By The Eva Monkey
on Friday, April 1st, 2005
No. This is not some sort of April Fool’s day joke. What you’re looking at is the third iteration of EvaMonkey.com. I had wanted to create a new design to mark the third year of this site, but certain other demands kept me from doing a new design. This time around, I sought to take a step away from a more dynamic design, and focus on textual content. I also wanted to go back and tinker with the color red. Those familiar with the site from its first year will know that the original color scheme was black and red. It was very hard on the eyes because of the colors used. This version uses the same basic set of colors, but used in a way that I hope is a bit more visually pleasing. Also of note is that the site and forums now share the same design and navigation. It is my hope that people will utilize this site as a whole, as a community and as a source of resources. I’m still tinkering at the moment, so the new design is bound to go through some more minor revisions as I go through code and so forth, and I’m hoping to offer the first and second versions of the site’s design as alternate skins. So those that liked the version two layout can stick with that if they like. And lastly, with a new design comes renewed interest in site development. I plan on doing more substantial work on this site in the near future, and providing some interesting content for people’s consumption.
Posted in: Eva Monkey.
By The Eva Monkey
on Saturday, March 12th, 2005
Posted in: Japan, Mildly Evangelion, Video. Tagged: Hideaki Anno.
By The Eva Monkey
on Sunday, March 6th, 2005
Those unfamiliar with the Addition Audio Drama entitled “Shukyoku no Tsuzuki” or “After the End” might be interested to take a look at it. I’ve collected together some information about the Addition CD, the drama track, its translation, the actual track in MP3 format, as well as an illustrated fan sub of the audio track. Its pretty funny, and those who enjoy a light hearted take on the Evangelion universe might want to take a look.
http://www.evamonkey.com/addition_audio_drama.php
Posted in: Audio, Video.
By The Eva Monkey
on Friday, March 4th, 2005
Recently I’ve been working on a blog/writing page for myself to write reviews, editorials, and in general have a journal available to write in without the restrictions and public nature of Live Journal. While building it, I was searching back through the years, through the various web pages I’ve built, looking for writings I would like to archive, revise, or integrate into the new page. I went backwards, and ended up at my old Tripod page, the very first web page I made. Complete with blinding green font, frames, and nothing but tables and text. I was surprised to find a section of the site devoted specifically to explaining Evangelion, dated to November of 2001. I had always credited my initial conceptualization of Eva Monkey back to the summer of 2002, and much of the initial development to the fall of 2002 when me and some of my friends were working on Hooligan College, an online college of sorts where one could learn within an academic format about various aspects of fandom. It was a bit like Anime Academy, but we actually were organizing resources into courses. I was the Eva geek, and my text was Eva Monkey. Its interesting to go back and find that the initial push to create this site was nearly a year earlier, during the fall semester of my freshman year of college. This site itself may be only 2 full years old now, but the ambition itself is in fact a bit older, something like 3 1/2 years. Its funny, I completely forgot about it. I never did anything with it, but I question what would become of the ambition if it were not for the idea of Hooligan College. I only wish the data from that site hadn’t been lost, I would love to archive it for nostalgia’s sake. Oh well…
Posted in: Eva Monkey, Personal.
By The Eva Monkey
on Saturday, February 26th, 2005
The forums are down again. I don’t know why. I inquired over at the phpbb forums about it, and they told me it was due to heavy traffic. This doesn’t make much sense to me, as this site’s forums are relatively small. I haven’t a clue how to fix this, and I’m just going to assume that the problem will correct itself as it has the last 2-3 times its happened. So, I guess the board is just dead for the day. Sorry, try again later.
In unrelated and more encouraging news, the site’s disk space has increased from 1 gig to 2 gigs, and the bandwith has been upped from 40 gigs of transfer per month to 50 gigs of transfer per month. With an extra gig of disk space at my disposal, I’m looking to put a lot of stuff up for people’s enjoyment that I’ve archived.
