Furo’s World

Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

After years of success with Evangelion, Hideki Anno decided to resurrect the angels once again in a brand new tetralogy named Rebuild of Evangelion:

- Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, out in 2007;

- Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, out in 2009;

- Evangelion: 3.0 Quickening, not out yet;

- Evangelion: Final, not out yet.

After having seen Evangelion 1.0 on DVD (that was just amazing!), I started to inquire on the Internet about the second film and discovered that even if it was not available on DVD yet, the UK premiere was to come… in Glasgow at the Glasgow Film Theatre for the sixth Glasgow Film Festival on the 15th of February! Hence, last Monday was for me the occasion to renew with one of my favorite anime serie ever and see Evangelion 2.0.

Although they have the same starting point, the new film are very different from the original TV series. The first film go through the 8 first episodes of the series with a lot of small variations at the beginning to tons of new details at the end. Also the graphical design has nothing to do with the original – of course now everything is computerized which makes the animations splendid!

The second film however is radically different from the storyline you would expect if you know the series: a new character, new evas, different angels,… Although the differences are major and highlight a complete new plot, I really liked the work that has been done: this new version is simpler to understand (yes, the original Evangelion episodes could have been written by Freud) and since the story variates, it is a delight to re-discover the Evangelion world.

I have always been used to watch Evangelion alone at the TV or on the computer so for me, watching it at the cinema was really amazing! It was just fabulous to discover the new story with a few hundred people and be able to laugh at Misato’s behavior, be scared by the Angels and encourage Shinji through his journey! Add to that the good environment of the GFT and a very friendly staff and you get the perfect recipe for enjoying your film!

The only thing that I hope is that they will do the same again for Eva 3.0 and 4.0

In summary, buy the first DVD and jump on the second one as soon as it is out!