You should absolutely watch NGE; it's a show filled with so many details that it'll never quite leave your brain. The ending is controversial for sure; I loved it, but you do need to be paying attention to the large-scale plot going on in the background in order to understand it.

The show was probably improved by the fact we live in the timeline where the original plan for the ending, in which werewolves show up, was scrapped (no, really, that was the plan at one point, look it up)