Sorry for posting this here, I tried to on the page and it wouldn't work, but I was rather proud of it so I wanted to post it. Here you go:

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most captivating and treasured series of all Otakudom, or atleast it should be. It is the mecha anime that changed mecha, it's so obviously mecha that you forget it's a mecha! Evangelion is the perfect blend of a psychological anime clashing head on with a post apocalyptic world armed only with bloodthirsty somewhat sentient sort of giant mechas operated only by the most inconvenient age group of teens against that which destroyed their planet; the Angels, an extremely powerful being from "somewhere" that- well, if i say anymore, I'll give away the series now won't I? You don't know, you haven't seen it. Sadly though, this marvelous anime had the worst ending I've ever come across, due simply to being based on an incomplete manga, and the creators completely running out of money. The last two episodes are primarily recycled footage and pen sketches. I'm not kidding.

So they tried to correct this little problem with a movie known as Death and Rebirth, essentially the last two episodes. BUT! It kind of just muddied everything up some more! So they released the infamous film, The End of Evangelion; (yes, this is going to be bad). Again, we were left wondering. "what in the he** just happened?!" But do not fear! As of 3 years ago, we were given (by the grace of whatever deity you believe in) a reboot! A complete redoing of the original series with it's own studio meaning no budget restraints, no time issues, and no secodn rate fight scenes. The "show" you clicked on in FUNimation.com is actually this new reboot that FUNi has licensed in America so everyone can enjoy; this reboot is titled, quite poetically, The Rebuild of Evangelion. (que goosebumps)

The Evangelion Rebuild series is the best thing to happen to anime since Death Note and it's so thouroughly thought out plot. This beautifully done tetraology captures the pure essence of the Neon genesis Evangelion series, and displays it to fans new and old with and perfect blend of CGI imagery and traditional hand drawn anime! Evangelion 1.0/.11 (depending on the edition, get 1.11) was basically a recap of the first few episodes of the original series, and did nothing more than show us what we could have had years ago if the budget for the show was much much higher. That is, until the end of the movie, where we get a glimpse of possibly something new to come with the trailer of Eva 2.22.

The sequel, which has only recently been released in America, was breathtaking in every aspect. I pre-ordered a copy from walmart.com for the ridiculous $11 price tag, and had my copy in the DVD player the moment it arrived. On my 2001, round screen television, this movie was absolutely incredible! Every scene was beautifully created to reflect Japan as accurately as possible. The story to the 2nd Eva film dramatically changes from the original anime, as it immiediately introduces a new character that proved to be as much of a fan service character as a total badd-a**! These reboot films of the anime are atleast 10, no, 20 times better than the original series in all but one way; the psychological factors. In the original series, this was a very prominent theme throughout each episode. This is dulled a bit in the new series, yet compensated by the much more established characters from their orignal counterparts. I.e, shinji is a little girl in the original, and is now more of an angry teen who is just really pissed that his father left him years before, and now only contacts him to fight against the one thing that caused mankind to fall years before. No, not a spoiler, first 5 minutes of the film.

All in all, the original series is wonderful and should be watched first, in order to get a greater appreciation and better understanding for both that and the new reboots. I highly recommend this *insert cliche praise* (I was going to put timeless classic, but I never liked that. Ya know? It HAS a time, it's like over 2 hours long.) to anyone; an otaku, a mecha fan, o just someone who likes that FUN is capitalized in FUNimation! This is one of the most creative, thought out, and elegantly contructed pieces of art to be gifted to humanity.