Before the release of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone, director Hideaki Anno stated:
In the past 12 years, there has been no anime newer than Eva.
He was right. Evangelion represented a paradigm-shift for anime. An instant classic, Evangelion took what anime was, and made more out of it. The series injected desperate nihilism into the sophomoric giant robot genre, incorporated Existentialist self-doubt into the pop-art iconography of two-dimensional children, and lacquered the whole with obtuse religious symbolism. Evangelion danced on the line between parody and homage, between depth and immaturity. It was melodramatic, cheap, and new.
Hideaki Anno loves anime. He wants it to be greater than it is. He sees a grand vision for the form, something that is both accessible and informative. Evangelion is a work that strives for this; a show designed to make money and sell toys, while telling us a great story. Anno hoped for the form to follow his lead.
It didn't.
With few exceptions, today's anime is frightened, tentative, afraid to take bold action and break out of the mold. Young moe girls, maids, and empty genre shows clutter our collections, pulling anime's average toward a lower common denominator. Series like Death Note and Honey and Clover are infrequent reminders of anime's greater degradation.
And so, in direct answer to this puerility, in defiance of anime's decade-long depression, Anno has taken up Evangelion again. He broadcasts the same message, shouted louder.
“Evangelion 1.0 was made out of the desire to fight the continuing trend of stagnation in anime,” declared Anno. “The desire to connect today's exhausted Japanese animation [industry] to the future.
“We aim to create a form of entertainment that anyone can look forward to; one that people who have never seen Evangelion can easily adjust to, one that can engage audiences as a movie for theatres, and one that produces a new understanding of the world.”
Having seen Evangelion 1.0, I can easily say that he's on his way to accomplishing his goal.
Evangelion 1.0 is the way we remember Neon Genesis Evangelion. It appears as a remastered version of our favorite game, a Criterion edition, or an album re-recorded in higher fidelity, with additional tracks.
If we brush up on our Eva beforehand, we may be a little disappointed. Though the original show is still an opus, there's a little rust forming on the edges. Sliding our original series Evangelion discs into our players, we're met with a show that is unfortunately beginning to show its age. The lines are thick and inconsistent, the animation is cheap and often off-model.
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