Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:序 (Evangelion Movie 1: Jo)

8.7(2)

OtakuDen

8.0(382,970)

MAL Score

Ranked #746

Popularity #403

Award Winning
Drama
Sci-Fi
Suspense
Mecha
Psychological

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 41 min
Aired: Sep 1, 2007
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

In a devastated future, humanity’s remaining foothold in Japan is the fortified city of Tokyo-3. Fourteen-year-old Shinji Ikari is summoned to NERV’s underground headquarters, where he comes face-to-face with his distant father, Gendou. There, Shinji is asked to pilot an Evangelion—a towering combat android created to battle the mysterious, destructive beings known as Angels, whose attacks threaten what’s left of the human race.

Hesitant at first, Shinji is drawn by the possibility of closing the gap with his father and takes on the role of Evangelion Unit-01’s pilot. As the Angels continue their assaults, he is pushed into brutal confrontations that test his resolve, forcing him to confront fear and responsibility under the weight of humanity’s survival.

Otaku Consensus

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone succeeds as a creator-led theatrical compression: Khara’s sharper animation, heavier sound design, and the newly staged Angel battles turn the early Evangelion material into a tense, polished action-suspense film. Its strongest reputation rests on adaptation discipline and the climactic early-series battle arc, while the recurring criticism is that it plays too safely for viewers expecting a radical reinvention rather than a refined retelling.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want Evangelion’s psychological mecha dread in a concentrated theatrical form, without the rougher TV-era production limits or a long episode commitment. It scratches the same itch as the most militarized stretches of Mobile Suit Gundam and the adolescent alienation of Serial Experiments Lain, but with giant-monster siege pacing and a cleaner blockbuster surface. Khara’s 2007 rebuild gives the Angel fights more scale, uses CGI as part of the mechanical spectacle, and tightens the early material into a 90-minute pressure chamber. It is especially rewarding for viewers interested in how a famous creator revisits his own work: Hideaki Anno is not merely adapting Evangelion for newcomers, but re-editing its rhythm, character temperature, and visual grammar for a post-2000s anime audience.

Key Characters

S
Shinji Ikari
Shinji is fascinating here because this version is noted by critics as slightly more responsive and talkative than his TV counterpart, changing the emotional temperature of his early relationships without erasing his anxiety.
G
Gendou Ikari
Gendou remains one of anime’s most imposing distant fathers, defined less by volume than by the institutional coldness he brings into every scene.
M
Misato
Misato stands out as the film’s humanizing counterweight to NERV’s severity, and reviews specifically note that Shinji’s more grateful response to her makes their dynamic feel subtly recalibrated.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Studio Khara rebuilds material associated with the first six episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion into a single theatrical feature, prioritizing momentum and suspense over the TV version’s episodic breathing room.
2
The Angel encounters were widely singled out in reviews as the film’s most immediately rewarding upgrade, with updated designs, larger-scale staging, and CGI-assisted spectacle that gives the battles a different physical weight from the 1995 series.
3
Hideaki Anno’s role as original creator, chief director, and design-works contributor makes the film a rare case of a landmark anime being revised under its own creator’s close supervision rather than handed off as a franchise remake.
4
The directing structure combines Anno’s authorship with Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki as directors, giving the movie both continuity with Evangelion’s identity and the brisker shape of a modern theatrical release.
5
Critics who praised the film often focused on its sound and score as much as its visuals, noting that the audiovisual polish helps the early Evangelion formula play as a suspense-driven action film rather than a simple recap.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The Japanese subtitle Jo identifies this as the opening movement of the Rebuild of Evangelion project, with the title commonly rendered in English as Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone.
Fun fact 2: The film premiered on September 1, 2007, more than a decade after Neon Genesis Evangelion first became a defining psychological mecha title.
Fun fact 3: The key staff list is unusually design-heavy: Yutaka Izubuchi, Junya Ishigaki, Hideaki Anno, Yoshitoo Asari, and Kazuchika Kise are all credited for design works, reflecting how central mechanical and visual redesign were to the project.
Fun fact 4: Several reviews distinguish the film from a plain compilation by pointing to altered characterization, especially a Shinji who comes across as more active and less withdrawn in early interactions.
Fun fact 5: On anime databases, its reception sits in the strong-but-not-uncontested range: MAL lists it around an 8/10 with hundreds of thousands of votes, while AniList records a 78/100 score and over 2,000 favourites.