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Evangelion 1.0 : You Are (Not) Alone Exclusive Screening

First, let me say, Evangelion 1.0 is a masterpiece by any standards. Watching it on the big screen after so many years is still quite an experience to remember. If you don’t already know, Evangelion 1.0 is a remake of the original Evangelion TV series back in the 90s comprising of the first few episodes’s storyline and scenes which were reanimated and improved upon. I had the opportunity of catching Eva 1.0 at The Cathay Cineplex Damansara thanks to an online contest hosted by LowYat.net’s AnimeShrine.

I have to say that although Eva 1.0 was a great movie the theater was kind of a let down and this ruins the show. The movie was screened at Hall 3 or The Picturehouse as they call it. It’s a much smaller hall with only about 8 rows of 12 seats each. Oddly though, they are divided at the center, so you don’t actually get to sit in the middle of the screen. My BIGGEST complain would be the screen itself ! You see, this version of Eva remake had some of the same exact frames redrawn. It wasn’t very noticable at first but then you suddenly realise that about 10% of the top screen was CUT OFF ! Yeap, you heard me right, it was just cut off. It doesn’t appear as bad in some sequence but when you only see 2 halves of a character talking onscreen, its really very annoying (SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t believe me, the scene where the first Angel exploded, the explosion should form a cross, in my screening, you only see a vertical explosion).

It’s been years since I watched the original, but I could still recall some of those scenes and it is very obvious that the framing of those scenes were just off. I couldn’t really tell if the sides were cut off as well but I’m guessing the screen ratio was probably screwed up anyway, so you’re really getting short changed if you are planning on watching Eva here. Anyway enough of rant on the cinema, the other minus point is…. Rei’s famous “Can you get off of me ?” scene was censored No escaping our censorship board there.

Anyway back to the movie. Eva 1.0 closely follows the events in the original series. The creators did a great job in squeezing in the 6 episodes it was based on into a full length movie without disrupting the pacing of the story. In the movie, we are introduced to Shinji Ikari and how he was incepted into the Nerv organization to pilot the Evangelions, humanoid robots that seems rather organic, to battle Angels, myterious beings of unknown origins. The rest of the story shows how Shinji tries to deals with all these changes in his life as he take on the pilot of an Evagelion.

A number of the scenes were exact remakes with some new details added while others were based off new storyboards. The animation quality was top notch and some of the scenes were really polished with high quality CGI especially the last Angel battle sequence which was a fantastic redesign.

The score which was composed and arranged by Shiru Sagisu was reworked from the original series and gives a very epic feel to the movie. Watching the Evas fighting the Angels on the big screen with the score was pretty intense experience. According to some websites that I’ve visited, it seems that the Japanese screening had previews of the second movie, however I stayed until the credit roll was over but there were no signs of the preview. Overall Eva1.0 is a great movie. It’s no wonder that it has won many film accolades in Japan. Truly a classic for all anime fans.

Rating:

Chief Director: Hideaki Anno

Director:
Kazuya Tsurumaki
Masayuki

Screenplay: Hideaki Anno

Storyboard:
Shinji Higuchi
Tomoki Kyoda

Music: Shiro Sagisu
Original creator: Hideaki Anno
Character Design: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

Art director:
Hiroshi Kato
Tatsuya Kushida
Chief Animation Director: Shunji Suzuki

Animation director:
Atsushi Okuda
Hidenori Matsubara
Kazuchika Kise
Yuji Moriyama

Mechanical design: Ikuto Yamashita
Co-director: Kobun Shizuno
Director of Photography: Toru Fukushi
Executive producer: Toshimichi Ootsuki

Running Time : 100 minutes
Rated : G

Evangelion Official Site

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