Beast Mode

My dome just about exploded from watching Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance. I thought I was immune to the anime bug from my experience last week watching the first film in the four film series. That film was less bold. I think this film is a more accurate representation of what anime fans love about the genre.

Like the first movie, this one revolves around the young pilots of massive government built super-robots, and their defense of the planet from supernatural beings called angels.

The animation is very slick here. The opening sequence establishes what is to come with the brilliant rendering of a new pilot and a new machine, or Eva. The technology that is imagined in the cockpit is similar to that imagined in movies like Avatar where pilots are hooked up to move naturally and feel the pain in the bodies they drive. It is rendered colorful, mystical, and very cool.

The skyline in the cities of the future is not static, but moving as whole buildings rise up and down from underground depending on the threat level. The ocean is not blue and full of life, but red and dead. There is a funny scene when the young Eva pilots visit an Aquarium that houses a tiny fraction of what used to be earth’s marine life. The gag involves the brutal decontamination procedure for all the attraction’s visitors.

The battle sequences are strong again in this film. I complained about the first film’s vision of angels as abstract geometric patterns, and here again, a big bad villain angel is revealed to take the form of a rainbow flower with petals that unfold and leave paths of destruction. Somehow, I am starting to understand the weirdness and prefer it. Who am I to question what planet devouring super-beings are supposed to look like?

After the flower angel is defeated, and after some decent attempts at crafting rounded characters with realistic flaws and desires, comes the big draw of the movie, the climactic final battle. I would describe it as a colorful videogame battle acid trip.

If you have ever gone berserk in competition or from passion, you know about beast mode. In the movie, there is a girl who pilots her robot into crazy town for the sake of a fight, and the government handlers called it transcending the limits of humanity. I call it going into beast mode. Come see me on the basketball court man, I’ll show you beast mode, haha.

Anyway, once beast mode doesn’t work for the girl and people start getting eaten up by monster angels, the hero of the film, ten year old Shinji, transforms into God Mode, or for NBA fans, Kobe vs Toronto 2006.

In God Mode, Shinji and his true love are the center of an apocalyptic tornado of pink and purple energy. Goofy Japanese pop music plays in the background (which I started to appreciate after a while.) Shinji is transcending the limits of physics with stuff floating around all menacingly, and everybody thinks the world is about to end.

At the center of the tornado are two little kids in love. This is how the film ends. The world is about to end and little Shinji is defiant and happy for it as long as he has his girl. I give Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance an A-. I was geeked out over it, but I have to leave some room for the next movie to improve.

After leaving the theater with my jaw all wide, I found out that there is a secret scene after the credits roll. I suggest staying for it if you can. It sounds pretty awesome.