General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 202611 min read

Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance

Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版：破, Evangerion Shin Gekijōban: Ha, literally "New Evangelion Theatrical Version: Break") is the home video edition of Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, the second of the four Rebuild of Evangelion films in which director Hideaki Anno retold the story of his 1995–96 television series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The theatrical version 2.0 opened in Japan on 27 June 2009; version 2.22, released on Blu-ray and DVD on 26 May 2010, retouched hundreds of cuts, added one new scene shared by Kaji and Shinji, and left the story unchanged.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Theatrical release	Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, 27 June 2009, Japan; 108 minutes, Vista size³
Home video version	2.22 released on Blu-ray and DVD 26 May 2010; 111 min 49 sec, with retouched picture and sound and new cuts added to the 2.0 digital master¹^•⁴
Key credits	Chief director Hideaki Anno; directors Masayuki and Kazuya Tsurumaki; production company Studio Khara⁵
Japanese box office	About 4 billion yen, roughly twice the first film's total⁶
Worldwide gross	$41,858,324, of which $133,640 domestic (United States); running time 1 hr 48 min⁷
Award	Excellence Animation Award at the 33rd Japan Academy Prizes (2010); Summer Wars took the top animation prize⁶
Story position	Second of four Rebuild films, where the plot first departs substantially from the original series, ending in a partial Third Impact⁸

Spoilers

Plot

A new pilot, Mari Illustrious Makinami (Maaya Sakamoto), from the Euro branch of NERV, launches in the never-before-seen Provisional Unit-05, drops from orbit to destroy an Angel, grinning the whole way down, before her unit self-destructs around her ¹⁸.

Back at Tokyo-3, Shinji Ikari (Megumi Ogata) lives his routine: school, synchronization tests, piloting Unit-01 for NERV, the paramilitary organization run by his father Gendo. Then Asuka Langley Shikinami (Yuko Miyamura) arrives, fresh from Europe, loudly declaring herself the best pilot alive. This version of Asuka is less bratty and more aggressively antisocial than her television-series counterpart, a careerist who does not moon over anyone and treats Shinji's hesitancy as a personal insult ¹⁹. She moves into Misato Katsuragi's apartment alongside Shinji and the quiet, enigmatic Rei Ayanami (Megumi Hayashibara), and the film settles into its rhythm: huge, precisely choreographed Angel battles interleaved with awkward kitchen dinners, bickering training sessions, and train-platform silences.

An Angel that splits into a swarm of bladed mini-Angels is defeated only by the three pilots coordinating as a team, a sequence staged like a military operation with launch catapults, umbilical cables, and countdowns. A marine and aerial engagement, fought in coordination between two Evangelions, follows, and the staging keeps the spatial clarity: you always know where each unit is and what a mistake will cost. Between fights, the human drama tightens. Shinji and Asuka train together in near-perfect sync, a mutual recognition neither will admit to. Rei, ordered to pilot a dangerous new weapon, begins asking questions about her own nature. In a revision that shocked fans of the original, Rei blocks Asuka's slap during the long elevator ride, a small moment that rewrites both characters ²⁰.

The Bardiel incident is the film's centerpiece, and it is staged with a cruelty the original series only hinted at. Unit-03, transferred to Japan with Asuka as its pilot, is infected in transit and taken over by the Angel. On the day of the battle, Asuka is revealed to be the pilot inside, and Shinji refuses to fight, knowing someone is in there. Gendo activates the Dummy Plug system, and Shinji, trapped in his own cockpit, watches his hands tear Unit-03 apart with Asuka still inside the entry plug. The machine then crushes the plug in its fist. In trademark Anno style, a song sung by children plays over the brutality, the cheerful tune juxtaposed against the mangled Eva ²¹. Shinji storms NERV headquarters and threatens to level it unless his father releases him from Unit-01, and for the first time his rage has a specific object. Gendo simply waits him out, because he knows something Shinji does not: the Angel is still coming.

