We initially saw this as part of the commercial for Chinese phone maker Oppo’s new Ace 2 Eva smartphone. Its Shanghai-based director, Somei Sun, has since released the full version of a stunningly realistic CGI short film featuring EVA Unit-01 from the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series.

The film is titled Evangelion: It Can (Not) Be True and, according to Sun’s production notes, the title was chosen because of its dual meaning: “one means my dream come[s] true, and the other means reality. The core purpose of this creation is to try to make the EVA world from the anime style to the Real.” It also draws inspiration from one of Sun’s favorite lines from the anime series:

梦——それは现実の続き；现実——それは梦の终わり
Dream is the continuation of reality, reality is the end of dream

Check it out:

Unfortunately, it appears that Somei has temporarily taken down the video from Vimeo, explaining on Weibo that  this was due to some copyright issues. However, the film can still be viewed on Weibo and on YouTube.