Anime: Shinseiki Evangelion Gekijouban: Shi to Shinsei

Critic's Log: Earthdate - May 19, 2012. Review #4: Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth

After The Finale of Neon Genesis Evangelion ended, the people that did not approve of this ending demanded for another ending, an ending that will be better. With the success of the TV series and the strong demand for another ending, two movies were made. The first one is Death and Rebirth. To be technical, The "Death" segment is a 70 minute recap and the "Rebirth" Segment is a 27 minute teaser of the next film The End of Evangelion. So, do I really have a lot to say about this? no, In fact I have seen the film and I pretend that it doesn't exist, just because the title makes little sense and The End Of Evangelion follows after the 24th episode. I will say that the Rebirth segment is good since it is setting you up for The End of Evangelion. It was set up so you can expect that the series conclusion would be promising, although I will warn you, Not everyone liked the movie ending. Death and Rebirth doesn't have much story since 70 minutes is used for recap, The Rebirth segment has the story needed but only to be seen again in The End Of Evangelion. The only segment that actually does put animation in the film is in The Rebirth segment, The Death segment is straight from the TV series, but with some slight tweaks. The animation is great in Rebirth; I don't think the Death segment is worth mentioning that much concerning animation. The music by Sagisu Shiro is just as good from the TV show. When it comes to the voice acting, The Japanese cast is superb, and I have mentioned that the dub in the TV show (I have reviewed it) is a bit of a hit and miss while being okay for the most part. The dub in this movie is really, REALLY BAD. For some reason, Matt Greenfield is not in charge of the dub this time, it's Amanda Winn-Lee (That's right, the voice of Rei Ayanami from the TV show!) Some characters don't keep their English voice actors from the show and the reason is because the voice actors that did their voices probably left the industry before these two films were licensed. If you are looking for consistency in the dub from the TV show to this, this will be a disappointment for you, Shinji, Misato, Rei, Asuka, Ritsuko, and Gendo keep their voices intact. The characters go all out in Rebirth... that is until you see the same scenes over and over in the first half of The End of Evangelion. It is really nice to see Asuka kicking some butt in epic fashion. However, expect a disturbing moment involving Shinji next to a comatose Asuka, it is somewhat disturbing. I will mention it later when I review the next film.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth was available by Manga Entertainment, this movie is obviously out of print.

With that said, Death and Rebirth is an okay movie, but it is not highly recommended if you already know the story leading up to The End of Evangelion. Most of it is recap and the rest can be seen in the movie that follows. If you are a completest, go ahead and buy the movie, if you are not into recaps, just skip the movie and go straight for The End of Evangelion. I own The TV show and The End of Evangelion; I skipped Death and Rebirth because I think it was made only to get people ready for the film that follows it.

I give Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth a 4 out of 10, it is NOT REALLY GOOD!

What exactly is the "Death & Rebirth" OVA in relation to Neon Genesis Evangelion? Well, I believe its main page at AniDB describes it best:

"Originally a collection of clips from the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series, Death was created as a precursor to the re-worked ending of the series. Rebirth was intended as that reworked ending but after production overruns became only the first half of the first episode of The End of Evangelion, with some minor differences. Over time, two newer director's cuts of Death were produced, each including new footage not seen in the series - these were called Death (True) and finally Death (True)^2. Note that despite containing clips from the series, Death (True)^2 & Rebirth should be seen after the series itself to be fully understood."

Due to REBIRTH being the first half hour of the "End Of Evangelion" OVA, I am simply going to focus this review on DEATH, since I'd end up repeating myself later otherwise. For a review on REBIRTH, please read "The End of Evangelion" review.

Visuals:
Since DEATH is just a collection of clips from the series, spliced with about two minutes of new actual footage, it can't really be analysed properly. Because of this, I would advise reading the techincal breakdown of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series review for information on visuals. It's just useless to go over it again here.

One thing I will say though - the visuals lose some of their epic feel due to just being a collection of scenes, with a few different bits of dialogue being voiced over them. And the new footage - it's only 2 minutes of the whole (the whole being about an hour and a quarter), whilst indeed pretty intruging, is no visual masterpiece, and for the most part, quite subtle. It is nice however, to see NGE in widescreen.

Sound:
The sound has a similar problem to the visuals. All the sound aspects are indeed good, but with them being sporadic in a clip format, they don't necessarily do as good a job as they did in the series.

However, a new feature to DEATH over the series is the classical music, which for some strange reason, gives DEATH a more self-contained feel, separating it from the series somewhat. It sort of makes DEATH feel as though it has more of a narrative than it lets on, making it appear to be more than just a collection of clips, and rather, a mega-montage, with the classical music providing an atmosphere for it.

