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I am rewatching the Rebuild films after finishing 3.0+1.0 and I forgot how much I enjoyed them (or at least the first two). would go as far as to say that You Are (Not) Alone is the ideal telling of the first part of Evangelion. Most of the issues I have with the movie are the result of having to adapt the source material, flaws and all — and most of the changes 1.0 makes are improvements. You really need to have seen the original series to enjoy this though, as pre-established familiarity with Evangelion's nonsensical jargon helps when you're faced with the shorter runtime ... of a movie.

This is a good little gem from the Winter 2020 season. It's a cute little slice of life/adventure story with a good amount of drama mixed in. The show opens strong and ends on a fulfilling, if bittersweet, conclusion. The whole show is reminiscent of some of the earlier Ghibli movies (Nausicaa, in particular) in theme.
The soundtrack is good, and suits the mood of the story well. The opening theme in particular is great, and draws further comparisons to Ghibli. The art direction is of the quality you'd expect from a modern 12-episode anime: clean and polished but nothing to write home about. It does ... its job. I think the background art is above-average, though. The characters are the show's high point. Somali, the Golem, and the rest are hardly groundbreaking in terms of depth, but they are well-voice-acted (the Golem's Japanese VA also voiced Jotaro!), well-written, and enjoyable to watch.
All in all, I recommend giving this a watch if you enjoy Ghibli films, these sorts of "unexpected adoption" stories, or if you just want a simple, heartwarming show to binge.

Spoilers for basically all of the Rebuilds (but especially Evangelion 3.0 and Evangelion 3.0 + 1.01) follow!!!
tl;dr Don't watch it. It's bad. Ignore the people saying it's good. It's bad.

I hate long-winded reviews. A review should be easy to understand, straight to the point, and use simple English. It's writing 101. It's designed to tell people about the movie in a concise manner. It's not an exercise to stroke your own ego with your big, sesquipedalian vocabulary. Unfortunately, however, I feel the need to rant, so excuse me while I break all of the aforementioned rules.

Good lord this was such a mess. A friend of ... mine gave this movie a 2, but I don't think I would go that far - I make a whole-hearted attempt to rate things objectively, even if they're popular and I don't get the hype. If this was simply meant to tank the score of the movie, I'd give it a 1. That's not the point of this review, though. The point is to express my not unanticipated but still unfortunately thorough dissapointment in what was supposed to be the culmination of a 30-odd year franchise.

Let's break this down into parts.

Story (2): What story? Thrice Upon a Time consists primarily of the named characters being pulled by various ex machinas and McGuffins through the unfinished plot threads of the films that came before it, like a graveyard of ships floating in a sea of LCL. That's not to say there's no coherent plot, only that this movie is forced to use 3.0 as a base for said plot - and 3.0 has no coherent plot. In typical Evangelion fashion, nothing is explained until the 11th hour, and once you've slogged through the exposition, you still don't understand anything. I am not so pompous as to say I'm a genius, but I'm at least smart enough to "get" philosophy. That's not the problem. If there was a grand design here, some great meaning, I've missed it, and not for lack of trying. Despite giving us FAR more exposition than the original series did, I came away from the movie feeling like I knew less than when I went in. It tries to be both "deep" and "evocative" while also being dumbed down for wider appeal, and it accomplishes neither.

There were a few scenes I enjoyed, but that's mostly because they reminded me of Gurren Lagann, or Gunbuster, or the original Evangelion. The penulitmate story reveal, of Shinji "breaking the cycle" of him and Asuka and Kaworu and everyone else, is a prime example. It was cooler when Simon did it. Aside from the main plot, there were a number of absolutely awful lines; the one that still irks me is when Shinji calls what's happening a "Neon Genesis". Now "cringe" is horribly overused, but I actually, no joke, cringed at that line. It feels like a "Truly the Evangelion was the friends we made along the way"-tier parody line, something from a D-grade abridged series rather than an actual original work. The apparent refusal to settle on naming conventions (is it Another Impact, Additional Impact, Fourth Impact, or Final Impact?) is admittedly a petty gripe of mine, but when you can call the damn thing "Bonus Impact" and have it not seem ludicrous, an error has been made somewhere in the writing process.

