Anime Review: Evangelion 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

So this week's Anime review is on a series that is actually quite old, but the creators of the original series decided to remake the series in a total of 4 movies. So far, only the first 2 movies have come out in Japan and 1 in the US. So this post will focus on the first movie and in two weeks I'll write about the second one.

So let me start by talking about the history of the movie since some part of the movie assume that you know what they are talking about. The original series is called Neon Genesis Evangelion and it was originally aired back in 1995. The original series is set in the future in 2015 and the world has changed dramatically. This was due to an event called Second Impact.

Second Impact happened in the year 2000 when there was contact and experimentation with the first of a group of being that are referred to as Angels in the series. This first being is referred to as Adam and he was initially found underneath the icecaps of Antarctica. Adam awakened and set off an explosion that was so strong that it melted most of the ice and it even tilted the axis of the planet, changing the global climate dramatically. The explosion cause Tsunamis that killed most of the people in the Southern Hemisphere were drowned and the rest of the world was in chaos with because of the lack of supplies and food. Wars quickly broke out allover the world and this didn't end until the year 2001 when a ceasefire was signed, by then the population of the world had been halved.

After Second Impact, Angels don't show up and humanity is left alone to rebuild and get accustomed to the new world. Like I said, the climate had changed so there was a lot of things that had changed with it. For example, Japan is described to be mostly underwater after Second Impact. Japan had to do the most that it could with the little dry land that it had left. This meant that they started to build houses and tall building to make up for the lack of space.

Going back to the year 2015, we are introduced to a war going on between humanity and the Angels. This is the first time that they showed up, but Japan isn't totally defenseless. During the time that Angels didn't show up, a secret agency set up a department called NERV that it's sole job is to research the Angels and find a way to destroy them if they ever show up. They managed to create huge creatures refereed to individually as Eva and differentiated by their unit number. The only thing is that adult can't control these new beings, the best people to control them are children that were born after Second Impact.

Shinji & Unit 01

This is where we are introduced to our main character, his name is Shinji Ikari and he is the son of the head researcher at NERV. But him and his father don't that the best relationship, this has caused Shinji to live most of his life alone and is afraid of human contact because he is afraid to get hurt. He thinks that it's better to be alone then to be hurt by someone you love or trust. Shinji is summoned to NERV to see if he is able to control one of the Eva. At first he didn't want to have anything to do with the project, but he changed his mind once he saw that if he didn't want to do it another girl that was very injured would have to take his place as the pilot for unit 1.

He struggles to control the Eva since he didn't have any prior experience and they were under attack by Angel number 3 named Sachiel. At first it looks like Shinji is going to lose, but then his Eva goes into berserk mode and is able to completely destroy Sachiel.

That is the basic background story of Evangelion. There is more characters in the series, and I would love to be able to cover all of them, but I can't. So I'll just quickly talk about the other 2 main pilots.

Rei & Unit 00

The injured girl that I mentioned above is called Rei Ayanami and she is the pilot for unit 0. She is a very odd girl, she is very shy and doesn't really talk to anyone other than Shinji's father. No one really knows where she came from, but she has a very mysterious aura around her. She is also a very polite girl, but isn't afraid to let others know how she feels. This sometimes comes across as being really rude, but in reality she is just expressing her feelings. This can be seen at the beginning when Shinji says something mean about his father (I can't recall exactly what he said) and it upset her, so she turned around and slapped him for disrespecting his father.

Asuka & Unit 02

Last is Asuka Langley Soryu and she is the pilot of unit 2. As you can tell by the name, she isn't a full blooded Japanese girl. The Eva project wasn't being worked on Japan alone, Asuka comes form the German branch of the Eva project. She is a very proud of herself and is very vocal about it. She shows off every time she can, and has a grudge against Rei because she says that Rei never shows any emotion, kid of like a doll. She has issues of her own, that I won't go into detail because then it gives away some of the story.

So those are the 3 children that pilot the Eva units. So now that you know what the story is about, let me move to the movie that this blog post is about.

So they decided to recreate the series into 4 films, like I mentioned above. The official title of the project is Rebuild of Evangelion and they are separated it into 4 films. They have basically condensed the story because they don't have time to go into detail like they would in a series. They do a really good job at sticking with the original story, changing only a few detail here and there. For example, some of the color of the original characters or Eva units were changed as well as on some of the Angels. This first movie, pretty much covers most of the stuff in this post. I know that it sounds all weird and maybe it doesn't make much sense, but it gets better.

The basic idea for this project is to explain the series, introduce new characters, and advance the story line in the first 3 films and then eventually change the ending on the fourth. We still have no idea of what they are going to do for the new ending, but I'm sure that it won't disappoint.

I still don't know when Evangelion 2.0 will be released, so I'll be doing the next review of a fansub version of the second movie. In the meantime, thanks for reading.