Differences between Evangelion 1.0 and Neon Genesis Evangelion

For main article, see: "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone"

• The better animation quality results in characters being able to emote more simply with subtle facial expressions that the original series didn't have the budget to animate. For example, when Misato is yelling at Shinji for refusing to pilot Eva-01 again, and he makes a jab that its easy for Misato to order him into dangerous situations from the safety of Nerv HQ, Misato's wordless reaction is for her facial expression to shift from displaying first shock, then anger, then realization that what Shinji's saying is entirely true, all within the space of a few seconds.
• There's a lot more CGI sequences, though these tend to be mostly used for things like computer readouts and holographic displays, for example for a display of an entry plug being loaded inside of an Eva.
• Whenever the ocean is seen, it is colored red. This includes numerous shots throughout the film, not just at dusk but in full mid-day. In particular, the opening shot of the film is of Japan's conventional military waiting on the shoreline to repulse Sachiel as it emerges from the obviously blood red ocean. Further, a shot of Earth from orbit in the final scene reveals that the entire planet now appears to have red oceans from space, instead of looking like a "blue planet". No explanation is given for this.
  • Things like freshwater lakes, however, are still normal blue water, for example Lake Ashinoko as well as the underground lake inside of the GeoFront. When Shinji and later Misato take baths in Misato's bathtub, it appears to be red, but this might be because the color of Misato's bathtub has been changed from blue to red. The swimming pool that the girls in Class 2-A swim in at school also still has blue water. Hopefully the next 3 Rebuild films will provide more examples of this "red sea" effect for further analysis.
• LCL is blood red now, not orange (depriving fans of previous comparisons of LCL to "Tang")
  • Logically, yes this does mean that the ocean is now the same color as LCL, and thus looks like a "Sea of LCL"...
• Nerv and Seele now have new logo designs:
  • Nerv's new logo has the word "Nerv" extending out of the left-hand side of an upside-down apple, with the old motto "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world" either coming out of the right side of the apple or below the word Nerv. The fig leaf from the old Nerv logo is retained, now superimposed onto the apple.
    • However, the original Nerv logo is still used on various equipment throughout the film. Apparently both the old and new logos are used by Nerv, though the new logo is more prominent and used on ID cards, etc.
    • On a minor note, "Nerv" is now universally spelled using all-capital letters. Several times in the original series it was not, thus making it clear that its really not an acronym. The best example of this is when in the original series Misato hands Shinji a "Welcome to Nerv" booklet while they're driving into Tokyo-3. In Rebuild, this same "Welcome to Nerv" booklet now reads "NERV" in all-capitals.
  • Seele's new logo incorporates the old logo, a triangle with the seven eyes of Lilith on it, with an apple inset inside of the triangle with a snake coiled around it. Written on the middle of the Seele apple is the phrase "Überm Sternenzelt richtet Gott, wie wir gerichtet," which is taken from lines 71 and 72 of Friedrich Schiller's original poem Ode to Joy. This translates as "Above the starry canopy, God judges as we judged".
• Evangelion Unit-01's design has several minor changes, including a slightly different chest plate design and shoulder pylon shape, as well as having more green stripes in her paint scheme than she did in the original series. Evangelion Unit-00's color scheme is also different: instead of being solid orange, the bottom half of her body is colored white, while the top remains orange.
  • The lights in the cage area do not fall during Sachiel's attack on Tokyo-3 (although they are shown shaking from the tremor caused by Sachiel's attack) resulting in Unit-01 not forcefully moving its arm to protect Shinji.
  • Eva-01's helmet does not fall off at the end of the battle with Sachiel, as it did in the original series, and thus what Eva-01's organic head looks like in Rebuild has not been revealed.
  • When the armor on Eva-01's hands is burned off due to grasping Shamshel's energy-tentacles, her skin tone is now light, like Shinji's, unlike the dark skin tone seen in the original series.
• When Eva 01 screams as it goes berserk for the first time, unlike in the original version, a cloud of condensation visibly exits its mouth, reinforcing the effect that the Eva is actually a living breathing organism.
  • Further, when Eva-01 regenerated her broken arm during the fight against Sachiel during the original series, the two ends of the break just reunited in a flash of light from both ends. In Rebuild, better animation now results in the separate muscles in Eva-01's arm twisting and wrapping themselves back into the proper place. In both versions, not just Eva-01's flesh but the armor itself on the arm is restored, which shouldn't really be possible, although the form-fitting armor might be held together close enough that it might give an appearance of being repaired in the second case.
