist because it's a whole ordeal. The Rebuilds are not worth watching unless you really like the franchise.
Also will note, when watching, do not try to parse the plot. It is irrelevant. The show is 100% a character study and all the shit about fighting angels and such is just a framing device for exploring the characters. Many people go into the show expecting shounen battle crap and then go "the plot didn't make sense" which is essentially the equivalent of watching The Big Lebowski and complaining that nothing important happens.
I think the actual show (I haven't watched the two films yet though) did a great job of focusing on the plot just enough that you have a very rough understanding of what's happening but not too much that it becomes completely incomprehensible like in Evangelion 3.0 where I felt it kind of overshadowed the bits about the characters themselves.
Trying to work out which to watch in what order for evangelion really made it hard to start watching evangelion for me, mainly because of their really dumb names of the films, it's nice to see they're keeping up the tradition so that people who get into evangelion after me will be even more confused than I was.
Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion (the original TV show) then watch End of Eva, which is a retcon film of the last 2 episodes of the TV show. It's considered the "true ending" even though the TV's ending is also good. Won't get into why the two exist because it's a whole ordeal. The Rebuilds are not worth watching unless you really like the franchise.
Also will note, when watching, do not try to parse the plot. It is irrelevant. The show is 100% a character study and all the shit about fighting angels and such is just a framing device for exploring the characters. Many people go into the show expecting shounen battle crap and then go "the plot didn't make sense" which is essentially the equivalent of watching The Big Lebowski and complaining that nothing important happens.
I think the actual show (I haven't watched the two films yet though) did a great job of focusing on the plot just enough that you have a very rough understanding of what's happening but not too much that it becomes completely incomprehensible like in Evangelion 3.0 where I felt it kind of overshadowed the bits about the characters themselves.