EvaGeeks.org

Funimation Entertainment announced on its website today that they have licensed the first Rebuild of Evangelion film from NTV. There is also a trailer in the Evangelion section of their website, although this is the Japanese trailer. The release date is set at November 10th, 2009.

This follows the recent announcements of Funimation licenses through “clues” scattered across their website. The clue for Evangelion was pretty obvious, so for most people, it was just a matter of waiting until New Years Eve for the official announcement.

Hopefully, we’ll get the same English voices in the dub and quality subtitles. Also, hopefully, we’ll get a version of it that isn’t as dark as the Japanese and Australian releases.

The Decemeber issue of NewType Japan promises some new sneak peeks of Asuka’s Evangelion Unit-02 which we’ve only been given a brief glimpse of in the preview at the end of the first movie. NewType has released a television commercial featuring another, more detailed, glimpse of the new Evangelion design. You may remember from the preview that Unit-02 can be seen with what looks like 2 horns, harking back to the more original designs where director Hideaki Anno based the Evangelions on Oni. We can now clearly see that the new design does indeed have small horns. Another cursory glance shows that the body design is very different from the 2 previous designs of the TV Series and the End of Evangelion movie, almost (probably coincidentally) taking some design cues from Gainax’s Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. Aside from the horns, the head also looks slightly different, having different spacing for the eyes.

Even with these design changes, this is still easily recognizable as Unit-02 and most people will not mind the changes, eventhough it seems more drastic than the changes to Unit-01’s design. Let’s look forward to some scans from December’s NewType and to see the new Evangelions in action in the next installment of the Rebuild movies next Summer.

Update: We have an image from NewType showing the full torso and arms of Evangelion Unit-02. Admittedly now, after seeing the entire torso, the design changes look less drastic than what could be extrapolated from the smaller image from the TV commercial.

Jokes about the title aside, we finally have long awaited confirmation of the 2nd installment of Rebuild. The Official Website has been updated with a new poster which indicates a release date sometime in the early summer of 2009.

The website promises us a few things:

• Asuka and Evangelion Unit-02
• New Evangelions (as seen from the preview at the end of 1.0)
• New Visuals and “Shocking” new story
• “Added items previously unknown to anyone”

After much pain and toil, and then much needless procrastination, I’ve finished a full translation of Explanation of Evangelion 1.01. This is one of the special features that accompanied the limited edition DVD of 1.01 (described by Ornette in the previous news post). Explanation was billed as a sort of “commentary” on the movie, but if you were hoping for the staffers bestowing their wisdom upon us, or anything else resembling truly useful information, think again. I don’t exactly regret the time spent looking into the technical names of myriad electrical equipment and armaments and locations and blah blah blah, though Explanation is incredibly pointless compared to what it could have been. Worth at least a cursory glance over; if nothing else, the stuff at the very end is worth knowing.

• View full translation
• Discuss in forum

The Limited Edition of the first of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies was released on DVD on April 25th. This is a slightly edited version of what was shown in theaters with audio and visual enhancements to 266 shots and has the designation “1.01″. There has already been several blogs reviewing the packaging and the contents of the DVD in detail so I’ll just quickly skim over this. The plain red box contains a sleeve with 2 DVDs, the first containing the movie (without subtitles) and the script, the second contains the “Explanation of Evangelion”, essentially the movie with text overlays explaining what everything is, music videos and trailers. There’s also a pamphlet, some advertisements, and more interestingly, a clip of 5 frames of the actual film.

Having already seen the movie in the theaters, I was more excited about the film clips which I first read about on the January 31st post at eva.b-ch.com. Some of these film strips have been auctioned for over $1000. There is also a Japanese site that has been compiling the film strips that people have been getting with their DVD (here and here).

According to Oricon, there have been over 219,000 DVD sales in less than the first week, making it the best selling DVD release in Japan so far this year.

• Discussion of the DVD Release
• Discussion of the differences between 1.0 and 1.01

Also, the movie will be screened at Fanime Con at the end of May in the Main Video room, for those who live near or can visit the San Jose area.

I somehow managed to find my way onto another episode of Fanboyhell. In this week’s episode, we discussed the shut down of EvaMonkey.com, as well as the launch of EvaGeeks.org, the DVD release of Eva ReDeath, and how I hate my job. You can also check out the first installment, where we discuss Rebuild of Evangelion, among other related Evangelion stuff.

• The Eva Monkey on Episode 3: The End of Evamonkey.com
• The Eva Monkey on Episode 1: Origins

By now you’ve probably heard the news. After five years of running the ultimate Evangelion resource site, and the largest online english Evangelion community, Aaron Clark, a.k.a the legendary Eva Monkey, has called time on EvaMonkey.com. We bid it a fond farewell. But though EvaMonkey.com may have ended, its spirit, and its forums, live on here at EvaGeeks.org.

So what is EvaGeeks.org?

Over the last few months, a project has been brewing, lead by the inimitable Rachel Clark, a.k.a Reichu. What initially began as an attempt by a small band of Evangelion fans to restart the Evangelion Commentary Project, grew slowly in scope, ambition and magnitude. The commentary project was to be revived, and in addition an Evangelion wiki was to be created, with the purpose of archiving and presenting the results years of fan discussion and debate. An encyclopaedia made by Eva fans, for Eva fans.

With the addition of The Eva Monkey, and the Eva Monkey Forums, the project suddenly became a much bigger beast. Beyond simply the commentary, encyclopaedia, or forums, it became greater than the sum of its parts. The Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan-Geeks Project had been born, and had grown so large that a whole new site was needed to contain it. We were a lot of fan geeks, who needed to live up to the greatness of evamonkey.com. And so EvaGeeks.org was launched.

