Over the weekend, we learned that Moyoco Anno’s Insufficient Direction manga, which features cute and funny stories based on her married life with Hideaki Anno, is being made into an anime. The show will consist of 13 very short episodes airing on TV Tokyo beginning this April.

If that weren’t an interesting enough development, news came that some of Hideaki Anno’s fellow Evangelion alumni will feature in the new show. Megumi Hayashibara, of Rei Ayanami fame, will portray Moyoco’s analogue “Rompers” in addition to other characters. Joining her to play the “Director” is Koichi Yamadera, better known as Ryoji Kaji.

Learn more about the new anime, including staff at:

• ANN
• CrunchyRoll
• Minna no Eva Fan (Japanese)

In an effort to encourage tourism and capitalize on its ties to Evangelion, the town of Hakone will soon be issuing Evangelion-themed license plates to residents.  You may know that in Evangelion, Tokyo-3 is located where Hakone used to be.

I’m reminded of something one of my friends said of their first trip to Japan.  He said that as soon as you get off the plane, Evangelion is everywhere, as if it has become the unofficial mascot of Japan.

Hakone has already put together a kind of map and tour of locations of Tokyo-3 and their corresponding locations in real life Hakone.  And there are a number of other examples of how Evangelion is everywhere in Japan.  You’ve got entire stores that sell Evangelion merchandise, the Evangelion Racing Team, Evangelion car charging stations, an entire Evangelion attraction at Fuji-Q Highland… they’ve even used Evangelion to promote horse racing.  And that’s just naming a few.

If this trend continues, I’ll have to put together a convention panel titled “Japan loves Evangelion too much”.

Source: Asahi Shimbun

Anime News Network today announced their ticket giveaway for Canadian screenings of Eva 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo.

Theater listings for Canada (as well as the United States) and general information can be found on Eleven Art’s Evangelion page as well as Cineplex’s page.

According to Funimation’s blog post today:

Important Information about your Evangelion 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo Order

It has been announced today, that due to the overwhelming theatrical demand for Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, the release date for the Blu-ray and DVD, Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo, has been delayed to a TBD date in 2014.

Once a new release date has been decided we will announce this information on our website www.funimation.com. Evangelion: 3.0 hits theaters beginning January 10, 2014. To look for a theater in your area please refer to: http://www.elevenarts.net/evangelion3.theater.html

Bad news for people who pre-ordered, slightly good news for the people who wanted to see 3.33 in their area as it looks like a few more theatres were added to the list of screenings, so far, in Sacramento and Oklahoma City.

(As an aside, all of the Canadian theatres are now listed at the ELEVEN ARTS website.)

The ELEVEN ARTS page for Evangelion 3.0 has been updated with a list of theatres which includes a total of 23 states.

The Manga Entertainment U.K. release (Funimation’s English dub) will be released on March 31st, 2014, almost a full month after the supposed U.S. release. It’s available via pre-order via amazon.co.uk at £20.38 for the BD and £16.78 for the DVD.

An additional bonus through all of this is that Manga Entertainment also released an English dub trailer, so the people who weren’t able to catch the English dub at a convention now get a preview of the dub.

Back in October, there was some hype made about a “short film” that Shiro Sagisu was producing that would feature his track “Peaceful Times”, which was the music that played during the next-time preview of Evangelion Final at the end of Evangelion 3.0, You Can (Not) Redo. The film is to be titled Peaceful Times(F02)petit film. Additionally, the hype was that it would be Evangelion related and there may be possible info about either Final or the time the elapsed between 2.0 and 3.0.

So today, the Evangelion website put up the first “Peaceful Times” film. But it’s region locked. So some friendly person uploaded it to DailyMotion.

So there’s a ton of stuff in there, looks like storyboard art, and not entirely sure what they all refer to. Some scenes look like it could be part of the end of 3.0:

And some of it clearly from 3.0:

See the “Discuss in Forum” link for more analysis and screenshots.

Interesting tidbit:

“Sagisu made a few comments about the video on his website and posted the Japanese version of the lyrics. According to Sagisu, when they were finishing work on Q, Anno told him this would be the last time they used the F2 (Next Episode) theme, which made Sagisu want to make a extended version of it. He says the video actually contains four versions of the song: An unreleased version by the London Studio Orchestra (at the start), the Takahashi version from Xpressions, the version from Piano Forte #1, and Hayashibara’s narrated version. He also says that he wants to make further Petit Films.”

• Original Announcement
• Anime News Network’s news post
• Evangelion website
• Minna no Evafan blogpost, lots of images and some discussion (Japanese)
• Forum thread starting from when the video was released

Today, Funimation announced on their Facebook page that the release date for Evangelion 3.33, You Can (Not) Redo, will be (subject to change) February 18th, 2014. They also provided a pre-order link at RightStuf. The only details so far is that it’s rated 14+ and the DVD costs around $18 and BD around $21 from RightStuf.

So one interesting thing to note is that back in October, the Walmart site already had it listed, with the release date of February 18th (their site is also accepting pre-orders). So I guess this time the leak was right.

Also, Funimation’s official twitter accouncement:

Update: As of November 21st, Funimation deleted both their tweet and Facebook post regarding the 3.33 release date.

• Funimation’s Evangelion Facebook page
• Announcement post on Facebook

ELEVEN ARTS and FUNimation announced that Evangelion 3.0, You Can (Not) Redo, will have a theatrical run that will span several major cities in the U.S. and Canada. Most of the screenings will be the English dub although a few of theatres will opt to show the original Japanese audio with English subtitles. From the official Evangelion Facebook page:

Get ready people, because Evangelion is coming back to the big screen! Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo will be hitting theaters in January 2014. We’ll be announcing dates and cities in a few weeks; but until then, make sure you “Like” the official Evangelion Facebook page. You might even win a couple of tickets.

Dates will probably be announced in the coming month, with the ELEVEN ARTS 3.0 page updated to show the full theatrical run.

• Evangelion Facebook page
• ANN News Post
• ELEVEN ARTS Evangelion 3.0 page