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It’s not often that I look at merchandise here, not because I don’t buy any but because photography is a pain in the ass. Well, not anymore!

I preordered the limited edition Evangelion 2.22 Blu-ray from YesAsia, and it arrived today after being shipped out two days ago. I just love ordering stuff from overseas. Anyway, this is the Hong Kong version, which has English subtitles. Opponents of piracy say you should import your anime if it’s not available in the US, but anime from Japan rarely if ever has English subs. Thankfully, Hong Kong has your back.

The Blu-ray itself is in a cardboard box, which unfortunately got crushed a bit in shipping. The disc is fine but there’s an unsightly fold on the spine of the box. There is also a pamphlet about the movie, and a paper sleeve with the bonus disc.

Additional swag from the limited edition includes the booklet that was given to theater goers, containing images from the movie and more information. I’m not entirely Chinese illiterate, but suffice it to say I don’t know enough Chinese to be able to discuss Evangelion. Maybe I’ll show it to my parents, they’ll think it’s a hoot.

I also got a cloth Eva-01 shopping bag, the kind vegans typically bring to the grocery store. I love Eva, but not enough to walk around in public with this thing.

The last item is quite strange but I like it anyway. It’s a keychain light, styled to look a bit like Eva-00’s entry plug. One side is marked “EVA-00” and the other is marked “NERV ONLY” though I don’t get why NERV would have restricted flashlights. Upon seeing this, I thought “shucks, I already have a keychain light. This one is less useful in that it isn’t also a bottle opener.” Except when you turn on this keychain light, it projects an image of Rei!

Look at that! If I’m ever in an emergency situation where I have to show someone what Rei looks like right fucking there, I’m covered.

Getting to the Blu-ray itself, the disc is region A so it will work in players in the Americas, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong. The picture and audio are good quality, with Japanese Dolby True HD and DTS Master HD options available, as well as a 2.0 Cantonese dub (fairly amusing). Subtitles are available in traditional Chinese and English. The menu is stylish but odd in that the background is a random bunch of trees. Not knowing anything about a bonus disc, I popped it into my PS3 only to discover... nothing. I put it into my PC and found that it was just a blank CD-R. Apparently it’s just one of the extras they pack in with the home video release. Man, there is some rubbish Eva merchandise out there. If you actually want the special features, that’s a separate $15 purchase.

If you do want to import Evangelion 2.22 (and I highly recommend it), I suggest you save yourself $15 and get the regular Blu-ray version. The only reason to consider the $55 gift set is for the portable Ayanmi projector, as I’ve taken to calling it. It’s awesome, but in an insanely stupid way. Otherwise, this is a far cry from the likes of the epic Haruhi Vol. 1 limited edition DVD.

Tags: Rebuild of Evangelion, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shin Seiki Evangelion, merchandise

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All for the sake of enlightenment.

Tags: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shin Seiki Evangelion

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Don't worry, no spoilers.

I used that picture as the title graphic not because Mari is hot—okay not only because Mari is hot—but because it in many ways encapsulates what Evangelion 2.22 is: a little bit of heaven, a little it of pain. As you may have noticed, today is May 26, the official release day of Evangelion 2.22 for home video. Through a process I don’t understand, fansubs had hit the internet as early as two days ago. So while the full review can wait until I get my imported copy, I’ll go over my first impressions of this Eva thing today.

The Mythology

The thing I like about Evangelion’s mythos is that it’s only sort of there. Neither the series nor the movies go to any great lengths to explain how every little thing works. You glean it through chatter, small details on the screen, and bits of animation. They only show you what you need to see. So though you get the sense that there are rules (however cryptic) at work, you don’t spend an inordinate amount of screen time learning them. If you wanted to find out more, you went to offscreen sources.

The Rebuild of Evangelion films handle the mythology the same way, showing only what you need to see for dramatic impact. Evangelion 2.22 is steeped in the mythos more deeply than its predecessor, making its changes and revisions more obvious but maybe not clearer. The reasoning behind these changes is not obvious, save for one practical production concern: most fans would have been able to guess what happened next if the writers had stuck to the source. Instead of trying to put a new spin on existing material, they went through the difficult process of creating mostly new material. As a result, Evangelion 2.22 manages to sustain a level of tension and drama that would have been lost had it simply been a retelling of the TV series. Starting around halfway through the film, during one of the climactic battles, it becomes apparent how the revisions have helped the film.

