It was popular enough that Gainax received death threats over the TV ending.

>>139217804
I thought that was over death & rebirth

>>139217804
Yeah, japs are wild. But what I want to know is if this "boom" was from the episode 1 or if began only after the story became more serious.

>>139217983
It was pretty "serious" to begin with, it started defying well-established anime tropes in the first two episodes. But that's not me praising the series, I think that stuff is only implied depth and that eva is overall extremely overrated. As for when exactly the "boom" happened, I can't answer that because I honestly don't know.

>>139217721
It aired at a slot reserved for kid's cartoons, so when stuff did become serious or "DEEP" it caught the audience totally off guard, which helped big time with it's aura. And is why it is so notorious.

There are a few older Japanese dudes in my lab who watched it as it aired and said that's probably the main reason it was so talked about. Like you would never in a million years expect that sort of stuff to be happening in a show show on whatever channel and time it was. It would be like if Nickelodeon aired it at 4pm weekdays or something.

>>139217721
I know episode 24 is the most popular episode, but I think it was a hit before that

>>139217804

Ah the beginnings of modern otakudom and the MeMeMe culture. Don't like something, throw a bitch fit and it gets changed because a small group of something like 50K something whales are virtually anime's entire support base. It also works for video games now post SJW movement.