While some fans managed to get their hands on it a little bit early, the fourteenth and final volume of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Neon Genesis Evangelion manga had its official release today.  It’s been a long-awaited conclusion for some, having begun in December of 1994, and concluding in June of 2013.  I for one have been looking forward to seeing Sadamoto’s take on the conclusion since I started reading the manga sometime around 2001.

The release of this last volume feels very timely, 2015 is not only the year that Evangelion is set in, but also the 20th anniversary of Neon Genesis Evangelion.  This year we also look forward to the English release of Evangelion 3.33, the possible Japanese theatrical release of Evangelion: Final (fingers crossed), a Japanese blu-ray release of the series (which many are hoping for a western release), as well as other anniversary events that have yet to be revealed in detail.  It looks like a great year for Eva fans.

And now, I have some manga to binge on, it’s been years since I’ve read many of these volumes.

Today, the official Evangelion website, Twitter, and Facebook announced the release date for the 2 Evangelion boxsets. Both sets will be released on Friday August 26th with the Bluray boxset for 38,000 Yen while the DVD boxset is for 18,000 Yen. The Bluray boxset looks to be 900 minutes with extras (at 9 volumes) while the DVD boxset will be 850 minutes with extras (at 8 volumes). Hopefully this release will see its way internationally within the next few years, but in the meantime, pre-ordering imports from the usual places (Amazon JP, CDJapan, etc) is an option.

Friday, August 26th release date for #Evangelion DVD (￥18,000 = $153 USD) and Bluray (￥38,000 = $324 USD) boxsets: http://t.co/orTT6X8MDk

— Evageeks.org (@EvaGeeks) February 2, 2015

Japan is blurring the line between reality and anime– this time by sending the Lance of Longinus to the moon! Given how mind-bogglingly expensive it is to launch things into space, the lance will be around 240 mm long and will weigh around 30 grams; for people who don’t know how to use the metric system, that’s about 9.5 inches long and around an ounce of weight.

The project is being crowdfunded, with an end goal of 100,000,000 yen (which is equivalent to around $850,665 at the current exchange rate.) The link to the crowdfunding page can be found at the bottom of this article, in case you feel like putting some money towards the project. The reward tiers range from 5,000 yen to 10,000,000 yen (!), granting rewards from having your name attached to the project and receiving regular progress updates to being able to name the mechanism that will stab the lance into the moon! (That tier, despite being 5,000,000 yen, has inexplicably already sold out.)

Launching a Lance of Longinus to the moon is pretty crazy, but it seems like a pretty fun way to celebrate Evangelion’s 20th anniversary, don’t you think?

• Minna no Evafan article
• Crowdfunding homepage

Discuss in the Forums »

2015 is nearly here, along with the 20^th anniversary of Neon Genesis Evangelion. However, it’s not just the show’s anniversary— as every fan of the series will be able to point out, 2015 is the year when the show actually takes place.That’s right, folks: we’re going to be living in the same year as the anime that we’ve been talking about for over a decade.

Khara hasn’t forgotten this. They’ve put together a website for us that you can find over here at eva-info.jp. The site is packed with information about all Evangelion-related projects (all in Japanese), as well as links to other websites like the Evangelion store, the original evangelion.co.jp website, and a newer site called eva-gate.jp, a digital online news publication about Evangelion. Eva-gate costs money, though– and there doesn’t seem to be anything there that can’t be found at eva-info.

It’s an exciting time to be an Evangelion fan!

Discuss in the Forums »

The 7th entry (out of a planned 30) in the Animator Expo short video series is Evangelion-related. Until You Come to Me is set to a Shiro Sagisu version of Danny Boy; the short seems to be a mix of hype for Eva Final alongside a blending of NGE with the New Movies. This short is reminiscent of Sagisu’s own Peaceful Times project with its artsy style.

Shinji in the “Until You Come To Me” short.

Anno himself stated that he plans to return to Eva after finishing the Animator Expo series (3.0 emotionally drained him), so we’ll just have to wait and see if this is a hint of upcoming FINAL news or just a fun little project like Peaceful Times was.

• The short can be watched here.
• Minna no Eva Fan blog post.
• EGF’s Animator Expo general discussion thread.

Big News early Monday morning, it was announced on the official Evangelion site that the original 26 episode TV series + the 4 “Director’s Cuts”, Death & Rebirth (theatrical version), End of Evangelion, and Death
True² will all get HD remasters and be released as a BluRay boxset with a tentative release date in Summer 2015. No word on any technical specifications or extras, or the price which is sure to be an arm ad a leg.

