Evangelion Forever

I became hooked on the Japanese animated television series "Neon Genesis Evangelion" back in college. I had been a long time fan of Japanese Animation (Robotech started it back in the early 80's), and Evangelion was right up my alley. Between the complex psychological exploration of the characters, and the rich use of both Jewish and Christian mythology weaved throughout the dense, sometimes uncomprehensible, story, it's the kind of thing that requires multiple viewings to truly appreciate.

Apparently it also involves purchasing it over and over again.

I'm starting to lose track of how many times i have purchased this series. It's amazing the purchases that end up being made by a single man left to his own devices. It started in college when i bought the whole series on dubbed VHS. DVD wasn't really around yet, and while i preferred subtitles over dubbing, i figured i would be more likely to get my college friends to watch it dubbed. I bought each new dubbed VHS as it came out, eventually owning the whole collection.

Entire series purchased once.


Later after i had graduated college, i picked up the entire dvd box set. This solved the problem of not owning the subtitled version since the dvds had both subtitled and dubbed versions of the show, as well as updating the whole set to digital, a clear improvement over the fragile, short shelf life VHS version of the series. Also, the box they collection came in was pretty sweet, and i got a great deal on the set.

Entire series purchased twice.

I was pretty happy at this point with my purchases. I had the complete Evangelion collection on DVD to enjoy whenever i wanted, in both sub and dub formats.



Of course at this point over in Japan, the makers of Evangelion, GAINAX, started to revise some of the series. The controversial ending of the show (which i won't get into here) eventually caused them to tweak and redo the final episodes of the show in Japan, which were released in the form of 2 dvds that had the new versions of the final episodes. I of course had to pick these up too, as i didn't want to have the whole collection without the added changes that were involved with new versions of the final episodes.

I've now purchased the series 2 times, plus some additional versions of some episodes.



It's at this time that the lovely people at GAINAX in Japan decided the whole series needed to be re-released. The new version of the series featured new video and audio transfers. There were updated scenes here and there, and the complete series with both the original end episodes and the additional director's cut version of the final episodes. In Japan this was known as Evangelion: Renewal. It was released in the states as The Platnium collection. Of course i needed this too.

As a side note i have recently discovered that the version of the platinum collection i purchased does not include the special features (Commentaries, trailers, textless openings/closing, bonus features, etc.), so now i'm looking into finding a version of the platinum collection that includes all of this. Sigh...

Series now purchased 3 full times, plus some additional.



It should be mentioned that ending of the series was eventually retold in Japan in the form of 2 feature films. Evangelion: Death and Rebirth, and The End of Evangelion. The first movie was like a recap of the series, with the latter being a brand new full theatrical ending for the story. I think if i remember correctly, i found the first movie as fansub VHS, then both movies on fansub dvd, and then finally purchased them both on official dvds a few years later when they were finally released in the states.

So i think I'm up to 3 full versions of series, some additional series stuff, and 2-3 versions of the movies.

You would think i was done buying Evangelion. It would seem that i have more than done my duty as a fan. Oh no. Now that Evangelion is over 15 years old, they had something up their sleeves over in Japan.



They call it the Rebuild of Evangelion. It consists of 4 Feature Films that will essentially retell the entire series in 3 movies, and have an entirely new ending for the story in a 4th movie. In addition to everything being brand new animation, some scenes are frame for frame remakes, while other scenes are entirely different, sometimes to the point of completely changing the plot. The first of these films was released in the US in November as Evangelion 1.0: You Are (NOT) Alone.

I'm seriously losing track here, but it gets worse.



Next week finds the release of Evangelion 1.11. Evangelion 1:11 is basically the same as 1.0, but it has something like 422 individual shots in the film touched up, and 3 minutes of all new footage. It's also being released on blu-ray, unlike 1.0 which was just on dvd.

Yes, I'll be buying this too.

Now i just have to wait for the US release details of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance. I think I'll be buying Evangelion well into my 40's. Don't get me wrong, I'm ok with all of this. I love this series, and i get a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of both watching it, and trying figure it out. That doesn't mean i don't appreciate the humor in how many times i have purchased the same series over the years.

I think I'm going to go watch some Evangelion now. Between trying to remember all the versions i bought, and finding the images for the blog, I got in the mood to watch some. At the end of this feel free to enjoy the trailer for Evangelion 2.0...