News & Updates

I found this set of photos on Flickr interesting.  Looks like an art student named Mark Ellis (aka Everfalling) at Academy of Art University made a Sachiel mask for his ceramics class.  I think it’s kind of cool, and I can relate, having done quite a few projects in my own arts studies that were influenced by, or incorporating material from Evangelion.  I enjoy seeing examples like this where people draw upon the familiar visuals and themes of a show like Evangelion.  I think it says a lot about its fandom and lasting value as a creative work.  I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but I think it would be cool to have something like this hanging on a wall in my apartment.

• Sachiel Mask set on Flickr »

Jon Lin, aka Ornette, over at Eva Geeks has made a Live Wallpaper for Android devices resembling the Magi hacking as seen in episode 13, and The End of Evangelion.  It might not replicate the effect precisely, but it’s kind of neat, and might be of interest to you if you’re an Adroid user.  If you’re curious what it looks like, there’s a screen shot and a video on the app’s page that shows what it looks like, as well as the options that Ornette included with it.

• Magi Attack Live Wallpaper on Android Market
• Magi Attack Live Wallpaper thread on Eva Geeks

Tiffany Grant, Mike McFarland and Matt Greenfield were guests recently on Madman Entertainment’s podcast “Anime Snack Time”.  They talked about a variety of Evangelion-related topics, including the original television series and the new “Rebuild” films.  They also discussed some of what goes into localization, including translation and dubbing.

For some reason, Madman’s podcast page doesn’t correctly provide a link to the MP3 version of the podcast, so if you’d like to download that, see the links below.  Enjoy.

• Madman’s Anime Snack Time Podcast
• Anime Snack Time – Evangelion 2.22 Special (MP3)
• Anime Snack Time – Evangelion 2.22 Special (M4V)

Mark your calendars and get ready,  because I’ll be at Otakon again this year, bringing my own particular blend of fun and excitement in the form of my new Evangelion panel, “Evangelion, WTF?”.  Here’s the description:

Evangelion, WTF? (18+)
Fandom works in very interesting ways. Given enough time, it tends to spawn various oddities without aid or encouragement. Some things you can never unsee, and some you’ll probably watch over and over on YouTube and LOL and ROFL. Occasionally you might even ROFLMAO. Sometimes you get an Evangelion ReDeath. Sometimes you get Evangelion music recomposed on Gameboys. And sometimes you even get prank calls from Spike Spencer as Shinji Ikari to MySpace users that never thought twice about having their cellphone numbers listed publicly. This panel, for better or for worse, is a collection of such nonsense and shenanigans.

This panel originally began its life as The Evangelion Omake Box, which I hosted at Ohayocon and Anime Boston earlier this year.  Omake Box itself was an all-ages approach to coalescing the various bits and bytes of Evangelion nonsense together into one free-form, emceed panel.  However I soon realized that I could very easily kick it up a notch, and make it an 18+ panel for epic great justice.  And if its debut at Tekkoshocon is any indication, it will be pretty rad, and will probably involve alcohol and the invocation of fire codes.

So if you’re planning on being at Otakon 2011 (July 29th-31st, Baltimore, MD), please stop by Evangelion, WTF? and be prepared to see a bunch of ridiculous Evangelion bullshit.  It’s gonna be awesome.

More information:

• Otakon’s Website
• Otakon 2011 Panels Roster

It seems like more and more cool music is coming out of members of Eva Geeks these days.  First Rachel Macwhirter, then Dr. Shoggoth, and now Michael Mancuso (aka Esselfortium), who has released an entire Evangelion-inspired concept album called Seventeen More Times.  This is the description of the album Essel provided:

“Seventeen More Times is an NGE-inspired concept album I’ve written and produced over the past four years. It’s entirely instrumental, and bridges a wide range of styles from upbeat electronica to cinematic downtempo pieces to heavy psychedelic rock. It’s based around Evangelion, and it musically covers all sorts of themes and concepts relating to NGE’s characters and events, and concludes with a suite comprising Third Impact, the escape from instrumentality, One More Final, and the forwards progression from there into the future.”

I’m really enjoying what I’m hearing.  It reminds me of Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile and Tool’s Lateralus album.  It has that same wonderful ambiance, where you can just immerse yourself in the music by not being too preoccupied with it.  if you’re looking for something to listen to, Eva-related or otherwise, Essel has made the album available to stream for free, as well as for purchase from iTunes and CD Baby.  Check it out.

• Stream Seventeen More Times for free
• Buy Seventeen More Times on iTunes
• Buy Seventeen More Times on CD Baby

If you’d like to read more about this album, Essel has posted some information on the Eva Geeks Forum.  There is also a review of the album on Higher Plane Music which he describes as “glowing”, as well as an interview that he gave.

