Reviews - Neon Genesis Evangelion Death & Rebirth
By Ashtray

I still stand by my belief that in anime, there are people who want to make art and not just animation, and this movie is enough proof for me.

Well pretty much everyone knows the ocean deep story of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but this movie doesn’t add anything new to the Eva world, but Death & Rebirth is rather a conglomeration of Eva episodes stringed together in a very dark, abstract and insightful way. The problem with this film though (although I don’t think of it as such) is that many people get bored, because it doesn’t have many new visuals, or anything new in general. But I must stress that I don’t view Hideaki Anno as an animator, but rather a troubled man with something to say. And this should prove it, so don’t watch it expecting hardcore action and fast development, because you will get oh so very dissapointed, rather watch it thinking what is it that Eva has that makes people say it is so deep and philosophical, rather than just another big-goodguy-robots-kill-badguy-aliens fare.

Neon Genesis Evangelion originally came out in 1996 and with other titles released around that time Eva never really stood out in the animation department, mainly because Gainax was a new, pretty low budget studio, so the animation fluctuated. In the movie Death (which is the compilation of the series) there are a few touch ups here and there, with even some completely new scenes and animations, the most popular being Rei’s first smile. But I must say I quite enjoyed all those new bits, although not all of them were animated, rather just a still picture with talking in the background, done mainly to aid you in the understanding of the characters and their problems. But all in all there is nothing really worth mentioning. Considering it’s a pretty new release it isn’t exactly an enormous step up graphically. The colours in this movie are dark and pale, but changes to bright and pale in appropriate situations., but they never have a positive tint, mainly to reflect on the issues at hand.

If you watch Death & Rebirth you will notice there are two sections, Death and Rebirth. Death is the movie and what I have been talking about so far, and Rebirth is the alternate episode 25, but I won’t get into that right now, rather when I review End Of Evangelion, which is the newest release with the alternate episodes 25 & 26. Since the version I watched wasn't dubbed, I could only judge the Japanese voice acting, which I found to be pretty pleasant, suiting and had all the original cast in all their glory.

Unfortunately the subtitles were horrible, with many grammatical and spelling errors. And a lot of the time the text cruised by the screen, hardly allowing me to read what it said, more irrating so, is that often the text didn’t even fit in the screen, which left some of the words up to imagination.

The ambiance was created with an eerie and dead undertone with times of peace coming of as quiet and awkward rather than happy and peaceful. The music was very good, with my favourite Eva song; “ Angel Battle 01” being played. The rest was pretty much just dull and dark music (not dull as in boring or anything, rather in the more pale tone). The movie revolved around a music practice from the four Children, and with each new character that entered the group the story focused on them after their instrumental solo.

The characters all have troubled minds that don’t often surface at first glance. In the series you see the characters develop, mature, expand and overcome problems. But in the movie you are just presented the characters in their full grace, having to accept them as they are, and given short time to understand any at all. I think that Hideako Anno did this to make the movie seem as a quick documentary of the events, as seen in the eyes of an outsider.

What I found to be as a problem with this film is that it doesn’t give you anything to start on, it doesn’t explain the background of the Eva world or gives any hint of what has occured or who is who. At first it would seem that it is just a movie for fans and those with a basic understanding of it’s background, but that depends if you want to understand Eva or just watch this as an unlinked movie. If you are going to watch this movie just remember to overclock your brain and leave immature nonsense at the door, because then you will

not be able to understand this movie. Try dissecting it, inspecting it and absorbing it, like a painting of an expressive artist, don’t give a quick glance and go “that’s cool” like a quick pin up artist.

Either way I loved the movie and so have many other like-minded friends of mine, and if it helps don’t watch it if you’re sleepy because you will most probably fall asleep, no matter how big a fan you may be, it happened to me >.<