I just finished watching the fabulous anime "Blue Seed" only to learn, after watching it, it is from 1994, while Evangelion aired late 1995.

Not only Blue Seed has a similar plot line (small government organization fights misterious monsters who want to destroy mankind by merging them all together ... ops I heard that somewhere!) but it features amazing character development with each character growing and learning from their interactions with each other (EVERY character, even the smallest ones), lots of believable and ubber cute romances both in main and secondary characters using a lot of subtle and reading between the lines, a very consistent and strong plot focusing on hope and preserving the enviroment and the green, and what is best, good animation, cute characters and no traumatic stock personalities to tell about.

All that aired more than 1 year before the so called "new wave" of Evangelion.

So, say again, what did EVA bring new? Mecha and robots? nah, you not only have super popular Gundan before, but you also have high quality Macross to tell you tales. Plot? Can't live without mentioning even Blue Seed, but also KOR, Macross and even Yamato. Wanna talk about character development? Blue seed beats 90% of all anime I have ever watched.

That's it for my last believe that EVA was nothing but a big fandom ... I can ping better animes in all aspects previous to it, and in different categories even =D

Throw your stones, I don't care, can't believe I didn't start watching anime with Blue Seed but rather Eva (EVA was my second anime, at the time, I also though "this was amazing" ... wow if I watched Blue Seed my life would probably be a lot better >D)

I actually saw Blue Seed before Eva, but I saw Eva many years (the whole series) after Blue Seed and I was "less intelligent" back then so I got into Eva more just to forget Blue Seed cause I couldn't remember it.

Though I can't remember everything so I can't do any comparison so far.