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Evangelion Movies Coming This Fall
Phunky Monkey writes: "'Manga Entertainment has announced the release dates for both End of Evangelion and Death and Rebirth as October 31, 2001! They to plan to release them in subtitled and dubbed VHS tapes as well as bi-lingual DVDs for each movie.' Got this little snippet over at www.eva2000.com. Although Manga's site doesn't reflect this, I havn't seen anything more accurate than 'summer 2001' until this. " Evangelion has gotta be among the coolest series, and I'm stoked to see a movie coming. Meanwhile I'm just waiting for my copy of
Eva 6 to ship.
A play costs more than a movie because your audience is far more limited and you actually have to pay the actors for several hours of work each time they perform.
Fine. I have no problem with them putting advertisements every 15 minutes in exchange for lowering the price of the DVD to the price of production + distribution (under $5). They already place advertisements on the damn DVDs which you sometimes can't even fast forward through every 2-4 episodes that are up to 10 minutes long.
Actually I got it from DirectTV broadcast at nearly the same quality as a DVD. Well, Farscape at least given I can't get much else.
Several months? My lord, you don't watch enough TV. A day for most stuff. Maybe a week for some of the long running stuff.
Lets keep things in perspective. We are talking about a medium which consists mostly of static backgrounds, significant amount of reused drawings and very little post processing. Compare that to something like Star Trek which takes an insane amount of money to produce and even that contains relatively small amount of sfx.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
It's a matter of economics. And it doesn't have anything to do with the cost of producing anime.
The distributors of anime, like the distributors of any copyrighted material, are monopolists. And monopolists, you should recall from Microeconomics 101, are price-seekers. Rather than accepting the market price as given, and trying to sell as many as possible at that price (which occurs in a competitive market), the monopolist would rather sell fewer units at a higher price, if this is what will maximize profit.
In the market for a Hollywood blockbuster, there are some who are willing to pay more, say $30, for a DVD, and a bunch who are willing to pay less, say $20. (I'm just making these numbers up.) The seller maximizes profit by setting the price at $20.
In the smaller market for anime, there are some who are willing to pay $30, and some who are willing to pay $20: but not as many as are willing to pay $20 for the Hollywood blockbuster. There aren't as many lost sales by pricing the release at $30, so the seller maximizes profit by selling at $30.
This is why in a non-competitive market, as the market gets larger, the price goes down. Remember how much VHS tapes cost back in the day? When only the video stores (who were willing to pay more) were buying them, the damn things cost $80. Now that VCRs are ubiquitous, they're "priced to sell".
The same reasoning applies to why they don't put more content on anime DVDs. They lose sales by putting only four episodes on a DVD when they could put eight on a DVD; but they don't lose enough sales to make up for what they gain by putting out twice as many to sell to those willing to pay for less material. (Again, I'm making the numbers up, since I don't have a DVD player. I still watch my anime on VHS.)
'Tis the nature of non-competitive markets. Unfortunately, we haven't figured out a better way to give the creators of artistic works incentive to create, other than granting them monopoly privilege over the reproduction of their work.
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I've never understand what people disliked so much about eva's original ending. It lacked the giant-mecha-fight-scenes that the earlier portion of the series had, but eva's only superficially a mecha show. The entire story revolves around character, and the entire original ending is devoted tying up loose ends in *character*. It does this remarkably well.
End of Eva, on the other hand, was fan-pacification attempt. People who watched eva solely for the giant mecha were disappointed with the psychological ending, and so GAINAX gave them what they wanted. All in all, the original ending is really more true to the series; End of Eva is just a bit more fun.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
...about bible-believing Christians actually more plentiful on Slashdot than references to "All Your Base..."? Sadly, AYB-gags are a passing fad, while the Christian-bashing is more of a /. pasttime for some.
Hint: If you want them to stop running, stop shooting.
Hmm maybe...
The processing on Star trek requires computers which cuts manual work done.
I still think anime is much more time consuming and nerve damaging to produce. But that's just me.
It could just be the expected audience size. Then again of all the irony England had La Blue Girl in theatres.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
However, I have been enjoying the simpsons news, the star wars news [to some degree], the LOTR news, an the star trek news ... so I can only immagine that to some the anime news is intersting...
It is interesting to note that alot of the science news dosen't make it on the main page, but anime seems to :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Is it just me, or is most of the hardcore christian element running from something ?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
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I like to watch.
Perhaps it's because many people feel that while anime is great, it'd make more sense to leave stuff like that on a more anime-centric site (after all, isn't that why animefu.com was created?) Why CmdrTaco feel the urge to post stuff there and here is beyond me. Personally, I think anime related stuff, unless truly groundbreaking, should stay off of Slashdot. I think that he posted the thing also to promote animefu.com - I could be wrong...
I was really disappointed by the quality of the Evangelion DVDs. Honestly, I have a 46" television.. and Eva tapes look the same as the Eva DVDs on it... of course tapes degrade at an exponential rate compared to DVD.. but still I was expecting more.
