A gum/cheek tissue infection, when one of my wisdom teeth erupted. Pericoronitis.
My jaw was in so much pain I couldn’t move it. I ended up tying a bandana around my head to immobilize it. None of the medications I had on hand worked; took me several hours to get to an emergency room for proper painkillers. But even those weren’t much help; it took days for antibiotics to have an effect.
A close second would be a case of hiccups, the day after I was in a serious car crash. My pectorals were on fire.
I was always vaguely aware of it growing up, but I was never much of an anime watcher. Loved the theme song though, even out of the show’s context.
I didn’t sit down and watch it until 2021, when I was in my mid-20s. Loved every minute of it. The only other anime I’d watched before that was Initial D, a few episodes of Speed Racer, and an old Gundam OVA, but I forget which one. Kaguya-Sama was coming out around then too, but I think I got around to that a bit later.
Didn’t get around to End of Evangelion for another couple of years, when my local movie theater held a special screening. Now that was a fantastic experience… aside from watching the scene in the hospital room, projected on a 50-foot screen.