Just watch it through, or the way like from that pic. End of Evangelion is an alternate version of episodes 25 and 26, and the rebuild movies are meant to be watched afterwards
It doesn't matter what order you watch it your first time around, you're not going to understand what the fuck is going on unless you watch a five hour video essay anyway.
Evangelion is an experience. As others have said, I wouldn't even bother trying to find the best way to consume it, just watch, and revisit once you get over the initial "wtf was that" feeling.
End of Evangelion (optional, but recommended. This happens chronologically at the same time as Ep 25 and 26)
Everything else (optional, not recommended)
The OG series is the story Anno wanted to show. Some fans wanted a more concrete ending, so Anno gave them a concrete ending in EoE. Then some fans wanted a happy ending where Shinji gets the girl so Anno said fuck it, sold out, and made a series with a happy ending where Shinji gets a girl. But now some fans want a happy ending where Shinji gets the right girl so Anno gave up on them as lost causes and went and directed Shin Godzilla.
Evangelion is sorta important culturally and historically in anime, but honestly I wouldn't call it good, even though it was one of the early ones I grew up on (along with Ranma 1/2 and Rurouni Kenshin).
I wouldn't bother with anything weird, just watch the series through and then the movies in release order. It might not be "optimal" but I don't think it needs to be. You can skip Death, though, since it's just a recap (there was originally a year between the end of the series and EoE)
TV series: You have to skip the first season, it's a slow start and kinda shit. Go back to it later, except for S01E07 and 08, those are necessary to understand the story arc.
In S02, watch E03,04,05,08,11 and 02 in that order. Still drags on but there are some memorable moments. S03 is great. Except for the ending, skip that. And it all goes downhill starting in S04.
But if you stick with it, S07 is bearable again.
I personally recommend watching all of GoT in order, not because it's good, but because you won't appreciate the flawless genius of S8E3 without the other 7 seasons of context. It's a slow drag through those 7 seasons, but once it picks up in the last 5 episodes, it'll all be worth it, I swear. There's so much character development packed into those episodes that they'll seem like completely different people!
Honestly, if I'm told that I need to watch something in a weird order in order to enjoy it, I just drop it from my watchlist. There's plenty of good media to watch, I'm not gonna do that stupid shit.
Not this extreme, but Always Sunny I couldn't get past the second episode. Gave up on it until someone told me that I can just completely ignore the first season and start on season two. Actually got into the show like that, never gone back to try and watch the parts I missed
Yeah, I can get into a series if people say to skip the first couple episodes/seasons because it takes a little to figure itself out (like how you can skip the first season of Parks and Rec and miss nothing of importance), but weird watch order is not something I'll bother with.
With American comics, it's not even the shattered continuity, it's that availability is a mess because some of the franchises are so ancient and collectible.
If I want to read through One Piece from the 1997 start, my library probably has/can inter-library loan all 105 volumes, or I can go to mainstream retailers and get any I'm missing without a huge fracas.
If I want to read Batman from the 1940 start, I'd better hope some of the rarer issues come up at auction in the near future AND that I can mortgage my house to afford them.
I'm amazed they never put out a DVD-ROM collection that's "Everything Marvel/DC did prior to, say, 1990, as PDF scans" just so mere mortals have a chance to enjoy the experience of completionism.
I was surprised about that figure of 105 volumes for one piece, so I googled it and it was 109 (probably just what came out since you last heard about it). I was expecting that number to be like a thousand or something.
Fate is pretty easy nowadays. Just start with literally any series made after 2011. They're all self contained stories that explain the premise within the first few episodes.
We're a long way from the old days where you had to read the VN if you wanted to have any idea about what was going on in the UBW movie.
Monogatari was much harder for me to keep track of IMO, Fate content you can start off with most of what's available (vanilla Fate, Zero, Extra, Samurai Remnant, Prisma, Grand Order). I'd only not recommend Hollow Ataraxia or Apocrypha first.
Where typemoon is concerned, Kara no Kyoukai is more headache inducing
Fate is only difficult for people who are adamant about watching adaptations. And even though I do think the UBW anime at least reaches the threshold of "good," it's still inferior.
Oh, but the power of American superhero comics is that you can just start reading them wherever. Sure, there is deeper lore, but you're not required to know all that. There's this bat-dude, see? He punches crooks and does awesome shit in the night. There's also a bunch of wacky villains. See? Just go read it, you'll pick up the rest of the details as you go along!
And I also love a lot of European comics because most often they have a pretty good balance between complex writing and manageable size. And publishers here tend to be more lenient toward artists making one-shot kind of comics, without any expectations that it'll become the next endless blockbuster cash-cow property.
Still, I do like how most of the manga series are like "OK, here's the beginning, here's 20 or whatever volumes, here's the end."
I'm surprised you had this problem with IDW Sonic as it's an incredibly easy book to follow. If you were confused by the beginning then know that the whole book takes place after Sonic Forces, but before Frontiers in the game timeline. Unlike Archie Sonic which is its own continuity.
do comics have as much filler as manga? because most manga and anime I've seen (which isn't too much admittedly) has been full of irrelevant shit just to pad things out.
Not really, since there's such a limited page amount, the only comics with "filler" either are because the editor kept mandating arcs that sell too well be stretched out as much as possible (Marvel infamously did this with Spider-Man's clone saga to the irritation of EVERYONE!), or because it's something like Early Archie Sonic where the stories are intended to be episodically self-contained to begin with.
I love batman and tried to get into comics many times. But every time I'd ask where to start it wouid be paragraphs of text exposing were I "could start" multiple reboots, side world's, multi verse who else knows what. So I just give up.
Make sure you watch the corrected DVD order because Fox thought more action would be better and put the 2nd episode first, the first episode 11th and totally fucked any hope for a second season...
Speaking of Dragon Ball, it's in a very weird "how to progress further" dillema after Toriyama's death. Various people have the rights for different purposes; and want to do different things with the franchise.
I just hope it doesn't end up like LOTR franchise where they cash out for shit ass products that doesnt respect its source material.
What do you mean, needlessly confusing? The release order was genius. Opening with the movie screening showed exactly the kind of show it was. It also allowed the climax to be in the last episode of the season, while still having it happen in the middle chronologically (as Haruhi wanted).
But the second season was where KyoAni outdid themselves. It was an improvement on the first season. While the first season was great, the second was even better. Sometimes you see a series dip in quality in S2, but here it was the opposite - the quality improved. For the second season showed an uptick in the narrative. The first season had already pushed the limits of storytelling, but the second went further. While the first season was greatly enjoyable, the second was even more so. Perhaps the most ardent fans may try to quantify the quality, and say that it was, I don't know, eight times better than the first.
Star Trek '09 and Into Darkness are both better movies if you read their supplementary comics. This is, I think, already on bad ground. Each work should be able to stand on its own to some degree. Pushing supplementary stuff like this to bring the story together is a cynical cash grab.
Season 1 of Picard then directly contradicts the comic to '09. Specifically, Data was fully revived inside B4 in the comic, while Picard showed that B4 could never handle the complexity of Data's programming (which, admittedly, is the more likely outcome). Not only that, but Alex Kurtzman was one of the writers of the comic was also on the writing team of Picard. Erasing that plot point was a deliberate choice.