The English voice cast for the characters Asuka Shikinami, Mari Makinami and Ryoji Kaji have been confirmed by Funimation on its online panel “FuniCon 5.0”. The announcement confirms that Tiffany Grant will be returning to the roll of Asuka for the English dub of Evangelion 2.22: You Can (not) Advance. The other 2 roles will be filled by Trina Nishimura and J. Michael Tatum for Mari and Kaji respectively.
Funimation’s Evangelion 2.0 movie trailer is up on Hulu.com, so that means it’s region restricted. It’s got some spoilers in it, there’s no dialogue (although Mari makes a sound), the choice of music is a little hit/miss, and it feels like the trailer got cut off at the end. At the end, it says “Coming Winter 2011”, so I assume that will be the DVD/BD release and not the theatrical run which starts in January of next year. Or, maybe they’re referring to January 2011 as “Winter 2011”.
Italy’s state run TV station, Rai 4, will be airing Evangelion 1.11 and 2.22 in late December and early January as part of their anime film line-up. In Decemeber, 1.11 will air on the 23rd (Thursday) at 23:00 and 2.22 will air on the 30th (Thursday) at 23:10. In January, the 2 will air closer together with 1.11 on New Year’s day (Saturday) at 9:45 in the morning and 2.22 on January 2nd (Sunday) also at 9:45 in the morning. Both movies will air with the Italian dub. Other anime movies airing on Rai 4 include Akira, Millennium Actress, The Sky Crawlers, and Sword of the Stranger.
Cinema Asia Releasing, Eleven Arts and FUNimation Entertainment have released a few Evangelion 2.0, You Can (Not) Advance, screening dates for the U.S. starting from January 19th. There are still dates that are TBA. Most of the runs are only a couple of days but some theatres will be screening for a week or more. There are also a few theatres that will screen Evangelion 1.0, You Are (Not) Alone, prior to the 2.0 screening.
On January 20th, 2011, Cineplex theatres will be having a 1 day screening of Evangelion 2.0, You Can (Not) Advance, across Canada. Find a theatre near you then go to their Evangelion 2.0 movie page to book advance tickets online (make sure to select January 20th). It looks like ticket prices vary from theatre to theatre, but most of the showtimes seem to be at 7:00pm.
The length of the movie is listed at 1 hour, 49 minutes, which matches the run-time of the actual 2.0 movie (as opposed to the 2.22 video release on DVD and BluRay), no word on the kind of print, though. This is good news, let’s hope the U.S. gets a similar announcement soon.
Since there’s nothing really going on as far as hard news is concerned, figured I’d post this.
It’s labeled OFFICIAL REGULAR COFFEE “SPECIAL STRONG BLEND”, and it’s Nerv’s official coffee. Originally sold earlier this May at Hakone during the screening of Evangelion 2.22, UCC decided to bring it back by popular demand. They come as powder or unground beans in a fancy silver or black can and costs about 2,000 yen.
No idea if the coffee is any good, although it does mention that it has a 9 month expiration date. At least the can looks nice and can be used to store stuff after you’ve drank all the coffee.
For your Thanksgiving listening pleasure, might I consider taking a listen to this week’s installment of Anime News Network’s podcast entitled “NERVous Breakdown“. Carl Horn, Dark Horse manga editor, long time Evangelion manga editor, and all around cool guy discusses with me and host Zac Bertschy a number of different topics including our take on the two endings, our thoughts about religion in the anime, as well as our thoughts on the manga and the new movie series. Carl brings the substance and commentary, I bring the banter and the opinion. We’re like a dynamic duo, and Zac is caught in the middle of it all. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be on ANNCast, and I hope you all enjoy the chat that we had.
The release date for the North American Blu-ray and DVD release of Evangelion 2.22 by Funimation has been revealed by Rightstuf.com, in a recent update of their website. The release date of 29th March, 2011 has been set, but there has yet to be any announcement about the English dub cast.
Along with Evangelion 2.22, Funimation will also be releasing Summer Wars on Blu-ray and DVD on the 15th of February. Summer Wars was recently submitted for nomination for an Academy Award in the category of Best Animated Feature.
This Asuka figure (note: labeled as “Soryu” and not “Shikinami”) from Yamato Toys caught my attention today. This 25cm tall figure created by Yoshizawa Mitsumasa and Shunya Yamashita depicts an older looking Asuka. The original resin version of this was sold for 11,000 yen at this year’s Wonder Festival (winter), but a PVC version was released by Creator’s Labo is supposed to be released on the 13th and a bunch of pictures of it have popped up on the internet.
I’m sure the original resin is much nicer, but I still think this figure is kind of nice eventhough I don’t really collect figures. It’s a cheaper, too, 7,680 yen at Akihabara or 7,416 yen on Amazon.
Evangelion 2.0 will be screening at the 24th Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) at Leeds, West Yorkshire, on Friday, November 19th and Sunday, November 21st. The Friday screening will be at the Leeds Town Hall at 6:30pm and the Sunday screening will be at the Hyde Park Picture House at 1:45pm. Ticket prices will be £6.50 and can be purchased online.
The Leeds International Film Festival is the largest film festival in England outside of London. The film festival is divided into feature length films, documentaries, experimental cinema, short films, and horror/anime/manga. Among other anime screened at the festival (on the same days as Evangelion) include Gintama the Movie, One Piece – Strong World, Mardock Scramble, and Redline. An all day pass can be purchased for £20.
