Giant Mecha News

da3dAlus writes "Starting next week, Monday Feb 24th, from 4-5pm est Cartoon Network's Toonami starts a Giant Robot Week. The lineup currently includes episodes of Nadesico, Dia-Guard, Robotech, and Evangelion (yes, NGE is slated for the block, but only on Mon/Tues). Also in Evangelion news, AnimeNewsNetwork reports Gainax is finalizing the re-release of the boxed set of NGE. This set includes re-worked (audio/video enhanced) versions of the original 26 episodes, the 4 'remake' eps from laser disc, and a bonus disc with creditless opening/closing video, trailers, and live-action edition of the film. The final cut of the Evangelion movie-- Death(True)2, Air, and Magokoro wo Kimi ni--will also be included. The discs will be in a limited edition art box, and will retail for ~$322 on or about June 25th, with a reservation deadline of April 14th. After that, the new set will be released separately without the box."

Comments

Robotech

[AyeFly]

I'm glad they include Robotech. That in my opinion is one of the best early mech shows. I actually never saw the cartoon when I was younger, but I read all the books based on them. or maybe the cartoons were based on the books.. anyway, they got me interested in Mechwarrior too :-)

Re:erm

[SecretAsianMan]

the part right before a certain female pilot went into a multi-episode coma.

Hallelujah! Errr, I mean I think that whole sequence is probably the best 5 minutes of animation ever animated. Quite possibly the best 5 minutes of anything you can play on a screen. People ask me "What is anime?", and I'll pop in DVD #7 and play the Hallelujah sequence. It's so good I'll burn all my karma with no regrets by posting this inane message.

If you've never seen anime or Neon Genesis Evangelion, then run, don't walk, to the nearest video rental and rent DVD #7. Watch the middle episode. Warning: may cause serious addiction.

First hand experience of the Eva Remaster

[ErMaC]

Well, for those in the know, the March issue of Newtype Magazine is out in Japan, I managed to snag a copy of it. Why? Because the sampler DVD includes a special section devoted entirely to the Eva Renewal project.

Here's what it has:
1) Remastered Opening
2) First Half of Episode One with Left Half of the screen Remastered, right side from original telecine with a white line running down the center.
3) Second Half of Episode One Remasters (with a little watermark in the top corner).
4) Remastered Ending of Episode One

So I've seen first hand the Eva remaster... spent the last hour rewatching it. It is AWESOME.

First off - the box set being released by GAiNAX is RAW JAPANESE in REGION 2. There are NO English Subs! Second, the price is extremely good for a boxset of this size (11 discs) in Japanese prices (actual boxset price is 39,800yen). Considering the poor shmucks who bought the Second Impact Box sets a year ago paid more than 50% more than that to get everything that's in this box - and not remastered - I'd say this is a bloody good deal.

The remastering process was two fold - first off, the entire show was re-telecined from film source and then digitally cleaned up. This means no frame jitters, no bad telecining, no bad coloring. It looks gorgeous. The colors are vibrant and clean enough it looks like digital cel work at times. And if you've seen my homepage - you know I've worked a lot with Eva's video... and the difference is like night and day.

The second part of the remastering process is all the audio is being redone in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. I can't comment on this myself as I haven't watched it on a full 5.1 speaker setup, but it already sounds clearer, and my home theater nut friend who also got the disc tells me it sounds fantastic. I'll take his word on it as he's one of those anime fans where if there's ANYTHING wrong he makes a stink about it.

Now if you want to see this for yourself, buy the March issue of Newtype Magazine (NOT the US version!! It's not in that POS) or wait for the Evangelion Test Type 01 disc to come out. It's a sampler disc of the whole remastered first episode with a couple extras for less than $20. If it's not good enough to spend your money on, you don't have to get it.
I own all the Region 1 Eva TV DVDs from ADV, I own the Region 2 imports of the Movies and Vol 6 (the re-edited episodes 21-24). I'm still buying this thing - it's that good.
I've taken the time to capture some samples off the disc (digitally of course).
You can check them out here, but PLEASE go easy on my server. If someone could mirror the pics please do so.
http://www.ermacstudios.org/EvaRenewal/