I watched the Evangelion TV series about four years ago. And I was quite underwhelmed. I didn’t like or care about any of the characters. The monster of the week format didn’t help much. And the ending was highly questionable. Plus, I kept trying to make sense of the randomly inserted mythological names and symbols and couldn’t make heads or tails of them. Every time I watched the OP all I could think about was “why is there a tree of life?”. I don’t think the issue was the plot– I loved Rahxephon, which had the same general idea. It was the execution which was terribly lacking.

Which brings us to the movie. When I watched the movie, it seemed like I was watching an entirely different story! I still didn’t like any of the characters – but now I hated them! There was so much more of an emotional impact the way they were portrayed in the movie. When I watched the original series, I remember thinking that Shinji was the character I couldn’t stand the most since he was so indecisive. But the movie’s portrayal of Shinji was so much more sympathetic – he’s really just a kid, abandoned by his father, hated by his classmates and with no positive adult role models whatsoever. How could I begrudge him not wanting to go and get himself killed for the bastards who put him in this situation?

And the character I hated the most in this movie was by far Misato. Shinji was absolutely right that she’s a hypocrite. At least Shinji’s dad has the decency to not even pretend to care about Shinji. But Misato’s alternating pretending to care and sending Shinji to die is the worst. Acting friendly and inviting him to live in her house, then sending him out in a mission to die. And when he does almost die (more or less every time) the way she acts like she didn’t think it would happen and really wants to rescue him is just disgusting. It really seems like she only worries about him and takes care of him because she wants to pretend to herself that she is a good person, but really, she isn’t fooling anyone. The way she talks to Shinji pissed me off as well. First she verbally abuses him for not deciding for himself about piloting. Then she hits him for disobeying her orders. And then when he finally does make up his own mind and decides he doesn’t want to pilot, she gets even angrier. And gives him some story about how everyone at Nerv is willing to die if he fails and the Angel arrives underground. Of course everyone is — wait, then why did no one tell Shinji about this? And why is there a school built above this base? This show just kept making me angrier and angrier about how these “adults” treat children.

I hated all of this show’s characters so I must have hated the movie, right? No, I loved it! A good characterization is one that makes you care about what happens to the characters, whether it’s love or hate, it’s all good with me. The thing which I absolutely can’t stand is characters which the viewer is completely indifferent to – this means that the show is boring. And the movie did show much better in this regard than the series – I don’t remember having much of an opinion about Misato at all in the TV series.

As for the rest of my complaints about the TV show – the monster of the week thing wasn’t an issue anymore since this was a movie. We haven’t seen the ending yet, but I assume it will be better. And they toned down the random mythobabble a lot. They did mention something about the angels eating from the tree of life and the Nerv eating the fruit of wisdom – well, it was knowledge, but a better attempt than before. And Nerv certainly doesn’t have wisdom, and if they do have the knowledge of good and evil — well, they certainly aren’t making good use of it. I might be a bit biased since I already know Nerv’s plan, but the angel’s seem to have a much better grasp on good and evil – they don’t even kill innocent bystanders, unlike certain groups that build schools on battlegrounds. They only gave the second an angel a name this time through – Lillith – which is a good fit since she is a mother figure. Overall a much better attempt at the mythology this time around.

I’m holding off on watching the second movie for a bit longer, but hopefully it will live up to the promise of the first movie.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Great dialogue.
• Characters – 9 / 10 – Excellent characters which evoke strong responses.
• Production – 9 / 10 – Nice explosions.
• Overall – A-

Voice Actor of the Show Award – Mitsuishi Kotono, for her portrayal Misato Kitsuragi that was believable enough that I could hate the character with a passion.

Recommendations – Rahxephon, Zeta Gundam

I did not particularly enjoy the Gundam 00 TV series. But this movie makes the TV show look like a masterpiece. Seriously, this was atrocious. First of all, it suffers from the same problems as the TV series (note: the full list is much longer).

