Apart from some problems at the beginning, I loved NXE - it's one of the best works of fanfiction I've read. Being a) a hopeless romantic and b) a Rei fan, I particularly liked the Jon/Rei relationship.

Let me point out one point, quoting from your review of NXE:TMP:

Now that I've finished gushing, let me say that NXE is not Evangelion in its original form. The treatment of the characters is far more gentle; they aren't required to go to the lowest ebb possible and emerge still uncertain. There isn't the same atmosphere of hopelessness and brutality giving way to a small ray of hope. However, I think that the life-affirming themes I
found and enjoyed in Evangelion are present in NXE, just in a perhaps more conventional form. I think the authors should be congratulated on taking the series to somewhere new, original and exciting. From its initially *very* unpromising beginnings as a rerun of the canon with some new characters and contrived alterations to the plot, NXE manages to become something to
be proud of. Good job, guys!

It should be noted that NXE began as a toss-off joke in the EPU online chat; Gryphon *hates* the original Evangelion.

I'm with him on that, too. I found absolutely nothing life-affirming about Hideki Anno's full-season fuck-you to anime fandom. The hopelessness and brutality I saw full on, but any hope I saw got crushed, mercilessly, usually before the episode it appeared in ended. The series gave me two mental concepts: first, that humanity is inherently worthless and deserves to be wiped out (if it doesn't commit suicide first); and second, that any and all efforts humankind makes will end in inevitable failure. The whole series, to me, is an essay in nihlism.

ISTR that Hideki Anno once claimed that he created Evangelion to show what he would do if he were the star of a giant robot show- in effect admitting that Shinji is a self-insert. If this is true, then it would only reinforce my view that Anno is lower than pond scum.

Compare DJ Croft with, oh, the interchangable heroes of the various Go Nagai giant robot shows, and you might see why NXE is the only way I've been able to tolerate Evangelion at all.

(Well, NXE and porn, anyway, but with porn I can pretend the naked bodies have nothing to do with the Show to Slit Your Wrists By.)

Redneck (PS, don't revive months-old threads)

Kris Overstreet, aka Redneck Gaijin
http://www.wlpcomics.com/redneck/
White Lightning Productions - huge tracts of land for sale
http://www.wlpcomics.com