Director: Hideaki Anno.
Pffff.... What can I say? It's a very long film, too long for one viewing session. The first half is beautiful, touching and dealing with trauma in a mature way, without gimmicks nor clichés. The 2nd half is full of lore and it's very hard to follow unless you are already extremally invested in it. I don't care much about the lore so I focused more on the interpretation of Christianity and Judaism from a Shinto perspective - and it was a big & beautiful mess. At the end, Shinji Kun is diving deep into a stream of consciousness, and it feels long and redundant. But then the animation starts to break apart into sketches from the early production of the film, the film ends in a real-world drone shot. The animation dissolves into reality. - I interpreted the ending as a closure for Hideaki Anno and letting go of his masterpiece. Letting it die in peace and to move on with his life. As an artist who also works on long term projects, I feel the need to let go. So the ending of the film moved me a lot. But I think it will disappoint many of the viewers who are not involved in film and animation as part of their career.
The Rebuild Of Evangelion is an epic animation about coming of age and coming to terms with trauma. The final chapters are lacking the humor we learned to expect from the TV series. Regardless, it's a modern master piece that every animation fan and artist should watch.
Verdict: 4 / 5 ★ - Hard to watch but worth it.
