Re-posting this here from my notes.
!!!SPOILER WARNING!!!
A decent enough adaptation of the first few episodes of Evangelion. We follow Shinji Ikari's personal journey toward self acceptance and watch him learn what it means to be alive, and what his purpose in the world is. This is before Evangelion gets to all the truly crazy insanity that unfolds later on, so we get a more personal tale which explores the psychology of Shinji and the people around him. It's pretty inspiring stuff, especially toward the later parts of the film where Shinji struggles to choose between his own priorities and the priorities of those around him. Still, we are left with mixed feelings about his actions, seeing as he is pretty much dictated into committing acts that can and most probably will get him killed. The audience is left to figure out for themselves if what Shinji is doing for humanity is a good thing or not, and if we should root for or against NERV. It's a fascinating topic of discussion.
As for the adaptation itself, I feel it does certain things well and others not so much. The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal, to start. The visuals are also gorgeous, but that has both a positive and negative effect, depending on how you look at it. In one way, it is nice to see the source material elevated to new heights with stunning visuals on screen, but on the other hand, I feel it takes a bit away from the feel of the original show. Evangelion originally came out in the 90s, and although you can easily tell what time period it is from, it still looked great for its time. I personally think this movie looks almost too nice for its own good; it takes away from the raunchy and gritty feel of the original, and makes it look too clean-cut. The best way I can describe it is by comparing it to a street fight where everyone is wearing a nice suit and tie. It just doesn't feel right.
The movie is also incredibly fast paced and cuts out everything that doesn't directly drive the plot forward. For some, this can be good, as it reduces the amount of filler and makes the movie more exciting (something I feel the first Code Geass recap movie really benefitted from), but for me this movie suffers a bit from a lack of context for characters' feelings and misses out on some important character development that make the scenes where they experience hardship feel more impactful. There is also a lot of technobabble that gets thrown around that doesn't really mean anything, but still takes up a lot of screen-time. 7/10
TL;DR
"Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone" is a decent adaptation of the first part of Evangelion; it doesn't add much of anything new or meaningful, but it doesn't take much away from the original either aside from some minor grievances here and there. I would not start with this movie if you haven't seen the series before, but it's a good companion piece when you need a refresher on the plot after having finished the original series. 7/10
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