New concept art from Weta for Evangelion

I consider Evangelion to the best anime series I've ever seen, the thought of seeing images like these up on the big screen years from...wow.
http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=16790

The mech designs kick ass, and some of the peices hint at the dark tone the film should be aiming for. The Rei and Asuka (who is supposedly going to be called Kate Rose or something) designs are iffy, but the suits look good and who knows what the actors playing them will look like anyways.

btw, who is that woman towards the bottom (can't seem to refresh the image all the way)? I'm guessing Misato, but with a different name.

"Misato" is called Susan Whitnell.

Ray... :lol: Now she sound's like some fat guy who plays golf on the weekends. And if they wanted to anglacise Asuka, why didn't they just call her "Oscar"?

Everything looks awesome, but that's only because it' carbon copied from the anime which already looked awesome. The female actors are going to have to be very "tight" to pull those suits off.

Awesome. There are so many neat things they could do with such a film that it isn't even funny.

Wow. I remember New Type US had three of those concepts a few months ago, but with the rest of the new art this movie is looking incredible.

I loved Evangelion, but for a single reason: the relegious overtones. The characters sucked, and the plot development sucked (until the very end), but the relegion kept me coming back for more. I'm very interested to see just how this movie turns out. I'm convinced it'll be visually stunning, but I hope they don't cut out all the relegion to make it "more suitable" for an American audience.

Christian iconography in Japanese games and anime is stupid. Seriously. They'd be doing us all a favour by nixing the ham-fisted allegory and giving us what I think we can all agree is of greater importance: giant robots stomping the living fuck out of each other and their immediate surroundings.

i'm not sure if you suspected it, cv, but most of the religious iconography was added only because it looked/sounded cool. this is coming from anno's right-hand man at last year's otacon (i forget his name.) interestingly, he now regrets doing it, but he never expected the show to become so popular, so it didn't seem like such a bad idea.

edit: his name is kazuya tsurumaki, and he directed the first half of end of evangelion.

Evangelion, seriously, is a pretty so-so anime series once you actually get off of the initial fandom of it. Yes, it was fun to watch, and good at parts, but at the same time, it's nowhere near the best anime ever released.

And, if those names are indeed movie names... can't get that page to load right now... that's total ass. I can't believe that Gainax would allow that, hell, I can't believe that ADV would support it. There are plenty of anime shows on TV now using the proper Japanese names... if little kids can understand and say the names, adult can too.

The sketches are pretty awesome and I'm pretty convinced Weta will pull off some pretty amazing things for this movie. But the movie itself I'm still kinda skeptical on. I like Eva okay enough, but as Shidoshi said it really isn't the best.

As for the name changing thing, I can kinda see why they did it but then again I ultimatly don't see the point. Assuming the movie will take place in Tokyo3... what would be the point in Americanizing it? But as for Rei to Ray... So? Rei is Ray is Rei, whats the point?

Doshi, what anime series do you think are amongst the best? I'd like to know, since it was your reviews of Eva that got me interested in the show in the first place.
If you look at the concept art of the city, it's clear that it's not in Tokyo anymore. The submerged skyscrapers look like a US city.

I'm not a fan of Evangelion, but I'm excited about this movie. Because I am confident that the main focus of this movie will be giant robots breaking shit.

As for the character name changes, I could see someone being pissed about it if it was a Japanese-made film and they tacked them on in the dub. Though, sometimes that's entertaining, but beside the point. If these people are going to be played by non-Japanese actors in a city that isn't in Japan, what sense would it make for them to still have Japanese names? Still possible, yes, but this seems to make more sense for the general audiences. Not that they couldn't handle Japanese names, but stubbornly hanging on to them for a film that is probably going to be a bit of a re-imagining of the whole concept for an entirely different audience than the original reached... yeah, I guess it's kinda silly.