Anime Pilgrimage RTT

The “Why” of Evangelion

Petit Eva~Evangelion@School~

The Gainax/Khara franchise spinoff spoofs the psychological science fiction drama by reimagining the characters as classmates in Tokyo-3’s Nerv School, headed by Principal Gendō Ikari and Misato-sensei. The student body includes three different Rei “sisters,” the EVA-01 mobile weapon reimagined as the school bully Evanchō, and the ill-fated Jet Alone robot as JA-ko, a “hidden character” in the form of a shy android girl.

I am well aware that the over-merchandising of Evangelion is news almost as old as the series itself, and a constant irony that something produced so cheaply can still be used so damned effectively to wring money out from across the world. Even with hating the series becoming the hip thing at one point, the behemoth continues unabated. So out of anime at the moment am I that I haven’t even seen the trailer for the new movies.

While my initial reaction to the “Evangelion at School” idea was “that’s the stupidest thing ever”, I think I would secretly really like to see it. I wonder if Mechazawa will turn up it in?

Evangelion still has its influence today: I wrote this last week, and my friend told me that I was Shinji at the end of episode 26. Is that a good thing? I don’t know, perhaps some day I can only hope that all of you stand in the centre of a blue rock while all of your acquaintances say “congratulations” to you. Then it turns out that’s your inner space, and in outer reality on the everyone’s dead.

Evangelion 10th Anniversary Boxset: 10 years all over again!

Anime News Network brings the news that ADV is releasing a special tenth anniversary collection of Evangelion in August. Now, call me crazy, but I could have sworn that Renewal of Evangelion (here Evangelion Platinum) was extensively marketed in Japan as the tenth anniversary collection. I distinctly recall reading in NewType, two years ago, reminiscinces of how great Evangelion was back in the day. The tenth anniversary was based not on its airing date, but from the beginning of the production cycle.
GAiNAX didn’t just restore Evangelion for kicks, nor did I replace my original DVDs with Platinum for kicks.

So now we’ve got some sort of false commemoration to wring more money out of this poor franchise. With a $250US price tag, this collection had better be made of solid gold or something, because that’s a huge price to gauge out of people for something they already own a billion times over (you could buy a Wii for that!). Poor Shinji: you’ll get your rest some day.