• A.T. Fields are "rainbow-colored" in Rebuild, while they were orange in the original series. It's not so much that they look like an actual "rainbow" (with actual stripes and such): it's the color-shifting effect seen on the surface of soap bubbles. This is really just an improved effect due to the bigger animation budget.
• Sachiel and Shamshel's designs are more or less identical to their designs in the original series, though updated with better animation.
  • Sachiel's blood is now red, when in the original series it was blue. Further, when Sachiel self-destructs, its body explodes into blood for a second, though this is quickly outpaced by the massive energy-blast created by its self-destruction.
  • In the original version, Shamshel had eight insect-like legs beneath its head, which locked into position and did not move. Shamshel's new design has ten insect-like legs beneath its head, they are a bit longer, and constantly twitch back and forth convulsively. Shamshel now has a Sachiel-style bird-skull on its back (note that so did Gaghiel in the original series). Instead of its body simply being a more or less straight rod, Shamshel's body now curves into much more of an "S"-shape when it is in combat mode, somewhat like a cobra. Shamshel's head now appears to have a small mouth on its underside, with two large tusks. When Shamshel died in the original series, its entire body just went limp, allowing Ritsuko's science teams to study an almost fully intact Angel. In Rebuild, Shamshel explodes in a shower of blood, leaving only its energy-whips impaled into Eva-01. In the original series, recovering Shamshel's damaged core allowed Nerv to eventually produce their own artificial S² Engines, which led to the destruction of Evangelion Unit-04 during an activation test, and ultimately were used in the Mass Production Evangelions. This raises the question of how Nerv will be able to produce artificial S² Engines if Shamshel's was destroyed, and thus they could not recover it.
  • When Shamshel explodes in a cloud of blood (mostly off-screen), the resulting rain of (literally) blood actually creates a rainbow.
• The Angel Ramiel also appears in Rebuild, and at first its design seems identical to the simple tetrahedron shape it had in the original series. However, it soon displays incredible metamorphic capabilities, capable of instantly shifting into a bewildering array of geometrical designs (stars, pinwheels, etc.) While Ramiel's core was never seen in the original series, as it is internal, Ramiel's core is made visible in Rebuild during several of the alternate forms it morphs into. Ramiel also vocalizes much more in Rebuild, making several whale-like sounds, howling in pain unnaturally when it is injured.
  • Ramiel's attack, originally coming out of the mid-line of the octahedron, now comes out of the core itself. In addition, the core is seen splitting into four to enhance the attack's destructive power.
  • Ramiel's original drill was a separate organ which seemed to be an internal structure which extended out of it. In Rebuild, the drill is formed by Ramiel's outer body itself: the bottom point of the tetrahedron "drips" down like melting glass then coils into a drill.
• There is a shot in the opening minute of the film of what appears to be a giant chalk outline of a humanoid figure on red ground in the middle of the city, surrounded by buildings. This is similar to the chalk outline of Eva-01 seen in Episode 05 in the original series, marking where she fell on the ground after Shamshel threw her. However, this is shown in literally the first minute of the film, before Shinji even appears on screen, and its not clear what exactly it is supposed to represent.
• Immediately after the Sachiel fight, while Shinji is unconscious and recovering in the hospital, he has a surreal dream in which he's on a train and is talking to Rei's voice. Scenes similar to this happened often in the original series, but only from the battle against Leliel onwards. The "surrealist train dream" motif now begins to appears much earlier in the overall storyline. At the very end of this scene, a "bug-eyed naked Rei" floats quickly towards the screen. This exact same thing happened in Episode 14 when Shinji was synched with Eva-00 and saw some sort of "mental imprint" or vision of Rei: "bug-eyed naked Rei" in this case is suspected to be the soul of Rei 1 contained in Eva-00. It is thus doubly odd that Shinji has such a vision when he isn't in any Evangelion Unit at all.
• In the original series, Ritsuko is first introduced when she has just finished working on Eva-01 which is submerged in coolant, so Ritsuko is wearing a diver's wetsuit. She throws a lab coat on over the wet suit, and this is what she is wearing when she first meets Misato and Shinji in the elevator. In Rebuild, the wet suit scene is not present, mostly likely cut for time (though it was one of the few fan service moments Ritsuko ever had in the series). Thus, Ritsuko is simply wearing her normal outfit when she meets Misato and Shinji in the elevator.
