| Average |
7.7 |
| Animation |
9 |
| Sound |
8 |
| Story |
7 |
| Character |
5 |
| Value |
8 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
| This review is based on the cam leak. After being dragged in by the huge hype of the original series, and being severely let down by the ending, I was extremely excited with the fact that Hideaki Anno was going to give this series another try - and possibly another chance at a treatment this anime deserved.
The original series was plagued by financial woes, not to mention the personal turmoil Anno was going through at the time. Which is why the series which was intended to be a deep, meaningful, yet light hearted animation (as the first 13 peisodes show) ended up becoming a pile of steaming, unexplicable, overly convoluted mess in the end.
Obviously this caused masses to go absolutely blithering crazy trying to make religious, political, sexual, and all sorts of meanings out of the series which were never intended to be there and needless to say were never ever there in the first place.
The first movie in the seires was a let down for many, as it promised a lot of changes yet delivered on very few of them. Sure the anime has gone through a makeover and looks considerably good. However real critics found there to be severe lacking of original content or change. Most scenes and happenings were taken from the trite old original series.
The second movie however delivered big on the promise of change, and if this is anything to go by, I am looking forward to seeing where this leads. Although knowing Anno and his work, one is forgiven to dread the outcme as well. Anno, although is well respected in the anime world. He is also widely regarded as a creator who gets swept away with the "image of grandeur" of his own work, and where his work starts of with great priomise, it ends up being an embarassment to the original idea of where things should have gone. His work is also often left with a feeling of being incomplete by the end - almost as if he lost interested at about 75%.
Visuals - Visuals this anime is beautiful. There is seamless intertwining of CGI and cell imagery. Character designs have the distinct look of the 90's yet the new designs have a distinct look of the new decade. In fact the suit worn in the opening scene of the anime by the new female character could be pulled out of any digimon episode. Or resembles megaman starforce.
Sound - The cound of the anime from what I could make from the cam would not let anyone down. Music however is a bit of a hit and miss. After almost 15 years, the impact of children singing an old kiddie song, as cataclysmic things happen, and people are being butchered loses quite a huge amount of its original impact. Where originally the juxtaposition of people singing "tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down" as the world crashed at the end of the orignal was inspired, now the autopilot berserk rage of Eva01, as it eats askuka's test Eva, just seems cheap and trite.
Characters - The new characters are a breath of fresh air. However the only character which departs from its flaccid original is Rei. Shinji, is less pathos ridden than before, however Asuka is the only character stuck in time. She is so annoying that her seeming fate (i shall not say more) halfway through the anime is actually welcome. Apart form this all the side characters display almost zero to little improvement.
All in all, the second movie in the rebuild of this series is quite a decent effort. However real anime fans - and I do not mean those kids who will immediately start drooling into their shoes and regard this anime as the greatest of all time during the first 5 minutes, will actually find that this anime shows why the original was and is a wonderful piece of work, and also once and for all realise the original's flaws and hopefully come to terms with the fact that at the end of the day Evangelion is only a robot anime, and not the religious, psychological and intellectual phenomenon that it is mistaken for.
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