danieljtune Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth is a 1997 film that acts as both a recap of the original series Neon Genesis Evangelion and a preview for the at-the-time upcoming film The End of Evangelion. The Death and Rebirth in the title refers to the two segments of the film; Death being the recap, and Rebirth being the first half an hour of EoE.At the time of the film's release, the film was supposed to act as an alternative to watching the original 26 episode series, most likely to draw in non-fans to come and see End of Evangelion. In my opinion however, the film isn't a very good alternative to watching the original series. It's organised out of chronological order and forgoes a lot of the plot to give brief outlines of the main character's personalities, which could lead to a fair amount of confusion. Most of the animation in the "Death" segment is just reused footage from the series. The only parts of the film that are not reused are scenes where the three main leads practice classical music, which are more or less purposeless and really only serve as an excuse to listen to nice music. If you had not seen the original series before watching this, I would guess that you would be rather confused.However if you are a fan of this franchise (like me), you'll probably quite enjoy it. Though the recap is strangely organised, it's still Evangelion, which is inherently pretty cool if you love the show. The organisation can be seen as an interesting new way to experience the show, and it can also act as a nice refresher on the events of the series. While The End of Evangelion segment is kind of pointless, it's still the End of Evangelion, which, in my opinion, is one of the best animated films ever made, so watching a bit of it is hardly a bad thing.Still, the film only really functions as a curiosity piece for super fans. If you are not super invested in the franchise already, you probably don't even know it exists, and if you do, you probably don't care.

John Doe All this film is is just a recap of the first twenty four episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, plus the first fifteen minutes of Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion. It is however, re-dubbed with a few voice changes but other then that the script is the same from the TV series.This movie does have some nice DVD extras though, including an Neon Genesis Evangelion Encyclopedia, an Audio commentary from English dub voice actress Amanda Winn Lee (who was also the English ADR director and English voice for Rei Ayanami), It also includes an in-depth Index of Characters, Angels, Evas & Terms, a nice Photo Gallery, original Japanese trailers, Japanese Production credits, an End of Evangelion Preview, Previews for other Manga Entertainment titles, a DVD Catalog, Fan Club Info, and Web Links. I wasted 101 minutes of my life watching this stupid movie. The only good thing about this is the DVD cover art. But only get this if you absolutely must complete your collection.

Ucare I did not watch the original 26 episodes series but I watched in these days all Evangelion films, because of the high ratings: Death and Rebirth (a recompilation of the original series), The End (a rewriting of the End of the series, still considered one of the best Anime ever), and then the last three, 1 and 2 which reboot the series apparently without mayor changes, and 3 which goes in new territories. At first I will write about Evangelion in general, and then about this specific movie here. In all Evangelion the writer touched any possible demagogic stereotype and cliché on earth: father/son relationship, Oedipus complex, a bit of the typical Manga Style sexuality, cheap psychology, and a huge amount of very cheap esoterism with symbolisms of all kind. My opinion? A big omelet of everything, which finally means absolutely nothing. Wiki says that after the failure of his previous works (which he judged as childish) he wanted to make something "deeper". My impression is that he did not even try to BE deeper, rather just to SEEM deeper in order to impress the audience. And I am afraid that only the Naive could be impressed by such a confused mess.I can still see why this show had success: Evas are cool, fights too, and there is enough mix of drama, action, teenage nerd sexuality in the typical Japanese style, and some sort of epic. I suppose that if you are younger than me and without any knowledge of psychology or esoterism, and a bit nerd, you may enjoy this works pretty much more than I did.About this film: well, the first half is just a recompilation of episodes of the series, and the second part is a preview of the movie "End of Evangelion", so I would say: watch the first half. If you like it, you can watch directly End of Evangelion skipping the last part of this movie. I personally did so. The first half of this, then the End, then 1 and 2 (reboot of the Series), and then the horrible 3. Even if I am sure that watching the whole series would be a more complete experience, the vision of this recompilation and of the reboot 1 and 2 gave me enough not to feel I miss the series, and showed me that I may not like the series so much to dedicate to it more time.

Greg Russell (tubola99) If you're going to see the series and the End of Evangelion, you're wasting your time here. This DVD contains a short overview of the series, followed by the first bit of The End of Evangelion. If you don't want to sit through the series (shame on you), you'll want to see the first half of this before watching the End of Evangelion, but otherwise it's not really worth the money.