Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版: 破)

Evangelion has come back. And this time, as a movie tetralogy instead of TV series. The 1st of the new series, "Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone", came out September, 2007, 10 years after the original series had ended. The 2nd film "Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance" has come out at the end of June this year.

Although the new series is called a "remake", it appears that the new film series does not strictly follow the original storyline. Aside from the cosmetic changes with the advance in technology (which in itself is quite amazing), minor (and some not so minor) changes in the settings were seen throughout the 1st film. In the 2nd film, the series has launched itself into a whole new storyline, even introducing a new Eva pilot, Mari Illustrious Makinami.

With the changes in the plot, the way some of the existing main characters are portrayed have been changed as well. The most evident of that, perhaps, is seen with Asuka Shikinami Langley, the female half-German/half-Japanese pilot of Unit 02, whose Japanese last name has been changed from Soryu (惣流) to Shikinami (式波) for a mysterious reason. Her hair color also has been changed from red to a lighter tone and more importantly, her personality seems less twisted than what it used to be in the original. Compared to Soryu, Asuka Shikinami seems to be a bit more secure emotionally. She is also slightly more comfortable in sharing her own feelings with the people around her which makes her quite more likable than she was in the original (although some die-hard fans may miss the crazy twisted-minded Asuka). Rei Ayanami, the Unit 00 pilot and another heroine of the anime, seems to have gone through some transformation as well. There are no obvious changes made to her like in hair color or last name that are seen with Asuka. However, Rei, who is famous for her lack of emotion and interest in pretty much anything but Eva and Gendo Ikari, the head of NERV, appears to be more willing and makes effort to interact with the others in the new series. This becomes increasingly more observable as the story progresses in the 2nd film. There are scenes where we see her saying "Ohayo" (good morning) to her classmates at school and later in the film, she actually tries to learn how to cook for Shinji, the Unit 01 pilot. And last but not least, the main character Shinji Ikari actually acts like a hero in the new series instead of running away every chance he got like he did in the original. This in a way makes the story more straightforward and easy to follow. You see a growth in the characters' personality and a sense of resolution after watching (at least thus far) as opposed to the original TV series that left many questions unanswered and the audience puzzled.

If you watched the TV series and liked it, you'll get to re-live the experience again with the familiar faces and a plot fairly similar but possibly heading to a whole different ending. The 2nd introduced a number of new ideas and premises that were not part of the original and at the end of the film, it has become very clear that the new series is not following the footpath of the TV series (some say that the new film series is somehow a continuation of the original series, which we are unable to verify until the next film). Does the "Human Instrumentality Project" or "Jinrui-Hokan Keikaku" have a different purpose this time around? How is it being implemented and what will happen at the end of it? The film has all the sudden introduced a number of new mysteries to what was supposed to be a remake, by which many viewers were caught off the guard. The Internet is full of speculators, analyzing and dissecting the films from every angle and predicting what will happen in the end, reminiscent of what it was like in the mid-late 90's when people were exchanging their own interpretation of Evangelion. Only now, the Internet has come a long way and is available to a much broader audience. The heated discussions are likely to continue well into 2010, when the series is to be wrapped with the films "Evangelion: 3.0" and "Evangelion: Final" (exact date is TBA, said to be later in the year).