Art (5): The traditional animation looks just as stunning as you'd expect a modern anime film to be, especially the backgrounds. There were even some shots that I thought looked beautiful, namely Asuka's angel transformation (although, again, it's my opinion that earlier Gainax properties did those same scenes better - the entire transformation sequence looks like it's been ripped straight from Diebuster). The CGI ranges from "pretty good" to "someone pinch me, 'cause it looks like I've time-travelled to 2003". The design for Gendou's version of Unit 01 (which the wiki tells me is called "13") is cool, but it's difficult to mess up "Unit 01 but with four arms". The designs for Mari and Asuka's mechs are... weird. They would be innovative if they were, say, Gundam designs, but Mari's Unit 8 and its Beyblade arms are a little ridiculous. The less said about the mass-produced drone Evas and sexy leg Evas, the better. I've got the same gripe that I have with the rest of the franchise, that being the gratuitous nudity, partial nudity, and other shots of Mari and Asuka (both of whom, if I may remind you, are in the bodies of tweens). It's excessive, it doesn't add anything, and it feels like it was done specifically to appeal to a certain sub-demographic of anime fans that I'm sure everyone reading this is already aware of. There are ways to do artistic nudity, and there are ways to use nudity to evoke feelings of horror or unease, and I just don't think that upskirt shots of the panty lines of the girls' new plugsuits qualify as either of those (also, why do the plugsuits have panty lines?). There is no reason given as to why Asuka spends half the movie topless in her panties. Is she a nudist? Does she just not care? I don't think that's the reason, given her response when Shinji didn't react to it. Or is it just because Anno is a clever dude, and he knows sex sells? No, it must all be part of his artistic vision (at least, that's what I had to tell myself every 10 minutes when another half-naked minor popped up).

Speaking of artistic vision, let's discuss the final fight between Unit 01 and 13: it doesn't look good. Now, that statement on its own isn't controversial. Disregarding the fact that intentionally-bad art is still bad art, I'm not sure it's a given that this was indeed intentional. People defend it as an artistic choice, an intentional stylistic decision made to convey... something. Nobody seems to be sure of what. Of course, my theory is that they ran out of money, just like they did in the original show, and to a lesser extent in End of Evangelion. This is the same series that had a minute-long still frame of two people in an elevator, after all, and had the last two episodes of the series composed mostly of storyboards. Coincidentally, both of those examples have people defending them as an artistic choice - and the latter, I actually enjoyed. I think it fit. The elevator scene didn't. The 3.0+1.01 fight didn't. It was lazy. Sometimes corners have to be cut when you're making a film. Not everything is the intentional movement of a chess piece by a brilliant, visionary player; sometimes these scenes are, in fact, just what they appear to be. Or maybe I'm just a Philistine.
To make a long story short, the art is easily the strong point of the movie, although that really isn't saying much.

Sound (4): The first and second films had very good soundtracks. Even the third, much as I malign it, had some great tracks. This was lackluster. There is only one song from this movie that I can remember, and it's "One Last Kiss". I found it to be incredibly boring and derivative - it sounds like any other lullaby-worthy downtempo pop song that you've heard hundreds of times before. However, with music especially, taste is subjective. A lot of people really like it, so your mileage may vary. I rarely pay attention to sound design outside of music, so I can't comment on anything else, really.

Character (1): This is easily the worst part of the film, so I'm devoting the meat of the review to it. First, I need to "set the scene" by talking about You Can (Not) Redo.

The 3rd Rebuild movie was bad. Let's not kid ourselves. 3.0 turned all these characters from the already caricatured, just-barely-unrealistic people they were in the original series/first two rebuilds into bags of flesh that looked like Misato, Asuka, etc. but were in fact inhabited by an altogether different spirit. They didn't resemble realistic characters at all, let alone the ones we'd spent 3 and a half hours (more, if you've also seen the original series) watching.

After 14 years, nobody thought to themselves, "Hmm, I still don't like that Shinji kid but given that he spent the first two movies fighting off APOCALYPTIC MONSTERS and that the near-3rd Impact was a) an accident and b) something he was ENCOURAGED TO DO BY MY CURRENT COMMANDING OFFICER, maybe I won't immediately be violently hostile to him." That is, I think, a realistic human response after having more than ten years to think things over. Everyone responds to grief differently; I understand that. But it is farcical to think that none of the seasoned military personnel on the AAA Wunder god-slaying jetpack lizard corpse McGuffin were able to relate to Shinji having to make difficult choices under pressure. The whole first half of the movie consists of the entire cast of characters (save Kaworu, Rei, Gendo, and Fuyutsuki) berating Shinji, attempting to physically abuse him, threatening his life on more than one occasion, and most importantly, not even bothering to tell him WHY they're all so angry. He's been in a coma for over a decade, for Christ's sake. The second half is a non-issue. We get some poorly-done chemistry with Kaworu, Shinji plays chess with Fuyutsuki and meaningless exposition is given, and Rei is a solid step down from her appearance in the 2nd Rebuild, where she demonstrated more personality than her anime series depiction. But I digress; this isn't a 3.0 review.