  • However, this does remove a bit of a continuity error from the original series: in the original version, Ritsuko is wearing a wet suit in the elevator and they are rushing to Eva-01, but when the scene shifts to the Eva pens, Ritsuko inexplicably has switched to her normal clothes, even though she probably didn't have time to change her outfit. By never having Ritsuko wearing her wet suit, Rebuild avoids this.
• In the original series, when Misato is leading Shinji into Nerv HQ for the first time, she's still new to the base herself so she comically tries to find her way around using a fold-up map she's brought along. Later on, when Ritsuko first meets them in the elevator, Misato hides the map behind her back out of embarrassment. In Rebuild the scenes of Misato and Shinji trying to find their way through Nerv HQ are cut for time, and it cuts straight from Misato's car entering the GeoFront to the elevator scene. However, when they're in the elevator, Misato is still hiding a a foldup map behind her back from Ritsuko, apparently a remnant of the original full sequence. Thus it seems that Misato and Shinji may have still been lost for a while, but "off screen".
• During the fight against Shamshel, instead of opening with a volley from a Pallet Rifle, Eva-01 uses a gigantic Gatling Gun, which drops a large amount of spent shell casings that destroy several vehicles on the ground.
  • After the Gatling Gun is sliced in half by Shamshel, Misato does send Shinji a standard Pallet Rifle as a replacement (as happened in the original series). Thus the old Pallet Rifle design is still present in Rebuild, however it is called just an "Assault Rifle" now.
• During the fight against Shamshel in the original series, Shamshel flings Eva-01 through the air, and she lands on the mountainside Toji and Kensuke are on. In the original series, Eva-01 simply moves through the air in one static position. Due to the better animation, in Rebuild Eva-01 flips head-over-heels multiple times in mid-air before she lands.
• The introduction of Toji, Kensuke, and Hikari has been somewhat shortened. In the original series, Shinji comes to class, everyone gets excited when they find out he's the pilot, but Toji gets angry at Shinji and beats him up outside after school. Rei then walks over to Shinji as soon as Toji leaves while he's still on the ground, and tells him there's an emergency. In Rebuild, the scene starts with Shinji training at Nerv HQ, then immediately makes a jump cut to Toji punching Shinji, while a shot of Shinji walking into class(probably a flashback to his first day, but it is hard to tell) is seen much later. There are no scenes of the rest of Shinji's classmates treating him like a celebrity because he's an Eva pilot. Next, in a scene which takes place some time later, Shinji has climbed onto the roof of the school building and is listening to his SDAT player while looking at clouds. Rei then comes to stand over him and tell him there is an emergency. Thus, the original scene from Episode 03 has been split into two separate events which do not immediately follow each other. Hikari doesn't really talk except for the scene where Toji and Kensuke run off, even though they bothered to add her into cast shots on production photos.
• Unlike in the original version, in Rebuild when Shinji goes to school and walks into class, he keeps his SDAT audio player's headphones on, "tuning out" socially interacting with the other students before he even walks in the door.
• In Episode 03 in the original series, Shinji used Eva-01 in a computer training simulation, training him to fire guns with Eva-01 at a target of Sachiel. Meanwhile, Misato and Ritsuko discuss how Shinji is adapting to being a pilot. This scene re-appears in Rebuild with more or less the same dialogue, but it is now a very complex CGI sequence in which Eva-01 and Sachiel fight in a wireframe, virtual reality Tokyo-3 simulation. Further, in the original series, Eva-01 just had a lot of wires attached to her helmet and limbs (like big virtual reality suit contacts), moving around while standing in place and pretending to fire her gun. In Rebuild, Shinji is loaded into what doesn't even appear to be Eva-01's head but a sort of complicated, bizarre training version of an Eva's head and spine, with an exposed, pulsating larynx and odd telescope-like projections on top of the eyes which move.
• The flashback to the incident in which Evangelion Unit-00 went berserk, resulting in Rei's injuries at the beginning of the story, is introduced a little differently. In the original series, it was first brought up when Shinji sees his father's burned hands when he is inspecting the core of the dead Shamshel. Because Shamshel leaves no corpse in Rebuild, this entire scene in the research tent doesn't happen. Further, when Eva-00 went berserk in Episode 05 it just punched the window Gendo was standing behind, while in the slightly reworked berserk incident in Episode 14 (caused by the mutual compatibility experiment with Shinji) Eva-00 stopped punching the window (which Rei was behind) and proceeded to bash its head into the wall. Because its probable that the events of Episode 14 won't be adapted into Rebuild (it was basically just a clip show), in Rebuild when Eva-00 goes berserk in flashback, it punches the window Gendo is behind, then proceeds to bash its head into the wall as it did in Episode 14, essentially combining the two berserk incidents into one scene.
