Review: Evangelion 1.0: You Are Not Alone

Once you get past the turgid and jargony title and backstory, and the dippy English dubbing, this episode of the popular Japanese anime series — directed by Hideaki Anno, Masayuki, and Kazuya Tsurumaki — is really quite predictable and inane. Years back, Impact Two destroyed half of the human race. Now, the fortress city of Tokyo 3 must resist a series of monstrous "Angels," which are something like Godzilla by way of War of the Worlds and Transformers. Nothing can stop them except for the "Evangelions," or Evas, a giant humanoid weapons system devised by a scientist from a top-secret organization. He's finagled his own 14-year-old son into piloting one, and now the kid has to worry about saving the world and making new friends at school. Although boosted by stunning visuals (Angel Six is what kaleidoscopes look like when they go bad) and a weird Christian apocalyptic subtext, Evangelion never makes it out of the cartoon stage.