You can be sure of that
It's actually quite alarming and sad that apart from Ergo Proxy this Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 has been (heck, half of it) best thing that has come out recent years in anime (I've yet to see 5 Centimeters Per Second though) And a lot of it is picture to picture recreation of original series! Though not in magnitude I thought it would be.
But yeah, it really was that great. Pacing, overall cinematography, new music etc. is just wonderful. And one can't not to be awed by animation quality. Not even 3D elements got too bad/dominating apart from one scene.
All the original seyuus are back. Now, I know people praise e.g Cowboy Bebop and its cast (rightly so) but personally I've yet to meet performance which thriumphs Megumi Ogata as Shinji and Hayashibara as Rei. Rest of the cast is superb too (next I'd rank Misato and Gendo) and it really wouldn't be eva without them.
To be exact what I've seen is recreation of Episodes 5 & 6 (directed by Hideaki Anno). Those were "the" episodes of first part of the series and are well example of Hideaki Anno's skill at more normal/usual storytelling and directing abilities (others would be of course eps 8-9 and his older works like Nadia and presumably Gunbuster which I haven't yet seen). However, I never was that much fan of whole Operation Yashima and Ramiel. Ramiel damn straight was one of the coolest looking angels and basically flying fortress, but it didn't feel that much of a threat. Sure, most powerful angel so far, but you just knew Shinji'll snipe him down eventually, tt was just sixth episode!
This time he really, really boils Shinji in first encounter... and stuff later on
I also knew that Anno wasn't too happy with how Yashima turned out in TV-series. Because of limitations of budget and all he had to reduce it's epicness quite a bit. In movie that epicness is bumped UP from that original vision
Suffice to say that's now one of my favourite fight scenes ever. Last time anime envoked such feelings within me was when I watched end of Cowboy Bebop for the very first time. It's that great.
Unless first half is terrible suckage I'll be giving this 5/5 and title of best-movie-of-the-year-I-have-seen-this-year-apart-from-Pan's-Labyrinth.
And it's not just the fanboy within me I guess, this movie has been doing very well in Japan.
First time I saw Lilith and Terminal Dogma was one of those kodak moments. If Terminal Dogma had been like in Rebuild back then I'd be like certain crazed arab from Lovecraft's fiction, sheesh :D