How does one judge a piece of media that’s almost exactly the same as another piece of media that’s come before?

Sure, the anime world is no stranger to remakes. FMA 03 vs Brotherhood, HxH 1999 vs 2011, the old and new versions of Fruits Basket, all the different interpretations of Fate/Stay Night... there are plenty of anime properties that have been made anew and reinterpreted for new generations of fans. And there’s plenty of interesting conversations to have surrounding what these different versions were going for, how well they succeeded at their goals, all that good stuff. But the first Evangelion Rebuild movie isn’t just any ordinary remake. It’s a near shot-for-shot recreation of the first six episodes of the original TV show. If you decided to start Evangelion with the Rebuilds and put this movie on, you’d get a nearly identical experience to if you decided to put on the show. Sure, I know future movies will move the story in a new direction and fully cement this series as its own unique take on Eva, and that’s where the really meaty discussions are sure to begin. For now, though, our starting point is almost entirely composed of imagery, sequences, dialogue, and ideas we’ve seen in this exact order before. How do you judge something like that on its own terms? Should I judge it on its own terms? Is it even possible? How different would my experience with this movie be if it was my introduction to Evangelion and I was experiencing all these moments for the first time?

For now, I can’t answer those questions. Perhaps my opinions will evolve the further I get into the Rebuilds. Until then, though, all I can do is talk about how this movie affected me now, reliving old memories in a slightly different context.

If I’m being honest, there’s something almost uncanny about Rebuild 1.0′s slavish devotion to recreating the first six episodes. It’s not just the scenes themselves that are the same; it’s how they’re shot, how they’re edited, which music cues are dropped when. Hell, even the animation itself feels lifted wholesale from the show at times, as if they literally just traced over the cuts from ten years ago and redid them in a new engine. That alone creates this fascinating stylistic contrast; you’ve got these very 90s keyframes and animation techniques, but now they’re in widescreen with smooth digital lighting effects and the occasional high-quality CG assistance for some of the more complex mechanical tech. This is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a 90s-style anime made with modern animation technology, and that itself is pretty cool. I’d even argue the overall effect is so seamless that it’s just as beautiful and evocative as the show. But it’s definitely weird re-experiencing an aesthetic that was very much of its time updated for modern technology. I spent so much of the first half-hour of this film experiencing what I can only describe as a reverse uncanny valley, trying to wrap my head around how well this twenty-year-old visual storytelling still conveyed its meaning in this new context. There should’ve been so much whiplash from fitting the styles of different eras together, and yet it just... works. That's somehow more unnerving than if there had been a disconnect. What wizardry did you employ to make it so seamless, Anno?

Of course, this movie isn’t literally just the exact same shots as the show. If it were, it would be over two hours long and the pacing would make no sense. There are a few cuts, a few additions, a few re-ordered sequences to make the story flow better as a cinematic narrative. And I could honestly spend the rest of this review talking about how those minor changes affect the experience overall. Some moments I desperately love are lost to cuts, but I can understand why they needed to go; as much as I adore the end of episode 4 where Shinji and Misato stare at each other across the train tracks, that kind of emotional catharsis plopped right in the middle of this movie would slam the brakes on Shinji’s arc and ruin the power of seeing him finally stand up to his demons in the final act. Some moments I feel should’ve been left in; Kensuke and Toji’s subplot is so stripped down that they barely register as characters, which makes their big inspirational speech to Shinji near the end ring hollow unless you know them from the show. Most of the additional scenes are welcome; I like the extra time with Misato and Ritsuko’s relationship, and introducing Shinji’s mental train conversations and Lilith earlier on helps the show’s slow progression of abstract, cosmic weirdness feel more natural. And when the final battle rolls around, the animators really get to cut loose and showcase the full power that modern technology can bring to Eva-on-Angel conflicts when they’re not just reusing blueprints from a decade prior. If that’s a sign of how hard the action is gonna go once these movies come into their own, color me excited as fuck for what’s still to come.

What really hurts, though, isn’t losing any one big moment or subplot. It’s losing all the tiny, incidental moments that are peppered throughout the show. Moments like Shinji teasing Misato when they first meet, or Ristuko joining them for dinner in their cramped apartment, or Shinji finding refuge with Kensuke out in the wilderness for a brief night of comfort. As brutal a show as it was, Evangelion always contrasted that darkness against the simple, ordinary lives of its characters, the scattered moments of humor, sweetness and light that made us care about their fight against the darkness. These are the moments that make Evangelion, and I just wish so many of them hadn’t been cut from this movie. I understand the time constraints; there was no way a 100-minute film could keep every last detail from 150 minutes worth of TV. But even just five more minutes to keep some of these details in, even just one more scene in Misato’s apartment to make it feel like home, even just one more scene with Kensuke and Toji to make their big finale speech hit home, would have made a world of difference. Honestly, I think the pacing overall works really well cinematically, building to a natural climax point and shifting just a few details around to give Shinji a single continuous arc en route to that finale. But those extra five minutes could have pushed it into “This could’ve been initially conceived as a movie and I’d never know the difference” territory.

You know what, though?

More than anything, watching this movie just drove it even further home how much Evangelion fucking owns.

See, I bring up the changes and cuts and additions because talking about what’s different is the most obvious thing to talk about in a product that’s otherwise mostly the same as something you’ve already talked about. But for the 80% of the time where 1.0 is just Neon Genesis Evangelion again? Folks, it was like nothing had changed at all. There I was again, getting swept up in the drama, gasping at the brutality, biting my nails in terror for Shinji’s safety and well-being, devolving into an emotional mess over his growing connection with Rei, howling with fury at Gendo’s cruelty, marveling at the visceral way Anno directs action, even cringing at the same overt fanservice that still hasn’t grown on me after all these years. The coat of paint may have changed, and some details may have been shuffled around, but this is still the same haunting, gut-wrenching, breathtaking, extraordinarily beautiful franchise that broke the world of anime open back in 1995. Not even literally repeating itself is enough to take away its power. If anything, it just makes it even clearer timeless Evangelion is, how its storytelling and conception of humanity transcend the context of their time to speak to audiences of any era. Evangelion could’ve come out for the first time ten years ago, five years ago, yesterday, or decades into the future, and it would still hit just as hard no matter what. It’s a shining star that will never truly fade, a story that will forever remain just as jaw-dropping, just as agonizing, and just as revolutionary no matter how much time passes since it was first released.

So in the end, maybe Rebuild 1.0 is nothing more than a rehashed starting point that begins to set the stage for the real changes to come. But so what? That starting point is every bit as electrifying now as it was when I first laid eyes on it, an eternal reminder of the unmatched power of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I may not like all the little changes it made, but I will never grow tired of revisiting the beginning of anime’s undying masterpiece. So as we prepare to see how these Rebuilds will chart their own course moving forward, let’s raise one last toast to the moments that started it all... and look forward to the new heights this old foundation will take us to.