EVA, worth it?

Stiny!

Ok, here's my predicament: I live in the middle of nowhere, Kerry, but I love manga/anime and the only place i can get it is off the internet. Now, I've been hearing quite a lot about Neon Genesis Evangelion but I've never actually seen an episode. Sounds interesting though. I have ghost in the shell and Akira and I really like both of them. Anyway, I've been saving my pennies and I was just wondering if it would be worth buying the perfect collection from amazon? Would it really be worth the e120 or so?

Art_Wolf

120 - god no

Got mine for 80 off cd-wow.ie

Its good, though hype has blown it a bit out of proportions

CuLT

Personally, I wouldn't buy the "Perfect Collection" for 120e; I'd be more inclined to purchase the recently released remastered version of EVA (with improved colour, 5.1 surround and new cuts) for whatever it'll cost to buy it all together.
It's called the "Platinum Edition" in the states, I think.

Jim_No.6

You could do a lot worse. Personally, it's one of my favorites - it has a huge following of raving eva fanboys, and a corresponding horde of people who hate it for being so popular, but it really has a lot of depth. It'd be €120 well spent.

Beyond that, take a look at Rah-Xephon.

Edit: Or you could spend less, and listen to people who can type faster than me

Stiny!

Art_Wolf wrote:

120 - god no

Got mine for 80 off cd-wow.ie

I've looked on cd-wow already but I can't find it. Do you have a link? Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.
I did also find it on play.com for 104e but it's currently sold out (dangit) :mad:

Infini

Try www.DVDboxoffice.com.
They're canadian and you can make real saving's on them because of the curency difference.

Thorbar

You can get caught by customs and end up paying 21% VAT if you buy something from Canada or America so keep that in mind. No might be lucky and get away with it or it could still work out cheaper with vat included. One thing to consider would be ebay, I've seen some good deals on anime secondhand on it.

Stiny!

oops, I just found the other NGE related thread (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=217634)
so this one was kind of a waste of time. Sorry about that
But let me change the topic of this thread (I can do that with my own thread can't I?) How many of you listen to the Mad Capsule Markets?

monkeyfudge

Infini wrote:

Try www.DVDboxoffice.com.
They're canadian and you can make real saving's on them because of the curency difference.

Under no circumstances should you use DVDboxoffice.com

Lots of people have had really bad experiences with them. I'm sure if you do a search on here you'll find lots of them.

My own experience was actually in trying to get The Perfect Collection. I had to wait months and months. Almost 6 in the end. They eventually responded to me and said that it had been sent back to them, as customs had stopped it and I hadn't paid the duty on it, so they'd sent it back.

This simply wasn't the case, as I hadn't heard a thing from Customs about a demand for payment. So I ring up all the different Customs departments and they have no record whatsoever of stopping a package to me, and also they rarely go through the expence of sending something back. They just sieze them.

So basically dvdboxoffice.com lied to me and wouldn't give me a full refund either, as they charged me some crappy reshelving fee.

DVDsoon.com are quite good value though. Although if you choose standard shipping it can take a while, but the do actually seem to send it to you.

Makaveli

DVDsoon I find are very fast with shipping. I usually have it within 5 days from despatch. Only place faster is CDWow.
DVDsoon are charging for shipping now though, which they didn't do before. Still works out cheaper than most places anyway.

honru

Makaveli wrote:

DVDsoon I find are very fast with shipping. I usually have it within 5 days from despatch. Only place faster is CDWow.
DVDsoon are charging for shipping now though, which they didn't do before. Still works out cheaper than most places anyway.

Heard terrible things about them aswell, although I have never used them before.

I have used dvdboxoffice.com only to wait for a good four months for them to complete an order, so I'd steer clear of that outfit.

I used dvdpacific.com once and they were great, haven't heard anything negative about them so far. I'd go with them if I were you.

Anyway, back on topic. Yes get Evangelion, but you can definetly find it elsewhere for less than €120. Have a look around.

Infini

f®eak s&#169 wrote: »

I have used dvdboxoffice.com only to wait for a good four months for them to complete an order, so I'd steer clear of that outfit.

Ouch I know how you feel. Once ordered Star Ocean from them but it never came. I got a different one in the end but had to wait more than 8 weeks for to get a new one.

Raziel

What's the story with the first 'full-length' NGE? Is'nt there one before Death And Rebirth and End Of Evangelion? I've never seen any of the series, either.

Asuka

If you mean the live action movie, I wouldnt hold out much hope for it. Weta are doing the visuals, so theres a chance it might look good, but there is NO WAY they can reasonably fit the entire story of the series into a single movie. Besides, its bound to be totally Americanised.

