Evangelion 2.22 Arrives

I unexpectedly got a knock on my door earlier and it was the mail man, with my copy of the Evangelion 2.22 “First Press” BluRay. I didn’t have much time to play around with the disc, but I managed to get some pictures on my mobile phone.

I ordered mine from CD Japan and was surprised it arrived almost halfway around the world so soon. I’m told that the CD Japan pre-orders gets you a bonus picture. It’s a little larger than postcard size, came inside a protected plastic sleeve and I got one of a close-up of Mari up close to Shinji’s face (shown in picture to the right), as seen in the 2.0 previews at the end of Evangelion 1.0. It’s a nice free gift, but it’s nothing special.

I opened everything up and the packaging is as to be expected. A folding dark blue case houses the black BluRay disc and on the other side, a slot for the accompanying booklet, a flyer, and most importantly, the film strip.

Contents of the 2.22 BluRay box

The film strip comes in a presentation sleeve almost identical to the one that came with the Limited Edition Evangelion 1.01 release. It opens up off-center with the Evangelion logo on the right and the film strip centered on the left.

The Folding BluRay case and the Film Strip

The film strip that I got features a plugsuited Asuka inside her Eva’s entry plug. I guess I couldn’t ask for anything more. Asuka in her plugsuit for 2.0’s film strip. Although I’m sure there are more coveted shots of Asuka from the film (or even ones of Rei) compared to what I got. I’m happy with it nonetheless. It’s hard to get a good picture of it because it needs to be backlit, and to make matters worse, I only have the camera on my mobile phone. Here’s a close-up of the film strip using my laptop’s screen as the backlighting.

Film Strip of Asuka

In case you’re wondering, that scene is from the beginning of the battle with Sahaquiel as the three Evas are running to intercept it.

Update (5/27): There’s a thread on aimix BBS where people are posting the film strips that they got.