Getting into this movie I was expecting something drastically different from the original Evangelion, but to my surprise, I found it's basically a 1-1 retelling of the original first quarter of the story. As I think that this first part of the story is crucial for the world and character-building, I have no complaints in this regard.
The anime is visually stunning, it kept the old character designs but refurbished them and gave the world a new, fresh look, which in my opinion, fits really nicely with the Evangelion atmosphere. Almost perfectly I would say, if it weren't overly bright at some points.
The soundtrack is really good as well, although not on par with the original one, which I hoped they would use more of.
The story, as I said in the beginning, is the same, although with certain parts cut, specifically of Shinji's existential nihilism, and of still scenes with either no music or just background noise in the form of crickets. Now, I fully understand why they would cut this from the movie, as it would drag its runtime along by a significant margin, and I also understand that a large amount of fans found displeasure in these nuances. However, I think, and some people I'm sure will agree with me on this, is that these nuances gave the original an atmosphere that no other anime has. There is a deep philosophical backdrop in the anime and it's absolutely instrumental (heh, get it?) to the story, and also the main reason I fell in love with the original anime in the first place.
Overall, after some time has passed since last watching Evangelion, I enjoyed this movie, and am looking forward to seeing how they handled its sequels, and of course, how they will handle its fourth and final one.