A Fan’s Perspective

As a fan, I enjoyed picking out the various differences between the film and the series. I found myself subconsciously filling in many details, which lead to a movie-watching experience that felt longer than it was. To me, Evangelion 2.22 is more, better Eva and it rides on the shoulders of the original work. As such it was easy to lose myself in the excitement and newness from scene to scene.

You can probably already guess that there is a lot of fanservice here, not just in the sense of partial nudity but in the amount of the universe that you see. Eva 1.0 mostly limited its scope to Shinji’s transformation into an Eva pilot. Eva 2.22 brings in more characters, more tech, more Angels, and more of the arcane wheelings and dealings characteristic of the end of the TV series. It breathes new life into old material.

A Non-fan’s Perspective

Still, it’s important to consider (strange as it may be) that there are people who don’t like Evangelion. What’s in it for them? That’s when the structure of the movie becomes a problem. Though the story deviates significantly from the original, the movie is still structured and paced like a connected string of television episodes. Story arcs don’t really span the entire film, so some scenes feel disjointed or rushed. Some effort was spent on developing the characters and building to the conclusion, but I feel it may not have been enough. There is a lot going on, and maybe the movie would have benefitted from cutting back the amount of battles to just one or two big ones.

In the worst case, you’ll have a viewer who hasn’t seen Evangelion at all going into this film. He’ll be able to divine the basic conflict, but the narrative would fall apart for him toward the end. The character relationships so critical to the series were mostly built in Eva 1.0 so the writers don’t repeat their efforts here. And even with a working knowledge of the Evangelion mythos, some scenes more or less lost me. I’m not sure a neophyte would have much of a chance.

To Be Continued

Basically, Eva 2.22 is somewhere between George Lucas’s enhanced editions of Star Wars and Ronald Moore’s reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. The fundamental chain of events is the same, and the tone is the same, but many of the details are different. Eva 1.0 built a good foundation for the Rebuild movies to stand on, and Eva 2.22 absolutely needs it. If you have that foundation, the movie is largely successful. But I would like to have a structure and story that acknowledges its cinematic nature. It needs exposition and more of a “big picture” to the script. Treating this like an extension to a TV show is wrong, and short changes the material.

Tags: Rebuild of Evangelion, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shin Seiki Evangelion, Cinema File

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As May rolled in, I found myself counting the days until Evangelion 2.22’s release. I heard that Evangelion 2.22 is so good that in clinical trials, 83% of viewers actually walked away with larger genitalia. In the meantime, I felt a gaping emptiness that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then I realized that I was supposed to be writing for Makigumo. I went to work immediately, thinking of quick top ten lists that I could bang out with minimal effort. But that’s not what I’m about. So I did some soul searching, and really dug deep into an issue that has always bothered me. What the fuck is up with the lyrics to the Spice and WolfED??

Spice and Wolf is an anime, one which I like despite the fact that its stories are based on economics (a subject so boring I suspect it was devised by a nefarious government as some kind of PSYOPS exercise). Robert Mugabe believes something similar, but the difference between him and me is that someone actually put him in charge of a country. A whole goddamn country! Anyway, Spice and Wolf is mostly about money, and not in the cool, scandalous way that Wall Street is about money. It’s less about greed, deception, and 80s power tripping and more about a straightforward merchant trying to make his way in life. I guess there’s a little bit of greed and deception, but it’s not as cool without the 80s backdrop and Michael Douglas.

Although the series itself is somewhat down to earth, its ending song is absolutely insane. Sure, some people write song lyrics that make no sense, thanks to the magic of hallucinogenic drugs. But “Ringo Hiyori” actually spins some kind of narrative. The trouble is, I have no idea what the fuck is happening in this story. I imagine if Tim Burton went on an LSD bender and directed a movie, Spice and Wolf’s ED would be a pretty accurate novelization. It starts:

Seven apples on a witch’s tree
With seven seeds to plant inside of me

I believe this is a reference to Snow White, which is the first fictional work that came to mind containing apples, witches, trees, and the number seven. The bit about “seven seeds to plant inside of me” is somewhat disturbing, as “seed” used in this manner usually refers to sex. So we can rule out the Disney version of Snow White and go straight to the Grimm version, which probably had more gang rape (I couldn’t be arsed to look it up).

In springtime I grew a magic song
Then skipping along, oh I sang the song to everyone

This part shows a striking lack of scientific knowledge. I checked the Wikipedia article about songs, and found no mention of any biological components. In fact, songs are completely synthetic—they do not grow from anything, and are instead manufactured by people. However, you should note that the narrator has grown a magic song, which obviously would play by different rules. It’s true that the “seeds” which have been planted inside her were never identified. My assumption was that they were of the dwarf semen variety, but when I googled “dwarf semen” I couldn’t find any relationship to songwriting. I did come across some fairly disturbing pictures, though. Apparently these songs also grew out of the narrator, which leads me to believe there would be serious abdominal wounds, lacerations, and hemmorhaging. Thankfully, the next line implies that she recovered.

