SMASH (Sydney Manga and Anime SHow) this year was the biggest yet, at a new location (again) and spread over two days for the first time, and including guests Kotono Mitsuishi (Misato Katsuragi Neon Genesis Evangelion, Usagi Tsukino Sailor Moon), Toshihiro Kawamoto (Co-founder and Director of Studio Bones), and Reika (World Famous Cosplayer).

This year it was held at Rosehill Gardens, a racecourse, but a location big enough to accommodate the hundreds of stalls and the thousands of people that came to the event. The show was spread across 3 different enormous buildings, which it needed to be as each room was filled with stalls and booths.

Kotono Mitsuishi did a number of interesting panels in which she discussed Sailor Moon, Evangelion, and many other interesting things.

To get my full rundown of the event and to see all the photos head over to my website Fazmotron.com or check out the forum post.

VIZ’s San Diego Comic Con Panel announced this weekend that the final volume of Sadamoto’s manga, Volume 14, will receive a Simultaneous Release on November 20th 2014 in Japan and the US. This is also what happened with Volume 13 back on November 2nd 2012.

.@VIZMedia at #sdcc – Neon Genesis Evangelion v.14 – final volume will be published same day as JP/11/20/14 http://www.viz.com/manga/print/neon-genesis-evangelion … #VIZpanel

— Deb Aoki (@debaoki) July 24, 2014

According to Comic Natalie, there was a flyer handed out at an Evangelion event at Yokohama advertising the limited edition release of the 14th and final volume of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga. The flyer reveals that a “new” female character will appear in the bonus material, stating “Yoshiyuki Sadamoto gives you rough illustrations as he heads toward the limited edition of the manga.”

The limited edition release of the final volume will also include an original cover, book ends for the entire 14-volume manga set, a 16 page booklet and exclusive illustrations by Sadamoto, and a “Yoshiyuki Sadamoto Working Music CD.” The CD is supposedly the music that Sadamoto liked listened to when drawing his manga.

Here’s a bigger picture of the “new character”:

So it’s possible that the “new” character could be Mari Makinami making a guest appearance in a side story. Or it could be another dark, long-haired female with glasses, since there is sort of a precedence for that. Still, will be interesting to see what this omake will be like.

• Anime News Network
• Minna no Evafan with some more images and some copyright analysis

Some very big news from Minna no Eva and this blog entry. (Thanks to forum member Dima for finding the latter, and Sailor Star Dust for translating the lineup). Evangelion: Q’s TV version is set to air on September 5, following TV broadcasts of Eva 1.0 and 2.0, and separate broadcasts of Death and Rebirth and the End of Evangelion. The entire broadcast schedule is as follows –

From NTV’s Movie Heaven block-
August 18th: Death (true)2
August 25th : End of Evangelion

Friday Roadshow –
August 22nd: Eva 1.0 TV version
August 29th: Eva 2.0 TV version
September 5th: Eva 3.0 TV Version + God Warrior TV Version

In addition, a new Preview is promised at the end of the 3.0 TV airing, similar to how a new 3.0 Preview came with the airing of the Eva 2.0 TV version.

From EvaMonkey.com:

There have been a bunch of vague and unspecified delays since the beginning of the year in regards to the English release of Evangelion 3.33.  Last month, Toonami tweeted that Funimation said 3.33 was “still on hold” and that they were “Working ‘closely’ with studio khara to ‘make it closer to original vision.’”. 

This prompted a number of people to fill in the gaps, especially those who had seen the dub in theaters.  The consensus seems to be that Funimation has done a poor job, not necessarily in translation, but in capturing the same emotions.  Scenes where Misato seemed to show a genuine sense of concern for Shinji have been overridden by her just sounding perpetually angry.  So it would seem that Funimation has been revising the dub in some amount.  That now seems to be confirmed, as Spike Spencer’s newsletter has just stated that he is scheduled to record “pick ups” for Evangelion 3.33. 

This should be considered good news, considering Spike Spencer, as Shinji, has the most lines of anyone in the film, and smoothing out his lines alone should be a good push towards them completing the dub, and setting a release date for the DVD and Blu-ray, which many fans are eagerly awaiting.

Well there you have it. Though it was difficult to believe in a news post from a Korean Drama gossip site that sourced a Transformers fansite that doesn’t exist in the first place. More about this over at EvaMonkey.com.

Dark Horse Comics licensed Tony Takezaki‘s famous one volume parody of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Neon Genesis Evangelion manga. Takezaki also contributed stories to the Evangelion Comic Tribute which is also published by Dark Horse.

From the excerpt from Kadokawa Comics:

What’s “Tony Takezaki presents NEON GENESIS EVANGELION”? It’s well reputed, the first(!) gag parody of EVANGELION in history, serialized in the monthly magazine “YOUNG-ACE” and “SHONEN-A” and any other Publications…, probably the world’s most divine-punishment-deserving comic rivaling the very popular serial “NEON GENESIS EVANGELION”, completely copying the original by YOSHIYUKI, depicting Shinji, Ray [sic], Asuka and Misato in “unthinkable” or “unforgivable” ways…

In all, it should span about 190 to 200 pages, the art quality is pretty great and it should be a real fun read. It’ll be nice to finally get a proper English translation and an official release of this parody.

Some other excerpts:

Dark Horse also publishes Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse, Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Detective Diary, and Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project Evangelion spin-off mangas, as well as the afformentioned Evangelion Comic Tribute.

Source: Anime News Network.

Anime News Network has reported that the final and 14th Volume of Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga will be released on November 20th in Japan. There will be 28 new manga pages added to this final volume-no word yet on the content or placement.

Additionally, a limited edition volume (similar to Japanese volume 13’s standard and special release) will  include:

•  An original cover
• Book ends for all 14 manga volumes
• A 16 page booklet with Sadamoto illustrations
• A “Yoshiyuki Sadamoto Working Music CD” which features music Sadamoto would listen to while working on the manga.

A U.S. release (simultaneous like volume 13, or otherwise) is so far unknown.

Also see this forum post:

Khara updated their recruiting page again, they need 3D animators in their digital section for “the next Eva film” (Final). Students are fine, the experience level doesn’t matter.

http://www.khara.co.jp/recruiting/

The deadline’s no later than July 2014.

Huzzah, progress!

I know nothing about anime work schedules let alone how Khara schedules things (seems to be different than most companies) but 2015—maybe near the end, if that’s the “Winter 2015” that’s speculated–seems more and more likely.

Gainax has released the first stage of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga to the ComicWalker platform in full color.  Also, they’ve released a substantial portion of the first stage for free through their online viewer.  Details are sparse, so it’s uncertain as to whether they plan on doing more than just the first stage, but it is definitely interesting to see a comic published nearly 20 years ago (geez!) updated with a splash of color.  You may recall that the first few pages of the first stage did originally come in color, as well as a stage in the second volume.  I doubt I’m alone in having wanted to see more of the comic in color.

UPDATE: Sailor Star Dust on Eva Geeks has pointed out that after downloading the Comic Walker app, it defaulted to English and she was able to access the English translated version of the colored comic, so at the very least, it is also being made available in English.  Very cool.

Links for this post:

• The first stage on ComicWalker
• Mirrored Gallery on imgur
• Sailor Star Dust’s post on Eva Geeks with an English screen capture.