Rebuild of Evangelion

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This article or section contains information about one or more upcoming films. Details will change as the release date approaches and more information becomes available.

Rebuild of Evangelion (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版 ,Evangerion Shin Gekijōban^?, lit. "Evangelion New Theatrical Version") is a tetralogy of animated films which are a remake/re-imagining of the original anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is being produced by Studio Khara in partnership with Gainax. Hideaki Anno wrote the first movie and will be the general director and manager for the entire project. Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki will direct the films, while Yoshiyuki Sadamoto will provide character designs and Ikuto Yamashita will provide mechanical designs. Shinji Higuchi and Tomoki Kyoda will provide storyboards for the first film.

In September 2006, the October edition of the Japanese anime magazine Newtype first reported that the new cinema series Rebuild of Evangelion would be released in the summer of 2007.^[1] On September 9, 2006, Gainax's official website confirmed that Rebuild of Evangelion will consist of four films. The first three films will be an alternate retelling of the anime TV series, featuring new scenes, settings, backgrounds, characters, and newly available 3D CG technology, and the fourth film will present a completely new conclusion to the story. Another stated intention of this series is for it to be much more understandable and accessible to non-fans than the original TV series and films were.^[2]

[edit] Film Titles

"序,破,急(jo-ha-kyu)", originated in gagaku which is Japanese classical music, roughly correspond to "beginning", "middle", and "end" and are used both to describe the acts of a Noh play, as well as movements in Classical music.

Although the series title is normally written using the katakana Evangerion (エヴァンゲリオン ^?), the film titles in Rebuild replace the e (エ ^?) and o (オ ^?) characters with the obsolete we (ヱ ^?) character and the infrequently used katakana wo (ヲ ^?), respectively. This does not mean the word "Evangelion" is pronounced any differently in the films, it was just a stylistic choice. Further, the word frequently appears in the films using Latin characters, and in these instances it is still consistently spelled "Evangelion".

As was done with episode titles in the original series, each film has an original Japanese title, and a separate international title in English picked out by Khara itself.

[edit] International Adaptation and Release

[edit] Evangelion 1.0

The majority of the Rebuild of Evangelion is very faithful to the original show. Shown here is a side-by-side comparison of the first showing of Sachiel, with the original on the left and the Rebuild version on the right.

The first international screening of the film was on October 12, 2007 as the closing film of the 2007 Pusan International Film Festival in Japanese with Korean and English subtitles.^[4][5][6]

The first film has been further released in South Korea (January 24, 2008), Malaysia (July 1, 2008), Singapore (March 13, 2008), Hong Kong (April 3, 2008), Taiwan (April 18, 2008), Germany by ufa Anime (October 2008)^[7], Italy by Dynit (October 30, 2008)^[8], Australia by Red Ant Enterprises (November 12, 2008)^[9] and a planned release in France by distributor Dybex, starting with an out of competition screening at the 2008 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.^[10][11] The most recent premiere for the movie has been announced for Los Angeles on April 11, 2009^[12].

In November 2008, FUNimation Entertainment issued a cease and desist order to fansubbers of Evangelion 1.0 on behalf of NTV, along with several other anime properties. ^[13] On December 31, 2008, FUNimation announced that it had acquired the rights to the first Rebuild of Evangelion film.^[14] Their website currently lists November 10, 2009 for the film's release date^[15].

No official statements have been made as of yet regarding the official English casting for the film(s), although several of the voice actors from the original English dub of the series, including Tiffany Grant^[16] (who voiced Asuka Langley Soryu), and Spike Spencer (voice of Shinji Ikari) ^[17] have expressed interest in reprising their roles. Grant pointed out, however, that the series was dubbed over a decade ago in the mid-to-late-90's, and most of the original voice actors have simply moved on and can't be found, citing how even for the Evangelion films and Director's Cut episodes for the original series, several voice actors did not return.

[edit] Merchandising

At Toy Fair 2007, it was announced that "petit-eva (ぷちえう゛ぁ ,puchi eva^?)" called Petit Eva: Evangelion@School would be produced for Rebuild of Evangelion, though they would feature a very different "super-deformed" design. ^[18] A later announcement was made of these figures also being adapted into a series of video shorts, based around Evangelion characters as students and teachers at Tokyo-3 NERV School. ^[19] The Revoltech action figure line also features the redesigned Evangelion units from Rebuild, and even a special accessory pack featuring the Rebuild versions of the ESV Shield & Positron gun.

[edit] See also

Evangelion portal

• Newtype
• Gainax
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Revival of Evangelion

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• (Japanese) Rebuild of Evangelion website
• (Japanese) Yahoo! Japan: The statement by Hideaki Anno and the bulletin movie
• (English) Anime News Network: Translation of Anno's statement
• Rebuild of Evangelion at the Internet Movie Database