JimmyWolk wrote:Wait, wait, the question was whether to ever go back to the series after Rebuild. And you really want to tell me 2.0 blew you that much away that if faced with that choice, you wouldn't miss seeing

SPOILER: Show

tandem-piloting (Daww), synch-training with Wall of Jericho and almost-kiss, thermal expansion & Magma saving, let alone the actual kiss, blushing retreat from checking on him in the infirmary, lots of little bits of banter,...

ever again?

Anta baka?! Of course not!

I should have been more clear (my bad with that) but I meant my first impression/viewing of 2.0 made me feel that way.

Also: dawww at the hand-holding.

As I haven't seen 2.0, I can't comment past the 1.0 sub I watched. That being said, I've got this to say-


As for the music being better, etc, and what not- Are you joking? The operatic battle score bit in 1.0 was effin' awful. Outside of that, the rest of the music was fine, different, but fine. the original's selection of music could get ecclectic, sure, but I don't think it was ever so far removed from the situation at hand as to be called bad.

As for the animation, its nice to se it in a cinematic view, but i think a lot of folks are going to have a parallel argument to the music format opinion war- Analog and digital. I've always loved, if not absolutely adore the animation style/method of filming with eva. It had that tinge of older equipment like lupin the third, gave the series some character. I dunno if I would have wanted to see the theatrical releases that way, but if the series had ended the way anno originally planned it with the tv production style, I would have loved it, no doubt.

Just too different for me to really say empirically one is better than the other. The series is the friend you've always known. Rebuild is the cool new kid you just found out you have a lot in common with, and seems like a good guy. Different.

roblucci01 wrote:but rather scenes in 2.0 were pointless, EG

SPOILER: Show

the decontamination scene, Asuka's shower scene

Really, only that? That are 'rather' ? lol

But, yeah, comedic scenes are character development too, have fun with characters make then grow in viewer perception, and really, plainly comedic scenes are few and short, I dont have any problem with that.

Also are very effective how the calm before the storm.

roblucci01 wrote:Killing that and adding a couple more minutes could have opened the possibility for another angel fight.

Another Angel? Perhaps Israfel for moe Shinji-Asuka interaction, but make that requires some more time (10 minutes or more), and some comedic scenes too

Also I dont see character development for Rei exagerated in any form.

The whole movie es very equilibrated in that sense.

JimmyWolkl wrote:Wait, wait, the question was whether to ever go back to the series after Rebuild. And you really want to tell me 2.0 blew you that much away that if faced with that choice, you wouldn't miss seeing
Spoiler:

SPOILER: Show

tandem-piloting (Daww), synch-training with Wall of Jericho and almost-kiss, thermal expansion & Magma saving, let alone the actual kiss, blushing retreat from checking on him in the infirmary, lots of little bits of banter,...

ever again?

Remember how I said that I like NGE better in concept than execution? Some of those scenes just seemed...silly, and I don't really mind missing the rest. I've never been a big A/S person anyway. I mean, heck, evenwhile funny, seemed a bit much for me. I've got it into my head that Rebuild is some big, serious, epic, dramatic thing, meaning that scenes like those feel REALLY out of place.

roblucci01 wrote:And with time spent on other things, this movie could have possibly introduced a new angel

Gamer_2k4 wrote:

JimmyWolkl wrote:Wait, wait, the question was whether to ever go back to the series after Rebuild. And you really want to tell me 2.0 blew you that much away that if faced with that choice, you wouldn't miss seeing
Spoiler:

SPOILER: Show

tandem-piloting (Daww), synch-training with Wall of Jericho and almost-kiss, thermal expansion & Magma saving, let alone the actual kiss, blushing retreat from checking on him in the infirmary, lots of little bits of banter,...

ever again?

Remember how I said that I like NGE better in concept than execution? Some of those scenes just seemed...silly, and I don't really mind missing the rest. I've never been a big A/S person anyway.

