The Lousypoet

What more can I say? This was one of those things I really wanted to experience. I’ve long been a fan of anime, and though I’ve seen the Disney-Miyazaki films in theatres, there was something about seeing Evangelion on the big screen.

Evangelion was the first show that got under my skin. It was the show that made me plunk down mega bucks for merchandise and spending hours reading about Kabbalah, the Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first website I built was an Evangelion website I titled “New Century Gospel.” The first domain name I ever purchased was evangelion.ca. In so many ways, Evangelion was a seminal series for me. While the debates seem to rage if it deserves the notoriety it has achieved, I have little doubt in the influence it had on me.

So walking into that theatre tonight, watching so many scenes familiar to me from the TV series, it was like coming back home to visit an old friend. I enjoyed the film very much, probably because it differed so little from the original series. It left me wanting so badly to see the second film I can hardly contain myself. But alas, I suppose it will be at least another year-and-a-half or more until we see a decent North American version.

So, anime on the big screen was a big hit with me, and I would certainly consider going again. On a side note, it was pretty funny/cool that the film was projected from a Blu-ray DVD player. I recall working in theatres ten or so years ago and being told that such technology would never be usable. Funny how times change. At about the same time, I’m pretty sure I was told we would never see anime such as Evangelion shown in mainstream theatres.

So Funimation films have completed their english dub of the first of the Evangelion movies (the re-release movies that is).  And to celebrate they’re putting the film out in a limited theatrical release!  What has me hyped about this is that there is actually a pretty wide release here in Canada!

On September 30th, numerous cities across Canada will be showing this film on their screens!  Funimation’s website has the details on where the film will show.  I actually have several sites that are near to me, so I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to check this out.  I don’t know if I’ll manage to convince Carolyn to go, she’s not that big on mecha anime, but Evangelion was one of the first series we watched together, and she certainly didn’t dissaude my obsession with the series, so maybe for old time’s sake

Anyway, the dates in the US start in July.  If you can go, do so, cause the more successful events like this are, the more we might see similar events in the future.

So it’s finally official, Funimation is going to release the first Evangelion movie, Evagelion 1.01 You Are (Not) Alone. No word yet on the actual date we’ll see it, but most seem to peg it for a release this year. You can check out the trailer at The Official Funimation Site.

So I guess this news is a little old, but I feel like posting about it anyway.

The website for the second Evangelion rebuild movie has been relaunched, anouncing the official english language title as You Can (Not) Advance. It also said that the film would be released in early summer 2009, a year later than the first press releases about rebuild had stated.

While the first film apparently deviated little from the series (I still haven’t seen it as there’s been no official english release! Grrrrr…), it appears this second installment is going quite a bit off the path, introducing 2 new evangelions and at least 1 new major character!

You can see a trailer for the film over on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in7xhXyxR8c.

This is the one I’m really excited to see. This is where Evangelion truly begins to deviate from what we know and delivers Anno’s promise of a new version (vision?) of Eva.

It’s funny that at one time I lived for Evangelion. My first true website was an Eva website and virtually all the forums etc that I participated online in were Eva related. There was something exciting about it back then. The story seemed so new, modern, and yet somehow avante-garde. I guess since then, cerebral anime with flawed characters are so common now, that Eva just doesn’t seem as unique as it did back in the 90s. None the less, I am really looking forward to seeing how these films turn out.

So I’m going to post this one because a lot of people seem to be coming here in search of the Evangelion Re-take manga.

This manga was created by fans of the show, so it’s a doujinshi, not a cardinal part of the story. That said, it is a brilliantly executed fan manga. The story fits well with Eva and actually adds to the end of the show as opposed to taking away from the original story (something I find happens with fan fiction sometimes). The characters stay true to their intended forms in the original anime/maga and the events seem plausible.

I loved this manga because it re-ignited my love for evangelion, still one of my all time favourite anime. Many moons ago, I uploaded zip files of the manga and posted it. Well, so many people came to get the (rather large) files that it blasted my bandwidth quota and I was left without email or webpage access for the better part of a month. So, I took them down. I just couldn’t (and still can’t) afford the download space to handle all the requests. It appears that there are still some torrents of the series to download. Aside from that, I can’t help too much. Sorry

If you are a fan of evangelion, do see if you can find them, they are worth it!