Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone opens the four-part Rebuild of Evangelion series, reaching Japanese theaters on 01 September 2007. Hideaki Anno wrote the screenplay and shared directing duties with Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki, with animation by khara inc. and music by Shirō Sagisu; Hikaru Utada's Beautiful World plays over the credits.

The film revisits Episodes 1 through 6 of the original television series and hews closer to that material than any of its sequels, down to characterization and sequences reanimated shot for shot. Its most visible departure is technical: computer graphics stand in for hand-drawn work in places like the Tokyo-3 cityscape and the Fifth and Sixth Angels. One narrative tweak relocates Shinji's encounter with Lilith to Central Dogma rather than Terminal Dogma.

A summons from the father he barely knows brings Shinji Ikari to Tokyo-3 just as a monstrous attacker, the Fourth Angel, batters the city. Misato Katsuragi delivers him to NERV, where Gendo Ikari pressures the boy into the cockpit of the towering Evangelion Unit-01 as its only possible pilot. Shinji blacks out mid-battle, yet the Eva slips into a berserk rage and tears the Angel apart on its own.

Instated as the Third Boy, Shinji clashes at school with Toji Suzuhara, whose sister was hurt during the fight. He brings down the Fifth Angel but ignores orders doing it, then briefly runs away before NERV staff retrieve him from an unfinished bridge; a stint inside the entry plug later turns Toji from enemy into friend, and Shinji has his first real exchange with the enigmatic Rei Ayanami. The Sixth Angel nearly kills him with a particle beam and starts drilling toward the cavern below the city, prompting Misato to show Shinji the crucified white giant Lilith and explain that an Angel reaching it would trigger the Third Impact.

The answer is a desperate gambit: every watt of electricity in Japan is routed into an experimental positron cannon for Unit-01 to fire, while Rei's Unit-00 stands by with a shield. Shinji's first shot goes wide; the second destroys the Angel. The closing scene moves to the Moon, where rows of coffins line a bloodstained landscape near a hidden SEELE facility holding a restrained white giant. From one coffin rises Kaworu Nagisa, who remarks to SEELE 01 that the Third remains unchanged, and that the meeting with Shinji cannot come soon enough.

Despite opening on just 84 screens, the film claimed first place at the Japanese weekend box office with the equivalent of 2.4 million dollars, packing many theaters to capacity, and finished its run at 15.3 million dollars. Critics abroad were broadly positive: Rotten Tomatoes records a 71 percent Fresh rating with a 7/10 average, while its Metacritic score of 66 from four reviews signals generally favorable notices.

Revised editions followed the theatrical cut: 1.01 arrived on DVD in 2008, and 1.11 came to DVD and Blu-ray on 27 May 2009 with extra footage. Amazon acquired streaming rights to the whole Rebuild series in 2021, putting the 1.11 version online worldwide on 13 August of that year, and a trio of 30th anniversary Blu-ray box sets released on 10 December 2025 collected it with the rest of the tetralogy.