Sunday, June 22, 2008

Extreme Devoution

The fact of the matter is that I am a rather large Evangelion fan. There's no getting around that fact. I'm large enough to be one of those people who bought the platinum edition of the anniversary set as the volumes came out. Not only did Evangelion change the way I viewed anime, but it was the series that made me realize just how deep and immersive anime could be over any show I had ever seen in America.

I'm very grateful for the fact that I have been able to experience such an amazing piece of work. So naturally I was just about ecstatic when I herd that they were going to do a rebuild project of the series in the form of four movies. I patiently bided my time till I could watch the project's first quarter. After having seen the creation not only am I pleased but I'm quite amazed at how much the video has been enhanced. I wasn't quite expecting them to do a virtual retrace and colouring improvement but that's what the package contains.

As much as the improvement is evident I decided to make a direct comparison. Here I've set up two screen shots from the theatrical release of the move and it's original TV counterpart. The TV shots come from my platinum edition DVDs and the movie from a 720p video. Note that I have scaled down the Movie screens to match the TV resolution (which was an odd rez) so that there is less of a size interruption.

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Right from the start you can see that there has been a lot of colour correction.
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Clearly the art style has improved and doesn't look as awkward.
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This shot shows how much effort has gone into the backgrounds, this one is an incredible improvement.
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Shading and lighting have become a day and night difference. No longer does it look like anything was over-layed.
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Additional non-essential elements have also received a visual upgrade. (wink wink nudge nudge)
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Here's and example of how some scenes received a near total reconstruction to the point of being unrecognizable.
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No not the background; If you know this scene than you may notice Rei has a more determined look on her face aobut what she's ready to do.
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Yes this is the same scene. This is one out of handfuls of examples where the entire design and presentation was reconstructed.
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The mood and total feeling of the movie is much better because of so many of the above changes that can be seen in the alterations between these two shots.
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Prime example here is that the characters are drawn to a more aesthetic degree. No longer dose Ayanami look like a disproportionate child in the midst of puberty, but a proportioned adult.


Can't wait for the next instalment of the movies.

(time spent on this gallery 3:36)
---Cp Out---

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