…And the Beginning of EvaGeeks.org

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.