Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genesis Reborn (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

"Neon Genesis Evangelion" was THE defining anime series of the 1990s. Like "Super Dimensional Fortress: Macross" in the 80s, nearly every anime fan on Earth saw it and every anime club showed it. Unlike "Macross", "Evangelion" was gritty, depressing, and difficult to understand even after multiple viewings. Fan web sites sprung up by the hundred, as people all over the world tried to nail down the many arcane Judeo-Christian references and fully explain the series to each other. Heck, I myself wrote such a site and participated in as many discussions and debates about the series as I could find. I personally know people who wrote college papers on the subject of "Evangelion" and what it all meant for various English and philosophy classes. Children´s fare "Evangelion" was not.

The studio behind the furor is Gainax, one of the major anime studios in Japan. The original twenty-six episode TV series was so difficult to understand, and fan outcry was so great following the end of the TV series, that Gainax would eventually produce three theatrical features, one double feature collectively known as "Evangelion: Death and Rebirth", and a final film, "End of Evangelion", to finish the series. Even then, people everywhere wanted more. The final release was a director´s cut version of the final six episodes of the TV series, which contains new footage, sometimes in the form of extensions and sometimes in the form of alterations.

I was torn when I heard the news about the director´s cuts. On the one hand, I love this series and want to see anything new that has to do with it. However, I worried about the alterations, as I don´t like it when a feature is changed after its general release. For an example of how wrong that can go, one need only compare the original and DVD releases of "ET".

ADV has released the director´s cut episodes on two separate discs, along with the original episodes. This disc contains both the original and director´s cut versions of episodes 24-26. This should go without saying, but do not watch this disc unless you have at least seen the first twenty TV series episodes. There are spoilers aplenty this late in the series.

Before getting into the new footage, there are some translation changes from ADV. In the original versions, signs and other writings that are visible during still shots are converted to English. In the director´s cut versions, the signs are left in Japanese, but have an English translation floating nearby. I am not fluent in Japanese, but the translation in the director´s cut episodes seems better than in the original episodes, which always felt too liberal with curse words and too fast and loose with metaphors. Regardless of which translation is more correct, there are some serious differences between them.

There is precious little new footage in the director´s cut episodes. Episode 24 contains new footage that adds a few details about Kaoru´s situation. As far as I was able to tell, there wasn´t anything added to the final two episodes.