Netflix releases their first major Anime series

Posted by pinoy1tv on September 18th, 2019

s of this writing, the only legal way to own a copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s 26-episode run is to make an expensive roll of the dice. As of June 21, anime fans won’t need to worry about it if they have a Netflix account, but if you’re still in the market for physical media, options are limited. Amazon lists two different editions of the Platinum Collection — a complete DVD edition minus the End of Evangelion and Death and Rebirth films — sold by third parties. Priced at around 0 when released in 2005, the sets now run at least 0.

Even at this prohibitive price, this is just one in a cavalcade of Evangelion bootlegs that have littered online markets over the past two decades. The majority of those listed on eBay seem to be bootlegs. This is the state of the market for the most influential anime of the past quarter-century.

Those tricked into buying one of these bogus copies shouldn’t worry: Many others were as well. A common pastime on the Evangelion subreddit is some schmo, hoping they got a deal, presenting their dubious purchase to the audience. In most cases, someone brings the bad news: “The clear cases are a dead giveaway.” “It only has 3 discs, so it’s probably really compressed.” “It’s the exact same as [mine]. I never thought it was a bootleg since the menu, music, quality and episodes all work well.” The poster is often disappointed but not necessarily surprised.

Kissanime series

Not everyone cares about legitimacy. The original show has been out of print for so long that many justify buying bootlegs or using streaming sites, as long as they are high-quality reproductions. Some vocal Redditors are proud of the strange bootlegs they find. (“It was totally worth the I spent on it lol. I’m just happy that I have the show and I can watch it whenever I want.”) Some worry over the ethics of watching the show on an illegal site like Kissanime, a strange, adorable quandary in this era of amoral, ubiquitous streaming.

There isn’t anything in anime like Evangelion, nothing that has been so popular but has made itself so scarce. Gainax, the anime studio that created it and other iconic series, is now a shell of its former self after key staff left to found Khara and Studio Trigger years ago. Illustrious shows from the same era that have smaller but similarly mythic nostalgias about them — Serial Experiments Lain and Revolutionary Girl Utena come to mind — have found their way onto streaming platforms and high-profile Blu-ray releases, but the easy money from the Eva license remains on the table. Aaron Clark of the fansite Eva Monkey couldn’t think of any comparison either. “Eva is, like, that unicorn,” he says. Bootlegs are the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Eva fans have had to do to watch the revered show in the last ten years.