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Evangelion 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance blasts onto Blu-ray with a brilliantly sharp and colorful AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1.The disparity between the two kinds of techniques is artfully handled, but some may find the hand drawn elements to be lacking in the “wow” factor that the CGI elements display. As with the previous Evangelion film, this offering fairly erupts with bright color and some really gorgeously rendered lighting effects. Effulgent streams of light are almost volcanic at times throughout the film, and there is a really sumptuous array of gorgeously saturated colors utilized throughout.

I’m a little bit torn about which audio track to recommend to first time viewers of Evangelion 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance, but the good news is, whichever you do choose to listen to, you’re going to get a bombastically fun audio ride courtesy of two lossless Dolby TrueHD 6.1 tracks, one in English and the other in the original Japanese. The issue with the Japanese is that there is a wealth of background “noise”, as in supplementary levels of dialogue (almost like in a Howard Hawks film) which is simply not dealt with in the English subtitles. Also, some of the characters attempt halting quasi- English on the Japanese track (don’t ask me why), and it can be quite difficult to understand them. For that reason, I’m leaning toward recommending that you stick with the English dub, which is really rather artful, for your first excursion through Evangelion. That way you get all of the multilayers of information, especially within the bowels of NERV. Later, you can go back and experience the original Japanese track and not feel like you’re missing anything. One way or the other, both of these tracks are absolutely a whirlwind of surround activity, with boisterous LFE erupting from the subwoofer and a virtually nonstop array of effects populating the surrounds. While the mix is intentionally quite busy most of the time, clarity is never sacrificed in either mix, and dialogue is always presented cleanly and crisply. One niggling complaint for some may be the at times obtrusive and really rather anachronistic score, which at times at least doesn’t really seem to support the onscreen action.