Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance

- Label:
- Manga Entertainment
- Certificate:
- 15
- Format:
- DVD or Blu-Ray
- Discs:
- 1.
- Running time:
- 107 mins approx
- Subtitles:
- English
- Video:
- 16:9 widescreen
- Sound:
- English 5.1, Japanese 5.1 (DVD version)
- Sound:
- English 6.1, Japanese 6.1 (Blu-Ray version)
- Release date:
- 20th June 2011
- DVD RRP:
- £17.99 - Amazon - Play
- Blu-Ray RRP:
- £22.99 - Amazon - Play

Brief synopsis:
Evangelion Pilots Rei Syanami and Shinji Ikari are joined by fellow pilot Asuka Langley Shikinami, who proceeds to defeat the newest angelic threat to Tokyo III on a solo sortie. And she doesn’t just do it alone, oh no, this pilot also does it with style, flair and above all, passion. But as the Angel threat grows ever larger, are these three enough to defend humanity against the Third Impact and the end of the world as we know it?
Comments:
OK, so here we are for the second of the four Evangelion “reboot” movies and while the first movie (our review of which can be found here) tried it’s best to stay true to the original TV show with most of the rebooty (is that even a word?) differences being just cosmetic – well, up until the last few minutes at least - this second movie seems to take great delight in showing that everything you thought was “true” about Evangelion is about to be thrown right out of the window faster than you can say “but that’s not how it’s supposed to happen!”. But that’s not to say that it’s a completely brave new world here, no, there's enough scenes carbon-copied from the show and then given major visual upgrades to make you go “squee” and then a whole bunch more new sequences to make you go “squee” all over again.

Taking over the helm from the big man Hideo Anno himself, is Kazurya Tsurumaki, who previously directed a number of episodes of the TV series, and with this movie he seems to be revelling in showing us scenes that we think are going to play out the way they did before, and then pulling the rug out from under the audience whilst yelling “gotcha” like some kind of demented Noel Edmonds. Asuka still gets her big entrance though, taking down a Angel single handed in her first appearance, and it’s the major differences in her character (and plug suit – being a movie rather than a TV show, the censors have pretty much been told to take a hike) over the course of the film - as well as the addition of an enigmatic new Eva pilot in the (rather curvy) shape of Mari Makinami Illustrious - that really trumpets to the world early on that while the first movie was happy to just follow the TV show, this version of the Evangelion story is definitely it’s own person… err… movie and is going in some new and exciting directions. And towards the end of the movie, boy, does it ever go start to blaze it’s own trail.

Extras:
There’s plenty of these to get through. There’s a audio commentary by a large number of the dub cast, deleted scenes, a “making of” for many of the computer generated sequences, an alternate version of the ending and a whole host of the original Japanese trailers and TV spots.
