Without much fanfare, certainly where I am located, the first movie in the series of 4 of the remake of the legendary Neon Genesis Evangelion anime was released in Canada. I had heard about this move coming out about a month ago, but did not hear about a release date. I found out it was in theaters 2 hours before the only showing and scrambled out of bed to make it (the showing was at 10 am).

The first movie, Evangelion 1.0 – You are (not) alone, was a faithful retelling of the first 6 episodes of the original series. There were some reanimated scenes taking advantage of some new-tech CGI stuff and there were also some extended scenes and new pieces added. The animation is top notch, as it was in the original series.

I’ve been doing some digging about this new, 4 movie series and have come to find out that the next three movies will take the series in a new direction. The aim of this retelling is to “make the series more accessible to the general public”. The original got very strange, very fast after the first 6 episodes or so; to me this retelling is a welcome change and I hope they can make more sense of it. Apparently the ending will be completely rewritten and easier to follow.

The second movie, Evangelion 2.0 – You can (not) advance, has already been released in Japan and if the lag time on 1.0 is any indication it’ll be two years before we see 2.0 in Canada. It’ll be the longest two years of my life…

Do yourself a favor and go see this in theaters if it’s still playing around you, you won’t be disappointed.