5/5 Great Ending
  by William J. Shepherd
This movie brings it all together. They did a great job to end the series. I loved it.

2/5 A review of the DVD, not the film itself
  by Patrick Robertson (Groves, TX United States)
I threw in this DVD tonight because I'm about to show it to a friend and I wanted to see how it would look on my new tv. Wow...a truly horrible release from Manga Entertainment.

If you own a widescreen TV and plan on watching this with subtitles good luck because when you zoom the image the subtitles are cut off due to this not being an anamorphic release.

If you plan on watching this dubbed be prepared for some pain even if you've been watching the dub of the TV show. Important actors are gone, technical terms are mispronounced, and lame sound effects are added because the ADR director thought it would be a good idea. It's unwatchable if you are at all accustomed to the TV dub.

For the apparently legendary amount of money Manga paid for the domestic rights to this they sure managed to make it one of the most sloppy DVD releases in their catalog. I can't imagine the rights lapsing even though this DVD is out of print so you may want to find another way to see this film.

5/5 The greatest thing ever created
  by Benoit Dupras (Montreal)
Where do I begin?
How do I begin?

It's extremely hard to describe how I feel about this film... And I know I won't be able to express my feelings about it. There is no way I can do it justice, so I will keep this brief. I will say that it is the deepest, most moving thing I have ever seen. (And maybe will ever see).

A review on Imdb said "EoE delves into the deepest, darkest human emotions" This is probably the shortest yet most fitting way to describe it. Hideaki Anno (the anime director and creator) put it as;
"'Eva' is a story that repeats.
It is a story about understanding self existence and self worth in the eyes of others and ourselves.
It is a story where the main character witnesses many horrors with his own eyes, but still tries to stand up again.
It is a story of will; a story of moving forward, if only just a little.
It is a story of fear, where someone who must face indefinite solitude fears reaching out to others, but still wants to try." --Anno

Much of the psychological aspects of the anime are based on Anno's real life experiences with clinical depression. It is important to look beyond the fictional characters when watching Eva. You need to realise what they are going through is what Anno went through and is what other people are going through in real life.
And don't be fooled by first appearances; this is NOT just a cookie cutter mecha-anime. Giant robots are to Evangelion what Fighting is to the film "Fight Club".

I honestly believe that Anno deserves a Nobel Prize for this. I have read the work of many Nobel Prize winning writers, and none of it has come close to matching EoE in any way.

If you are thinking of watching EoE, just know that you must watch the original anime series beforehand.


1/5 A final summation of a series suffering severe entropy
  by Andariel Halo (Phenomynouss@hotmail.com is my real e-mail)
Spoilers follow.

I get this and "Death and Rebirth" meshed in my head, and I struggled with whether or not to include my review here in "Death and Rebirth" or this one or both. So I'll just settle for this one.

I don't place value judgments on Japanese culture and society, but I can say I don't like it. I find it sexist towards women particularly.


This series began with a simple, almost stupid concept involving giant mecha-Angels attacking New Japan and little kids who can sync up with Evas to fight them.

Apparently the original ending (which I found particularly brilliant despite the awful turn the series took) wasn't good enough for bi-polar Hideaki Anno, who decided to take a beautiful mental introspective of overcoming your problems, and **** all over it to make a suicidal whiny little emo's delight of an ending.


Everything that the Neon Genesis Evangelion storyline was building to is effectively rendered pointless and useless by this story, which consists of really tasteless and poorly executed sequences of SEELE murdering NERV employees with all the cinematic and animation tact and seriousness of an unrated spoof of "Hostel", followed by Asuka waking up in her machine and destroying lots of military machines in her Eva.


But what does any of that matter, when Misato sacrifices her life for Shinji to survive and save the world, only for Shinji to go whiny he-bitch emo and do nothing so that the "Human Instrumentality Project" can be unleashed, and basically every single human being in the world (except somehow Shinji and Asuka) is killed and "merged" into one giant human who looks like Rei.

Whatever your philosophy is, I find it BS. In my view, there is no way any person can be "merged" with another to form one being. Even if it did, there's only one of them, they can't reproduce, and they're too damn big to live on the earth. So essentially, the human race dies, especially after Shinji chokes Asuka to death.


