ANI-MOVIES, *Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo

As the third installment of the Rebuild Of Evangelion 4-part movie series, this chapter completely removes itself from the original Neon Genesis Evangelion storyline and catapults it into a totally alternate storyline. The established plot that the first two movies were adapted from is given a fresh take with a radically different look at the Eva world.

Taking place 14 years after the end of the previous movie, the Third Impact was pre-empted with the arrival of Kaworu from the moon who impaled the awoken Unit 01 with the Lance of Longinus. Now, Asuka and her Eva partner, Mari(introduced in the last film), are retrieving Unit 01 containing Shinji. During this whole time, none of the Eva pilots have aged because of some side-effect. Shinji awakens to find that Unit 01 has been used as the prime engine for a new airship called Wunder operated by WILLE, a group of ex-NERV members dedicated to stopping SEELE's attempts to bring about the next impact. Misato is now captain of this ship, and places an explosive collar on Shinji that prevents him from ever piloting an Eva, but he's rescued by Rei in Unit 09. Shinji is taken to the remains of NERV headquarters which is only inhabited by his father Gendo, Prof. Fuyutsuki, and Kaworu. Gendo needs Shinji to co-pilot the new Unit 13 with Kaworu to retrieve the now two Lances of Longinus. Showing mistrust in his father's work after he learns that this Rei is really another clone of his dead mother, Shinji befriends Kaworu after he removes his collar and puts it on himself. The two operate Unit 13 two get the Lances from Central Dogma embedded in the remains of the 12th Angel that was stopped in Evangelion 2.0, and merge them with Unit 13. But Asuka and Mari interrupt their mission to stop a possible Fourth Impact. During the battle, all the Eva units are destroyed, and Kaworu gets his head blown off. This leaves Asuka, Shinji, and the "replacement" Rei to rendezvous with WILLE.

As part of this Evangelion remake, the third chapter takes some serious risks in shaking up the status quo with the characters and situations. The downside though is that not much changes with most of the previous cast who were around during post-Third Impact, not including the fact that some of them didn't physically age at all, or were in stasis during that time. A lot of questions remained unanswered, which obviously leaves room open for in the final movie, but stuff like what happened to the other cast in the missing 14 years is left mostly unexplained(least of all what happened to Pen-Pen!). This movie does expand the characters a little more as far as their goals and their ability to adapt to the ever-changing world they live in, either always fighting for their beliefs or just struggling to stay alive. Since the series director and creator Hideaki Anno is now working on the new Japanese revival of Godzilla, its hard to say when exactly we can expect Evangelion 4.0 to wrap all this up, but hopefully it won't be left with as many question marks like the last Eva anime did.