The Second Impact wiped out much of the world’s population, and now those who remain must endure the onslaught of the Angels, strange creatures bent on destroying the human race. The only thing standing between mankind and its complete annihilation is an experimental weapon, the Eva. Shinji Ikari is tasked with piloting Eva Unit 01 and protecting the city of Tokyo-3 from the relentless onslaught of the angels, all while dealing with his own mental problems. Questioning his own existence, and desperately seeking approval from his father, he pilots the Eva, defending mankind alongside his only ally, Rei Ayanami, the quiet and mysterious pilot of Eva Unit 00.
The story of Evangelion is likely well known to most anime fans. Shinji Ikari, a horribly depressed individual, has to pilot a strange new weapon to defend mankind from destruction. In the process he deals with his own loneliness and fears about piloting the Eva unit. This adaptation doesn’t make any significant changes to the plot from the series, which is one of its problems. Evangelion 1.11 essentially summarizes the first six episodes of the series, and for people who have already seen the series it won’t offer much of interest. The first six episodes are also arguably some of the least interesting episodes of Evangelion, and the shortened versions of them will leave any new viewers unsatisfied with how rushed everything is in the movie, and viewers of the old series will prefer the actual episodes as opposed to this more streamlined version. Fortunately, towards the end of the movie we’re given hints of things to come which appear to be more new and interesting than the first movie. But even with this being a condensed version of the beginning of the series, the characters are still deep and interesting enough to draw you in.
The Blu-ray release does much to improve on the visuals of the first DVD release. The colours are more vibrant, and some scenes where there were issues with things being too dark have been corrected. The quality of the animation is excellent and it benefits greatly from having the budget of a feature film, looking much better than the original series, but given the age of the series that’s to be expected. This release allows older viewers to relive memorable scenes from the series with drastically improved visuals.
Extras on the disc include various previews for the second movie, along with a stable of trailers for other Funimation releases. Also included is a making of feature, which shows the animation of the film in various stages throughout its production, from storyboard to the finished film. There isn’t really anything spectacular in the extras, which is fairly common these days.
The English dub brings back a few of the voices from the original series, namely Spike Spencer as Shinji, and Allison Keith as Misato. Other characters voices were replaced, but the new voices still fit the characters, with Rei’s in particular being an improvement over her old voice. The dub is well acted save for a few particularly odd sounding lines, and generally stays fairly close to the subtitle script with only a few minor deviations. Fans of the old dub won’t be disappointed by the new one.
This movie will really only appeal to fans of the series, and even for them it will seem inferior to the actual series itself. It also lacks appeal to new viewers as the way it shortens the episodes down may leave them a bit confused. Hardcore EVA fans will undoubtedly want to own this, not for the quality but just to own Evanglion on Blu-ray, but for everyone else I’d recommend watching the first six episodes of the series instead.
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