I've been re-watching Evangelion again for the past two weeks to get ready for the new movie. Ah, all the memories (and questions) are gushing back in. It think this is my 3rd or 4th time watching the series entirely from start to finish, including the movies. Lord knows how times I've watched the individual episodes by themselves. I wouldn't say I'm an EVA expert, but I do understand almost everything that's shown.
I was finally able to find some time this weekend to sit down and watch Rebuild of Evangelion: 1.01: You Are (Not) Alone, without being interrupted, so I can concentrate completely on the story. I haven't been reading up on what's the story is about, to avoid spoilers, so I didn't know what to expect. So, it turns out that this is a new retelling of EVA, compiled of the first couple episodes of the TV series. Watching the entire series again kept everything fresh in my mind, so I was able to notice a lot of differences in animation scenes, and storylines.
The new animation scenes were gorgeous. EVA Unit 01 never looked so good! There were a lot of changes in some scenes, like the lakes are now red, instead of blue; kind of like the waters at Second Impact. Some storyline elements were also left out or changed, like when Shinji wanted to quit and return home on a train, this never happened here. Also, right before this scene, as Shinji was getting in a cab to go to the train, Suzuhara came to apologize and let Shinji punch him back; in this movie, he punched him at school, but wasn't leaving to go home.
There were also MAJOR changes in the storyline. Misato took Shinji down to Central Dogma (If I remember correctly, I don't think she even had access to this area in the series, nor did she know of what was kept in there, until Kaji told her) and show him Lilith (with a different mask)(also in the series, SEELE mistakenly refers to it as Adam, which makes us think it IS Adam, until episode 24, when Kaoru finds out that it's really Lilith). Shinji thinks it's an EVA and Misato says "No. While they began life under the same star, this is the Second Angel, Lilith... the trigger of the Third Impact." Now, either this is a translation error or her answer is too ambiguous. Her answer implies that the EVAs were created differently from Lilith, whereas in the series, the EVAs were clones of Lilith. She also explicitly says that Lilith is the trigger of the Third Impact. It was implied that this would happen, but I don't think they ever said that outright. Also when they were going down the elevator to Central Dogma, Misato said that if an Angel ever reached Level-EEE (Central Dogma) of Nerv, an automatic self-destruct would commence. In the series, they said that they were prepared to blow Nerv up should an Angel reach Central Dogma, they didn't say anything about an automatic self-destruct.
Another Major change was the inclusion of Kaoru near the end. I'm not bothered by this, because this could have happened in the series, it just wasn't shown. However, they show Kaoru standing over, what I'm assuming to be, a full-sized Adam (with the mask from the series). Why is Adam full-sized? The point of Second Impact was to reduce Adam to an embyonic stage, and minimize the damage it would have caused. Either they're completely changing some storyline elements, or they're still in the process of reducing Adam to an embryo, then later on Kaji would steal the embryo and give it to Gendo.
I'm not sure whether the storyline changes are good or bad, but hopefully we'll get a definitive answer with the subsequent releases of Evangelion. Now another long wait for the rest of the movies to come out. This reminds me of waiting for the new Star Wars movies to come out and hopefully they aren't as dissappointing.
The first 1/4 of the show kinda felt boring with the Gundams dominating everyone without much opposition. Then we have some great character development in the end of the first half. We finally get to see some internal strife with Celestial Being in the second half. There's way too much to talk about without giving spoilers, so I'm not even going to bother.
I'm still thinking about the ending, whether it was good or not. The build-up was pretty good with a lot of action and emotions, but there were some questionable final fights. They killed off a lot of characters in such a short span of time. While the ending closed up some loose-ends, it opens up a ton more, which leads into the second season. I knew there was a small time-skip coming, but man, the second season is gonna change pretty much everything. Overall the show was very well done, much better than GSD. Now, for the long wait till season 2 arrives :(
For the last month, I've been watching a bunch of anime movies and short OVAs, and just trying to empty out my plan to watch/on hold series. Notable anime that I've watched are 5cm per second (visually stunning, typical Shinkai movie), Appleseed OVA (the old one; surprisingly very good), Appleseed EX Machina (bought the HD DVD version, amazing quality, better than I expected), ICE OVA (good premise, but poorly executed in many areas), Blame! (didn't know you're supposed to read the manga to understand, so didn't know what was going on; great art style though).