• Misato actually grabs and physically pulls up Shinji, after his defying her orders in the battle against Shamshel. In the original series, Shinji runs away at the beginning of Episode 04, and it is revealed in a flashback that he left after Misato yelled at him. In Rebuild, these events are simply presented in the chronological order they happened in, with no flashback.
• In the original version in Episode 04, Shinji ran away and wandered through Tokyo-3, then eventually through the countryside where he found Kensuke, then Nerv agents captured him the following morning. In Rebuild, Shinji does not go to the countryside, and never meets Kensuke there, but wanders through Tokyo-3 for most of this sequence. At night, he is portrayed as so pathetic that he actually spends the night sleeping in a cardboard box in an alleyway as opposed to in a movie theater. He then wanders along a road on the outskirts of Tokyo-3 heading out of town, but then ultimately on his own decides to turn around and head back. Seconds after deciding he should head back, Nerv security agents catch up with Shinji and bring him back.
• In the original series, Shinji having to deliver Rei her ID card at her apartment was set up by a humorous scene in which Ritsuko comes over to Misato's apartment for dinner, dressed informally. The dinner is really bad because its really hot and spicy insta-food curry that Misato made, and Misato comically gets really drunk, then teases Shinji about having an excuse to see Rei. In Rebuild, this has been replaced by a more subtle scene between Ritsuko and Misato in the restaurant they go to that offers a good view of the "ceiling city" (the underside of Tokyo-3 hanging from the top of the Geo-Front). Ritsuko gives Misato the card, asking her to make Shinji give it to Rei. Shinji is heard wondering why his father asked him to give the card to Rei. Why Gendo and Ritsuko want Shinji specifically to give Rei the card is not yet known.
• "Operation Yashima", the final battle against Ramiel, is expanded a great deal in Rebuild. In the original series, Shinji's first shot from the positron rifle interacts with Ramiel's energy beam, causing both to warp and miss. Ramiel's second blast is deflected by Eva-00's shield, while Eva-01's next shot hits Ramiel and destroys it. In Rebuild, conventional military forces are used against Ramiel to try to distract it from the Evas, but Ramiel easily zaps missiles closing in on it from all directions and then demolishes several massively fortified artillery batteries located in the hills around Tokyo-3. Eva-01's first shot actually does hit Ramiel, but due to Ramiel's extreme toughness, this doesn't kill the Angel: it just shapeshifts again into a star-pattern and fires a shot which throws back Eva-01 and partially destroys the mountain the Evas are based on. Shinji manages to crawl back to the positron rifle, just as Ramiel fires a second shot. However, Shinji is shielded from Ramiel's second beam attack by Eva-00, holding its shield, and Eva-01's second shot with the positron rifle kills Ramiel, whose body then explodes in a hail of blood.
• When Shinji has to save Rei from Eva-00's superheated Entry Plug at the end of the film, he doesn't just pull it out as in the original series, but actually has to use his progressive knife to pry it open.
• There's a lot more product placement in the film, though its nothing particularly gratuitous: Yebisu beer and UCC Coffee have returned, but there's a lingering shot when Shinji opens Misato's pantry and it's just filled with "junk food", and its full of "Doritos". This was apparently part of cross-promotion with Doritos, as to promote the film in Japan for a limited time Rebuild of Evangelion characters appeared on Doritos bags. Several other brands are visible, notably Pizza Hut.
• In what has garnered a fair amount of publicity, because Rebuild of Evangelion is a movie series, not a TV series, there's much less censorship and therefore there's a lot more nudity. Little has been outright changed, but for example, in the original series when Shinji and Rei are in the pilots' locker room changing into their plug suits, there's a partition between Shinji and Rei, so both Shinji and the viewer just see from her silhouette that she is naked while she changes. In Rebuild, the camera actually shifts angles so its on the other side of the partition, and viewers see Rei fully naked as she changes. Her physical motions are pretty much what they were in the original series, it's just that they're not trying to artfully hide it anymore. Further (and this is a matter of some concern for a number of fans) in the original series, naked people weren't animated with nipples, as this probably would have upset the censors. That's just the style they used to animate naked people. Notably, in the original series' film, "The End of Evangelion", they did animate Rei with nipples when she was naked. In Rebuild of Evangelion, probably because it is also a movie, characters are actually animated with nipples, and its a lot easier to see because the animation quality is better. Further, in the original series (including the movies) Eva pilot plug suits are supposedly skin tight, but they don't have a "wet t-shirt" effect because there are various plastic bits over the breasts. In Rebuild of Evangelion, there are no such plastic sections and Rei has a full-on wet t-shirt effect when she wears her plug suit.
