NTT Docomo released a promotional video (strangely, in English, with a British accent? Australian accent?) of their new SH-06D Nerv smart phone. We previously made a post with pictures of a mock-up of the phone but these videos look like the working UI. As unusably cluttered as it appears, the 3D-ish UI still looks really awesome. This promo tells about the creation of the phone within the story of Evangelion.

DAIGO Eva report is also doing a 5 segment review of the phone, but it’s in Japanese. Though around the 3:40 mark, you can him play around with what looks like a working SH-06D. This is the first of five.

Source: Official SH-06D Video page

Update:
The Verge did a review of the phone:

Read the rest of the review at The Verge

In the middle of March, Evangelion and Docomo announced that they’d release a new Evangelion themed phone, similar to the SH-06A Nerv phones that they released almost 3 years ago to coincide with the release of Evangelion 2.0 where the phone is featured within the movie. The SH-06D is also made by Sharp, but unlike the previous model, is a touchpad smartphone that will run Android (2.3 Gingerbread). It also boasts a 4.5-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution and 16 million colors. The phones will come pre-loaded with some Evangelion apps and a theme designed by Studio Khara.

The phone itself is on display at the NOTTV booth at the Anime Expo 2012 (held at Makuhari Messe in Japan) this weekend and some first look pictures have been snapped of it.

The NOTTV Booth at Anime Expo 2012

Back in January, Arianne, the artist who sang the song Komm Susser Todd that played during the start of 3rd Impact in the movie, The End of Evangelion, announced on her Facebook page that she would be working on new versions of the song, along with a video. Around the 20th or so of March, she posted that the song and video are done recording and are in post-production. You can see some of the photos in the related forum thread.

There’s a site called Komm Susser Tod 2012 that was put up (currently just a place holder) in mid-March but you can hear and buy the 2 versions on Smash My Box. There’s a 7 minute long version plus a shorter dubstepped version. You can also here other recordings by Arianne at that site.

• Smash My Box
• Facebook page
• Komm Susser Tod 2012

According to Anime Anime, the next Evangelion film will be distributed (in Japan) by T-Joy instead of KlockWorx, who distributed 1.0 and 2.0 among many other anime titles. T-Joy announced on the 6th that they’d distribute Evangelion 3.0 along with the new 009 Re:Cyborg movie, Tiger & Bunny, The Beginning movie, and Houkago Midnighters to be amongst their first jump into anime. Khara chose to go with T-Joy because they’re a larger distributor. T-Joy was established in 2000 in collaboration with Toei Company and its group companies. They also plan and operate cinema complexes in and around Tokyo as well as a distributor of programs via satelite.

• Anime News Network
• Anime Anime Post
• T-Joy Co., Ltd. official website

土曜にエヴァのアフレコでした。(でも多分あとまだ、何日かアフレコあると思うけど）で、劇場版エヴァって、声かれちゃうんだけど、やっぱり最後の最後でかれちゃったばい。ばってん回復はいつも、2週間はかかるんだけど、今回はなんと！昨日のオフで回復ちまちた(^-^)/

— 宮村優子 (@386miyamura) February 27, 2012

This tweet from Yuko Miyamura, Asuka’s voice actress, seems to indicate that she was doing dubbing for the new movie (3.0? Final?) last Saturday, February 25th. Don’t know a lot about the production timeline of the last two movies or whether this is supposed to be good news (production is moving forward) or bad news (maybe they won’t finish 3.0 by fall 2012), but there hasn’t been much in the form of updates in the recent months so it’s good to at least hear something about it.

 According to  Minna no Eva Fan and Crunchy Roll, Sadamoto’s Manga has finally reached Volume 13, which will be the last volume in the Manga series (previously revealed by Sadamoto to be the final volume).  As of this writing, Stages 84 through 90 (7 Stages) of Volume 13 have been printed in the seinen manga magazine Young Ace.

UPDATE: Volume 13 is planned to be released in Japan this year. Discussion with MinnaNoEva Fan Blog revealed that because of the small number of pages in Stage 90, it’s possible (but still pending) if Volume 13 will be the conclusion of the manga. More information will be posted as it becomes available.

A quick update for those who didn’t see khara‘s or our tweets late last night, there’s an official Evangelion Facebook page that contains a movie poster for 3.0/Q in the spirit of the previous 2 posters for 2.0 and 1.0. It also reveals that the color theme will by a cyanish blue where 2.0 was orange and 1.0 was red.

Also, the page links to the updated Evangelion website that has a similar image of the poster with navigational tabs at the bottom that takes you to info about each of the movies. The 3.0 tab takes you to a page where they announce that on January 18th, their official facebook page was launched. The FINAL tab is white, possibly indicating that the color theme for the final movie, due in 2013, will be white.

• Official Evangelion Facebook page
• Updated Evangelion website

The official Evangelion website http://www.evangelion.co.jp/ was updated for New Years with new information: The International title for Evangelion Q (to be released in Fall 2012)  is You Can (Not) Redo. Evangelion ? was also revealed to be released in 2013.

Kotobuyika is releasing a 1/100 scale “NERV Headquarters Commander 1” VTOL aircraft as seen in the new Evangelion movies. It’s about 19cm long and based on the pictures, it looks fairly detailed. Release date is set for April and will run 4725 yen (including tax).

There’s more pictures at the Evangelion VTOL page at Kotobukiya’s website.

Not news but this is a neat little video found on the internet.

Japan’s NTV has a weekend movie slot called “Friday Road Show” (金曜ロードショー) that usually have different animated intro/openings. Here is one featuring the Angels from the new Evangelion movies (and Rei). On August 26, the Friday Road Show broadcasted a TV version of Evangelion 2.0 as well as 1.01 back in 2009.

Here’s the one from July 2009, the 1.01 broadcast’s intro:

Other (non-Evangelion related) openings from the “Friday Road Show”.