[Fish Sandwich]

I'm not particularly interested in disagreeing with you on episode 28, but I am sad you didn't end up liking it. It's always been a favorite of mine, and the whole "I became a Rider to protect people! And that means I can protect Riders too!!!" bit is like, the definitive Shinji quote. For what it's worth, here's my take on the episode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The whole Time Vent plot was an extremely clever twist on the normal concept of a recap episode, showing the events of the series up to this point play out again in a fashion that reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode or something. The whole context of the episode is that Shinji is completely powerless and can't even remember he remembers what's going to happen most of the time, which is kind of horrifying, and gives things a very different atmosphere than the usual clip show where people sit there reminiscing about things in a laid-back manner. Actually, I keep comparing it to a clip show, but I'm not even sure that's fair. It might just be a total coincidence the episode functions as a summary of the story, because I have to imagine restaging a bunch of old scenes again probably ruins the low-effort part that usually motivates such things, even if most of the Rider action is recycled. At any rate, I love this episode to bits because it's one I think of whenever I think of how captivating this show was to me at the time (and obviously still is). It seriously felt like anything could happen by this point.

I think the key difference might be that I'm looking at it as a clip-show that got clever, and not something trying to be clever that turned into a clip-show.