• Misato's rank is now "Lieutenant Colonel". In the original series, she was initially a Captain, and then promoted to Major in Episode 12. The rank structure of Nerv in Rebuild, however, hasn't really changed because of this as Misato neither outranks nor is subordinate to anyone in Nerv different than she was in the original series. So far it just seems to be a slight cosmetic change.
• The Angel numbering system has been altered - Sachiel is now the "Fourth Angel", Shamshel the "Fifth Angel", and Ramiel the "Sixth Angel", when in the original series Sachiel was the "Third Angel", and so forth. Presumably the numbering of all later Angels will be accordingly shifted up one. It has been theorized that this is because Kaworu is being counted as the "Third Angel" (given that Seele already knows about him), but this is pure conjecture and actually might be discredited by later revelations.
• Misato is now fully aware that Lilith is being held inside of Nerv HQ, and correctly identifies her. In the original series, Misato didn't know Lilith was being held in Terminal Dogma until Kaji revealed it in Episode 15, and even then, both of them thought she was really Adam. In Rebuild, Misato already knows about Lilith, and further, she knows its Lilith and not Adam. Misato actually shows Lilith to Shinji before Operation Yashima to encourage him to fight Ramiel.
• Lilith's design has been altered and she has a Sachiel face now - When Misato shows Shinji Lilith in Terminal Dogma, it does not have the purple triangle "seven eyes of God" mask it did in the original series, though Seele's new symbol in Rebuild still incorporates the triangle-with-seven-eyes symbol into its new design. Instead, Lilith has the same "bird-skull" face as Sachiel, with what appears to be real eyes in them; it appears to be her actual face and not a mask. The hundreds of white feet sticking out of the stump of Lilith's torso are present once again, but they branch out even more than previously, with feet branching out of other feet, and constantly twitch convulsively. Lilith now has a diagonal scar across her chest with crucifix-shaped nails around the edges, the shape of the scar and its location being evocative of Misato's scar in the original series. Further, Lilith is already impaled by the Spear of Longinus, while in the original series Gendo and Fuyutsuki had to go to Antarctica in Episode 12 to retrieve it and she was not impaled on it until the end of Episode 14 (off screen). They've apparently already retrieved the Spear in Rebuild.
  • The deep level of Nerv HQ which Misato takes Shinji to see "Lilith" in is actually called "Central Dogma" on computer displays, not "Terminal Dogma" as in the original series. While Terminal Dogma might be elsewhere, it must be noted that unlike similar terminology in the TV series, Terminal Dogma is not a real-life term from molecular biology, and the creators may simply have chosen to not use this made-up term this time around. Another possibility is that this might be a clue that this isn't the real "Terminal Dogma".
    • The level indicator on the elevator to where "Lilith" is crucified ticks down from "997...998...999" to "EEE". The entrance to the chamber is a bit different: instead of a simple door, a complex interwoven tapestry of DNA-shaped rods uncoil themselves, pulling away horizontally and vertically.
    • In the original series, a giant streak of orange LCL constantly poured down the center of the red cross Lilith was crucified on, apparently bleeding out of the exit wound made by the Spear of Longinus in her back. A second, smaller red streak was in the middle of the orange streak, which many have interpreted to visually evoke that Lilith was menstruating (which would be confusing, given that Lilith's blood is LCL, which is orange and not red). In Rebuild, the exact same streaks of liquid are pouring down Lilith's cross: a big orange streak with a smaller red streak inside. Given that LCL is blood red in Rebuild, this seems particularly odd, as if Lilith is really supposed to be bleeding LCL from her back, it shouldn't be orange anymore.
• There's another Lilith-like giant on the moon. This giant is revealed in the final scene, being excavated in Seele's Moon base. This "Lilith" has a purple mask similar to that seen on the original Lilith, with what look like giant stitches sewing it on to the giant's face. Barely visible below one of the fake "eyes" are three eyes and part of a triangle- the same design as that on the crest of Seele and the original Lilith.

The Final Scene

The final scene of the film has no counterpart in the original series, and reveals that the storyline of Rebuild is not a pure remake of the original series but instead will contain some drastic departures. For more information, see the main analysis article: "Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: The Final Scene"