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

'enhanced' == 'fixed' ?

[Angron]

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

Re:First hand experience of the Eva Remaster

[ErMaC]

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. :)