I could at least appreciate Anno's integrity if he kept with these out-of-left-field, nonsensical personality changes in the 4th movie. Instead, we get so much backpedaling we're back at the goddamn starting line. The sheer AUDACITY of the writers of this film to just shit all over the fans' intelligence with the way they wrote these characters. It's almost unbelievable. Get this, guys - the reason Asuka and Rei acted like schizophrenic children (forgive my ableism) rather than grown-ass adults wasn't because the writers were asleep at the wheel. It's because they were CLONES, and they were just PROGRAMMED to act that way. What a fucking cop-out. What a fucking cowardly face-saving measure. But that isn't the worst of it. You remember how Misato completely refused to accept any responsibility for emotionally abusing Shinji since the day they first met? And how she was barely even willing to acknowledge his existence after the timeskip? I remember. But it looks like we remembered wrong. Actually, she's been shouldering that shared burden for all these years, and actually she really does care about Shinji. That's why she put a bomb collar on him, refused to tell him what was going on, pointed a gun at him, and then when he comes back, she puts him in another fucking bomb room. It's laughable. They heard people complain about the characters in 3.0, so they retconned it in the laziest way they could.

The flesh-sacks that are our cast of characters now desperately try to convince us that "No, the last movie was a fluke. We're totally the same people you know and love!" They fail even at that basic task.

You know who got character development? Tohji. Tohji did. He was well-written, competent but not unrealistically so, and his personality in the earlier films is still noticeable even though he's mellowed out since then. I've already written about Misato, but did you know she's got a kid? Yeah, she and Kaji fucked like a week before near 3rd Impact, apparently. Don't worry, the kid gets fewer lines than an abandoned theme park. Asuka's character development is that she's a clone now. And also she's an angel now. And also she's screwing Kensuke now (of all fucking people. I don't even remember if they had a scene together outside of the initial introduction in 1.0. Also, she's physically 13 and Kensuke's in his late 20s, and that makes me want to vomit). Oh, but she actually DOES care about Shinji. Couldn't you tell by how she kicked him while he was catatonic in a curled-up ball, or violently force-fed him, or flat-out mocked his PTSD reaction to her bomb collar? Mari is Mari. She has as much of a character as she did in the last movies (boy, she sure does love piloting EVAs), except this time it's revealed her name is actually Mary Iscariot!!! But who cares? We have no context as to what that means or why it's supposed to be a twist. Also, she's a former student of Fuyutsuki's, which puts her in the same age range as Gendo. She is a 50-something year old woman in a body that is 16 at the oldest perving on a 14 year old. Let that sink in. Kaworu is back, too, I guess, and he has a relationship with Kaji for whatever reason. Was that ever foreshadowed? No, but it's canon now, so deal with it. Shinji's turn from so depressed he will litererally starve himself to death to confident shonen protagonist almost feels like an afterthought. What, Rei 38,000,000 tells you she thinks you're cute, and that was all you needed? I love competent, happy Shinji as much as the next guy, but this was unearned. Oh, and Gendo, lest I forget. Gendo gets some backstory about how he was lonely as a kid or whatever and that's why he spent 20 or 30 years trying to bring about a biblical Judgement Day. Also, he played piano as a kid, and it was "one of only two things that brought him joy" (this makes the second time we've seen "Piano" used as a substitute for character development, if you'll recall. Is it good thematic cohesion, or is it fucking stupid? You decide). Also also, he's a superhero now, complete with laser vision, flight, and the ability to tank multiple gunshots to the face. Doesn't help that he also looks like Boros from One Punch Man.

The supporting cast really isn't much better, but I'm not writing a novel here so I'll skip them.

Enjoyment (3): I think you can figure that out by now.

Overall (3): Thrice Upon a Time, as of the 16th of August, 2021, is rated an 8.80 on this website. It's the 30th best anime of all time. I don't think it deserves to be in the top 100. I came in with low expectations and I was still disappointed. The baffling writing decisions made in 3.0 led to a slew of loose ends that were too convoluted to ever be satisfactorily tied up, but 3.0 + 1.01 comes in and just dumps a whole truckload of thread onto the mess of the last movie. They trapped themselves in a hole with 3.0. Dug themselves into a big, deep, nonsensical pit. This movie was their ticket out: An explosive, a shaped charge to blast a tunnel back to the surface. Only, it turns out they paid the price for not bringing an experienced demolition expert with them - it wasn't a shaped charge, it was a cluster bomb. At the end of the day, they're still stuck at the bottom of that pit, but at least they're not alone anymore; they've got plenty more holes all around them now. In all seriousness, if you enjoyed this movie, more power to you. There were parts of the film where I was impressed (mainly by the visuals), but this movie was not billed as a good-looking action movie (and the "good-looking" part is subject to debate anyway). It's an Evangelion film. I really, REALLY honestly do wish this movie was better. I don't HATE Evangelion. I don't WANT it to be bad. But regardless of what I wanted, this movie was bad nonetheless.

