YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE @ Ottawa

I already watched Evangelion 2.0 last summer, but being able to watch it on a big screen is just too rare a chance to pass by. So I scrambled to buy the ticket at 2am yesterday, 17 hours before show time once I confirmed the audio to be in Japanese.

The screening felt as if a local anime club booked the smallest cinema (even smaller than the lecture theatre I went to in university) in SilverCity, and whoever was responsible for the actual playback seemed like a newbie.

The small cinema was relatively full, and the average age of the room was maybe under 25. There were probably no more than ten East Asians, and a lot of the people had the air of typical Western geeks rather than hard core anime otaku. Friend-K was slightly impressed by the atmosphere of geekiness. I just thought it's calming environment where I could spend the whole day reading quietly in a corner. XD

While it's pretty awesome to watch Evangelion 2.0 on the big screen, the somewhat muted audio volume was very disappointingly pathetic. The somewhat flat audio sound failed to deliver the impact of big screen movies and made it obvious that it's just a regular disc playback. Yes, it's just a straight Blu-ray disc playback, and the BD logo was shown on screen for a brief second.

From the reaction at the end, the majority of the people likely already saw the movie before. I didn't hear any surprised gasp during the whole screening even though the movie diverts rather drastically from the original series. When the lights were turned back on during the ending theme song (who put the lights back on when it's not really over?), only a few people left. And people who got up to chat instantly sat down quietly just as the song finished.

All in all, the screening was a pretty merry scene. Despite it being an anime movie, it felt more like being at the Comic Con rather than the Anime Expo, however.

On a side note, I wasn't planning to write anything about the movie itself, but something kind of irked me. As I was purchasing the ticket online, I was asked to select the number of ticket I wanted for senior, children, or adult. Apparently the movie is rated PG, which means that basically anyone older than 10 can watch it.

...!?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's R-15, and the rating (by the movie theatre) is PG?? What, just because 99% of the reddish fluids shown on screen do not directly come out of a human being, it's not considered to be bloody? And young female flesh strategically concealed by beer cans and a straw (albeit for gag effect) is not considered nudity? Are people still treating anime as cartoon for older kids?

Anyway. There you have it, my first theatre-going experience in Ottawa.

Now to wait for the 2.22 Blu-ray release in North America.