It arrives as the tenth Angel, and the defense collapses. Asuka, broken in mind and machine, is rejected by her unit. Rei sorties in Unit-00 with a weapon that fails utterly, and the Angel absorbs her, along with Unit-00, into its body. Inside, Shinji sees Rei cowering and reaching out. She tells him she can be replaced; he denies it and keeps going ²². Unit-01 goes berserk, tears into the Angel, and fuses with it, pulling Rei's pattern back out in defiance of every order and every law of the project. The sky turns red, a halo forms over the Eva, and a black hole opens above Tokyo-3, sucking the city into it: Third Impact, the apocalypse, triggered not by an enemy but by a boy who refused to let someone be replaced ²². The traditional song "Tsubasa wo Kudasai" plays over the moment, and the muted beat that follows is emotionally devastating ²¹.

The end of the world is stopped, barely, by Kaworu Nagisa, a white-haired boy who appears on the Moon beside a coffin and impales Unit-01 with the Lance of Cassius. In the post-credits scene, seated in the completed Mark-06, he announces: "The promised time has come, Shinji Ikari. This time, I'll be sure to bring you happiness" ²². The film cuts to black.

Characters

Shinji Ikari (Megumi Ogata) is the withdrawn pilot of Unit-01, spending the film being told he is the only one who can fight and ending it by doing the one thing nobody ordered. Asuka Langley Shikinami (Yuko Miyamura) is the new pilot, loud and competitive, whose competence is real before it fails her, and whose broken body and spirit after Bardiel are the film's cruelest image. Rei Ayanami (Megumi Hayashibara) is the quiet first pilot, slowly discovering she has questions about what she is, and whether she can be replaced. Misato Katsuragi (Kotono Mitsuishi) is NERV's operations chief and Shinji's guardian, holding together the war effort and her household. Gendo Ikari (Fumihiko Tachiki) is Shinji's father, whose sealed orders and willingness to spend children are the film's true antagonist. Mari Illustrious Makinami (Maaya Sakamoto) is the new Rebuild-continuity pilot whose jazz-inflected nonchalance briefly makes the enterprise feel like fun again. Kaworu Nagisa (Akira Ishida) arrives at the end from somewhere outside the story, implying loops already run.

Interpretations and controversies

Kaworu's line, "This time, I'll be sure to bring you happiness," is the film's most debated moment: it implies the Rebuild films are conscious revisions of the original 1995 series, possibly set after it, with Kaworu aware of previous timelines. The subtitle "Break" (破) references a traditional Japanese technique used in drama and the martial arts, which fans read as the film breaking from the original story's path ¹⁹. Kotaku's retrospective argues the climax deliberately toys with fans' foreknowledge, letting Shinji's success, which means the end of the world, feel triumphant ¹³.

Sequels, prequels, and universe

This is the second film in the four-part Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, following Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007) and followed by Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012) and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021). The 2.22 edition is a digitally remastered re-adjustment of the theatrical 2.0 cut ²³.

Place in the Rebuild series

The Rebuild of Evangelion is a four-film retelling of Neon Genesis Evangelion made by Anno's studio Khara: Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007), 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009), 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012), and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021).⁹ The theatrical cuts carry the x.0 numbers, and the extended home video editions carry the x.xx numbers: 1.11, 2.22, and 3.33.¹⁰ Anno described the films as his way to make the series as intended, without the financial restraint that had forced changes to the original television production.⁹

Where the first film stayed close to the original series, the second begins its deviation from the first scene.¹¹ It opens with the new character Mari Makinami Illustrious piloting the test unit Evangelion 05.¹² Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami are joined by two new pilots, the fiery Asuka Langley Shikinami and the mysterious Mari Illustrious Makinami.⁷ Reviewers noted that Asuka and Rei become distinct from their previous incarnations, the same characters with different motivations, and that the film shows Shinji moving from learning what he has to do to learning what he wants to do.¹¹

