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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."
A lot of the stuff in Eva isn't so much disturbing due to violence or sex as the imagery. While there isn't very much blood and gore in Eva, there is a lot of cross shaped explosions and talks about what makes a human that many parents in this country would find disturbing.
I mean how many people in America would think that showing kids explosions of crosses and talks of the attacking Angels and the final battle between them and humanity is appropriate?
You'd think it was sweeps month. Oh, it is.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
I was seriously asking a question.
How many people watch this? It wasn't sarcastic at all.
Also, I wasn't blanketing the teenage population as a whole. OBVIOUSLY there are kids obsessed with computers. I knew that. I was more referring to kids that watched cartoons and even moreso indirectly asking a question as to if kids that watched these cartoons were interested in computers.
Does 'enhanced' mean that they fixed the jitter in the video sources of Eva? One of my biggest disappointments with the DVDs before was the incredible amount of jitter just before/after scene changes. I found it incredibly distracting, especially on the (large number of) slowly panning scenes.
I played for a long time with trying to make digital copies without the jitter by using various stabilizing plugins for VirtualDub or other software, but to little avail (most were targeted at shaky-handed video camera operators).
If they've fixed the jitter I would really consider picking up this set; I've found Eva to be one of my favorite media ever, and usually try getting anyone who hasn't seen it to watch with me whenever I go through it again.
-A
Geez, don't bitch - you lot in the USA get anime at one third to a half of the price of what it is here in Japan.
Take GitS, for example - in Japan, it's still sold at the RRP of 7,800 yen (about $US65), at best with 20% discount, but in the States, you can get it for around $US25.
Oh and I forgot to mention -
:)
ADV is not going to be releasing these. I will bet money on this.
First off, GAiNAX's relationship with ADV turned pretty sour after Eva. ADV never got a hold of the licenses for the Eva Director's Cut episodes 21-24, they only had the license for the original TV versions. Second, they didn't get the movie rights because of money. The amount of money GAiNAX wanted for the films was REDICULOUS, and the only reason Manga got them was because they're stupid and they have too much money (the did not recoup the licensing fees off their disc sales yet).
ADV is not going to spend money again to relicense the new remastered prints. They're already making money off their "perfect" box set. The demand for these remastered prints wouldn't be high enough to sustain the cost because in general American anime fans aren't the kind who will rebuy everything when a new version comes out. There are people I know who've bought something on VHS, then Laserdisc, then on DVD. Japanese hard core fans will do this all the time - and there's a much larger hardcore anime fanbase in Japan than here.
So don't hold your breath for these to ever be released Stateside. You want subs - go get some scripts or rip the sub streams from the ADV discs and retime them to these new imports and use DVDSubber. Me, I'm happy with em raw since I know all the dialog already.
"I want to get more into theory, because everything works in theory." -John Cash
IMHO the best Giant robot anime of all time:
Giant Robo.
dig it.
Gasaraki had a decently realistic take on the giant robot genre that I liked.
The TAs & Fakes weren't particularly huge. I think they were only 10-12 feet tall. Not much taller than a tank. They were designed for urban warfare and could even enter builings. They could run faster than tanks and were more agile so they could take on a tank division in the field if they had the element of surprise.
Another break from giant robot conventions was that they didn't add any new mech designs throughout the series. There's a funny (text) interview on the DVD where the designer describes how the merchandising department got freaked out when they found out there were only a couple mechs. The designers reasoned that the TA and Fake designs would be in service for at least 10 years, though some variants might show up in a few years. But that would all be beyond the lifespan of the show.