an Anniversary for all the Wrong Reasons: Evangelion 3.33 peorder one year later

Hey there, remember me? Yeah, I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, life has been busy so I haven't had much time for my blog. However this here is something that I absolutely must write because I feel that this here is something in general that must be addressed to anime fans and the dubbing industry as a whole.

If you've been reading my blog you probably know that I am a huge Neon Genesis Evangelion fan. It is my favourite anime of all time and I've written reviews for the series and every single film. Now I was browsing Amazon looking at prices for the extended editions of the Hobbit when I came across this here.

Now you're probably wondering why this issue here is a big deal and why I am pretty distressed over this. If you look at the top of the picture you can see that it says that I pre ordered Evangelion 3.33 on December twelfth of 2013. By next week I will have had Eva 3.33 pre-ordered for a year, want to know the kicker to all of this? Funimation has still not given the movie a release date!

Now of course I have seen the movie, its actually fantastic, I've even thrown a review for it which you can read right here. Now Evangelion 3.33 was released in Japan back in 2012 and in typical Eva fashion received many mixed reviews. However the movie was highly successful and  naturally was labelled for an English release, as where the other two movies in the Rebuild series. 

Funimation Entertainment (or Funi to fans for short) is the company that has been responsible for distributing the recent Evangelion titles to the public. Now I know that there are different distributors around the world for Eva: Manga UK handles, well, the UK, and Madman for Australia. However Funi is the company that holds the primary distribution rights, and every other company has to go by Funi's business model whether they like it or not. Now I'm all for supporting the dubbing industry, I know there is the sub vs. dub debate that will frankly never be resolved. I do know that if it was not for dubbing most anime would more than likely be undiscovered and the wonderful media niche that we all know and love today wouldn't be what is. Of course if you want to support official releases and hate dubbing, there are outlets that you can go to for that but that is beside the point.

I don't really enjoy downloading movies. As someone who really loves film and animation it's just something I can't do. However if I do download a movie/stream (which is hardly ever) it usually is for a property like Eva that wont hit North America for a couple of years, but I always make a point of buying the official product when its released (if I enjoy it which is normally the case). So naturally when Eva 3.33 was announced for a North American release I pre-ordered it without a second thought, little did I know that I'd be writing this a year later without the movie that I've longed for. Of course you can say that I'm being completely childish and unreasonable because there are more important things to be all worked up about, but it's not the delay that's set me off, oh no, the problem lies with Funimation themselves and the blatant lying (up to debate) and lack of any information on the delay of the film. 

Now Funimation is truly a great company I have to get that out there before I continue. They've been in the business for decades now and have provided some of the best dubs in recent memory (FMA anyone?) and brought Dragon Ball out of Japan and into our homes, so you can already see their lasting power within the anime community with some of the best properties under their belt.  Now in order for me to fully explain why so many other Eva fans including myself are upset I'm going to have to paint a picture on the current status of the movie. 

Now if you don't really know what I'm talking about Eva 3.33 is part of the Rebuild of Evangelion, a anime movie series by Eva creator Hideaki Anno which according to Anno  is the true take on the story that was told in the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Eva 3.33 is the third film and unlike the other two films in the series is truly treading in unfamiliar territory. Unlike the last two films, 1.11 and 2.22 which largely was similar to the original series Eva 3.33 is  a fresh  new story which is why it was so successful in Japan. Within minutes of it's original theatrical release fan subtitled cam rips of the film began popping up on torrent and streaming sites. Even when the film was released on home video in its native country fans across seas quickly ordered the Japanese version of the film and fan subbed it for others to watch online, this was how I originally came across the movie. But even then, some fans refused to watch these torrents, they wanted to support the official release of the movie which really shows the dedication of some fans.  Unfortunately some have still not had the chance to watch the movie. 

The last two films in the series that Funi had produced did see limited theatrical runs, so naturally Eva 3.33 was going to get the same treatment. The news of Eva 3.33's dub broke at the 2013 New York Comic Con (NYCC), where a special screening of the dubbed film was shown to hundreds of Eva and anime fans. Two months later Funi announced on their blog that the movie was going to have a official theatrical run with a home release of February eighteenth, the only way that fans would get to see the movie was if they demanded it to be shown at their local theatre. I was lucky enough to have the Niagara Square Cineplex to show the film, not once  but TWICE! Due to the tremendous ticket sails, two showings of the film were shown, one in Japanese the other in English (I saw the dub of the film obviously) 

About one week later the news broke, the dreaded blog post that changed everything. On December the eighteenth 2013 Funimation announced that Evangelion 3.33 was going to be delayed due to the enormous demand for the theatrical showings of the movie. In order to accommodate as many Evangelion fans as possible Funimation extended the films theatrical run in order for the film to be seen by as many people as possible. I think anyone can see that in reality the entire blog post  and move in general  was just for the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, because in reality that's why any company would orchestrate a move like this. So many disgruntle fans swallowed the news and waited. Some were smart and flat out cancelled their pre-orders on the spot, back then it seemed like a rather dramatic reaction but as time has shown us perhaps that move was probably the best course of action. Other distributors of the movie (Madmen and Manga) also  had to delay their releases because Funi held the main distributing rights, and if North America wasn't getting the movie you can damn be sure that no one else would either.