• Seventeen More Times thread on Eva Geeks
• Esselfortium – “Seventeen More Times” Review
• Whispers of the Plains: Esselfortium (Interview)

So apparently today is the rapture.  And if you are not familiar there has been talk about the end of the world, also known as the second coming of Christ, and the Last Judgment.  There’s this guy named Harold Camping, who is a self-published Christian author and radio personality who has spent way too much of his life trying to decode the bible in order to discover when the end of the world will be.  He already predicted it would happen on September 6th, 1994, which clearly didn’t occur, which begs the question why anyone would still take him seriously.  He revised his prediction to today, May 21st, 2011, which is why you may have seen posters and billboards saying that the world is going to end today, and that “the bible guarantees it”.  I really can’t get enough out of how silly people can be.  In related news, it is sad to hear that Randy “Macho Man” Savage died yesterday, but we all know, he’s up there foiling Jesus’ plans right now.

But in all seriousness, I think it’s all rather silly, and if you are a believer, then the bible should be considered sacred, and it states very specifically that only the father will known when that day comes.  I wonder what it says about us as a people that we’re preoccupied with the end of the world.  We see apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic scenarios in popular culture all of the time, and Evangelion is no exception.  Evangelion is a post-post-apocalyptic story that shows the last days of humanity, leading up to what is very much a depiction of the rapture and the end of the world.  Albeit, in Evangelion, it’s all a reinterpretation of Judeo-Christian mythology and symbolism within a science fiction narrative, but you can’t deny what it is representative of.

So I think in honor of Harold Camping, I’m going to kick back and watch The End of Evangelion.  It’s been too long.

It seems our excitement over the June issue of Newtype and it’s Studio Khara feature was a bit premature.  LIwarriorTKD, a user on Eva Geeks who is currently living in Kyoto, got his hands on the new issue and has been translating and posting little bits of information for us, as well as some photos of the article itself.  The bottom line, however, is that this article is not about Evangelion 3.0.  The only real detail is that Anno has asked everyone to be patient.  The article itself is literally about Studio Khara, which is still interesting, just not what we were all hoping for.  It seems we’ll all have to wait just a little bit longer before we can start sinking our teeth into 3.0.

For more information, translation, and discussion, please check out the full thread over on Eva Geeks.

Images From the article:

• Page 16-17
• Page 18-19
• Page 20-21 (Anno “puppeting” Misato, Rei, and Shinji to work on Evangelion, as well as a yon koma comic featuring Anno)
• Page 22-23 (Crew wearing “Rebuild” t-shirts)
• Page 24-25

Hardcore Evangelion collectors and/or generous Evangelion fans might be interested to know that Funimation is currently auctioning off a number of items on eBay for Japan relief.  Amongst the items is a packaging printer proof of the sleeve for the Evangelion 1.01 DVD.  As of right now, the auction is currently at about $100 and has six days to go.  That will no doubt rise significantly, but if you’d be interested in getting your hands on a one of a kind collector’s item while benefiting a good cause, you should definitely take a look at the auction.

• Funimation blog post about Japan Relief auction
• Evangelion 1.01 Packaging Printer Proof eBay listing

UPDATE: Bidding on the packaging proof closed at $405.09.

If you like Happy Hardcore/Hardcore, or what some may refer to lovingly as “candy raver music”, you should check out DJ S3RL.  He’s a musical artist from Brisbane Australia, who not only makes his own tracks, but also samples from things in popular culture, including anime.  He has one such track called “Neon Genesis” which features samplings of Cruel Angel’s Thesis, as well as English dub audio of Spike Spencer and Tristan MacAvery as Shinji and Gendo Ikari, respectively.  A lot of people may find this style of music incredibly repetitive or possibly annoying.  I personally think it’s kind of cool for what it is, and I’m definitely not one to turn down free music, especially when it’s borrowing from something that I’m into.

For some reason, I can’t seem to find an official posting of the track by DJ S3RL.  Perhaps he got hit by a copyright claim for sampling from Evangelion, I’m not really sure.  At any rate, as you all know, once something is on the internet, it’s on the internet.  You can find plenty of videos using the track by searching for it on YouTube.  Otherwise, I suggest checking out this posting of the video on YouTube, or this posting on Tumblr.  I wish I had a kosher direct download of an MP3 handy for you, but you’ll just have to figure that out on your own.  But do check it out.  It may be 6 and a half minutes long, but it’s worth giving a listen to, just to check out.

Official DJ S3RL sites:

• DJ S3RL’s Myspace
• DJ S3Rl’s SoundCloud

EDIT: Apparently the track is available for purchase on iTunes:

• Neon Genesis on iTunes

Now, I don’t want to get anyone excited prematurely, but the June issue of Newtype is going on sale in Japan a week from today, and it has been said to have a prominent feature for Studio Khara.  And now, thanks to this commercial for the issue with voice over by Kotono Mitsuishi (Misato Katsuragi), we can now see that the cover features a nice image of Asuka from none other than Evangelion 3.0.  I don’t know about you, but it looks pretty certain that this will finally give us a title, and a release date for Evangelion 3.0.  The timing is right, as it has been an awful long time since we’ve heard anything from Studio Khara, and it will soon be a solid two years since 2.0 was released to theaters.  I’m looking forward to that information and more.  It’s amusing, we’re getting excited about a release date, only to have more waiting to look forward to, as it will be a good while before many of us can actually see the movie.