One Evangelion Movie Changed Anime Forever, But Nobody Talks About It

Published Jul 30, 2026, 8:30 PM EDT Zach joined the ScreenRant Anime team as a contributor in June 2024, before taking on a Senior Writer role in November. Since then, he has covered breaking news and produced features and lists about the most popular anime titles. Anime had one of its biggest years ever in theaters in 1997. Alongside major full-length film releases from some of the industry's most popular titles, the year also saw the big screen directorial debut of Satoshi Kon in his masterpiece psychological thriller, Perfect Blue. Just a few weeks earlier, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke hit screens around the world, making it the first of Miyazaki's works to receive an overseas release after a distribution deal between Ghibli and Disney. However, it can be argued that no anime franchise had a better 1997 than Neon Genesis Evangelion. The iconic sci-fi series wearing the clothes of a mecha anime saw the release of not one, but two theatrical movies, one of which being the endlessly influential, apocalyptic, and timeless series finale, The End of Evangelion. Today, The End of Evangelion is celebrated as a rare occurrence in which an artist and his chosen medium simultaneously reach their peaks. Though before then, a lesser-talked about gem, Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth, hit theaters and gave audiences both a recap of the original TV anime and a preview for the series' upcoming film. Last week, Death & Rebirth was screened in the U.S. for the very first time, and it not only remains a worthwhile watch, but it's proven itself a game-changer 29 years on from its premiere. Evangelion: Death & Rebirth Is Anime's Greatest 'Recap Episode' Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth has undergone quite a few changes since its 1997 theatrical debut, and since the early 2000s, has been available only as Evangelion: Death (True)² on home release and streaming services, with re-drawn sections and the Rebirth portion of the movie removed. On the surface, it's little more than a recap episode of the original Neon Genesis Evangelion TV anime. Evangelion did not invent the recap episode. In fact, the trope had been one of anime's most popular for decades prior to Evangelion's airing. The series did, however, prove that the recap episode could be used more effectively. Death & Rebirth does well to cram 24 episodes of important events and character development into a concise 70-minute runtime, and it also manages to find the time to re-frame those events as necessary in the build-up to The End of Evangelion, which itself acts as a replacement for episodes #25 and #26 of the series. The movie lays out its story as a string quartet performance between Evangelion's four main pilots, each having their own segment of the film to clarify how they arrived at the end of the world before The End of Evangelion begins. Death & Rebirth is incredibly stylish in its own way, separate from the show it's recapping. And for all its chaos, the movie manages to lay out how exactly these characters' stories intertwine with more clarity than the TV series did. Death & Rebirth is not a simple retelling of Neon Genesis Evangelion, nor is it a replacement for the TV series. Instead, the movie is a complimentary piece of the franchise that does enough to stand on its own two legs, a major departure from how other popular anime series' were handling recap episodes at the time. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most important anime series ever, and its mainstream popularity around the globe has not dwindled over the 30 years since its debut. The series and its two 1990s theatrical releases are all available to stream right now on Netflix, and viewers will be doing themselves a disservice by skipping 1997's Evangelion: Death (True)². Release Date 1995 - 1996 Network TV Tokyo Directors Keiichi Sugiyama, Masahiko Otsuka, Tensai Okamura, Shoichi Masuo, Minoru Ohara, Seiji Mizushima, Tetsuya Watanabe, Ken Ando Cast Megumi Ogata Shinji Ikari (voice) Kotono Mitsuishi Misato Katsuragi (voice) Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Japanese animated series set in a post-apocalyptic world. It follows a secretive agency that recruits young pilots to operate bio-mechanical weapons against monstrous invaders. As humanity faces escalating battles, the pilots grapple with the immense responsibility of saving the world. Creator(s) Hideaki Anno Streaming Service(s) Netflix