A week and a half ago, Evangelion 1.0 was finally released on Bluray entitled Evangelion 1.11. Not only was this the initial Bluray release for the new movie, but it also adds another 10 or 15 minutes of additional footage into the mix.
Today, I got it in the mail! I tore upon the Play-Asia envelope, quickly unwrapped the cellophane and put it into my Playstation 3. Thanks to the advent of Bluray technology, "they" decided to redistribute which territories fit into which Regions.
For DVD Regions, the world was split into 6 regions. Unfortunately, the US and Japan were split. Japan and Europe were snug into Region 2, but the US and Canada were in Region 1, all alone.
Bluray is different. The world is now split into only 3 regions. All of the Americas, Japan and the Philippines occupy the same territory. And Europe is on the outside with almost everyone else. That's good! Now the US has the ability to play Japanese Blurays at our convenience.
This only gives the ability to play the Bluray, of course. There is no Bluray magic that transforms the speech into English or anything. It is what it is. And this particular Bluray only offers Japanese Audio with no Subtitles.
3 months ago, I finally downloaded Eva 1.0 and watched it, though I had a little trouble. It's kinda weird that I waited so long to finally watch it considering how much I love the Anime. I watched it and absolutely loved it. But the quality was pretty bad. It was good for Internet standards, but there were some scenes that were rough.
That's the main reason I bought the Bluray. I wanted to see this film with absolute clarity. And Evangelion 1.11 does not disappoint. It is crystal clear and absolutely beautiful. The sound is amazing too!
Also, It's not like I need the subtitles, anyways. After spending so much time getting the subtitles to work on the copy I download back in March, I wondered why I wasted so much time. I've seen the Anime almost 100 times now and basically have the whole thing memorized.
It's annoying that there are no English subtitles. Half of the reason I buy any movies these days is to share it with people. And I can't really share this with my friends because they don't know Japanese. We could attempt to watch it, and I could probably "translate". But that would really be confusing. Especially for my friends who've never seen Evangelion before.
Oh well. The American release is in November.