Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone – Review

After the second impact, all that remains of Japan is Tokyo-3, a city that’s being attacked by giant creatures that seek to eradicate the human kind, called Angels.  Last hope for survival rests with a government agency and its gigantic Evangelion fighting artillery, a human-mechanical hybrid designed by Shinji’s distant father, Gendou.  Before I continue I should note that I last saw the series about five years ago and haven’t retained much in the way of exact plot recollection. What I do know, is rather than a straight remake, Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone, is an expanded retelling of the opening to a story that began as a 1995 TV series and was concluded by mastermind Hideaki Anno in the 1997 feature Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion. When you’re dealing with a classic anime series that has been around for many many years, you can expect confusing plot jumps like this.

The art in this film is probably not what you are used too from earlier episodes. Tech package is geared up with the latest CGI software without betraying the sharp lines and simple facial expressions of the original material. The character designs are the same, streamlined and tweaked a bit, but when it comes to the layout, placement and style of the film, it’s like watching a glossier version of what came out back in 1995. Of course, they are condensing six episodes, about 120 minutes, down to a 90 minute runtime so things are cut. But they deal with it well enough.

Allow me to explain that last part, Rebuild 1 is basically a retelling of the first 6 or so episodes from Neon Genesis Evangelion. In a real rarity, the Evangelion TV series is being “remade” into four new movies, the first of which is entitled “You Are (Not) Alone”. Once you get past the dubbing and shotty backstory given, you begin to really think this movie is is really quite predictable and inane. I felt this flick lacked basic plot development to form a basis for what is to come in future films.  While the storyline basically follows that of its sister anime it has been completely remade. For instance, there have now been a few changes in design as well, EVA Unit 1 has had a slight rehash with a few armor additions and some new weaponry.

I can’t really talk about the film without talking about the series because… well… It’s a reboot, one that stays fairly close to the story of the original. Then again, if you aren’t familiar to this series I won’t be able to catch you up to speed in the limited amount of space in my reviews.  This is not to say that it’s not a good movie. It’s just that like I said, it’s like watching the series again. The music, composed by Shiro Sagisu follows the ways of the story and visuals in regards to the original anime. It sounds familiar, though outright different. Despite the quality of this film, You Are (Not) Alone is only held down because of the reasons why it was created. Many fans might look at this and see only money, or others might say that the original series never needed to be made. Frankly, I like to look at it like another take on the Evangelion universe, expanding on ideas that were not touched on in the original series.