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superhero looks at EVANGELEON 2.0: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE anime!
EVANGELION 2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE
Directed by Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, and Hideaki AnnoWritten by Hideaki Anno
Reviewed by superhero
Astounding. Tremendous. Staggering. Jaw-dropping.
Dare I say…Genius?
These are all words I would honestly use to describe EVANGELION 2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE. When I went to see this movie last Friday evening in Los Angles my expectations were high. In preparation for going to see EVANGELION 2.0, I broke out my Blu Ray disc of EVANGELION 1.11 YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE. I have to say, I was shocked as to how amazing the first chapter in this new “rebuild” of the classic NEON GENESIS EVANGELION was. I’d seen YOU ARE (NOT ) ALONE when it had a limited release in theaters a couple of years back and found it to be highly entertaining. But the animation as presented on my Blu Ray player via my wide screen TV made the 1.11 feature look…well…unbelievable. I’d bought the first movie on Blu Ray with every intent of watching it as soon as it came in the mail but I’d never gotten around to it. I’m glad I waited until EVANGELION 2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE finally got its U.S. release to watch the first film again. It pumped up my expectations all the more for this next chapter of the new Evangelion.
And I have to say, my expectations were met and surpassed. With EVANGELION 2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE anime fans have been given one of the best anime, hell best animated, releases in years. This film was just…spectacular. While the first film was basically a re-hash of the early episodes of the 90’s EVANGELION series 2.0 kicks what the creators have dubbed as the Evangelion rebuild into high gear. This film is an amazing achievement and I was literally gobsmacked when I left the theatre. I haven’t felt this impressed by something since the first time I walked out of…well, I can’t remember when I’ve been this impressed by a movie.Visually, the movie is just gorgeous. It takes what was created from the original series and uses modern technology to enhance the scale of what has come before. Evangelion was never your typical giant fighting robot series and with this chapter of the remake I truly saw that this version was taking Evangelion onto a completely new playing field. This is not your father’s Evangelion. This is something new and that is excitingly different as well as obviously familiar.
What EVANGELION 1.0 kept intact, EVANGELION 2.0 completely pulls apart and deconstructs. While there are familiar elements and plot points that line up with some of the later episodes of the original Evangelion series this film goes off the rails and in an almost completely new direction. The biggest change (which purists online have been freaking out about) is the introduction of a new Eva pilot. While it’s true that I saw no real reason for the introduction of a new character into the Evangelion mythos I will say that the newest member of the cast isn’t as catastrophic an addition to NGE as many fans might have expected.As part of my prep for this movie I also went back and watched much of the original series. Yes, it’s true, the new pilot does take a bit of the spotlight away from a character that was a fan favorite to many Evangelion fans. I can’t say that the new pilot’s introduction harms the new film in any way. She doesn’t necessarily enhance the movie either and I found it to be an odd choice to move certain key player’s roles around to make room for a completely new and unknown quantity. But this movie moves along so quickly that you don’t have time to question it. You just have to move along with it. Which, to me, is part of what made the film so terrific. If the thing is so entertaining that I don’t have time to bring up my inner whiny fanboy then someone’s doing their job right. Besides, I know that this is only the second of four movies, so there’s a lot more time to grow with this character as well as to see what new plans there are for the existing group of characters.
The biggest change, however, is just the overall tone of the series. With this new version of Eva creator Kanno has somehow opted to give us a seemingly more optimistic and less ambiguous version of what’s come before. For the record, one of the things that I really like about the original series was the practically nihilistic and tragic feel of the whole thing. I felt that the original series was so intense because of the emotional weight it carried along with the intense action sequences. In this rebuild we’re presented with versions of the main characters that are less emotionally fragile and isolated. They are more open to connecting to one another. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still pretty messed up but in this Evangelion they are trying to develop connections with one another that weren’t even really attempted in the original. I know that much of this is because in the 90’s series there were twenty six half hour episodes to play with as opposed to four movies with a running time of an hour and forty minutes. So the character development in this particular entry is a bit, shall we say, abbreviated but the story doesn’t suffer for it. Again, it just makes it different but not worse than the original series.With EVANGELION 2.0 Hideaki Anno and his co-directors have sounded a clarion call challenge to all other action anime creators. The bar has been raised and there is a new standard in action/science fiction anime. If this is the future of anime then I’m on board for sure. By the time this review sees publication the U. S. theatrical run of this movie will be pretty much over but that’s OK because you’ll be able to experience this film on a widescreen TV somewhere in all its high-def glory when it comes out on Blu Ray. I know I cannot wait for that day to come as this will be one anime I’ll be watching over and over again.The last thing I’ll say is that I hope that this feature is remembered at Oscar time next year. This is an amazing achievement in animation and should at the very least be nominated for a statuette. Anime fans should hold their heads up with pride when talking about this film. It truly lifts us all up when a film of this caliber is made and we can indentify ourselves as fans of a fantastic work of art such as this.
Discovered as a babe in an abandoned comic book storage box and bitten by a radioactive comic fan when he was a teenager, superhero is actually not-so mild mannered sometime designer & cartoonist, Kristian Horn of Los Angeles, California. He's been an @$$hole for three years. Some of his work can be seen at www.kristianhorn.com and check out his blog at www.parttimefanboy.com.
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
