Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
We caught the second Evangelion movie at Cathay Cineleisure Orchard this afternoon, and the only way to describe it is: “This is not the Evangelion I watched, lo these 20 years ago as a teenager”.
And it’s not just the addition of a totally new character, Mari Makinami, the entire sequence and character relationships and interactions between Asuka and Shinji have been both changed and compressed. (Is it just me, or is it starting to look like some harem anime?)
*Spoiler alert!*
Signficant changes off the top of my head are:
1. The fight on the ships against Gaghiel which debuted Asuka has totally been deleted/modified to a solo takedown in style by Asuka.
2. The tag-team fight against Israfel (”Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!”) by Asuka and Shinji was nowhere to be seen.
3. The story of the infected Unit-03 where the Dummy Plug was used to take over a reluctant Shinja has been changed to have Asuka instead of Toji as the test pilot.
4. Kaworu Nagisa makes his apparance in what looks like Unit-06 at the end of the movie, spearing Shinji in the act of saving Rei who was absorbed by the Angel.
Recommended, though the movie felt somewhat rushed, as if to introduce all the critical characters that did not appear in the first movie, so much so that so many of the original character developments that we expected did not appear.