The ambition of this site is to become The Ultimate Evangelion Fan Site. We are carrying on the mission of the old EvaMonkey.com and EvaCommentary.org sites, but now with many more people behind the effort. It’s our aim to become the best source of Evangelion news, information and discussion on the web. It’s a tall order, but we’re going to try to fill it.

There are currently three keystones to the site

• The Forums: Discussion and debate has always been central to the online Evangelion community, and it will be central to this site as well. With the migration of the Eva Monkey forums, we’ve got a strong base of fans to build the site around.
• The Encyclopaedia: Over the years, there have been many great threads, theories and topics. We’ve learned a lot about Evangelion, and the ambition of the Encyclopaedia is to catalogue and present all we know and love about the show.
• The Commentary: The jewel in our crown… if we can finish it. The aim of the commentary is to present the closest thing to a running commentary of the entire series, in the form of a cut by cut online discussion, with pictures. This is our ultimate tribute to Evangelion, and its our aim to complete it, or perish in the attempt.

But there’s more to the site than the keystones. News, events and archival are among our other plans. In addition, we want the site to have a firm foundation, and to stay online for a long time. And so we’re in the process of drafting a site constitution and forming a group of custodians to see that it’s implemented. It’s early days yet, so for now we’re letting our enthusiasm carry us forward.

This is going to be a fan based site, and there’s a lot that needs to be done. So we’ll eventually be needing volunteers to help with all the various projects we’ve gotten planned. Right now, with the site launch, and Reichu away, we’re still assessing our situation, so a full list of “positions” isn’t available yet. Stay tuned for more information about tasks that need completing, and Minionisterial[sic] positions that need filling.

One position that we definitely will need in the immediate future is that of a project translator. There’s a swathe of material that needs to be translated for the commentary project, and a wealth of other material besides. Ideally we would like someone who is both proficient in Japanese and also and avid Evangelion fan. Things are often tough for Eva translator, but we aim to make it worthwhile by offering authority and kudos.

So with that, I leave you for now. Hopefully the Commentary Mistress herself will be along soon to lash us all back into action, but for now, a few us us will be taking a well earned break for a few days. It’s been a long month, and there’s going to be some more up ahead, but I think it’s going to be worth it.

A little bit over 5 years ago, I set out to create a concise singular site of resources dedicated to Evangelion. An ambitious prospect to say the least when you’re dealing with a work that not only has an ever-expanding universe, but is already a work steeped in uncertainty and brimming with layers of detail. I never truly achieved the goal I set for myself with the site. Eva Monkey never lived up to the subtitle I gave it, “The Ultimate Evangelion Resource Site”. I still cringe inside whenever I read that horribly arrogant and inaccurately phrase. Don’t get me wrong, I consider Eva Monkey a success in a number of ways. I’m certain I was able to do a lot for the fandom by taking up my ambitions as many of the sites I read when searching for answers fell into various forms of inactivity or termination. I saw a need, and I wanted to fulfill it. And that journey was immensely rewarding and fulfilling to me. But at a certain point, you have to accept that there is only so much that you as one person can do, and that it’s time for a change.

To that end, I am hereby retiring EvaMonkey.com. I especially want to thank Carl Horn, formerly of Viz, as well as Brendan Jamieson of EvaOtaku.com. You have been a greater inspiration to me than I can convey, and it is your dedication and passion that ultimately led me to create this site. I think thanks are also in order to my girlfriend, Christina, whose infinite patience with the time I put into this site and fandom is completely undeserved. I also want to thank everyone I met along the way for your friendship and for sharing your experiences. You gave me a feeling of kinship that the immediate physicality of “IRL” life simply couldn’t afford. In particular, I want to shout out to Rachel Clark, whom I would be completely lost without; Sarah Myer, for being an all around awesome person to get to know; Xanatose, for being an enigmatic wonder that I love poking at; Travis Farren, for squealing “OMG it’s teh Eva Monkey” at Katsucon 2004; Vulkurt, for being the coolest teacher ever; Otaprince, DatDude, Seele08, Alan, Kyle, and Dan from OG, and anyone who I just can’t think of right now. And lastly, thanks to everyone who’s ever asked a question, contributed an article, or posted in the forum, without you, Eva Monkey would be nothing but a bunch of files on a server.

Now, this is not quite an end of an era. I’m not throwing in the towel quite yet. A month or so back, Rachel Clark, and a few others got together, and decided to unite our sites, time, energy, and talent together to form a new site and community, one which will hopefully achieve the goal that both Rachel and I set out to accomplish with sites like EvaMonkey.Com and EvaCommentary.Org. This new site can be found at EvaGeeks.Org. There you will find (in time) many of the same resources and features of both Eva Monkey as well as Eva Commentary, particularly the Eva Monkey Forums, which are now the forums of the new Eva Geeks site. And if you’ve ever wanted to get involved, now is the time to do it. This new site is being built from the ground up to allow any dedicated and responsible Evangelion fan to get involved, share their knowledge, theories, and ideas. Whether you’re a forum member, a wiki editor, a content editor, or a news poster, this new project is a communal effort, possibly unlike any before. This is a site by and for the fans in every sense of the phrase. While Eva Monkey will remain up in its present state for as long possible, my efforts and attention will now be channeled into Eva Geeks.

Thank you for the last 5 years. I’ll see you all on the other side.

EvaGeeks.Org