1. One dimensional, boring characters who are complete assholes yet somehow popular. Exhibit A: Setsuna F. Seiei. He is a complete jerk, yet everyone loves him and thinks he is the only hope of saving mankind. In the original Gundam, Amuro was also a jerk, but at least everyone knew it and he had the decency to hate himself as well. Setsuna F. Seiei’s main character trait is his middle initial. He basically is a serial killer though, so I guess it fits. Which leads to my second issue.
2. “I will fight to bring an end to war!” This was a major theme in older Gundam shows as well. But there, the characters were aware that there was a contradiction. In Gundam 00 it doesn’t seem like they are. They all shout about bringing peace, and the only way to do this is to blow stuff up. And they shout this frequently and loudly. Marina Ismail is guilty of a similar crime, except for her it is “I will sit here and do nothing to bring an end to war!”. It is even more annoying when their enemy is an alien species which they can’t even communicate with which is about to annihilate the entire planet.
3. The Master Race. The innovators are the evolution of humanity, and superior to normal humans in every way. The original Gundam and Zeta Gundam had this same theme with the newtypes, but they actually challenged it and debunked it. The Newtypes were not really any better than normals (except in combat) – indeed, the two main examples, Amuro and Camille, were pathetic human beings. In these shows, newtypes and non-newtypes had differences which could be overcome. But in Gundam 00, Setsuna F. Seiei is the evolution of humanity – he is better than them. And this leads to…
4. Might Makes Right. Celestial Being, with their advanced technology, have not only the right but the responsibility to “take care” of humanity by bringing peace through military action. Their condescending attitude stinks of colonialism as they “look after” Earth without so much as a by your leave.

End rant. Now the movie had all of the same flaws as the TV series. In addition, it jumped around between characters too much. They had to fit everyone and their cousin in. And they all had to fit in roughly equal amounts. Marina did absolutely nothing to advance the plot and yet kept showing up.

As in the first show, the battles were equal parts random screaming, Brownian laser motion, preaching about bringing peace while blowing things up, and pinkish nudity. They also made no sense, particularly in regards to the passage of time. I thought it was supposed to take ninety days, but it seems like they are fighting the aliens immediately after. And why exactly were there two battles? Plus the entire premise is stupid. Why are there aliens in my Gundam show?!

On the positive side: there were lots of explosions. Oh, and Saji and Louise were less annoying than in the TV show. Probably the fact that they didn’t show up much helped. The best part was the epilogue – Setsuna F. Seiei comes back, having become an alien and meets Marina Ismail, who is an old granny by now and can’t even see. Setsuna F. Seiei hasn’t aged at all. They hold hands and she is happy to see him. He doesn’t apologize or anything. A perfect ending for two of the characters I hate most. I do feel kind of bad for Feldt, but if she’s dumb enough to fall in love with Setsuna F. Seiei I can’t say she doesn’t deserve it.

• Plot / Script – 4 / 10 – Painful to watch.
• Characters – 3 / 10 – Setsuna F. Seiei.
• Production – 9 / 10 – Great explosions.
• Overall – F

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – Give Setsuna F. Seiei more of a personality by letting him be taken over by either the aliens or Veda.
Recommendations – If you actually liked this movie – Gundam Seed. You’ll love it. Otherwise, the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, and Turn A Gundam.

Brief Summary: A terrible virus, Medusa, spreads around the world and turns people to stone. The creators of the virus (unbeknownst to the rest of the world) create a cyrogenic sleep center to protect 150 people from the virus. They will awaken in 100 years.

Sounds like an exciting sci-fi movie, right? Wrong. This description is barely even incidental to the plot of the movie, which is about dreams and fairy tales. Well, saying it is about dreams and fairy tales is quite generous. Really, it’s about running away from monsters. I don’t know why, but the creators start with this fairly interesting premise and completely toss it out. The virus is basically a plot device to make people go into the cyrogenic sleep center and to kill people at convenient times so that they can die “tragically.” All but seven or so of the sleeping people die within a minute of waking up. Maybe this was supposed to be shocking but it was really just pathetic. The cyrogenic sleep lasts for two days instead of 100 years, and this is discovered after about twenty minutes of being awake, so it is not like they are concerned about it at all. Plus, the creators of the movie seem to completely forget the plot thread about the creation of the virus about halfway through the movie, for no apparent reason. It is never mentioned again.

I had high hopes for this movie for approximately the first two minutes, when it started out with one of the only semi-realistic settings in America I have ever seen in anime (the other being being Red Garden). This was coupled by a quote from Romans on the side of a bus for bonus points. Unfortunately, once people came into the movie everything went downhill. The setting was a European castle, supposedly in the middle of the US, next to an ocean with windmills. Why did they show New York at the beginning?