Diebuster is also known as Gunbuster 2 - positioning itself as a sequel to the 1988 OVA series, Gunbuster, Gainax's first big hit. Indeed, it was produced as a 15th anniversary project for that series. Expect spoilers for Gunbuster - you should watch that first (it's better, anyway) - as well as minor spoilers for Diebuster itself.

Story (4/10): Set about a decade before the last scene of episode 6 of Gunbuster (and thus some 12,000 years after episode 1), Diebuster follows a robot with a profound connection to a character from Gunbuster (if you've seen that, you will know immediately who this is); more on ... this in the Characters section. The long and short of it is that it's not great. Diebuster fails at one of the guiding principles of storytelling - show, don't tell. I'd wager a good 30% of screentime is devoted to exposition, and you still can't tell what's going on. Not an Evangelion-style "this is too deep for me" confusion, mind, but a "no, really, what the hell is happening?".
Many of the story beats are nods to Gunbuster, but rather than provoking a response of "Oh, I remember that from the original! Cool!", it only serves to draw attention to the fact that all of those story beats are better-explored in the series' older sibling. This is perhaps Diebuster's greatest flaw: it cannot escape from the shadow of its own "onee-sama". Gone is the hard sci-fi; the somber exploration of the effects of temporal relativity and time dilation, the detailed shots of the various engines, lasers, and mechanisms. In their place is a superhero story, stripped of any ingenuity, and playing fast-and-loose with the laws of physics (this isn't a bad thing - I love Gurren Lagann for this very reason - but it doesn't scream "Gunbuster"). I feel like it would have been better as a standalone OVA series - I spent much of my time trying and failing to connect the relevancy of events in Diebuster to those in Gunbuster.

Art (8/10): It's Gainax. Diebuster is a feast for the eyes, especially with regards to its action scenes. Other than the design of the space monsters (the late-80s Giger-esque style works much better than the early 2000s pastel) and the character designs (bland and uninspired), I think it can safely be said that this is the only area of improvement over the 1988 series.

Sound (5/10): This movie came out in 2003, sandwiched between FLCL (2000) and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007), two series renowned for their memorable, catchy, and enjoyable soundtracks. Diebuster gives you generic ominous drum pieces and heroic orchestral music. In other words, it fails to take any risks with its sound design, and the music fails to meet the hype of the art.

Character (3/10): As far as personalities go, none of the characters in Diebuster have a lasting impact, instead reflecting the same archetypes you'd find in any early 2000s anime. When compared to the likes of Kamina, Haruko, or Shinji, they have all the depth of the paper they were drawn on. Hell, they fail to pass muster even when compared to the tropey, one-note characters in Gunbuster or the *background characters* in Gurren Lagann. There's just nothing there. People complain that Gunbuster's lead is whiny, or poorly fleshed-out. But I raise you this: I was able to immediately connect with her, follow along with her struggles and triumphs, and remember these things after the show was over. The same cannot be said for Nono or Lal'c.
As mentioned in the Art section, the characters are dressed in uninspired costumes in various shades of pastel. I think this works in FLCL - it gives a sense of stagnancy that is central to the idea of "nothing interesting ever happening in this town". It does not work here.

Enjoyment (4/10): This is, as of the time of writing, the only Gainax or Studio Trigger production I have seriously considered dropping halfway through. I can say with a good degree of confidence that if you a) enjoy either studio's work and b) appreciate mecha anime, you will be better served by watching literally any of their other works in the genre - Gunbuster included.

Overall (6/10): Ignore that the above scores average to 5, please and thank you. I can't recommend this show. If you're itching for more Gunbuster, I recommend Space Battleship Yamato, its spin-off Space Pirate Captain Harlock, or Gundam (any of them, really). If you want a high-octane mecha show, watch Gurren Lagann.

It's Akira. What else is there to say? If I had to pick a negative thing, I'd say that the pacing of the film's story is strange and at times hard to follow. However, I think it becomes much easier to understand on repeat viewing(s), which you'll definitely be wanting to do thanks to the stellar artwork, animation, and music and sound design. At the risk of beating a dead horse, Akira is a must-watch for self-proclaimed casuals and diehard fans of anime alike. Watch the damn thing, and read the manga too (it continues the story after the film's climax, and it's paced much ... better).