Story:
Let's not make DEATH into something it's not - a proper story. When it comes down to it, it is a recap of the NGE series, with a small amount of extra prelude footage and a small amount of extra footage to tie different clips together or provide some flow. There are very little unique points that I can say for the Story aspect of DEATH - but I don't feel it necessary to try and do so. Put quite simply, it is something to see for a quick analysation of the series.

Character:
There are no new characters in DEATH, nor are there and real advancements to character development or relationships that weren't already in the series. Any new footage of characters in DEATH over the series is mainly to do with providing flow to the OVA, in the form of the main trio coming in one by one into a room to join in with a strings quartet rehersal. As each new child joins, new clips are shown.

There are some small parts of the OVA where there is new dialogue over certain clips, which further describes the mindset of some of the characters, but to be completely honest, I didn't find it all that intriguing because I though it obvious and already implied.

Value:
For a NGE fan, DEATH is worth watching once, and I think only once will be enough for the majority. There is nothing to really go back and watch over again - even any of the new footage isn't particulalry worth it in my opinion. Personally, I would want to watch the whole series again if I suddenly had an Evangelion craving - to watch a montage of clips is in no way the same.

The reason I have not given the Value the lowest score possible is because of the DVD - suprisingly the (R1) DVD of DEATH & REBIRTH has a nice array of Evangelion-related extra info which I like in my collection.

Enjoyment:
To see anything Evangelion-related provides instant interest from me, and that's about the most of my feelings towards DEATH. I can't say I really enjoyed it because what I actually enjoyed was the series. I can only reccommend DEATH to the hardcore NGE fan, because the casual viewer would definately feel ripped off by it.

However, REBIRTH (the first half hour of "The End of Evangelion" OVA), is another matter. But please read my review for "The End of Evangelion" for more information regarding it.

My take on Death: as a movie standing by itself, it's very bad and you're better off not watching it at all. See the series (and possibly End of Eva if you feel it's necessary) instead. On the other hand, Death is one of my favorite recaps, and from that standpoint it's somewhat worthwhile.

If you're like me the first time I saw Evangelion, you'll be hopelessly confused by the time you get to the end of episode 24. There's just a whole lot of events and information packed into the series, and the emotional impact of the last few episodes tends to make past events foggy as your mind tries to reinterpret them. Death won't give you all the answers, but it will give you a lightning-speed refresher on "what the hell just happened?!" and disambiguate some of the mysteries, shedding light on earlier events that seemed unimportant at the time.

Animation: hey, it's what you expect from Eva. Nothing spectacular has been added, but it's as good as it always was.

Music is one place Death really shines. The recap is structured around a sort of alternate reality in which the children are preparing for a strings quartet rehersal, and you have some really nice classical music to go with it, most notably the Eva version of Kanon. If you don't like classical.. well, go get some taste! And shame on you! With the fast pacing of the recap, you'll hear lots of the songs from Eva before its over, so if you liked the music to begin with I don't think you'll have any complaints in this area.

Value and enjoyment? Well, it's useful to see to get a better understanding, but also sort of frustrating when you're waiting to see episode 25/26 or EoE to find out "what happens next". Of course what happens next is aside from the point, but that's another matter entirely. Honestly this movie is one you can watch or skip, depending on whether you feel like you'll get something out of it. You won't be missing any significant part of the story if you skip it, but if you're confused this might help you understand Eva just a little bit better.

Just an excuse to rip you off with more of the same thing.

Although the animation is done nicely, with a bit more creative ways of showing the story, it gives a very dark, creepy atmosphere throughout the movie. The storytelling is odd, since it's more a bunch of short scenes which tells a story, where every now and then they skip to another scene, to keep it short and to the point.

The music is just good, different from the series, but also emphases on the dark atmosphere from the animation. The voices are done well too.

Death is bluntly said: a recap of the first 24 episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. They tried to capture the entire storyline and plot in a movie, which failed miserably according to me.
The story is rushed, only keeping the most important scenes in the series, thus leaving out all scenes which involved most of the character development or the scenes which subtly gave away the characteristics.
Even if not compared with the series, Death's story is going too fast, feels like it's rushed and manages to confuse you while watching.
Although it does manage to tell the story they wanted to, it feels somehow bad, as if you've missed a bunch of scenes/plot which is necessary to understand the story itself.

The characters are all there and you do get a feeling how they feel and how they change throughout the series, but those changes usually come sudden and sometimes you're left wondering why they changed like that. Another thing is that you can't feel with the characters since there happens too much and you are hardly used to the characters before they already undergo a thorough change which might cause you to like a character more or less - but that doesn't stay long enough since the character changes already before you get used to that one.

Although the sound, music and animation are excellent, they can't grab the atmosphere nor the entire storyline and especially not the way the characters evolve (and that's what made NGE good).
So in my opinion this movie is worthless. If you think you can summarize an entire series with that much character development and story in only 90 minutes, then you should think again. And that's why I won't recommend anyone watching this, except if you're the die-hard NGE-fan who desperately want to have the entire series.