In an even more egregious move, the movie drops the Christian mythology we were expecting from the quote from Romans and random talk about Noah’s ark, along with the religious cult hiding in the shadows which controls the corporation (as far as I can tell, they are never mentioned after the first ten minutes). This is exchanged for the story of Sleeping Beauty. Now, I may be biased because of the Disney movie, but Sleeping Beauty is one of the most boring folktales ever told. And they start off with Christian mythology and crazy evil cults and drop it for this. Disappointing, to say the least.

King of Thorn also did a very poor job at explaining the plot. This may have just been me (the attention I paid to the movie decreased exponentially over time as my interest waned) but by the end of the movie I was even more confused than I was at the beginning. A good mystery should reveal the answers to previous questions as it asks new ones. This movie asks new questions as it forgets about the old ones. By the end of the movie I barely had any idea what was happening anymore. And not in a good, mindfuck kind of way. In a “they fail at explaining” kind of way. I didn’t even realize that the main character and the person who came to the cyrogenic freezing center with her at the beginning were twins until halfway through the movie. And I’m pretty sure this wasn’t supposed to be one of the “twists.”

Looking on the positive side, one of the bright points was the musical soundtrack. All 30 seconds of it. By the twentieth time through I had had about enough. As for the characters – they weren’t interesting at all because all of their actions were reactive. The entire movie was them running away. What will we do next? Uh oh, monsters. Run! More monsters?! Run! The castle is flooding? Run! This is most of the plot.

• Plot / Script – 4 / 10 – Horrible / no resolution, forgotten questions, unfulfilled premise.
• Characters – 4 / 10 – The characters’ entire personalities were merely occupational. Mother. Soldier. Mad scientist. Ex-KGB. RPG player. Police officer. None of the characters really took any steps outside their assigned role, with the possible exception of the main character.
• Production – 7 / 10 – It did look nice, I’ll give them that, but work a bit harder on the music, ok?
• Overall – F

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – Maybe try doing something with the premise involving cyrogenic sleep instead of forgetting about it after ten minutes. Try something involving the characters performing some activity other than running away from monsters. Make the plot at least mildly coherent. But seriously, I would just pretend this never happened.

Recommendations – Princess Tutu (any arbitrary episode tells a better fairy tale than this), Shangri-la (for same kind of sci-fi / overrun cityscape setting)

As a fan of the Tales series I was looking forward to this movie, and was not disappointed. Production IG decided to toss out the plot of the game and make a prequel, with Yuri and Flynn’s adventures in the knights before the start of the game. It worked out quite well, with a story that could conclude in a single movie but has plenty of room for sequels. I’m curious how faithful the sequels will be to the game plot though – especially those two twins, they were never in the game at all but were two of the main characters in this movie. Perhaps we can look forward to an untimely demise?

The characters are great and well developed, which is unsurprising since they have great material from the game to work with. The characters and their interactions are really the strong point of the Tales games- all those side dialogs as you’re walking around through the overworld make for some great development. I wish more RPG makers would realize that this is what makes a great game and not fancy graphics and fast-paced real time battle systems (*cough* *cough* FFXIII).

But back to the movie – my only issue with the characters was that I couldn’t tell the two twins apart. I didn’t realize their physical differences until the captain pointed it out. As a unit though they worked well. And baby Repede was so cute! Also, Yuri looked less feminine than I remember him being in the game. I think it’s because he’s wearing his knight uniform instead of that low-cut shirt. We can probably look forward to his fashion sense degrading in the next movie.

The plot of the movie was fairly typical – man vs. nature (evil monster in castle), the villagers band together to defeat it, the monster’s master is revealed to be the evil sorceror. But I didn’t mind, it’s typical because it’s proven to work. The movie is light-hearted and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with humorous, well spread out jokes.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – A typical fantasy plot, but done well.
• Characters – 9 / 10 – It’s Tales.
• Production  – 10 / 10 – It’s a movie by Production IG, what do you expect? The CG for the monster in the castle was only a little bit out of place
• Overall – B+

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – More Rita. Also more people who mistook Yuri for a girl.

Recommendations – Tales of Phantasia, Miyazaki movies, Book of Bantorra