The anime consisted of only 3 components - the 26 episode series, the Death and Rebirth movie and The End of Evangelion movie. Even at that, due to various circumstances, the last 2 episodes of the series were re-scripted and re-animated at the last minute, and ended the series on a completely abstract note. The idea of making Death and Rebirth was to summarise the series and add the original (or alternative, depending on how you look at it) ending. However, the summary took so bloody long that it ended up with only about 20 minutes of new material. The End of Evangelion is the alternative episodes 25 and 26 in their entirety.

From a continuity point of view, Death and Rebirth therefore becomes somewhat obsolete (and since it summarises the series so briefly, a bit crap). The TV series' 25 and 26 are a matter of personal taste; when i first saw them in 1996 (on a 4th generation VHS copy, without fansubs, and a translation script printed from the net) I thought it was a disappointing end to the series - but if you know that there is a more satisfying 'real' ending, then they could be quite interesting. The way I would recommend watching it from beginning to end is TV series 1-24 followed by The End of Evangelion, since it doesnt lose momentum that way.

A

Raziel

Nah, I just meant what I thought was the first 'movie' in a trilogy with D+R and EOE. I had heard before that these feature length editions followed on from the series. It's funny, Macross Plus 'the movie' does much the same thing as you've described with Evangelion.

Asuka

Not really; Macross Plus was just a retelling of the story from start to finish (with some shiny new animation), and it didnt lose much in the movie version - since there were only 4 eps of the OVA the movie was almost as long as their combined length. Thats a reasonably common thing to do with a popular OVA series - they did the same with Endless Waltz.

The Eva movies are different, simply because one is rather pointless, and the other isn't so much a retelling of the series as an alternate ending.

It might be closer to compare Death and Rebirth with X, except Clamp did it the other way around. They made the film first, which made very little in the way of sense, but looked pretty, and then they animated a full 24 ep TV series a few years later which actually contained the story.

A

monkeyfudge

Raziel wrote:

What's the story with the first 'full-length' NGE? Is'nt there one before Death And Rebirth and End Of Evangelion? I've never seen any of the series, either.

They did recently release directors cuts of the last few episodes in the series.

I have a DVD called Neon Genesis Evangelion : Resurrection. It's really just episodes 21 - 23 with a few extra scenes.

You also get a special feature on WETA's work on the designs for the live action film.

Raziel

Asuka wrote:

It might be closer to compare Death and Rebirth with X, except Clamp did it the other way around. They made the film first, which made very little in the way of sense, but looked pretty, and then they animated a full 24 ep TV series a few years later which actually contained the story.

Really? Did'nt know that. I liked X, but it felt like it was missing something. I'm sure the fleshing out of the story in the series is much more satisfying.

Asuka

Yes, extremely satisfying. The TV series is one of my favourites.

A

Clinical Waste

monkeyfudge wrote:

They did recently release directors cuts of the last few episodes in the series.

I have a DVD called Neon Genesis Evangelion : Resurrection. It's really just episodes 21 - 23 with a few extra scenes.

You also get a special feature on WETA's work on the designs for the live action film.

And don't forget Neon Genesis Evangelion Directors Cut: Genesis Reborn. It's episodes 24 - 26 with extra bits. (revised and re-edited?)

Mr. Wanker

I would highly reccomend getting a holdof Eva. It's my favourite anime series of all time, and worth having the entire thing in a collection, as you will want to watch it over and over again. you'll notice new little things everytime you do.

one note on what's being said on the movies. its common speculation to simply say "its an alternate ending".. but the endings in themselves were very ambigious, and i simply see it as a alternate take on the ending. the episodes taken from completely inside Shinji's mind, and the movie taking a broader look at the whole thing.

anyway, highly reccomend it.

Raziel

They should just release one definitive version.

pingoo

Mr. Wanker wrote:

I would highly reccomend getting a holdof Eva. It's my favourite anime series of all time, and worth having the entire thing in a collection, as you will want to watch it over and over again. you'll notice new little things everytime you do.

one note on what's being said on the movies. its common speculation to simply say "its an alternate ending".. but the endings in themselves were very ambigious, and i simply see it as a alternate take on the ending. the episodes taken from completely inside Shinji's mind, and the movie taking a broader look at the whole thing.

anyway, highly reccomend it.

Well we could even consider the films (except the summary) like a follow-up on the series, if you show all the eva episodes + the filsm to someone who has no idea what the serie is he/she might not see the difference