Eh, that was solely directed at SSD, you know, being quite an A/S person. ;)

It didn't ruin the original series for me, because they both are different. But it made me realize that Evangelion was a low budget series.

I mean, compare to RahXephon. This one has outstanding visuals from beginning to end. With Evangelion each episode had a different drawing style and some were really awful.

I still remember how terrible looking it is when Eva goes berserk and 400%. The quality was awful.

I own every DVD ever released in the US (the original series ADV 'Perfect' not the director's cut which i hated) and the 2 movies, and watching Rebuild just made me want to watch the series and movies all over again.

The opposite happened to me, I got enthused about Eva all over again becuase of Rebuild.

And I compared the animation quality of EoE and the cut scnese from D&R and I thought they were fairly comparable (IMHO slightly better) then the Rebuild, but i'm a traditional hand-drawn fan.

I don't mind the 'bad' animation of hte series at all, I still appreciate it and the story is what matters more to me.

The only thing I can see is, Rebuild is (so far) far less depressing, and so maybe I will be able to watch it more frequently then I do with NGE Series... which sort of is one big downer after episode 18 or so.... (although the last 2 episodes sort of make up for it.... which is then crushed again after watching EoE).

I'm of the persuasion that the original series has ruined Rebuild for me. Shapeshifting Ramiel was kewl, but the rest of it I would have preferred as a stand-alone new title.

Well, it's been 12 years and now that 3.0+1.0 is finally out, anyone got any new answers to this question?

That's a hell of a necrobump

I have always been of the persuation that ppl who cannot appreciate something despite old animation / old CGI/ old special effects have no imagination, don't understand Sci Fi/Fantasy/ Horror in the least. They should go back to action flicks or soap operas.

ALL CGI/animation/special effects/video game graphics will look old eventually. Indeed 1.0 already looks super old compared to screenshots from TuaT. The old series looked old next to the beefed up EoE footage.

I would like to hope there's some narrative value here that would still be there if you did the whole thing as a stageplay with wooden masks in a greek amphitheater.

And from Q onwards the Rebuilds have diverged so much that you can no longer even consider them a 'beefed up version' - they're more like different endings in a video game. (a comparison, I think, that Anno himself once made wth EoE and the TV ending - it's like the "game" got a third route in the beefed up anniversary release. )

I've met a bunch of ppl who've seen the rebuilds first and all of them were like "please more!" & were at this point invested enough not to care about the oldness, though it will be interesting to see the reaction of ppl who've seen the completed rebuilds first now that they have an ending.

I think Q single-handedly makes this thread completely irrelevant.

Also, I think NGE frequently looks aesthetically superior to both 1.0 and 2.0.

If anything Rebuild kept the love for the original series alive. It kept it "relevant." As a fan from the very beginning, the very concept of the Rebuilds was very strange to me. NGE was a complete work, one I took out every once in awhile to show new friends and revisit, but as far as I was concerned, it was wrapped up in a nice little bow. There was stuff to talk about, but ultimately it was done and it had a special place in my heart. By the time "You are (Not) Alone" the viewings were getting less and less. Realistically, I have watched the series from beginning to end at least 30 times, no exaggeration! But with the Rebuilds, the excitement swelled up again, as I could talk about them and refer back to the original series and it sort of reinvigorated my love for them.

Don't get me wrong, I think NGE is superior in every way, but the Rebuilds have more artistry and depth to them than a lot of fans are willing to admit. They are a wonderful companion piece to NGE. They don't replace them in anyway and I imagine future viewings will incorporate them. NGE followed by Rebuilds. I'm excited for 3.0 + 1.0 to make the Rebuilds a complete thing as the NGE was, but a small part of me is sad that this era of speculation and not knowing is about to end.

I think the latter half of NGE does suffer a bit from the obvious compromises that were made due to the production issues they faced. Stuff like repeated sequences and long still frames that happen during the later eps IS jarring, there’s only so much “it’s for the stylistic/artistic effect!” hand waving you can do before the real reason for the sequences becomes impossible to ignore.