So, fans began to speculate when would the movie be released, many fans couldn't see the film in theatres due to location issues so the home release was their only bet at seeing the movie, and still some fans have not watched the movie yet! Many speculated that the movie would follow the path of 2.22 and be released in the spring (2.22 hit theatres in February of 2010 and was released in April of that year). Many anime movies see home release after theatre runs about three to four months after their initial screening, so this wasn't out of the realm of possibilities, but alas no news came. When I say no news I literally mean that there was absolutely nothing coming out of any of the anime news outlets. Even Funimation refused to comment on the delay of the movie. Fans took to storm on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook asking Funimation what the hold up was, but there was nothing but silence. Even on their own blog post where they announced the delay they refused to say anything (however they have stated what the hold up was but we'll get to that). The delay was annoying, sure, but it wasn't what was setting off fans, it was the pure fact that Funi would not say anything about the current state of the project, even a "we're working on it" would have sufficed, but no they refused to comment.

Now Evangelion is a pretty big title, in fact its probably one of the biggest mecha anime series ever, right next to Gundam. Eva is one of Funi's biggest titles with legions of fans, to leave them in the cold was a very bad marketing move. Of course in order to make everyone happy Funi did announce the release of Attack on Titan, in fact their blog exploded with AoT news, from casting updates to the different variant editions that you could pre-order. After this any Eva posts got smothered by other news as time went on. Even the final two episodes in Hellsing Ultimate got announced during this time frame. In other words it all came

(see what I did there?)

So the seasons changed and low and behold finally after months of speculation news broke out on why Eva 3.33 was delayed. According to Funi the Japanese studio responsible for the film (Studio Khara) were not to impressed with the dub of the movie and demanded that it be changed. So for the time being Funi were being  forced to go back to square one and work closely with the Japanese production company at dubbing the film for a second time. Now having seeing the film  I actually praised the dub, I loved it in fact and found little to no problems with it. Of course even if dubbing isn't your cup of tea almost any anime release comes with the original Japanese audio that you can watch at your leisure.  Now delaying it due to discrepancies between studios  does sound like a reasonable reason as to why the movie was delayed, some people have bought it, I however am not so easily convinced and I'll let you know why.


If you are taking any form of art from another country and translating it to another language for other audiences you more than likely have been working closely with the original creators of said project. Funi is known for creating pretty extraordinary dubs and having good working relationships with Japanese production teams. This movie was being treated completely different from it's two predecessors, it wasn't just having a limited screening, no, Evangelion 3.33 was being shown across the world at festivals and at theatres in a massive theatrical run. This is a big deal, how the heck did Funi not even screen this to both  Khara and Anno!? Obviously the creators of the movie would want to see what is being done to their product and say what needs to be changed. Funi should have been working with Khara from the very beginning of production, so why didn't they?

Now I might be extending my reach a little bit here but I think the major problem all comes down to one simple factor $$. The past two Evangelion movies racked in major profit which I bet Funi was not even expecting, seeing as how Evangelion hadn't really been in the spot light for almost a decade. Like all big corporations that start out doing something because they love it, money and greed always become a major factor in the evolution of any corporate machine. I honestly think that Funi just went ahead and produced the movie without screening it to Anno or Studio Khara, it's the only explanation for why Khara would not be pleased with the dub of the movie. The production time for the English version of Eva 3.33 was done in half the time it took for 1.11 and 2.22 to come to North America. I was surprised that we were honestly getting the movie a year after it was released in Japan, that's almost not heard of when it comes to anime dubbing.  However we have seen a slight increase on the demand and release of both manga and anime within the last 6 years. Even the English version of the Naruto manga is a few months behind its Japanese release (sadly Naruto has ended).Only the highest priority projects get treatment like this. For example the latest Dragon Ball movie, Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods came out in Japan in March 2013 and saw an English release, a theatrical one mind you, on August 5th of 2014. The movie then right after it was finished its tour took two months to come out on bluray,  I own it and have watched it many times now and highly suggest you check it out if you love DBZ.

Of course this is all the rambling of an disgruntled fanboy so why should you care right? I think that any anime loving fan should look at this and actually be ashamed that this is the practise that the business is currently running on. Obviously my statement on Funi rushing production is just an assumption, it is probably not the case and I'm just being paranoid, but you can see all the signs there that this could possibly be the result of a rushed production and a campaign to suck up as much profit as possible from fans. Funimation was even able to release the final two OVA (original video animation) for Hellsing Ultimate, and on time! Even after that entire project was faced with countless roadblocks. Funi was able to push it out while pleasing both Geneon/Universal and the original Japanese Production team. If Funi can release both Battle of Gods and Hellsing Ultimate in a timely fashion than clearly You Can (Not) Redo couldn't be that hard to get on the shelves, let me remind you that the movie was originally supposed to come out in February, Both DBZ and Hellsing were released in October, so that's 8 months past when the film was supposed to be released.

Currently as it stands the status of the project still remains up in the air. The last anyone heard from Funi was last month (November 19th to be exact) when a moderator on their blog finally  noticed the comment section on the post was still going strong, even after the news of the delay was first announced. All that could be reported was  a non answer and news fans already knew.

"We don't have any further updates other than we are working directly with the Japanese studio and the original creator on the home video release. This is taking longer than normal since there are more steps in the process, and the Japanese studio has requested to add their own subtitled track "

As it stands this is all that fans have to go by for now. So far it looks like the movie will be released sometime next year (hopefully), all Eva fans have to do is continue to patiently wait. 

As I look at my pending Amazon order I am always tempted to just click cancel, to just order it when an official release date is announced. But there is a part of me that's hopeful that someday, maybe even tomorrow Funi will pull their act together and finally have this thing completed. I've stuck with it for a year I might as well hold out for as long as it takes. Funimation is a good company but this is completely unacceptable, now this would all fall under first world problems under anyone's books and as a 23 year old I feel like my anger towards the situation belongs to an 8 year old, but hey, I've been waiting for things longer *cough* Final Fantasy XV/Versus XIII *cough*