Anime Review: Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

So I don't actually have to do a blog post this week, but I decided that I should do one anyways because there is still a few things that I want to review before the end of the semester. If I skip another week like back in Fall Break, then that would make it two things that I wouldn't be able to review. I could always just keep this blog going even after my writing class is over, but I'm still debating that since it would consume some of my time.


Anyways, this week's post is a continuation of the blog that I did two weeks ago. This week I'm picking up where I left of with the second film in the series. This one is called Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance and its name in Japanese is ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版: 破 (Evangerion Shin Gekijōban: Ha) which literary means: Evangelion New Theatrical Edition: Break.


This film picks up right where the first one left off, and they don't even give you a break in the action. The movie starts right off by introducing you to a new girl that is piloting Provisional Eva Unit 05 and is going to fight the skeleton of resurrected Angel number three. They have a brief but action packed fight and the new pilot wins by self-destructing her Unit.

New Character

The next thing that happens is very interesting to me because it reveals something peculiar about the new character. At this point we still don't know her name, but after self-destructing her Unit, she uses the emergency escape system and survives the blast. One of the guys overlooking the fight says: "I just don't like using children as pawns for the convenience of adults." So this guy is obviously not happy about sending in a teenage girl to fight a monster and almost getting killed.


But what's interesting is the response from the girl. Once she gets out of the escape pod she says: "I just don't like using adults as pawns for the convenience of children." That is something that really shocked me when I read it (I'm was watching a fan-sub version of the film). Even while she was fighting the Angel, she was saying something to the effect that even if it was dangerous, she didn't care because it was fun for her.


I don't know what to make of that. On one hand I think that she is very cool and strong (I've mentioned before that I really like strong female characters). But then I have the feeling that she's kind of nuts. Also keep in mind that I'm not able to fully analyze her because they don't really give that much background information about her. Although we do find out that her real name is Mari Illustrious Makinami later in the movie.

Mari with Eva Unit 05

Her Eva Unit is also unique because it's way different than the other three that we have seen so far. While Asuka's Eva Unit is the first production model and is the first one built for actual combat (Unit 00 was a prototype and Unit 01 was the test type), Unit 05 has no legs or arms. Instead, its arms have been replaced with jousts and claws, while it has four legs attached to wheels for movement.


They introduce a few more characters in this film, but they aren't that important. Plus, they are introduced somewhat later in the film and I don't want to talk about something that might give away some of the story. 


Basically for this film, it's pretty much like the last one. This film is meant to introduce new characters and move the story forward just like the last film. They do this while introducing you to new Angels that the children have to defeat and personal issues that they have to resolve if they wish to get better. Because while Asuka is probably one of the best pilots among all, she has no sense of teamwork and this often leads to trouble while fighting angels.


If you've watched the first film, I totally recommend that you watch this one as well. This one is not out in the US yet, and I couldn't even find a possible release date for the US. They have to dub and sub it, so this usually takes a while for companies like FUNimation to do. While I do find this somewhat ironic that small fan sub groups are able to do faster and better translations of the animations. I won't go off topic too much, but I do like point-out that some of the translations done by big animation companies don't make sense sometimes.


Anyways, that's all I have to say on this film. I hope that I didn't confuse you with what I said. Trust me, it's a really good film and you'll be glad when you finish watching it. I tried looking to see if they had a date for the next film, but I couldn't find anything. I read in some forum boards that they probably think that 3.0 will be released sometime in late 2011 or early 2012. Lets hope that they try to do it a little earlier than that.


Thanks for reading.

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.