While “Neon Genesis Evangelion” was a popular anime series, many fans were divided over the final two episodes. We would eventually get an alternate ending with “The End Of Evangelion”. However, we first got “Death & Rebirth”. It’s completely terrible as it recycles old content in a way that makes almost unwatchable.

“Death & Rebirth” starts as a recap of the tv series with twenty-four episodes’ worth of content crammed into little over an hour. While the series itself was often challenging to understand, this version is just incomprehensible. A series with such complex philosophical themes gets butchered. The remainder of this film is essentially a lengthy preview of “End Of Evangelion”.

When you try to fit in several hours’ worth of content into just a single hour, it’s going to come at the expense of character development. “Neon Genesis Evangelion” was really about the characters and how they developed rather than the sci-fi world and the giant robot action. Here, nobody is introduced properly. It would be almost impossible to understand any of the characters if you had not watched the full series. Just so much is left out and the editing just makes it even harder to understand anything about any of the characters. The animation is good but that’s because the animation in the show was good.

I can maybe understand that at the time of its release, there was some value for fans getting to see some iconic moments from the show up on the big screen. However, this is literally just a recap of the majority of the series and then a preview of what’s to come. It will be meaningless if you haven’t seen the series and it’s completely skippable if you have watched the show and just want to get to “End Of Evangelion”.