Label:

Manga Entertainment

Certificate:

12

Discs:

1

Running time:

96 mins approx

Video:

16.9 anamorphic

Sound:

English 5.1, Japanese 5.1

Subtitles:

English

Release date:

26th April 2010

DVD RRP:

£17.99 - Amazon - Play

Blu-ray RRP:

£22.99 - Amazon - Play

Brief synopsis:

It’s been fifteen years since a global catastrophe – believed by most to be caused by an immense meteorite impact known as Second Impact - melted the polar icecaps, flooding much of the planet and wiping out a large portion of the human race. But humanity is nothing if not resilient and little over a decade later life on Earth has returned to some semblance of normality. Fourteen-year-old Shinji Ikari has been summoned to the technologically advanced city of Tokyo III by his long estranged father where he becomes a first hand witness to an attack upon the city by an immense and powerful alien life form. Shinji is shocked to discover that Tokyo III is home to humanity’s last line of defence against these alien invaders in the shape of huge biomechanical humanoid weapons called Evangelion. But the revelations don’t stop there as Shinji also discovers that not only is his father the commander of NERV, the agency tasked with fielding these Evangelions against the alien invaders, but that his father has summoned him there to become the newest combat pilot of these mighty leviathans and defend humanity against the threat of total annihilation.

Comments:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these last ten years then you’ll probably already know about Evangelion. Originally created in the late 90’s as a twenty six episode TV anime, Evangelion is to anime fans as Star Wars or Star Trek are to pretty much every other nerd in existence; i.e., even if you’re not a Evangelion fan yourself, you’d still know what it’s about, who the main characters are and generally have a strong opinion about it one way or the other. What initially seemed to be a just another “giant mecha versus monster/alien of the week” show soon revealed itself to be as much a psychological drama as it was a mecha action piece. Evangelion’s ultimate success lay in entrenching itself deep in the fans hearts by allowing the fans to get even deeper into the characters heads, and boy were they ever a bunch of emotional screw ups right down to the very last one. But while it was asking the audience to ponder the meaning of existence while examining the human condition – it was also keeping everyone entertained with plenty of big ass robots kicking seven shades of shit out of an army of invading aliens and destroying plenty of buildings while they were at it. Yay for them, what a win-win situation.

Unfortunately the TV show went a bit overboard with all the psychological stuff towards the end of the show’s run leaving a lot of the audiences scratching their heads wondering what the hell was going on. Lucky the TV show was soon followed up with a theatrical outing called End of Evangelion (technically making this “reboot” movie Evangelion 1.11 the second and it’s sequel Evangelion 2.0, the third, showing that the producers just love messing with the audiences’ heads in any way that they can) answered a lot of questions and any it didn’t were quickly swept under the rug whilst lots of things – actually, pretty much everything - got destroyed in a major way.

Gainax, the production company behind the Evangelion franchise, knew a good thing when they saw it and have been milking the series for all it’s worth ever since. If you can stick a character’s face on it, make a model or statuette of it or tie it in with a product in some fashion then they’ve done it. But after all that, original creator, writer and director, Hideaki Anno, still wasn’t happy with the way things had turned out and has decided to do the whole thing all over again as four new movies. Utilising a whole pile of spanking new 3D technology, new animation techniques and a much bigger budget, these new movies come almost as a ten-year anniversary present from Gainax to the fans. A big thank you for fuelling this cash cow by buying the figures, T-shirts, toys and Directors cut special edition platinum DVD box-sets in a fancy tin for the last decade. Oh, but by the way, that’s still 12 bucks a seat please.

So, what have they done here? Well these four planned movies are a complete reboot of the series and while this first movie follows the first half dozen episodes of the TV show with almost religious devotion, the last few minutes then show that they’re going in a new direction with the remaining three. Appearance wise they’ve essentially pulled a lot of the old animation cells and storyboards out of the cupboard, scanned them and the re-animated straight over the top of them just with a much bigger budget. This means that visually this movie’s both very impressive whilst remaining eminently familiar to the fans. But then with all the time and money they’ve had available to throw at this project it’d be a huge disappointment if it was anything but impressive. Mind you, after watching these almost carbon copy upgraded shots for much of the film it’s quite the shock when the 4th angel - which at first glance seems identical to the old version –suddenly goes on the offensive with a totally breathtaking all new 3D-CGI attack mode which not only blows away the good guy’s defences but also the audience as well.

