Today, November the 5th, is a most auspicious of nights. I know of no reason why it should ever be forgot. Amongst other things…its the two year anniversary of ReVolutionOfEvangelion.org!

State of the Fansite

I think we’ve done a lot to be proud of, but things can be a lot better.  Not least of which, things got derailed this year because I had pneumonia this past Spring, and I’ve had to put work before play this Fall to make sure I stay ahead on my graduate school work.

Nonetheless in the past year other members have really stepped up when I wasn’t here, and run their own panels at Anime Boston, and Anime Central in Chicago.  I always really wanted this to grow to the point that if a meteorite fell on my head, it would continue on without me.  Also, I have recently taken steps which will stabilize things at New York Anime Fest.

I missed a lot of news which I’ll be trying to catch up on in the coming weeks.  Generally speaking, this year we had the excitement of Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0:  You Can (Not) Advance; I wonder if the final two Rebuild films are going to match up to that experience.  Rebuild 1 was enjoyed by many but ran into some criticism that it was mostly introduction, and stayed too close to the original TV series.  States-side, while I think FUNimation did a great job on Rebuild 1, there was a lot more buzz for Rebuild 2 when it came out, what with Rebuild 1 being their best-selling title of the year and all.  Rebuild of Eva 2 was, to me anyway, a perfect mix of starting to change the source material without straying too far away from what we tonally think of as “Evangelion”; it was great that they stopped relying on the old storyboards and started taking full advantage of their bigger movie budget.  Who can say what Rebuild 3 and 4 will be like, if they change drastically more?  Time will tell…sooner or later…

Also as you can see from the (sporadic) updates I’ve been making since Fall began, among other things, REVA wrote the cover-story on Rebuild of Eva 2.0 for Otaku USA magazine, the last anime-dedicated regular publication in North America.  I hope that really got the word out about our fansite, as well as help spread the word about Rebuild of Evangelion.

The general goal now is to get more done next Christmas/Summer break, to make sure everything is *finally* “up to speed” as the definitive Evangelion resource, by the time Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 comes out in Japan:  the release date has been tentatively announced for “Fall 2012″, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are delays.

Finally, we’ve started doing what no fansite with aspirations of becoming “the theonering.net of Eva fandom” can do without:  cast interviews.  I’ve started posting up some English-dub cast interviews.  REVA was always meant to be a rejection of the silly subs vs dubs divide, and to thoroughly embrace English dub actors.  These aren’t the days of ten years ago, when people seriously wished English dub voice actors bodily harm.  They’re like rock stars to us!  And they give some fun insight into the making of Evangelion.

We’ve got work to do.  But the best is yet to come:

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