Posted in: Eva Monkey. Tagged: Forums.
By The Eva Monkey
on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005
So this past weekend I took a trip over to Crystal City Virginia to hold another Evangelion panel at Katsucon. Please note that the Evangelion panel I held at Katsucon two years ago was my first, and one that set me on my current path. I was excited to return to where much of my fan enthusiast career originated. Unfortunately, I was not expecting the convention to be a completely mismanaged nightmare in every single aspect. Hardly anthing went well over the course of the weekend, it was spread across two hotels, during frigid whether, and coincidentally, both hotels were under construction. There were all manners of cancellations, confusions, double bookings, delays, and technical difficulties. In short, it was as the title of this post would indicate, a sucky time for all. I was one of the unfortunate individuals who was uninformed, and when time came to host my panel, I was left without the proper room, a few people managed to find me, but that was most likely because my friend Charles (bless his heart) littered the hallway with signs that explained where the Evangelion Panel was. Not to mention that he periodically went out in the hallway and yelled “EVANGELION PANEL IS IN HERE!!!”. The panel drew perhaps 8-10 people, which is sad coming off of a panel with perhaps 200 at Otakon, and even more than that at the first Katsucon which was early Sunday morning during a snow emergency. In all, it was a weekend poorly spent, and oddly enough, fitting for the fact that it was my 13th convention. Perhaps unlucky numbers do have some significance.
To end this, I’d like to comment that I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of book scanning, and I’m trying to put together a very nice book guide for all the Evangelion collectors out there. I figured I would put my collection to good use and give people some recommendations about which artbooks they would be satisfied in purchasing. So far, the response has been good, please take some time to take a look at the books section. I’ll be adding more to it periodically.
Posted in: Conventions. Tagged: Katsucon.
By The Eva Monkey
on Friday, February 4th, 2005
“I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning’s dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesterday’s thoughts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies, and devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent.”
This passage from Frankenstein really struck a cord with me just now. I have spent many a sleepless night agonizing over this site, wishing that my ability to build it could progress at the speed at which my mind built it within my head. Not to say that I consider this site comparable to Victor Frankenstein’s Monster, but the restlessness he describes in the chapter prior to giving life to the monster really jumped out at me and made me think for a second. He later comments that he must be driven to achieving his vision, so that he can enjoy leisure and good health. I’ll have to see how that turns out for him, though I’m pretty sure I know how it goes.
Given that I really haven’t much in the way of real life associates with the “Eva Bug”, I feel it necessary to continue to use the front of this web page as a sort of soap box. But I promise you, if I do so, I’ll give you something in return for hopefully reading my inane banter.
And without further ado, I give you manga-ish stuff.
Dirty Work
While this is a bit unrelated to Evangelion, it might still prove of interest to Eva fans. Dirty Work is a one shot manga done by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, and his wife, who goes by the pen name “Takaha Mako”. While some may find it “unrealistically dark”, I find it to be quite similar to Sadamoto’s manga interpretation of Evangelion. Fans of Sadamoto and the Eva manga might want to take a look at this to get a better glimpse into Sadamoto’s story-telling. And finally, a warning: while there’s nothing extremely mature or explicit about this, some may find its content a bit unsettling.
Route 20
Another kernel of Gainax/Sadamoto interest. Route 20, from what I understand, was to be Gainax’s follow-up project to The Wings of Honneamise. For whatever reasons, it never made it to production, and all we are left with is a preliminary work-in-progress trailer, a few Sadamoto illustrations, and a manga adaptation by Sadamoto that never went very far either. Nevertheless, as far as I know, I have available nearly everything from this project. So set aside a moment, and take a look at what might have been
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Iron Maiden 2nd
Eva fans consider spin-offs like Iron Maiden 2 (aka Girlfriend of Steel 2) by Fumino Hayashi to be anything from light fare to a defilement upon all that is holy. Nevertheless, it is directly building upon what Anno set forth, and it IS new Evangelion story. Though it is far from its predecessor, it is something to wet one’s appetite in wake of the abundant lack of new Sadamoto Eva manga. The series is (to my knowledge) up to three volumes, and still in production, and who knows if it will ever see an English language version. So for those who have an open mind, and a ravenous hunger for Eva, enjoy!