I looked at the world through apple eyes
And cut myself a slice of sunshine pie
I danced with the peanut butterflies
Till time went and told me to say hello but wave goodbye

Apples don’t typically transmit light in the visible spectrum, so we’ll chalk that one up to the aforementioned lack of scientific knowledge. There is also little evidence to suggest sunshine can be baked into a pie, so I guess she just cut herself a slice of regular pie. The reference to peanut butterflies is a strange one. I can only assume that, after her ordeal with the seven dwarfs, the narrator discovered a new species of insect in the woods. The last line suggests an anthropomorphism of time itself, which is instructing the narrator to be duplicitous. I think here we have an allegory about a young woman who was gang raped, became delusional, and then became unwilling to trust others as a psychological defense mechanism. Dark stuff.

A thousand sugar stars
Oh put them in a jar
And then whistle round the world
Oh whistle round the world
I’m a little wolf inside a girl, you say
And off I’ll go from June to May
Oh whistling round the world

Here we enter the cosmological phase of the song. For one, stars are not made of sugar. But the primary components of sugar are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, which can be found in stars. A typical jar wouldn’t even fit one star much less a thousand, so I can only assume that our intrepid narrator is tripping her goddamn ovaries off. “I’m a little wolf inside a girl” indicates the dual nature of the narrator, who has the shape of a girl but was forced to develop the vicious personality of a wolf due to her past trauma. Finally the end of the chorus suggests that she has actually discovered time travel, as it is clearly impossible to go from June to May.

Thankfully the madness of the ending credits stops there. But I don’t like to do anything half-assed for Makigumo, so I looked up the full song and it keeps going.

I met a golden swan upon the road
Who was a handsome prince, so I was told
I asked it the way to yesterday
Then I was a sailor, and through the day I sailed away

The part about the swan is a reference to the myth of Leda and the swan. In it, Zeus takes the form of a swan and seduces Leda, the queen of Sparta. Naturally they boogie and, well, it all devolves into bestiality, as most Greek myths do. However in the song, the bestiality is only implied. What is not implied is time travel, which has already occurred once but now our narrator is asking about it again. I take this to mean that time is turbulent and difficult to navigate, so you’d have to stop and ask directions even if you’re only going back one day. Then using her time powers, our narrator is able to complete a naval training course and operate a ship. Whether she sails as a civilian, an enlistee, or a commissioned officer is left ambiguous.

Bluebird seas I sailed
With mermaids riding whales
Oh whistle round the world
Oh whistle round the world
I’m a little wolf inside a girl, you say
And off I’ll go down Wonder Way
Oh whistling round the world

Wait what? I don’t even... huh??

Through apple eyes
Oh there are rose-coloured skylines
Where flying silver spoons
Eat melting marmalade moons
Through apple eyes
I see for millions of miles
The sun’s a diamond shining
In the nighttime of a summer day

This part is just complete insanity, the ravings of a lunatic possibly driven mad by her experiences traveling through time. Spoons eating marmalade? The song ends with the “thousand sugar stars” chorus, leaving me none the wiser as to the events which transpired in this narrative. I can only assume these are the ravings of a delusional mind. Dwarf gang rape might not even have been involved. Trying to visualize this song, I saw things I’d rather not have seen. Let my experience be a lesson to you. Never try to understand the Japanese unless you fully understand the extent of their dementia.

Tags: Spice and Wolf, Okami to Koshinryo

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Senkou no Night Raid hasn’t really leveraged its historical setting thus far, instead opting to be more like a retro version of Ghost in the Shell. Hell they even do that telepathic communication thing, which looks and sounds like the equivalent technique in Ghost in the Shell. I didn’t find the episode particularly well structured, as it tried to establish the back stories of our ensemble cast without a single line of exposition, and very little context. It would just cut into flashbacks at random times, though I found Aoi’s flashbacks to be most appropriate to the story. The main plot involves the arrival of a Russian musician who is a suspected spy. Our heroes (maybe? I don’t really see the purpose of their counter-espionage shenanigans) have to stop him from getting a message out to... someone. Wake me up when a proper story arc begins.

Tags: Senkou no Night Raid, Super Serial

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