Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance [Blu-ray]

Sheer brilliance
For those who don't know, the Rebuild of Evangelion series is a four-part theatrical remake of the infamous anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. Evangelion was a deconstruction of the Giant Robot genre. The original series was very much love it or hate it. The polarizing issues ranged from the characters' notorious pyscholgical problems, to the confusing final two episodes, to the show's use of rather horrific imagery, peppered with pieces of Christian and Kabbalistic symbolism, resulting in one of the most brutal, influential, and controversial examples of Anime. I liked the original series, but I was fully aware of its flaws, and I considered it to be a flawed masterpiece.

Now onto Rebuild of Evangelion. Evangelion 1.0 sums up the first 6 episodes, with the continuity changed slightly, and the Angel fights given a massive makeover. I enjoyed it very much, and while it is very similar to the original, it sets the stage for Evangelion 2.0.

Now as for Eva 2.0...
Review of the Film itself
To understand truly how great this film is you should watch the original TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion which this Tetralogy is based on. The differences and improvements to the characters may seem subtle, but in a 2 hour film those differences are magnified compared to a 26 episode series which had a lot of time to develop characters.

That being said the animation, CG, lighting, etc are incredible and I can't remember seeing anime action look so incredible in a long time. I watched the English subtitled version of this film and voice acting and subtitles where fine, don't know about the English dub but the voice actors are supposed to be the same from the TV series so they probably did a fine job.

Also in case you don't know this is the 2nd out of 4 films, so if you haven't seen the 1st film you will be lost and be prepared to want more once the film is over. This film I will recommend to anyone regardless of a preference to anime or not, this is a great...
Great, but not a replacement for the original - A Comparison
I bought this and felt I needed to give my Amazon rant about it to provide some thoughts to the public - particularly those who know the original (or who are deciding between buying this or the original!).

After being an Eva fan since the release of the original series, I used to watch (and re-watch) every episode intently, fascinated by the multilayered plot, themes and amazing sound and visuals. What we have here with Rebuild 1.11 and 2.22 are a highly desireable and well received remake of the original series that, instead of simply retouching the original, attempts to 'retell' the story in a manner more suitable for a modern audience. There are new scenes, touch ups to original scenes, a new character, a fleshed out story with some slight alterations and 'new' angels. Anno and the Eva team have done this all to create a movie length feature which can summarise 8 or 9-odd episodes worth of material from the original series. While rebuild 1.11 stays quite true to the...
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