Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11 "You Are (Not) Alone" Review

Warning: This review may contain spoilers for the film Evangelion 1.11 and some spoilers for the Evangelion TV series.

Apparently dead set on repeating himself, Hideaki Anno was already planning The Rebuild of Evangelion in 2002. But the Rebuild project verges on ludicrously unnecessary. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most perfect television programs of all-time, and you cannot improve on perfection. Everything that needed redone, was accomplished by The End of Evangelion. Imagine if HBO announced they were going to remake The Sopranos, or if Pink Floyd decided in the 80s "Well, Darkside of the Moon isn't relevant to modern audiences. We're going to turn it into a dance album."

But if you give me a thousand ways to watch Evangelion, I'll watch Evangelion a thousand ways, and be happy for it. I'll resist the urge to compare Rebuild in a 1:1 ratio with the original series. For starters, a film series just isn't equipped to tell a long-range story as well as a tv series, so it's inherently unfair. And we already have the original Evangelion. Nothing that Rebuild could ever do, has any potential to deprive or diminish anything about the original series, which will always be the one true version of Evangelion. I'm content to judge Rebuild on its own merits.

From Angel Attack to Rei II

The first Rebuild film is an exceedingly faithful adaption of Evangelion's first six episodes. In many cases, the dialogue and scenarios are completely identical to the TV version. Hell, if they had made the film little longer, they could have fit everything in. An Eva episode is about 20 minutes, the first six episodes would take about two hours to watch. Evangelion 1.11 is one hour and forty minutes long. So approximately one episode is lost in the conversion.

The animation is crisp and clean. The voice acting is spectacular (unless you're watching the dub), and it's great to hear it in enhanced audio quality. Shiro Sagisu is back behind the helm an incredible soundtrack, with much of the classic BGM retained. Also back, of course, are Anno behind  the curtain and Sadamoto as the artistic designer, as well as most if not all of the original voice talent.

The pace is brisk. Certain segues from one scene to another are really botched. With the necessity to carry the story along quickly, it can seem really awkward the way they try to squeeze everything in. But that's coming from someone who's well acquainted with the natural pace of the TV series. Perhaps to new viewers, the film segues feel less forced.

The only real misstep in Evangelion 1.11 is that character moments are taken out, little things like Kensuke and Shinji bonding when he runs away from Nerv. Taking that out not only weakens Shinji's arc, it also makes his return to Nerv seem awfully abrupt. And I feel it's those little moments of bonding which make Evangelion so powerful -- you care about these characters in the dire circumstances because you also see them in the casual circumstances. Isn't that why the alternate reality sequence in episode 26 is so powerful?

But these are exactly the kind of omissions you find in any adaption where you have a limited amount of time to use. It's a little extra jarring in Evangelion 1.11 because everything else about it is so darn faithful. But at the same time, because everything else is so faithful, it's not hard to let the little things go.

Exposition and Excellent Positioning

The one thing I found really refreshing about the film, even if it did come off as a tiny bit forced, was the blatant exposition. Things that were ambiguous or slow to dawn in the original series, are explained outright in Evangelion 1.11. Even some major secrets, like the nature of Lilith. This shows me that the Rebuild project is dedicated to telling their own story, and giving new viewers everything they need in order to genuinely appreciate what's going on.

If there's even one single thing that the original series didn't do 100% well, it has to be that certain bits of information were very obscured and never overtly revealed, even at the end. That's absolutely fine for smaller issues like whose soul is in Evangelion 00. But that's not okay for larger issues like whose soul is in Ayanami Rei. I plan, in another post, to explore the extent to which certain information is revealed in the original series. Suffice to say, if Rebuild continues on its current path, there will be no need for such a discussion once Rebuild is over. (That's a pretty huge IF though!)

Final Act

While the earlier parts of the movie left me a bit skeptical, the film's final 1/3rd was sincerely spectacular. The fifth angel, Ramiel, is fucking awesome! The way it moves was really well designed -- despite being completely bizarre to the laws of physics, its movements felt natural and it had personality. I don't mind how weird it's getting, as the angels are supposed to seem diametrically opposed to humanity to begin with. This is also the first time when it actually seems like it's been 15+ years since the original Evangelion was animated; the animation finally impressed me during the fights with Ramiel.

Even better, Rei's character is handled really well. The bastards took out her fucking joke! You know, the one I made such a big deal about in my Rei Dissertation. But other than that, they handled her character sublimely. In this incarnation, Anno has emphasized Rei's inner emotion in some small, new ways. And she looks even more pissed after the bedroom incident than she did in the original. Her solemn strength and dedication to defend Shinji is more or less the same as it is in the show, but never the less it comes across very well in the film. Cutting the joke may be a table flip moment, but I'll give them mad props anyway for choosing Rei's two episodes as the ones they want to adapt faithfully. Spoiler alert: Asuka doesn't get equal treatment in Evangelion 2.22. They split her time up with a really, really shitty, ill-advised fanservice character.

They also handled Shinji's character really well. It was a bit rocky at first, but by the end of the film I was really starting to feel for him and I think they may have written the monologue of his internal whining better, because it seems to make more sense to me now. 'Course that may have more to do with the ADV script than with the original Evangelion script... sometimes I wonder if those DVDs are even translated at all, or if they just put the dub script up in the subtitles. #conspiracytheories

Evangelion 1.11 no doubt holds subtle clues as to what grand scheme Anno has in mind for this film series. The brief scene at the end with Kaworu seems to imply that this is, as has been speculated both for Rebuild and for the original Evangelion series, a new iteration of a reality or history that has already occurred, and perhaps people such as Kaworu and Rei exist outside of this continuity. But we won't know for sure what these small deviations will mean until we reach further into the story. So we've no choice but to carry on. As a stand alone film, Evangelion 1.11 "You Are (Not) Alone" is a beautiful homage to the greatness of Evangelion, and it is well done on all accounts.