“I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete.”
Posted in: Angelic Days, Manga, Personal. Tagged: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.
By The Eva Monkey
on Monday, January 31st, 2005
Be forewarned, this is mostly me using the site’s mainpage as personal rant space, although this is technically an update, and there is some new stuff to comment upon.
Its a bit late to be making New Years resolutions, but I feel it is a bit appropriate at this time. Today, the last day of January, marks the second anniversary of EvaMonkey.com, and the beginning of its third year in servicing the Evangelion community with information and resources. While I have been pleased by my accomplishments through the site, I feel quite dissapointed in not having taken the site’s content further. I have this mental block with producing anything of importance, especially when I know it must be of a high caliber. Granted, this is just a website about a cartoon, but for me, it should be much more than that. That causes me to second guess a lot of what I do. Not just with this site, but with life in general.
When I think about it. I really haven’t done very much real development with the site since summer, when I launched the Eva Monkey Forums. And I intend to rectify that. For starters, I’ve resolved to work progressively on this site, and try to put something new to the site each day. In addition to that, I’m setting things into motion. For starters, Rachel “Reichu” Clark, whose commentary project is being hosted here is going to be assisting in other areas of the site. With her dedication and attention to detail, she’ll be sure to offer a lot to the site and its “readers”. Also, I have the opportunity this semester to have my research move to a new level and be funded through an undergraduate research award program issued by my unniversity’s provost. That may well provide a great deal of momentum and importance to this site’s endeavors. For starters, for the first time, the fan community may see translations of rare materials that we never have had the means to have available. There’s much of interest written about Eva in the English language, but if I’m not mistaken, that’s merely the outer crust of the knowledge on this particular subject. And who wants the mere crusts of knowledge? I would rather take the whole loaf.
As far as productivity is concerned, I’ve recently accumulated quite a few of imported Evangelion books, and I’ve been working on the books section of the website. I’ll be working on it progressively, and hopefully it’ll be a helpful resource for those Eva fans who like to collect, and appreciate knowing what it is that they’re buying. Its not very expansive, however, with some time (and a lot of scanning), it will be.
Posted in: Eva Monkey.
By The Eva Monkey
on Sunday, January 2nd, 2005
The results are in from Anime Fringe’s Top 25, and I’m absolutely stunned to see that Eva Monkey not only placed in the top 25, but managed to snag twelfth place. So I would like to thank everyone for giving their votes to me, and for continuing to support the site as well as Evangelion fans. It really makes my day to make it up there with the likes of Anime Academy, Anime Suki, Anime News Network, and Anime Nation. So from the bottom of my heart, thanks a lot, it means a lot more to me than you think.
Posted in: Eva Monkey.
By The Eva Monkey
on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004
There’s a very promising book being published next May called “The Notenki Memoirs: Studio Gainax And The Men Who Created Evangelion”. It looks to include quite a bit of inside info on the company and the Eva phenomenon, and a lot of what went on behind the scenes that has never been allowed into the public eye. And be aware, this book is being put out by ADV Manga, so amazingly enough, its going to be in English.
Here’s some info from Amazon.com.
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: ADV Manga (May 24, 2005)
Details:
A tell-all account of Studio Gainax, the creators of the classic anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. Yasuhiro Takeda, a member of the Gainax company since its inception, talks about everything from the untold stories of Eva to the Gainax tax evasion scandal that plagued its production. Including a series of stunning revelations, this history of Gainax is a must-read for any serious anime fan.
Posted in: Merchandise, News. Tagged: ADV Manga, Books.
