>>15
That is true, but I will always remember NGE as a flawed masterpiece, and wonder what it could have been if it hadn't gone spiraling down into the Black Pit of WTF at the end.

Think of all the great films you have seen, not just anime. How many of them are memorable because they were good, and how many of them are memorable because they started out great and then got really, really bad?

I think that NGE, with the last 3 or 6 episodes thrown out completely and rewritten by someone who didn't feel a compulsion to abandon the story and abandon 20+ episodes of painstaking, exquisite characterization in favor of spending the last few episodes kicking the audience right in the beanbag over and over, could be the Best Anime Ever. The way it is now, it's just frustrating.