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After announcing it 10 months ago, Madman has finally released information about their screenings of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance in Australian theatres. The film is headlining their (almost) annual anime film festival, which will begin in September this year. King Of Thorn, Summer Wars, and Redline will also be screened during the festival. Madman has also stated that there will be limited screenings of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone during the festival.

• Madman Blog Announcement
• ReelAnime Website

Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (Japanese with English subtitles) will be screening in Montreal at the Fantasia Film Festival 2010 on July 10th at 12:00 PM at the Concordia Hall Theater. The screening will be the original 2.0 on 35mm film. The Concordia Hall Theater is located on 1455 de Maisonneuve O. in Montreal. Tickets will be $8 and can be bought either at the theater, by phone, or over the internet at admission.com (French).

The Fantasia Festival is North America’s largest film festival which plays genre films from all over the world. Fantasia Film Festival 2010 will last from July 8th to July 28th and include films such as “Gintama: The Movie”, Mamoru Oshii’s 2009 short film “Je t’aime”, Katayama’s “King of Thorn” and “Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection” among the list of over 100 films to be screened during the 22 day span.

• Evangelion 2.0 Film page.
• Ticket Info

Run’a Entertainment, who you may remember from the Evangelion race car article, has entered a Kawasaki ZX-10R painted to look like Unit-01 in the Coca-Cola Zero Suzuka 8-Hour Endurance Road Race, the third race in the 2010 QTEL FIM World Endurance Championship Series. The race lasts from July 22-25. Racers Shinya Takeishi, Tamaki Serizawa, and Yoshihiro Konno will ride the bike. See more pictures at the links below.

• ANN article
• Cinema Topics Online (original source)
• Eva Racing website

Evangelion: Complete 2.0 is being released this summer. Early orders will receive a woven bag and a film strip as a bonus. The books have over 650 total pages as well as art and posters by Sadamoto. It will, however, cost you a hefty 12,600円. You can find more details as well as (pre)order the book from here.

Forum member NAveryW was at Fanime 2010 and attended the Gainax Panel hosted by Hiroyuki Yamaga (Director of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Mahoromatic, Wings of Honneamise). He was kind enough to supply us a synopsis. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for to see the synopsis)
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I unexpectedly got a knock on my door earlier and it was the mail man, with my copy of the Evangelion 2.22 “First Press” BluRay. I didn’t have much time to play around with the disc, but I managed to get some pictures on my mobile phone.

I ordered mine from CD Japan and was surprised it arrived almost halfway around the world so soon. I’m told that the CD Japan pre-orders gets you a bonus picture. It’s a little larger than postcard size, came inside a protected plastic sleeve and I got one of a close-up of Mari up close to Shinji’s face (shown in picture to the right), as seen in the 2.0 previews at the end of Evangelion 1.0. It’s a nice free gift, but it’s nothing special.

I opened everything up and the packaging is as to be expected. A folding dark blue case houses the black BluRay disc and on the other side, a slot for the accompanying booklet, a flyer, and most importantly, the film strip.

Contents of the 2.22 BluRay box

The film strip comes in a presentation sleeve almost identical to the one that came with the Limited Edition Evangelion 1.01 release. It opens up off-center with the Evangelion logo on the right and the film strip centered on the left.

The Folding BluRay case and the Film Strip

The film strip that I got features a plugsuited Asuka inside her Eva’s entry plug. I guess I couldn’t ask for anything more. Asuka in her plugsuit for 2.0′s film strip. Although I’m sure there are more coveted shots of Asuka from the film (or even ones of Rei) compared to what I got. I’m happy with it nonetheless. It’s hard to get a good picture of it because it needs to be backlit, and to make matters worse, I only have the camera on my mobile phone. Here’s a close-up of the film strip using my laptop’s screen as the backlighting.

Film Strip of Asuka

In case you’re wondering, that scene is from the beginning of the battle with Sahaquiel as the three Evas are running to intercept it.

Update (5/27): There’s a thread on aimix BBS where people are posting the film strips that they got.

Although the official release date for Evangelion 2.22, You can (not) advance, was slated at May 26th, some online retailers have shipped pre-orders of the DVD and BluRay. Rips of the DVD have already appeared online and hopefully, we can start seeing some pictures of the film strips soon. There’s a few new scenes so the old camrip subs need to be retimed and the new scenes translated (there were 3 major ones). It won’t be long now.

The R2 Japanese release of Evangelion 2.22, You can (not) advance, will be out in a few days (May 26th). Of course, it’s not going to have English subtitles. For those who want a hard media copy of 2.22 with English subtitles can pre-order a copy of the Hong Kong Region 3 release (BluRay Region A), which will also have a Cantonese audio track as well as Chinese subtitles, distributed by Asia Video with a release date of June 25th.

The packaging looks similar to the Japanese R2 release and there’s also limited edition versions of the DVD and BD available from Yes Asia. The Limited Edition releases of the BD comes with the 2.0 Theatrical Program, the DVD comes with projections (I assume you attach them to a flashlight to project an image), and both the DVD and BD will come with a bag and “secret” gifts. For those looking to import, these will come much cheaper than the Japanese releases setting you back by about $31 USD for the DVD ($37 for Limited Edition DVD) and $40 USD for the BluRay ($45 for Limited Edition BD). The DVD and BD will come with Dolby 6.1 and 2ch Japanese audio.

• Neo Vision’s blog on UWants (Chinese)
• Yes Asia HK Evangelion 2.22 Links: DVD (Limited Edition), BluRay (Limited Edition).

That’s right, the Evangelion merchandising department has finally reached the bottom of the barrel, and have decided to sell that too. The “NERV pail” is 30cm (11.8in) in diameter and has a capacity of 20L (5.28gal). Suggested possible uses for the “NERV pail” include a housing for garbage, and with the addition of a few cushions, a simple chair. The “NERV pail” will be released in early August, and will sell for ¥4,980.

• EvaStore link (possible spoilers)

Eva Extra, a free publication from Studio Khara (although 03 was sold in theatres), will have a seventh issue released on May 26th, 2010, which looks to be released in conjunction with the release of Evangelion 2.22 (DVD and BluRay). It will be in A5 format with 24 pages, full color, contains some illustrations by Kazuya Tsurumaki and will be distributed in various stores the Evangelion 2.22 DVD/BD are sold and at Animate.

• Khara Web Blog
• Eva Extra at Evangelion.co.jp