Anything to gain from watching Death and Rebirth?

[KingXanaduu]

It's not really necessary, unless you're a completionist. It's basically just a rehash of the entire series, to get people up on where the story is and what's happened before EoE.

[Love Not Given Lightly]

I wouldn't know, I've been an Evangelion fan for four years now and I still haven't seen it.

[Dream]

It's not necessary, but useful.

At the very least it gives an interesting perspective or feeling on some aspects of the series throught the editing, i think. So i would recommend it even when it's not exactly vital to the viewing experience.

[Mr. Tines]

It was some years after everything else that I watched this. Apart from the DC material, there are the interleaved sections with the Children forming up as a string quartet, and the reanimated sections of the earlier episodes that didn't get incorporated in the remastering, in particular, Rei smiling after Operation Yashima.

[svenge]

The most recent Japanese home video release (the 2003 "Renewal" edition) treats Death (or at least its most recent revision, Death[True]² ) as an integral part of Revival of Evangelion, which was the 1998 theatrical re-release of Death[True]² + 25' "Air" + 26' "Magokoro wo Kimi ni" all together, and reflects the original intent of what "Death and Rebirth" was supposed to be before the production delays.

Even the cover of the Renewal release implies this; It's written as "The Feature Film - Neon Genesis Evangelion" (note that the use of the singular "film" in the release's title is not an Engrish mistake in this instance). That's the reason why you couldn't get Death or The End of Evangelion separately, neither in the original "Renewal singles" release [KIBA-1009/10] nor the DTS Collector's Edition [KIBA-1209] that came out a year later. The only reason that they put Death[True]² on a separate disc than Air / Magokoro wo Kimi ni is due to the fact that the encodes for all 3 parts (Death[True]², Air, and Magokoro wo Kimi ni) would take over 11GB, which is 3GB too much for a dual-layer DVD.

As for Rebirth, only in Japan's pre-Renewal releases was the actual theatrical footage from it actually used. For all other releases (US, UK, etc.), Gainax/King Records only provided the A/V from the corresponding portions of 25' "Air", along with the title cards and ED credit sequence from Rebirth proper to insert where they would've been if the A/V from Rebirth was provided. So if you have the Japanese release, Rebirth a nice bit of history with some slightly different animation and voice performances, but if you have the US release it's worthless except for the ED credits song "Tamashii no Refrain", which is a nice track by Yoko Takahashi.

Based on all this, the originally-intended way to watch the Evangelion films is either to watch both discs of the Japanese "Renewal" release in full back-to-back, or watch only the "Death" portion of Death and Rebirth and then change discs to The End of Evangelion if you only have the US/UK/etc. releases. It was always meant to be one integral work of art and should be viewed in that manner.

On a tangental note, it's a damn shame that the original 1997 cut of Death (i.e. not the 1998 Death[True]² version that we have today) was never released on video. I wonder if it would be possible to "reconstruct" it with a copy of the original AR script (if it was published somewhere) and the "Director's Cut" versions of Episodes 21'-24'. The e-konte (storyboard book) that was put out for the movies reflected the Death[True]² version, so that wouldn't work...

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Is the Death and Rebirth movie worth watching? I am under the impression that the director's cut episode fills in all of the new content that is in the movie. Thus, should I just move on to The End of Evangelion movie after watching the director's cut episodes?

Well, the film doesn't even include all of the "Director's Cuts." It uses the original TV footage for some of the scenes.

But, it's Neon Genesis Evangelion in discontinuous editing form wrapped in a nice little feature. I couldn't say no to that.

[Reichu]

svenge: The best (only?) coverage of the original theatrical version is the Death Newtype Film Book. The observable differences (can't tell anything about timing and editing minutiae) are pretty minimal. Some of the new Asuka mind-rape material is sandwiched between Kaji's death and Kaworu's appearance. Also, the flash-cut of Misato's smiling face from Shinji and Kensuke's conversation in the tent is different (i.e., it was redrawn again for one of the subsequent Death edits).

[svenge]

svenge: The best (only?) coverage of the original theatrical version is the Death Newtype Film Book. The observable differences (can't tell anything about timing and editing minutiae) are pretty minimal. Some of the new Asuka mind-rape material is sandwiched between Kaji's death and Kaworu's appearance. Also, the flash-cut of Misato's smiling face from Shinji and Kensuke's conversation in the tent is different (i.e., it was redrawn again for one of the subsequent Death edits).

Ironically, that's the one Newtype Film Book that I do have, but I never analyzed it all that closely. I mostly got it because it's a pretty representative sample of the entire series and has all the telop slates that were shown for a duration of at most 1-2 frames in the actual film.

Of course, the fact that I can't read Japanese at all would probably be a hindrance to deeper analysis as well.

[Reichu]

I mostly got it because it's a pretty representative sample of the entire series

It's similar to the other movie film books, but the ones for the TV show are different in just about every way other than dimensions.