Rebuild of Evangelion

[Yukimura]

Oh and THORA's release is amazing as always. Not sure why they chose to go with AC3 for the 720p release though, considering 1.11 was released with DTS.

I am willing to bet they did it to keep the size under 1 single layer DVD and maintain visual quality. I am certainly not complaining since my digital media->TV converter box decodes AC3 but not DTS so I didn't have to resample the audio to watch it on my TV.

In any case, I greatly enjoyed this movie and I approved of the direction the narrative seems to be taking so far. The biggest change I noticed to the character dynamic was the seeming reduction of the importance of Asuka in pretty much everyone else's life. I was never a big fan of Asuka and so I was actually pleased by her more limited role in the film. I was even a bit giddy when I thought the Dummy Plug killed her to the point that I didn't even notice that she survived until I watched it through a second time.

The Shinji of Rebuild is seemingly less conflicted than the Shinji of the original series but I can't tell if it's because so much has been compressed away that he simply hasn't had time to build up to the level of angst and whining that he did in the original. Regardless I found the final scene of 2.22 to be an awesome showcase of the Shinji I always wanted to see. I thought it was touching and awesome that Rei being in danger spurred him to get back in the Eva and beat the tar out of Zeratul to get her back.

I was also quite fond of Mari, I see her as what I would have preferred Asuka to be as an Eva pilot and as a character. Here's to hoping her role turns out to be more than just fanservice/trope fodder in the final chapters and she fits into the story in a sensible way.