Anime: Shin Evangelion Gekijouban:||

1/3 of this movie isn't that bad, actually it is quite good if we compare this with the disaster that 3.0 was but don't be fooled by it, later on one character is written out for no reason other than psychological manipulation (it has its own page on wikipedia because this trope has been done so many times that well it's become a damn trope example: Gwen stacy/the amazing spider-man comics) and the movie went downhill after that and 3.0+1.0 became a complete mess of pseudoscience, nonsensical vaguely Christian babble, and people infodumping stuff the previous movies should have established earlier and not in 20 minutes (Anti-universe, Eva imaginary, bits of information about what happened between 2.0 -3.0 , Asuka's backstory..and more)

It's so depressing that Anno thinks satisfying the audience means sacrificing every interesting thing he has going on as a filmmaker and just creating anime-colored paste of flashing lights and dramatic speeches (and CGI because it's cool or some shit) and after 1h 20m of a lot of references to ultraman, Uchuu senkan yamato (star blazers), BYE BYE JUPITER and more ANOTHER IMPACT (no pun intended) is triggered and it's basically instrumentality 2.0 but with Gendo instead of shinji and everything here including characterization and execution is a poorly attempt to recreate something that was lost long time ago.

BTW My biggest grip with 3+1's ending is that Shinji's real problem was never the Evas, EoE had an anti-escapism message (the negative consequences of the Third Impact weren’t wished away and shinji had just to roll with it) but here shinji rewrites reality as he sees fit, a reset ending in which everyone is happy resetting a timeline where humanity struggles against the consequences , so there are no consequences for any action (which it's bad because that's not how the world works) and shinji is a salaryman with Mari as his GF for reasons that are beyond my comprehension not only ignoring what eva 3.0 told us about the world "YOU CAN(NOT) REDO" (you actually CAN, you just need the right spears and giants robots) but also goes against EoE and NGE. Making Evangelion Another escapism fantasy.

P.S. WILLE's crew behave erratically, hysterically with no rhyme or reason or explanation (sakura and that pink haired girl)-

- If you are a mecha fan (just like me) the fights are not that good. This is not tekkaman blade, Char's counterattack nor something meaningful like Argento soma - Ideon Be invoked.

VEREDICT: 4/10 Because I value story over everything else and none of the fights since 2.0 have been satisfaying at all.

I watched all 4 Rebuild movies and this is what I think of them. I am not going to over what I wrote about the series, so check out that one if you haven’t, since it’s more of a comparison than a standalone analysis.

So, the Rebuild movies are the remake of Neon Genesis, and are essentially how Hideaki Anno reevaluated his magnum opus 20 years later, when he was no longer that depressed and had left the shitfest that Gainax became by turning into another modern studio. As such it’s not going to be the arthouse piece it used to be nor a landmark in anime, since it’s a derivative piece of entertainment made in an era where the term classic is about to die out. Almost nobody’s watching old anime anymore, therefore there is no point in telling Zoomers of the classics that defined earlier decades. Even those who bothered to watch the series when it was added on Netflix some time ago didn’t find it to be special after thousands of other shows copied its style. Most of them even said they didn’t like it because it had robots, and Shinji was a crybaby and not an overpowered self insert harem lead in a videogame isekai. So yeah, right from the start you know these movies are not going to be something special for those who didn’t watch and love the series 20 years ago. Which is why the only thing I’m going to do is to compare them.

Starting with the first movie, which was pure fan service for the old fans. Almost identical to the first episodes of the series and with a hundred times prettier colors, so obviously I loved every second of it and gave it a 10/10.

The second movie is where things change and left me partially disappointed. Not so much because it wasn’t an identical recreation of the original, but rather because the changes didn’t make this version better. And by that I refer to the inclusion of Mari, a new character we were calling the glasses waifu, something that was added just for selling dakimakuras. Eventually there was a good reason for her existence, evident by her name. She’s called Mari because she’s a Mary Sue, and sums up the worst traits of the archetype. She’s always great, she always wins, she doesn’t suffer from psychological issues like the other characters, and she always guides a discussion in whatever way she likes by making loaded questions. She’s literally a self insert, thrown in a preexisting story for showing off how amazing she is. Heck, she even makes Shinji her boyfriend at the end. What a load of crap. That aside, the movie ends with the Third Impact, which didn’t make any sense at the time since there was nothing past the Third Impact in the original. What the hell are they doing here? I gave it a 7/10 for at least being rule of cool despite having Mari.

Then came the third movie which was off putting. There was a time skip which changed completely the look of the setting. The Third Impact wasn’t complete and thus the planet is half dead. Everything was mechanical and lifeless, and the characters permanently cryptic and emotionless. Shinji spends the whole film having no idea what is going on and nobody is explaining shit. It’s also where they included Kaworu in the plot, which seemed ill timed. The thing that was making him so deceptive in the series was interacting with Shinji in his daily activities. There were no daily activities here, everything was ugly and joyless. And speaking of which, the setting was also ugly because they no longer drew over the CGI. I could see the damn polygons in most scenes and it made the fights to look like something out of a Playstation 3 cut scene. Also the ending didn’t even feel like an ending, it was more like a cliffhanger to something that was ugly, lifeless, and had no relation to the series anymore. I gave this one a 4/10.

And after many years of waiting the final movie came out and it was not that bad in the first third. It took place in an area that was not affected by the Third Impact where the characters had a normal life in the countryside. You get to see a lot of the minor cast from the series all grown up and with families. This part felt like an actual continuation of the plot, since all these people didn’t disappear and life went on. Unfortunately the rest of the movie was an incomprehensible mess of pseudoscience, religious mambo jumbo, and people infodumping stuff that should have been established in earlier movies and not 15 minutes before the end. Talk about ill-planning. And sure, the End of Evangelion was also a mess in terms of narrative, but at least it ended with Shinji living in a devastated world where the negative consequences of the Third Impact weren’t wished away. In this version they did, the ending is a reality reset where everything is fine and all of them are happy. Hideaki what did you do, you were supposed to be the chosen one. Why did you make your magnum opus into another escapism fantasy? Is this the result of not being depressed anymore? What a load of shit. I’m still giving it a 6/10 for the epilogue-like portion of the movie, but the rest of it is completely against the core message of End of Evangelion.

And that’s what I had to say about the Rebuild movies. The best one was the first because it was identical to the series, thus again proving why retro always wins.