Apparently, Gainax hasn’t finished squeezing enough Yen of this anime, even though it’s already 7 years old. Gainax launched a campaign called The Renewal of Evangelion (NOT related at all with the fake movie “The Reprise of Evangelion”) that consists basically in loading the market with a Super-Dobly 5.1-surround-widescreen-mega-director’s cut-ultra-super-duper-posta-posta-chucha-chucha re-launch of everything that carried the Evagelion name. More precisely:
The exclusive box of DVDs with eleven CDS and a 96-pages long book about the series. The first eight CDs have re-made versions of all the TV series with some scenes that where cut like and explosion of the Eva and Adan in Gendo’s hand. The ninth has the movie that resumed the TV series plus a few new scenes (Known as “Evangelion Death (True)”. The tenth has the “The End of Evangelion” movie and the eleventh has several interviews and a lot of scenes that where never used in the TV series because they where planned for the movie, but where never used so they where half-forgotten. These scenes include parts of the TV series that where meant to be even longer.
Thousands of different toys that include: SuperDeformed designs, the Eva01 with a metal armor (Where the hell did that come from?), Rei and Asuka in weeding dresses, plushies, etc.
A new brand of CDs (Because the three million singles, remixes, collections, etc apparently weren’t enough)
A new artbook with original designs for the anime.
The eighth tome from the Manga (Which I already got :P)
But the two jewels of this collection where the recently launched “Girlfriend of Steel 2” (Also called Iron Maiden) which is based in that 5-minutes sequence at the end of the final chapter in which they show a world without Eva, Nerv, Angels or any of that stuff and the kids being reasonably normal. It’s a “Date game” that’s based on one simple idea: Everybody wants to screw Shinji. Rei (A new girl in the school), Asuka (A childhood friend) and even Kaworu.
By the way, this game was adapted to another Manga series by someone named Fumino Hayashi, which was released in August 24th by the Kadokawa Shoten editorial. I’ve seen it, and the designs stink.
The second one is the PS2 game “Shin Seiki Evangelion 2” that is supposed to be a “Real-lime simulator”, which means you get to live as Shinji and do all his chores, as well as defend the planet from the Angels. It’s announced that the Eva01 has a new armor in it (I have a pic here but I’ve got no scanner)
The big question: How much more can you squeeze out of Eva?
Totally unrelated: To open up the “Who killed Kaji” debate, the mange finally got to that part. It still doesn’t show who did it but it gives a few new details: The free Misato AFTER Kaji gets shot, the shooter wears white butler-like gloves that really look like Gendo’s and you can see that his hair is short and messy.