The latest issue of Young Ace, volume 9, contains the rumored 100 page digest “Evangelion Extra Issue”. The digest contains some parody mangas, summaries of the 12 volumes of Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga, a preview of stage 77 of the manga, and, probably the most interesting, some message from Gainax staff to Sadamoto and his responses.
Anuraag Agrawal at the english-language evangelion mailing list, has graciously provided translations of some of these messages:
Similar to the Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami Entry Plug figures, Evangelion 2.0 brings the 3rd one in the set featuring Asuka produced by Skynet. Like the previous Entry Plug figures, the plug can be opened and closed and lit internally via LEDs (white or LCL orange light) with a posed PVC Asuka. The Entry Plug is about 50cm long and comes with an AT-Field styled pedestal. The release date is June 2010 and will cost 8,800円.
Funimation’s Evangelion 1.11, You are (not) alone, BD gets a pretty lengthy review over at Blu-ray.com. Although most fans have already seen the Japanese 1.11 release on BD, it’s good to hear that Funi’s release isn’t going to be a letdown (well, almost). The reviewer, Jeffrey Kauffman, starts off be describing the original plot and franchise, then some of the differences between the original TV series and Rebuild. He breaks down his review into Video (5/5), Audio (5/5), and Supplements (2/5), with an overall rating of (4.5/5).
The Irish Film Institute will be screening Eva 2.0 as part of the IFI Anime Weekend on March 20th. Ticket prices and other information can be found at the IFI’s website.
Update (2/26):Andrew Partridge has confirmed that the movie will be shown with Japanese audio with English subtitles, and will be the 35mm festival film print that was used at Glasgow Film Festival screening.
The AV Watch website posted some images from the upcoming Evangelion 2.22 BluRay release. Quality looks pretty good and there’s been some obvious touch-ups.
Funimation put up a youtube video of a review of the R1 Evangelion 1.11 BD release. You get a chance to see in some detail the packaging and the contents.
An anime convention based in Sydney has recently announced that both Yuko Miyamura and Tiffany Grant will be attending their next event as special guests. SMASH! will play host to the Japanese and English voice actors along with Grant’s husband and co-founder of ADV films, Matt Greenfield.
Miyamura and Grant are best known for voicing the character Asuka Langley Soryu, but have also played many other characters in their respective careers.
SMASH! 2010 will be held on Saturday August 7th in Sydney Town Hall for the first time since its beginning in 2007. The event was normally held across two days at the University of New South Wales, but only one day has been announced for this year.
Universum Film, a German film licensor, has the rights for the Evangelion 2.22 film and will be releasing it on DVD and BluRay on July 16th along with the Evangelion 1.11 film on BluRay. The DVD will be sold in a “steelbook” and limited to 8,000 copies, then the soft box version will be sold.
Universum posted on their message board yesterday about the release. Also in the thread, they mention that since the 2.22 version of the movie isn’t completed yet, they can’t say anything about the differences between 2.0 and 2.22. This also explain why even the official Evangelion website doesn’t have any information about new scenes.
It’s Official, Evangelion 2.22 is listed to have a DVD (KIBA-1773 ) and BluRay (KIXA-35) release on May 26th, 2010. There will be new battle scenes and have a running time of 108 minutes. The BluRay will have 1080p AVC video with Dolby TrueHD 6.1ch Japanese audio, the DVD will have Dolby Digital / 6.1 Surround EX audio, neither will have subtitles (there will also be 2ch audio tracks). The BD will sell for around 6,090 円 and the DVD has a list of 5,985 円.
The DVD seems pretty expensive even for Japanese DVD prices, so given the choice, it seems going with a BD is the way to go. Good news for people who are staying spoiler-free waiting for a real release. Only 3 more months to go!
Update: Must have missed this in the announcement on the Evangelion website. ィルムコマ (Film Frame) is listed as one of the extras. Not exactly sure what a “film frame” is, it may be clips of the actual film like in the Evangelion 1.01 release. It’s included in both the DVD and the BluRay.
From an Anime News Network Podcast, Joseph Chou, producer of Halo Legends, Appleseed: Ex Machina, and billed as the producer for the Live Action Evangelion Movie, says that the anime adaptation is still “very active”. Chou says it’s possible that the project may even start moving forward by next year, after a lot of paper work has been resolved, and that the reason the project was at a stand still was because of the anime market crash. Chou said “the reason it stopped in its tracks was not because [John Ledford, co-founder of A.D. Vision and ADV Films] wasn’t paying attention to it … he actually amassed a considerable amount of money, financing, for the film … but then I think he just needed to stop, because the whole market was falling apart at that time,” and as a result the movie “fell on the wayside.”, although Ledford is still part of the project.
This could mean good news for people who were hoping for a live action adaptation. But for most, they’re probably not going to hold their breath until it starts moving forward again.
The latest issue of Young Ace, volume 9, contains the rumored 100 page digest “Evangelion Extra Issue”. The digest contains some parody mangas, summaries of the 12 volumes of Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga, a preview of stage 77 of the manga, and, probably the most interesting, some message from Gainax staff to Sadamoto and his responses.