There’s been a lot of debate over the years about how feasible a full HD remaster of the TV series would be and whether it would be worth it or little more than an upscale. At least it seems they’re serious about doing it right, and I’m sure they have the means for a quality BD release. That’s what everyone is hoping for, at least.

The other question is if there will be an English release and who would take on the license? Will there be a release somewhere (HK, maybe?) that at least has English subtitles? Will Funimation take on the rest of the Evangelion properties and do a BD boxset and a full redub? Can only speculate right now but could be a lot of big news coming from familiar names like Funimation or Madman Entertainment in the coming year.

Additionally, the official website also lists a DVD Boxset release in Summer 2015 of the 26 episode TV series and the TV version of Death and Rebirth called “Archives of Evangelion“. It looks to be the On Air versions of the TV series episodes as well as the version of Death and Rebirth that was aired on TV.

There’s also no official release date for the DVD Boxset nor any details on the release or extras. It doesn’t mention whether these are the original masters of the episodes, though I’d guess they will be identical to the original ADV “Perfect Collection” release that included all of the On-Air episodes (instead of the home-video versions that GAINAX was releasing in Japan).

• Official Evangelion site
• Comic Natalie
• i-Mezzo

VIZ will release a “Third Impact Bundle” of Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga before the Volume 14 manga release date on November 25th. VIZ’s Volume 14 release date is part of the simultaneous international release date November 26th in Japan (the Japanese Limited Edition comes out on November 20th).

EDIT: In a recent Twitter discussion, VIZ mentioned that “Unfortunately a production delay pushed this back to February 2015. Apologies for the inconvenience.” It’s unknown for what reasons this push back has happened, but is reflected on their product page for Volume 14 (February 10th 2015 being given as the new release date): http://www.viz.com/manga/print/neon-genesis-evangelion-volume-14/11509

Catch up before Vol. 14 drops! http://t.co/Ia20Dv4SEZ pic.twitter.com/HxpWiUTPPw

— VIZ (@VIZMedia) November 11, 2014

.@VIZMedia 's #Evangelion Third Impact Bundle before Vol. 14 release on Nov 25th: http://t.co/9hvoofvsWr Thanks to .@NJ_ for the tip.

— Evageeks.org (@EvaGeeks) November 11, 2014

Last week, it was announced that Shiro Sagisu, the music director for both the Neon Genesis Evangelion original TV series as well as the new theatrical movies, was releasing an album of Jazz arrangements of Evangelion music. Today, we have an album name, track list and a release date. (Image on the right is not related, that’s from Piano Forte)

According to the official Evangelion news site, the name of the album is “The world! EVAngelion JAZZ night = The Tokyo III Jazz club =”, will be released near Christmas of this year (12/24/2014), and sells for about 3000円 plus taxes. The track list is as follows:

01: Weekend, the introduction (by all star singers)
02: Welcome to the Tokyo III jazz club (by all star orchestra)
03: Swingin’ A1 (by all star bigband)
04: Come sweet death, second impact (by Megumi-H)
05: Barefoot in the club (by all star bigband)
06: Final decision at the milestone (by all star combo)
07: Emptiness, the longest (by all star orchestra)
08: Thanatos, cool again! (by all star bigband)
09: Dilemmatic triangle opera (by Megumi-H)
10: A8, mellow slow-jam (by all star combo)
11: Theme Q, suppa-duppa! (by all star bigband)
12: The Image of black me (by Megumi-H)

H/T: Minna no Evafan.

Forum user xPearse worked on a project to translate the Neon Genesis Evangelion: Ayanami Raising Project Nintento DS game into English. The ROM can be downloaded from the blog post and there’s also a partial guide.

The in-game graphics with Japanese haven’t been translated but the guide should help with some of that. And the player’s name needs to be drawn (in Japanese). If you have any other questions, you can contact Pearse from his blog.

So we mentioned a few weeks back that NTV’s Friday Road Show was going to do an Evangelion marathon, concluding with the airing of the TV version of 3.0/Q. Last time, the 2.0 broadcast ended with what ended up as the beginning of the 3.0 movie so it’s natural to assume we might get a couple of sneak peaks in the next time preview for FINAL this time around.

Nope.

Oh well, we didn’t get a release date either. Maybe we’ll get another NTV Road Show that will give us a sneak peak of the new movie later on. For those who sat through the broadcast or a crappy live stream, we’re all disappointed. But at least it confirms that Hideaki Anno wasn’t completely making stuff up when he drew the most recent lantern:

I wonder if that whole repeat sign thing is gone now? Also, some updates from around the internet:

• Main Evangelion site updated with new title
• Evafan with some specula (updated)
• If you can’t load the main site (seems to be up and down), you can see the logo thing at the updated facebook page