I am not a fan of anime. I’m not going to hate on anyone who is, I’m just saying. Honestly though, I can’t even tell you what makes anime different from other styles of animation. They make it in Japan I know that. I also know my girlfriend Elissa hates everything having to do with Japan. Yup, my girl is a racist.
Nah, she isn’t a racist, but she wouldn’t go with me to watch Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone either. Sadly, I don’t think this is the first time a girl has turned down an invitation to watch anime. So I’m not going to front, this movie is dorky. It’s ultra-mega-super dorky.
On the other hand, though, it isn’t terribly boring either.
The plot follows ten year old Shinji, who is picked up by a government agency and told he is humanity’s last hope, the pilot of a massive robot, called an Eva. He must defend earth from equally massive and powerful beings called Angels. This is trippy sh-- for real. I had just finished toking on some nice Blue Dream though, so maybe that explains why I was keeping up with all that angel apocalypse talk.
The highlights are definitely the battle sequences. The robots resemble aliens more than machines, and brutally pound on each other as well as the cities that act as their backdrops. Explosions get larger and more epic as the film progresses (something I suspect will continue as the sequels are produced.) Blood/oil rains down on the remnants of cities in ridiculous quantities.
The animation was interesting for the most part, until an angel terrorizing a city was revealed to take the form of a large blue diamond. Did the producers run out of animation money here? I am not kidding a big bad monster in this movie takes the form of a large blue diamond. Weird.
Other weird moments include a penguin named Pen Pen who reads the newspaper and smokes cigars, and a female sex-kitten character showing off her goods in a bath tub scene. The anime tradition of heavily sexualized female characters is definitely weird. I can’t remember when the last time I saw a cartoon breast was before this.
The movie is based on the classic Japanese TV series of the same name, and is the first of four feature-lengths. It is basically a shot-for-shot remake of the original six episodes of the series, according to my anime expert (and brother-in-law,) John.
This is something I had a hard time with. If you are going to remake a movie or TV series, why make a shot-for-shot remake? Wouldn’t it be better to go all Christopher Nolan over everyone’s faces and re-imagine the series into darker, heavier territory?
I’m not even going to comment on how much of a baby Shinji is as a character, worrying about bullies and his father not loving him, meanwhile half the earth’s population was killed by angels. Here is where they should have cast a baller little kid like Will Smith's son to get in the robot. Remember Independance Day?
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone was a decent dip in the anime pond for me. I can appreciate the distinctive style of the animation, and the epic imagery and mythology in the storytelling. The characters are drawn too one-dimensional for me, and this throws the balance of the movie off. I give it a C+.
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