I wasn’t expecting this. The clear, clean lines and bold colours. The seamless melding of smooth hand-drawn and computer animation. The thunderous, crisp sonic electricity emanating from my speakers. There’s no way this is a TV show from the early 90s! There’s no way Neon Genesis Evangelion can possibly look and sound this good! And yet, it’s stunning in just about every way. I really wasn’t expecting this kind of quality from such an old show, even on Blu-ray!
This is reference quality work. This “Rebuild” of the series, as it’s referred to, has taken an old, animated giant-robot adventure and buffed, polished and magically re-assembled that grainy, square-shaped footage into this sparkling, new widescreen extravaganza! I was honestly taken aback when the film began. It’s really that stunning. And, though I hadn’t watched an episode of Evangelion in over a decade, I could tell that it was radically different!
This 100-minute film combines the content of six of the original half-hour episodes, smashing the slowly unraveling plot points and character moments into a more feature-friendly structure, along the way jettisoning some of the details that made the show so popular to begin with. A lot of scenes have been replaced with newly created ones, featuring all new hand-drawn and cgi animation. And for the most part it’s seamless. If you’re a long time fan, you’ll most likely be amazed at how new it all feels, while remaining the same old Evangelion you loved fifteen years ago. If you’re new to the story, you won’t know the difference. But that won’t make the details of this ambitious combination of giant-robot-battle epic and religious parable any less confusing. It’s always been confusing. If you didn’t like it before, this “Rebuild” won’t change your mind. But it sure will look fantastic while trying!
Even if you don’t find Evangelion‘s convoluted tale appealing, you won’t be able to avoid being sucked in by the Blu-ray discs sumptuous visuals. This is a reference quality presentation on all levels! The good folks at Funimation have really outdone themselves, giving us a Blu-ray that can stand up to, if not best every high-def effort from Disney – not an easy thing to do when you’re talking about the transfer and encode of 2D animation, something that Disney have, to date, done better than any other studio. I can’t find a flaw here. And I feel like this disc will be one I put on again and again, for the sheer pleasure of its visuals. Oh yeah, and the two Dolby TrueHD 6.1 audio tracks, both original Japanese and dubbed English, match those visuals in their perfection. What a great looking and sounding disc!
Sadly, I have to report that the Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone Blu-ray Disc fumbles in the special features department. I was really hoping for even a short featurette that would explain the reasoning for and the process of creating this “Rebuild” but the best the disc does is provide a couple of montage videos, with examples of progress on new effects and animation. There are numerous music video remixes, some “News Flashes” and an unending stream of trailers but nothing that amounts to the kind of informational or entertaining experience you hope for.
The best thing about the Blu-ray, outside of the flawless presentation of the film itself, is the beautiful packaging. It’s wonderfully designed, with a reflective-foil side-sliding sleeve that blankets the interior digipack, containing the disc and a nice little 20-page booklet that offers some explanation as to why we’re getting a new Evangelion after all these years.
True anime fans should not be without the Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone Blu-ray Disc in their collection. Yes. It’s that good.
