Studio Sokodei's Evangelion: ReDeath

Gavv likes 'fan stuff', and I recently came upon this work by some college guys (who else :) out in California. As a devotee of fan-produced creative works, I am always pleased when I come across a new parody dub that doesn't curl my toes with unfunniness. Before you say 'oh great, what's more unfunny than yet another Evangelion parody' (and actually I said the same thing when I first got the tape), let me say this particular dub is quite entertaining. I'm unsure, but I believe this is/was the group's first effort, which if true, makes it arguably one of the best first-time effort in some time, along with GRAAC's Bad Scottish Dubbing.

The story of the dub, such as it is in many parody dubs, is a bit fractured and works best as a series of loosely based sketch comedy scenes. The gist is, Gendo, seeking to become the Uberpimp, accidentally caused the 2nd impact by playing Prince's "1999" in the year 2000, breaking some cosmic expiration date. Shinji wanders around trying to find out what these things called 'melons' and 'nookie' are, Misato & Ritsuko catfight over Kaji, Bob Dole and Di$ney attempting to take over the world, and then climactic battle with the eleventeenth angel and the coming 3rd impact.

There are some brilliant originality to a lot of the production, including the commercial breaks and musical segments. A lot of the writing and editing around the whole Gendo-pimp storylines were hilarious, and Sokodei even did a hilarious job with parodying the infamous 'Gainax long still frame scenes'. Technically the production is a mixed bag. Great care was taken with the editing in a lot of places, and generally comes off well, but some of the voicing isn't quite there, especially about half of Misato's lines which were literally 'phoned in'. It appears Tokyo-3 is a cellular town :). Overall I give the job a good 6.5/10 (considering Gavv's harsh critiques, that's pretty good). It is definitely something I recommend everyone see if they get the chance.

For more information about Evangelion: ReDeath, you can email the writer and director, Andrew Hosking at fundus@cats.ucsc.edu.