I finally watched it over this past weekend with a bunch of friends, so now I’m going to take the opportunity to review it. For those not in the know, Gainax decided to redo all of Evangelion as four theatrical works. This is the first one, which covers episodes one through six, or in terms of angels, three through five. As for what angels are, they want to kill us, so we kill them back. That’s the most cursory explanation I can give, you’ll figure out their motivation much later. Now, onwards!
Shinji has been summoned to NERV headquarters by his father, Gendo, who runs the place. He rides in with Misato and meets Ritsuko and Rei in short order. So all our characters for this movie are in place, and I’ll explain them very briefly to those of you that might not have seen Eva yet (where have you been?). Shinji whines a lot, though fortunately he’s quite a bit less annoying, for now anyway. Rei has as much personality as a piece of wood. Misato lives life like a party, but she’s hiding something underneath the exterior. Ritsuko is devoted to her job and fairly antagonizing to others. And Gendo is a manipulative BASTARD and that’s actually been played up in this movie. Of course, there’s reasons why everyone is this way, but you’ll have to watch the series yourself to figure that out.
Gendo manipulates Shinji into piloting Evangelion Unit 01, and he fights the fourth and fifth angels alone. Oh, right, minor note here, there’s a new third angel that hasn’t been revealed yet, moving all the other angels up by one number. In the meantime, he has to deal with the depression and angst that comes with being a 14 year old that’s been shunned by his father forever. Like I said though, it’s a bit less annoying than in the original work. Rei joins to fight against the sixth angel, and Shinji looks like he’s coming out of his shell just a little bit. There are two major plot points that have shifted and bear mentioning, they are between the following two images. If you don’t want to read it, scroll down or click here.
Shinji is now introduced to the angel Lilith by Misato, just before fighting the sixth angel, apparently to try and motivate him to keep up the fight. Originally this happened much later, and Misato had no knowledge of Lilith. Additionally, Kaworu appears at the end of this movie, talking to the members of SEELE from the moon. If the previews for the next movie are any indication, he’s going to play a much larger role in these theatrical releases than he did in the anime.
The production quality has gone abso-freaking-lutely through the roof. It’s amazing what difference 10 years can make in the animation and sound quality. Probably the largest change comes from the sixth angel. In the original, it was simply a cube with a drill, not very interesting in the slightest. Now, it is everything. I mean that, it’s wonderfully abstract in its movements and attacks, and makes that section of the movie my favorite by far.
Overall, it’s a very refreshing version of Evangelion that I would say surpasses the original work. Some of the slow parts are still way too slow, and I think some of the character development that we’re going to need later was cut out, but I can live with that. Unfortunately, if you were thinking you’d watch the whole series through the movies, you’ll be waiting a while. The second one won’t come out until later this year.
Final Score: 9.5/10 AT fields
Objectionable content: Angels and Eva Units are huge and have proportional amounts of liquid to dump when they die. It’s not particularly gory at this point *coughEndOfEvacough* but the violence is there in force. There also may or may not be large quantities of references to Christianity. 16+.
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EVANGELION is one-of-a-kind anime! It captures all the escence of all anime! GOOD JOB!