Story-wise there’s a whole load of the TV show’s back story and character development that’s been skipped over but that was bound to happen when you’re compressing six or so TV episodes into one feature length movie. The assumption seems to be that you’re either a big Evangelion fan already, in which case they can skip over that pesky back story thing – or that you’re so new to the show that you won’t know what you’re missing and as such will just be distracted by the pretty pictures and loud noises while they blow shit up. Either way, it works. The movie’s been raking it in hand over fist and the sequel – Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance – looks like it’ll also do the same

But what about the voice acting? Well not only is a sizable chunk of English voice cast back again, even more impressive is that the Japanese version got practically everyone back on board, and after ten years of honing their skills have slipped right back into their characters like old friends coming over for drinks and a catch up. The English language dub’s been well accepted. There was concern that Brina Palencia (Juliet in Romeo and Juliet) would have trouble taking over from fan favourite Amanda Winn-Lee as Rei Ayanami but not only has she taken to the role with ease and confidence but has also managed to make it her own rather than just trying to mimic too closely the work of her predecessor. The only real disappointment I found was that Colleen Clinkenbeard, who’s usually one of the more impressive actresses in anime dubbing today, just didn’t seem to click at all as Ritsuko Akagi.

Now, here’s the bit which I really have a bitch about something. I almost always do and this movie’s no exception. While there was a need to compress the story and expunge anything that may take up too much screen time, there’s a lot of plot points that have lost their punch along the way. Things like Rei’s emotional outburst or Shinji finally growing a spine and no longer sounding like a whiney bitch have lost their potency because you haven’t spent the last god knows how many episodes seeing them do anything else. The same’s true with Misato’s cunning/crazy plan to take out the 4th angel. As you haven’t seen just what a lazy, disorganised slob she generally is then when she pulls the proverbial rabbit out of the hat it’s totally lost it’s impact. So, for any viewers that were new to Evangelion who enjoyed this move I’d suggest that you check out the likes of ebay or similar and pick yourselves up one of the multitude of the box sets for the show. With so many sets having been released over the years and a lot of the fans trading up to the next one over time you can generally pick up one of the older ones for not much more than the price of a cinema ticket.

By now you’d think that after being given a chance to revisit the Evangelion universe again without the time and money constrains originally imposed on a TV production, Director Anno would be one happy chappy… but no. Even after the movie’s release he still wasn’t happy and in true George Lucas style Evangelion 1.01 became Evangelion 1.11 with a full re-mastering of both sound and visuals plus almost one hundred scenes having their animation tweaked and dozens of completely new shots being added. Mind you, with so many people now owning Blu-ray players and TVs the size of ping pong tables I can’t say that this was a bad thing. The Blu ray version totally knocks the socks off the DVD so if you have a Blu-ray player then skip the DVD entirely, go straight for the Blu-ray version and sod the extra expense.

Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions also have special editions (what a surprise) which for only a couple of quid more than the standard edition come with a booklet, some fancy packaging and a bonus DVD containing Evangelion 1.01 which is basically the same film with some scenes either missing, slightly shorter or with some of the special effects missing. I can’t help but think that this cunning marketing ploy probably had more than a little to do with having a warehouse full of Evangelion 1.01 DVDs that probably wouldn’t sell once Evangelion 1.11 was on the cards. Cunning ploy or not, it’s bound to work and I can see the Eva fans snapping them up when they go on sale on April 26th.

Extras:

Angel of Doom Promotional Music Video; Original Promo News Flashes and 3; Movie Previews (Beautiful World Version 2, 2A and 2B).

While it’s obvious that Sci-Fi-London is the festival to be at, we have to acknowledge that there are other places for you to get you anime fix this year so here goes: You can catch both Evangelion 1.11 and Evangelion 2.0 up on the big screen over at the BFI next month during their weekend anime festival; details of which can be found here.