GKIDS, which distributes the Studio Ghibli films in the United States, have announced that the highly influential 1990s anime series “Neon Genesis Evangelion” is coming to Blu-ray and digital download for the first time next year.
The boxset will release the 26-episode series and two follow-up films. The announcement comes on the 25th anniversary of the original airing of the first episode of ‘Evangelion’ in Japan.
One of the first titles that transformed what animation is truly capable of, Hideaki Anno’s celebrated series was one of the first major animes to break out in the West and is dubbed ‘essential viewing’ from film critics like David Ehrlich to and filmmakers like Wes Anderson. The story takes place in 2015, fifteen years after Earth has been damaged by a cataclysmic event known as the Second Impact.
In the futuristic fortified city of Tokyo-3, teenage boy Shinji Akari has been recruited by his father Gendo to the shadowy organization NERV in order to pilot one of several giant bio-machine mechas called Evangelion against alien beings known as ‘Angels’.
The series explores the experiences and emotions of Evangelion pilots and members of NERV as they try to prevent Angels from causing more cataclysms. It is famed for its exploration of the human psyche, deconstruction of anime tropes, and heavy themes delving into Freudian and Jungian theory and theology from Shinto to Judaism, Kabbalah and Gnosticism.
After the DVDs went out of print, the series had been unavailable to purchase or stream for over a decade until last year when Netflix made the series and two films available on its platform with a controversial all-new English dub censoring a bunch of key dialogue, and a new end credits song – much to the chagrin of longtime fans. It’s not clear if the Blu-ray print will restore either the original English dub or translations, or the “Fly Me to the Moon” end credits music.
Source: Indiewire
