The first half is a cash-grab recap that drains the psychological weight from the series. The second half pivots hard into new material that actually matters, but by then you're already sitting through condensed episodes you've seen before. Only watch this if you need to bridge directly into End of Evangelion without rewatching twenty-six episodes, and even then, End of Evangelion does the heavy lifting on its own.

Fourteen-year-old Shinji arrives in Tokyo-3 expecting to reunite with his estranged father, only to find the city under constant threat from otherworldly beings called Angels. Rather than mending their relationship, his father Gendou has summoned him to pilot a giant robot, Evangelion Unit-01. Shinji somehow manages to synchronize with the machine and is made its permanent pilot, standing as the city's final line of protection. As the fighting continues, he starts to learn the truth behind the Angels and the Second Impact, a catastrophe that followed a meteorite striking Antarctica years earlier. The film comes in two parts: the first recaps the television series with new and redrawn animation, and the second presents a rough cut of the first 28 minutes of End of Evangelion.