-gerbik
Well.. by time they made these two movies they had no money left.. I mean the end of the series is even pretty weak, lots of flashbacks and silly trip out animation scenes. Lame.. but essential none the less.
-gerbik
Good list. Here's another entry:
I don't yet have a good response to those kinds of posts, but I sure am tired of them.
(And though I don't want to sound like the kind of jerk I'm talking about above, you might be interested to know that "otaku" is more of a general term for any kind of obsessive geek. In addition to anime otaku, there are video game otaku, military hardware otaku, idol singer otaku, tropical fish otaku...and, of course, computer otaku. Like folks who are up at 2am posting to Slashdot...)
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WWW.TETSUJIN.ORG
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The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
Now that the series is coming out on DVD almost 1 a month, it's exciting to see that the release date of DVD #7 is May 29, 2001 (a little known fact, find it here: ADVfilms. The date for the next one has been released even before the April 17th release date of #6 has approached! I'm excited, but then again these DVDs are poor quality compared to other DVDs, but that's another story.
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I'm just an ordinary man with nothing to lose.
This is no cartoon for kids. The depth of the story line and underlying themes make most anything that comes from Hollywood look like a kiddy pool. In the land of anime, comparing Evangelion to anything for kids (i.e. Pokemon, DBZ, etc...) is like comparing The Matrix to say, Sesame Street. If any one of the children in the target audience for the latter of both were to watch the former, they would be completely confused by the subject matter and probably disgusted with the language/violence. I'd usually say "you should watch this series," but, as you have displayed, your ignorance would probably prevent you from enjoying it, so don't bother. And stop complaining. Clicking on the happy little anime head icon (or here) will show you that there have been 6 articles anime-related posted this year (including this one). After all the crap about Mir, this is nothing.
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It is the monkied monkey that monkies with another monkey's monkey. Monkey.
I've always wondered why anime is so expensive. Heck, even things other than anime distributed by ADV Films (Farscape for instance) is outrageously expensive.
I'm also curious why they put so few episodes on each DVD. Paying $18-35 for something which was broadcast for free on TV just to have to pay another $500 to get the entire story from beginning to end is silly.
Sure a two hour movie is the same price, but it is typically a complete story, not 1% of a story leaving me with some sense of completion. I personally don't like walking away from a movie with questions about what happens next.
All I really want is a complete set in a nice box for a single price with DVDs which are filled to capacity so I don't have to get up all the time and watch silly commercials I've watched 12 times before and some brain dead transitions between episodes which breaks the mood.
Is that too much to ask?
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I have sat outside viewing rooms at Cons discussing the merits of End of Evangelion (particularly Purest Heart) as a cinematic tone poem. Plenty of well educated people see the final ending as an incredibly executed "thust of non-plot emotion". The montages and music are timed perfecly, the symbolism is well planned and executed; the movie stands as a great piece of Art.
The problem is, the first part of the series was "children piloting big robots". So if you got into the series because of that, you were pretty much pissed off by End... *particularly* if you like endings that tie everything up, and everybody is happy. This does NOT finish anything plotwise, and is NOT a simple, happy ending, but it is very satifying... *if* and only if you are used to such endings. I.e., if you watch a bunch of "art films". I'm not saying it's "better than a Hollywood movie", just that it is a very different kind of movie, and will appeal to a very different crowd.
I watched all of Eva because someone kept telling me during the beginning "Don't worry - there's more to it than this". The first time I watched it, we watched all 26 episodes, then Death and Rebirth, and then all of End of Evangelion, all back to back over the course of a long weekend (pausing only around ep. 20 to go do Rocky Horror, and then coming back to finish up). That was a great experience, and I recommend it as a way to get the whole experience.
And yes, the DVDs suck. I have a HDTV front projection system, and the *average* VCD (legit ones, not "home made") has far better quality than Eva DVD 1. Ick.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Every time Taco posts something about anime, I see the following types of posts:
1. Anime is crap (no reason)
2. Anime is crap (because they're childish cartoons)
3. Anime is bad because it's made by the immoral Japanese.
4. Anime isn't geek news
5. CmdrTaco thinks he's some anime expert
To stop this madness right now I'll reply to them all:
1. Worthless opinion. Clarify it!
2. You haven't watched a decent amount of anime to judge it.
3. To the Japanese, Americans are a bunch of fat idiots who bombed then in WW2. Get off your high pedistal.
4. The term for "anime geek" in Japanese is otaku.
5. Taco has his strengths and weaknesses in anime as well as everybody else. Take his opinion with a grain of salt.
Peace
The Death and Rebirth movie is just basically a summary of the whole series. If you have Eva on DVD already, there is no reason to get Death and Rebirth. End of Eva is pretty cool though, but it seems to me to be an alternate ending to the series rather than a continuation of it. There are also alot of mixed feelings in the anime community about End of Eva, but it is worth it to see the best fight in all of Evangelion (Asuka vs. ....I wouldn't want to spoil anything!)