Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth--Review and Reaction

Death and Rebirth is the first Neon Genesis Evangelion movie having been released before End of Evangelion. If you want to know a basic plot synopsis, just scroll down and read the first paragraph of both my review of the series and End of Evangelion.

That is exactly what Death and Rebirth is: a stripped-down NGE series plus End of Evangelion put into one movie. Like End of Evangelion, Death and Rebirth is a sort of two-part movie with Death being a crash course of the television series and Rebirth being part of End of Evangelion.

For the most part, the Death sequence was key scenes of the television series edited together to give the viewer a basic run-down as to what went on up to episode 24. Occasionally, there were a couple new scenes put in here and there in order to help explain certain character relationships and things like the Second Impact. Otherwise, Death was just a SparkNotes version of Neon Genesis Evangelion that would only make sense to people who have already seen the series. The way the scenes were edited together in a manner resembling what probably goes on in someone with ADD clearly shows that Death and Rebirth is not supposed to stand alone as any sort of Evangelion-related narrative. Also, I was not entirely sure I got the scenes showing Shinji, Asuka, Rei, and Toji rehearsing for a string concert; I know they served to introduce the characters that the movie wanted to focus on, but I was not really sure what the meaning of a string concert was; I guess it is at least partly because of director Anno Hideaki's tendency to intentionally leave things unclear so as to force viewers to try to interpret things.

The Rebirth segment of Death and Rebirth showed some of End of Evangelion up until about a quarter of the way through that movie, ultimately ending with the deployment of the Mass-Produced Evangelion units; it appears to be a hanger to those who have not seen End of Evangelion. This movie was released before End of Evangelion, so clearly the Rebirth portion of the movie was to entice fans to see what would eventually become End of Evangelion.

So what did I ultimately think of Death and Rebirth? For me at least, having seen this after End of Evangelion, this movie was rather redundant. Death and Rebirth really was just a thinly-disguised nearly two-hour-long trailer for End of Evangelion. This movie was really only worth seeing in the time between the end of the series and the release of End of Evangelion. Granted, if you are one who had a little trouble following the series (which, let's face it, was a little confusing), then I would recommend seeing Death and Rebirth for the Death portion of the movie alone. Otherwise, you might as well just see the series and End of Evangelion.

Overall: 2/4.