I read about the release date for the Evangelion 1.0: You Are [Not] Alone special edition DVD announced as April 25th on Furu Anime Panikku and thought that finally, around late April or early May, the rest of the world can see this first in the series of four films that reimagine the Evangelion plotline (through fansubs). But then, I wondered what the packaged extras would be and found this story on ANN wherein this sentence caught my eye:

The extras disc will include the Explanation of Evangelion:1.01 — an exclusive edit which superimposes Japanese commentary text over the actual film to explain each scene to fans.

Wow. I can’t believe that there will actually be an extra that will tell viewers WHAT THEY ARE WATCHING. I’m not sure whether to interpret this as the producers thinking the film is too complicated (not very likely) or as them thinking the fans are too dense to figure it out for themselves using their own eyes, ears and brains! Perhaps they believe there are a lot of first-timers who saw this film in the theater and don’t know the intricacies that a long-time fan would and I suppose I could conceive a certain portion of the audience being that way. But still, the extra comes off as patronizing to me and likely many other fans.

Oh, and there will also be a standard edition release on May 21st for 1000 yen less than the special edition mentioned above as well as a 400-page Complete Records Collection (release date unknown) and a 330-page animators’ drawing collection in April.

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