Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009)

[ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版: 破]

Director: Hideaki Anno, Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki
Starring: Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara, Yuko Miyamura

Synopsis:
As the attacks on Tokyo-3 by the Angels continue, the Second Child is sent to Japan to reinforce NERV's defenses.

Impressions:
Based on the first film, it seemed like the Rebuild series would just be a big budget reskin of the original with little changes here and there. However, with this movie things turned around, taking more of a broad stroke approach to the original story and becoming more of its own creature. Using the first film as guideline, I figured they'd be adapting six or seven eps per movie, but this one covers twice as much ground, to the point where I wondered what exactly they had in mind for the remaining two films. (We'll be getting to that.) With such a significant compression of the timeline, we lose out on a lot of character development, meaning that the new Asuka Shikinami is far less fleshed out than original Asuka Sohryu, and there's not much to Rebuild original character Mari Illustrious Shikinami, even though she does have an entertaining personality, good action scenes and she's voice by one of my favorite seiyuu, Maaya Sakamoto. We do, however, see some interesting developments with Shinji and Rei, both of them asserting themselves more in a welcome change. (I want to comment here, but spoiler alert and everything.) The Bardiel fight is as brutal as you would expect (though the context is different), and the Zeruel fight is first-rate, with Shinji impressively manning up.

This film got me excited about the potential of the Rebuild series far more than what its predecessor could have done. As for how that potential gets capitalized on, read on for the reviews of the next two films. It falls just shy of me rating as a must-have. Definitely give a watch, though.

Rating:
Watch It