The film ends with a partial version of the Third Impact, the apocalyptic event of the franchise's mythology; like the earlier Second Impact, it is not the end of everything, and the film reserves further developments for the later installments.⁸ The climax drew strong praise from reviewers: the Kotaku critic Richard Eisenbeis called it one of the best constructed climaxes he had ever seen, and the film is widely treated as the point where the Rebuild story sets out on its own path.¹³^•¹¹

Production and animation

In production, the movie combined digitally animated hand-drawn 2D work with fully 3D elements, and the finished footage was rendered as a 2K digital intermediate matted to 1.85:1 for its theatrical run, while home video presented it opened up to full-frame 1.78:1.⁸ The studio's stated aim for the second film was to develop further the established digital-imagery methods of the first.¹⁴ Reviewers found the animation cleaner and better rendered than Evangelion: 1.11, with less aliasing, a smoother blend between 2D and 3D work, and expanded lighting effects that take advantage of digital production; the Angels in particular look more elaborate and otherworldly than in the television series.⁸ The Evas no longer move with a sense of weight, but reviewers found gravity behind their actions, particularly when the machines go feral in displays of brutality that the film pairs, deliberately, with happy music.¹¹

Shirō Sagisu's score is carried by a 6.1-channel Japanese Dolby TrueHD mix on the Japanese Blu-ray, which also offers DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 surround options.⁴ The mix uses all available channels, placing NERV headquarters staff dialogue around the listener and spreading mass destruction across the soundstage.⁸

Reception and box office

The theatrical version premiered on 120 screens across Japan on 27 June 2009 and took the number 1 spot at the weekend box office with an equivalent of $5.37 million.¹⁵ The Japan Academy Prize records a Japanese box office total of about 4 billion yen, roughly double the first film's gross, and notes that the film also opened in Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.⁶ Box Office Mojo lists a lifetime worldwide gross of $41,858,324, with $40,448,249 from Japan and a limited United States release distributed by Eleven Arts that earned $133,640.⁷ At the 33rd Japan Academy Prizes, held 5 March 2010, the film received the Excellence Animation Award (優秀アニメーション作品賞), one of five nominated animated features, with the top animation prize going to Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars.⁶

Critical response to the film itself was broadly positive. Reviewers credited it with providing the story and character development the first film lacked, while some found the pace too quick, flying from one plot point and battle to the next with interludes of everyday life in Tokyo-3 too short to land.¹¹ The home video revisions have been well received; the Digital Bits review notes that most people seem happy with the changes Anno made to each Rebuild film for home release.⁸

Home video releases

The Japanese Blu-ray (catalog number KIXA-35) and DVD (KIBA-1773) were released on 26 May 2010 at 6,090 yen and 5,985 yen respectively, each carrying the 111-minute main feature plus bonus footage, including the Rebuild of EVANGELION: 2.02 featurette, four omitted scenes, and the "I Would Give You Anything" Scene Noguchi ver.⁴ The 30th Anniversary Movie Collection later presented the 2.22 digital master directly; the original DVD had printed it to 35 mm film and re-telecined it to HD.²

In North America, GKIDS released the film on Blu-ray with an embossed orange slipcover and a 20-page booklet, all extras in HD, and the Japanese audio as the default track. The GKIDS disc uses the more recent Amazon English dub in 5.1 rather than Funimation's 6.1 dub, a change that has been controversial among fans; the Funimation 2011 Blu-ray had offered 6.1 for the English audio.⁸ GKIDS sells the release for $24.95, and reviewers of the 1.11 and 2.22 Blu-ray editions describe them as the definitive releases of the first two Rebuild films.¹⁶ A limited revival screening of version 2.22 ran in December 2025 as part of the "Monthly Eva EVANGELION 30th MOVIE Fest.2025–2026" project marking the franchise's 30th anniversary.¹⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026