I'm watching Gundam 00 right now. Just did a 13-ep marathon yesterday. This show is pretty good so far. I looking forward to the internal conflicts of Celestial Being. I'm thinking that Setsuna might break away from them and help out his old country using Exia. I should be finished with this soon, although it's gonna suck to wait for the second half.
The new season is coming up/already here. Not much anime I'm really looking forward to. I usually wait until shows are finished before I watch nowadays, but I might start watching Nijuu Mensou Musume weekly, mainly because it's a BONES anime and looks pretty interesting.
Wow, it's been almost 5 months since I've watched anime and blogged on here. I've been extremely busy and just can't find the time to relax and try to enjoy an anime. The thing with me is, if I can't concentrate on the anime without any distractions around me, then I just don't watch anything. I don't want to half-ass any watching experience; it's just not fair to the creators of the anime if I watch something and don't give my undivided attention, and then form an opinion that's probably not favorable towards the anime. This definitely reduces my anime-watching time, but at least I can give a complete and honest opinion of the show.
Anyways, I watched a few anime over the last two weeks. I've seen 5 episodes of Devil May Cry (after playing DMC4), I'll probably finish that sometime this week. I also saw My Neighbor Totoro, which was long overdue, as are many anime in my list :( It was a nice and cute show, very reminiscent of Miyazaki's other works.
The long series that I saw was Kurau: Phantom Memory. I chose this because it was made by BONES, and I thoroughly enjoyed most of their stuff, and after watching Jyu Oh Sei again, made me want to watch more of their stuff.
Kurau started off extremely well, with lots of intrigue. After the first episode, there is a 10-year time jump, so we get to see the repurcussions of the happenings of the first episode. We also get a lot of mystery as to what happened to everyone and why. BONES are doing what they do best in this anime, and that's storytelling and character devlopment. The bond between Kurau and Christmas is one of the best development I've seen in an anime. You totally feel for them and fully realize what it means to be a pair. Every character in the show is fully fleshed out and have their own backstory, which makes you really understand their plight. The lead-up to the ending seemed a little rushed, but in the final episode, all is forgiven as it has an amazing ending that wraps everything up nicely.
This was another excellent anime by BONES, speaking of which, I'll be watching more of their stuff very soon. Probably Mars Daybreak, Ayakashi Ayashi, or Ouran Host Club (which I've wanted to watch for a while).
Just finished a 2-day marathon of Black Lagoon and The Second Barrage. This was a very good anime. At first I thought it would be some typical action anime with Revy guns ablazing in every episode and not much content to it, but it turned out a lot better with excellent character development and philosophical conversations. Revy is an awesome main character, as she has so much chemistry with everyone. I especially enjoy her conversations with Shenhua and Eda; they are hilarious! Rock is a pretty unique character. At first he seems like the typical weak guy who likes to spout his idealistic BS, but there's another side to him that just screams badass. We only get to see this a few times, but when he's standing up for himself and his beliefs, it just makes his character so much more likable. This is especially evident in the last few episodes when he finally realizes the resolve that he has come to. Speaking of the last few episodes, the final arc was very good and there are a lot of emotions flying around, but I would've liked it if the entire Black Lagoon team was on the case. Dutch and Benny was sorely missing.
Every character was likeable, even the villians. Roberta, the Terminator was scary and badass and the Twins were freaky but awesome. Every episode was done really well. The first season had short but sweet episodes and the second season had longer arcs that had more character development for the new characters.
Overally, this was an excellent show with a lot of action, drama, and great characters.