he final installments of the 26-episode Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series left a lot to be desired. The series mixed monster-of-the-week plots with religious symbolism, artistic expressionism, Kabalistic imagery and a great deal of strange science fiction about the origins and ultimate evolutionary direction of the human race. But it ended with an abstract welter of hard-hitting images that carried a lot of emotional impact without answering most of the questions the story had raised.
Eventually, two theatrical movies took up the Evangelion story again. The first, 1997's Death & Rebirth, is finally available in the U.S. after years of delays; the second, The End of Evangelion, is slated to follow shortly. Death & Rebirth consists of two separate
sections, separated by the film's credits and a timed "intermission." "Death" consists mostly of previously-seen Evangelion TV footage, re-edited into a choppy, driving montage reminiscent of the series finale. Words flash by in near-subliminal inserts: An early combat between whining child-pilot Shinji Ikari and one of the invading monsters known as "Angels" is trimmed down to an abrupt, flickering segment in which violent images alternate with words like "bloodshed," "silence" and "massacre." Other sequences are linked thematically via timeline-leaping titles such as "Seven years earlier, she ran into a room." The entire piece summarizes the first 24 episodes of the TV series, albeit in a jumpy, random, truncated way.
The second, shorter segment, "Rebirth," replaces the final two episodes of the TV series with the first part of a grim alternate future that's far more concrete than the cosmic ballet of self-exploration that ended the TV series. With the defeat and destruction of the 17th (and supposedly final) Angel, the NERV complex is no longer necessary to the controlling cabal of SEELE, which moves to collect the monstrous biomechanical Eva units by killing everyone who might claim or control them. Meanwhile, events have left Shinji despairing and nearly comatose, while once-fiery pilot Asuka is literally comatose. As a private war to determine the future of humanity begins, the Japanese Strategic Special Defense Force launches an assault on NERV, and the corpses begin piling up.
A somewhat sour taste of things to come
Death & Rebirth is fragmentary and stylized enough to completely baffle new viewers, but at the same time, the recycled footage doesn't offer a lot for experienced Evangelion fans. At best, it's a dizzying recap for those who don't want to re-watch the entire series before finally seeing its end. To compensate, Manga Video has padded out the Death & Rebirth DVD with a detailed glossary that finally explains many of the series' deepest mysteries. The DVD is two-sided: one side just contains the Death & Rebirth movie, while the other side contains the same movie in "Mokuji" ("contents") interactive mode, which sets up hyperlinks between film scenes and appropriate glossary entries. The Mokuji movie also features an audio commentary by three anime voice actors: Taliesin Jaffe, Death & Rebirth co-producer Jason Lee and producer/director Amanda Winn Lee, who's particularly hyper and giggly.
Unfortunately, the commentary version doesn't include subtitles, so it's difficult to follow the film while listening to the audio track. And the interactive system isn't all it's cracked up to be: the same links pop up over and over (after his third or fourth appearance, is it really likely that a viewer's still going to want to look up Shinji?), and the glossary doesn't include images, so if several people and links appear on the screen at once, viewers who don't already know who's who won't necessarily be able to tell them apart.
Extras aside, Death & Rebirth is powerful but often frustrating. After more than an hour of recycled footage, viewers are launched into a bloodbath that ends on a shocking cliffhanger just as the story gets up to speed. The rapid cuts and interspersed words are stylish and intriguing at first, but eventually start to grate. The entire piece is more an experimental tone poem than a narrative film, but the tone is somewhat shrill and nerve-wracking, and in the end, the text segments are more useful than anything in the film itself. Unlike The End of Evangelion, Death & Rebirth has relatively little to add to the Evangelion story, and its contributions are mostly distractions, variations and teasers for the upcoming main event.
One of the most unique things about the DVD release is the deeply creepy main menu, which flickers and changes periodically, flashing subliminal words, moving the menu items around on the screen and sometimes briefly removing them altogether. The effect is disturbing, but at the same time, it's both
attractive and hypnotic, and it fits perfectly into the style of the film.
— Tasha
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