But at the end of the day I think NGE just has to be enjoyed as a product of its time, with the knowledge and understanding of its troubled production. I don’t think it would be possible to “remake” it with more consistent animation and a tightened up plot, because how would you even decide what to change and what to stay the same? If your goal is explicitly to remake Eva, do you fix inconsistencies like Misato introducing Lilith as Adam? Do you keep the abrupt transition from Ep 24 to Ep 25 with no real explanation of what happens in between? There’s so much stuff that COULD be “fixed”, but if you’re making those changes, aren’t you edging dangerously close into reboot territory?

Ultimately, I think the Rebuild’s decision to go off in a completely different direction was a good one. This way, it’s very obviously not trying to supplant the original in the same way a remake or a reboot is trying to, and it forgoes the impossible task of somehow topping EoE. Because while I think the latter episodes of NGE could definitely use some touch-ups and improvements, I dunno how you can remake EoE when it’s already pretty much perfect in terms of visuals and aesthetics.

Kendrix wrote: The old series looked old next to the beefed up EoE footage.

CG can certainly age, but animation doesn't really work the same way. NGE doesn't look old next to to EoE, it's quite simply not as good visually. Akira is from the 80s and is better animated than most. Fantasia is from the 40s and still looks absolutely stunning. And I'm sure one can come up with many more examples.
Even within the frame of Hideaki Anno's works, Gunbuster is probably more consistently better in visuals than Evangelion or any other of his works, and it is again from the 80s. Not like it's surprising, it was an OVA, and all anime TV series he worked on, while greatly helped by his directing, can't really hide the fact that compared to really stacked productions like Escaflowne or Cowboy Bebop the animation/backgrounds/etc are just weaker most of the time.

I'm not trying to say the Evangelion looks bad, it doesn't at all, any of the works, except for some of the CG in the rebuilds, that crap only hasn't aged like milk because anime CG in general is stuck in 2006. Not that I'd like much more it if it looked better.

No, quite the opposite actually. To a surprising amount. I spent a lot of time with NTE in between rewatches of NGE, and feared that NGE would have lost its charme at this point, but no. It feels a lot more human to me in many aspects. The visuals, while not as flashy, have aged very well in my eyes. It's overall just a different experience. Compared to NGE, NTE turns up everything to 11 (or 12, or 13). That works on first viewing to wow you, but then it becomes irrelevant at some point. Episode 19 might lack in visual fidelity, but what it does not lack is feeling and making me connect with it (which NTE constantly fails to do, for various reasons).

So, no. NTE reminded me (again) that less is often more.

Yes, yes it did.

The two are such different series to me that I feel it would be hard for one to "ruin" the other.

For starters, NGE is long-form television, and NTE is a tetrology of movies. They're different ways of telling stories and can spend time in places the other couldn't, and I appreciate both. From a visual standpoint, some of the shots in NTE are absolutely beautiful, but I still love how NGE feels when I watch it. Characters are subtly different, we get different interactions between the two, and once we reach 2.22, the stories diverge enough that they're effectively different franchises.

Even now that Shin is actually out and we can view the films as a complete tetrology, I still don't think it does anything like "ruin" the original series. They're both good and can both stand on their own, in my opinion.

For me NGE and RoE look very similar, i don't really pay much attention to the visual improvements.
Or more exact, when wathing the scenes sideby ide,sure, but when wathcingthem with 1 week inbetween no differnce.

The original series and the Rebuilds are two completely different things. The Rebuilds are just something I ignore and forget, and I imagine a lot of people are going to do the exact same. They’re not the original series, they never will be, and they don’t ruin it. The Rebuilds ruined themselves. I could understand Anno wanted to do something different. But he didn’t do it good. The Rebuilds fail to stand both as a continuation of Eva and as their own series. So they’re just something that will be forgotten and ignored while people will always remember the original.