Shin seiki Evangelion Gekijô-ban: Shito shinsei

The Evangelion series itself may well be a true masterpiece, a rare example of a popular work that transcends its commercial origins and enters the realm of great art. Unfortunately, this film fails to really do it justice as it consists primarily of material already seen in either the television series or the film End of Evangelion. Additionally, they redubbed many of the voices for the English version, and the new voices often fall quite short of the old ones (even if they didn't necessarily live up to the Japanese ones to begin with). Touji's lines, in particular, fall spectacularly flat. On the positive side, it does introduce some new and hard to get footage interspersed with some nice musical numbers from Bach and Pachelbel.

I would like to preface this review by saying that I absolutely love the original series of NGE. It has aged astonishingly well, and I think it's truly timeless. However, this film occupies a bit of a strange spot in the franchise. About an hour is recapping the series, and the final half-hour is a "sneak-peek" at the next film in the franchise, "End of Evangelion" (which I have not seen at the time of writing). This begs the question - if your intent is to follow the storyline of the franchise from start to finish, what point does this film play? You could watch the series and (I'm assuming) go straight to End of Evangelion and you wouldn't have missed anything. It's a bit like having a "previously on evangelion" segment, then a half-hour trailer for something you're probably going to watch afterwards anyway. I will admit, the recapping of the series did make me view some of the themes in a different light by juxtaposing scenes I didn't connect thematically before, so it's got that going for it. But it hasn't got a lot else I'd recommend it for other than that, or for revising the story so far if you haven't seen the series in a while. It's not bad. There's just not much reason for it existing.

"Evangelion - Death & Rebirth" is, obviously, a film of two parts. "Death" is a futile attempt to stuff the content of the first 24 episodes of the "Evangelion" TV series into a running time of just under an hour. It succeeds in getting the very bare-bones of the plot in, but leaves out all of the subtler moments, the moments of psychological drama, and the fully-realized character developments that helped to make the TV series so popular to begin with. The few minutes of animation made help fill up this immense loss fails miserably.

But it does its job. And its job is to promote "The End of Evangelion". It is virtually impossible to watch "EoE" without some significant background knowledge of the TV series, and that is exactly what "Death" does.

"Rebirth" is, essentially, the first few minutes of "EoE", there for the sole purpose of whetting the appetites of audiences all over Japan for the initial release of "EoE". But since "EoE" has since been released, what's the point of keeping "Rebirth" around, anyway?

As far as promotional packages go, this is one brilliant piece of marketing. But viewers expecting to be thoroughly blown away by "Evangelion" are best off watching the TV series and then "EoE" (all in one sitting is NOT recommended, due to the sheer length of it all). "Death & Rebirth" has served its purpose, and now is no longer needed.

This movie is a summary of the previous 26 episodes. I think the NGE episodes worth watching, but if u skipped them, u should watch this movie to have a clue about the second movie. One last word about NGE: It is one of the best anime series I've ever watched, try to watch all the episodes and the movies.

It's more like the Teacher's Edition.

"Evangelion" can be a life-changing experience when seen in it's entirety; if nothing else, it will redefine the way you look at anime. "Evangelion: Death/Rebirth" will not affect you quite so profoundly, but it's still worth viewing and, in my opinion, owning when the official U.S. DVD release hits stores in late July 2002.

Originally released in Japan prior to "End of Evangelion" to promote the theatrical finale to the series, the first half ("Death") is a summation of the first 24 episodes meant to "refresh the memories" of long time fans of the anime, and initiate those who have not seen the series into the mythology of Eva's world circa 2015 A.D.; The second half ("Rebirth") is a sneak peek at the first few minutes of "End of Evangelion" (the two part movie which - sort of - wraps up the series).

To say that "Death" is largely redundant if one has seen the series is fair enough; To say that "Rebirth" is redundant because the movie itself will be available domestically on DVD in September is also fair. But "Evangelion: Death/Rebirth" is not a total waste; a great deal of new animation was created for the film, including a number scenes which were given the "director's cut" treatment and which have been, until now, mostly unavailable in the U.S. except as fansubbed movie files off the internet. This alone is enough to recommend the title to many longtime Eva fans.

Granted, I won't watch it as often as the other episodes or the movie itself, but I'll own the DVD when it comes out. Bottom line, if you haven't seen Eva yet, watch the 24 episodes in their entirety first. You'll get more out of the movie AND out of "Death/Rebirth" that way.