And so at the end of the series, we see a whiny little emo bitch unleashing his man-boy angst in an art medium, and giving us an ending so full of despair, tragedy, and sadness that it becomes overwhelmingly dismal and pointless. And where was the purpose in having Shinji masturbate and ejaculate on a topless Asuka while she's in a coma in the hospital?

There is a difference between "sad endings" and horrible endings. A "sad ending" to a movie or series can be done tastefully, like with "Cowboy Bebop", another anime, or with movies like "Midnight Cowboy", the director's cut of "Blade Runner", "Chinatown", or "The Shining".

What is instead given here is the equivalent of a suicidal teenaged boy who threatens to kill himself because his parents won't let him go to a concert on a schoolnight, or because his girlfriend doesn't spend like hanging out with his friends, or because he got a 'B' on his science project.

3/5 Beautiful... but overly complicated
  by Adam (MA, USA)
I'm probably going to get flack from both sides for my relatively neutral rating of this attempt to rewrite the ending of the series "Neon Genesis Evangelion". How do I know it's an attempted re-write? Because there are episode numbers in here and they're clearly marked as the last two episodes from the full series boxed set (at least that's how I'm interpreting these numbers). Now for the most part I liked the series and the world the author tried to create, but like the final two episodes before, these episodes are also fairly confusing. Let me try to explain as best I can.
How do you explain an extremely confusing life experience such as depression, when you're having a difficult time with concepts like self worth, your usefulness in the world, or even who you are and how you relate to others? The answer is surprisingly simple, you simply don't. I can't think of a coherent way to include all of these elements given the two episode time frame the author appears to be giving himself to work with. I think this, single handedly, is the downfall of this series. Instead I think these themes should have been slowly introduced to the audience over the entire series, not all at once. Granted I'm sure it accurately simulates the confusion the author went through in his personal life, but it's just not a good idea if you want to try and convey this message to a very broad audience.
Strangely I think the last two episodes on the main series were a little easier to understand. I understand what he was trying to do with "The End of Evangelion" and visually it feels like it integrates into the series more. In this re-make there is another Mecha battle and it seems to flow from the series in a smoother fashion. However, the content is a lot stranger, where Shinji doesn't want to help fight with his Eva unit. Not to mention there is an allusion to a past intimate relationship between Shinji and Asako... I don't remember this ever happening in the series... other than the time they kissed, but it didn't seem like that manifested into anything beyond that one act. Anyway, the imagery and art is beautiful and I really thought it was cool when one of images of ascension was the Ten Sephirot found in Kabbalah. Seemed like a rather interesting choice. I get the feeling like the main purpose of the message was something of primordial unity between all beings; at least that's what I gather from the last scene concerning Shinji and Rei. However, I just thought its execution was overtly confusing. The message didn't really need to be told in such an obtuse fashion and I just felt like it lacked the clarity that even the original version of the ending had. I liked the fact that the imagery integrated with the main series more, but the explanation of the human instrumentality project seemed stranger. Honestly, if I hadn't seen the ending episodes of the series to really reinforce my understanding of this re-write I don't think I would've been able to figure out what the writer was talking about.
Overall this was a nice try and I certainly enjoyed the animation, but once again I felt the final message was weakly conveyed. Trying to grasp something this complex into the time frame they've given themselves makes it nigh impossible to succeed! This is a shame to me, because I think the message they are trying to send to the world is incredibly profound on many levels; psychological, philosophical or even theological. I'm honestly not sure if I would recommend this to Evangelion fans, because I think most people will walk away feeling this isn't a suitable substitute. Instead, what I think Anno should have done was actually build on what he already started. Like continue Evangelion from where he left his audience in that confusing state then take this 90 minutes to sort of explain it in finer and more coherent detail. Instead it feels like he tries to be too artistic or too poetic and presents it in a more convoluted manner. Don't get me wrong, I certainly appreciate the art, but I think a great series is when you have balance between absolute clarity and some ambiguity. This is all ambiguity and it's up to the viewer to try and discern what's going on. One thing that I felt was wholly strange was in the beginning and in the end there is live video footage of real people. The first is primarily of a girl doing everyday things... like going to the bathroom, and the final shot is of an audience. I personally have no idea why... maybe someone can let me know in a comment, I'd like to know the purpose behind that. Anyway, take it for what it is. It has some merit, but I wouldn't expect it to have any ground breaking content like fans were hoping for.