Yahoo Japan recently conducted a survey, which asked otaku which anime girl that aired in a 2009 series would they wish to marry more than any other? Although now that otaku are seemingly capable of actually marrying their 2D dream girls, maybe this isn't the kind of thing Yahoo should be encouraging.

The top winner is unbelievably surprising- Mari Illustrious Makinami from Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0. I mean, seriously? I'm surprised she made the list at all, much less coming in first place. Neither Rei nor Asuka break the Top 10 either, so Mari managed to crush both of her predecessors. I'm a bit surprised at who came in at #2 as well, but the rest of the list makes sense (in other words, a lot of tsundere). Check out the top 10 below:

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Holy sweet jesus. What we have here is the first official figurine of Asuka Langley Shikinami in her test-version plugsuit, seen exclusively in the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 film. There are seemingly hundreds of different Asuka figures that have been released over the years, but this is the first to have her in a new official outfit like this.

This new version of the classic EVA plugsuit was worn by Asuka towards the end of the film when she test piloted a new EVA. Since a new outfit was never even hinted at in the trailers or anything, fans were taken aghast by Asuka's surprisingly revealing new uniform. I mean, yowza. That orange part is essentially see-through.

Outfit aside, I love Asuka's overall look here. Great face, & lovely flowing hair to go along with it. Seriously, you can't call yourself an Asuka fan if you don't order one of these. I put my order in instantly. In fact it's so awesome & I'm such a big Asuka fan, maybe I wont be doing her justice unless I buy two of them. =b

Retail price is 4725 yen (~$50), quite a good price actually. Though that probably has to do with the fact that she's smaller than your average anime figurine. Average tends to be 1/8th scale, but Asuka here is only 1/10th scale. You'll have to wait awhile before importing her too. She wont be hitting Japan until May 2010.

Source: http://www.hobby-wave.com/LINE_UP/kanseihin/2009/asuka

Gainax has come out with some official Neon Genesis Evangelion dakimakura (character body pillows) for fans of the EVA girls to fall asleep with. Based upon the new Rebuild of Evangelion movie series, there's one dakimakura each for Rei, Asuka, & even Rebuild-exclusive newcomer Mari. Each one shows the girls in their attractive skintight plugsuites, though while Mari gets her nicer looking pink plugsuite instead of her garish green one from earlier in the film, Asuka is left in her classic red plugsuite instead of the much more revealing test suite seen in latter half of the second film. Oh well, it still looks good on her.

Due out in Japan in March, the unfortunate news is that they retail for 10,500 yen (~$115) each. So if you want to sleep with all three girls, that'll run you a whopping 31,500 yen. However, I do believe that each of them are not just mere dakimakura covers (as is usually the case), but actually are already pre-stuffed with a full-length body pillow. That helps redeem the price tag a little. You also gotta get a kick out of the description for these items:

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The very popular & extremely awesome Japanese fanart site Pivix has announced that they'll be hosting a Twilight art contest in honor of the upcoming American movie sequel "New Moon." But wait, that's not the best part. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (the character designer & manga creator for Evangelion), Hideo Kojima (creator of the Metal Gear Solid video game series), & Ryuji Gotsubo (illustrator of the Japanese versions of the Twilight books) will be serving as the official judges of the contest.

So yes, in a nutshell, the guys being Evangelion & Metal Gear will be judging Japanese fanart of Twilight. All three judges are said to be big fans of the teenage girl angst novels. It doesn't get much weirder than that!

Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-11-02/eva-metal-gear-creators-judge-twilight-art-contest

According to a recent interview with Newtype Magazine, a producer working on the Rebuild of Evangelion movies has said that work on Evangelion 3.0: Q has progressed ahead of schedule. It is now reportedly set to come out in Summer 2010. Due to the huge success of the second film, Studio Khara is no longer limiting the films' budget. This allows them to increase the staff for the third film, which will result in the same high quality but done in much less time.

It took nearly two years between the first & second films to come, so having only a year to wait between two & three is great news indeed. I wouldn't say this is 100% set in stone yet, but it does seem pretty solid. Of course let's not forget that Rebuild 3.0 was originally scheduled to come out in Summer 2008, & that sure as hell didn't happen. Although I'm pretty sure these last two movies wont be 45 minutes anymore either, so at least we're getting more story out of this extended waiting period.

Source: http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2009-September/004918.html

At the 47th Amusement Machine Show in Japan, there was a special display that Evangelion fans around the world would die to see in person. In honor of the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 movie, they had some really big Eva figures/statues on display. Some would say the main attraction was the gigantic work of art that is Unit-01. In addition to being tall as all hell, it's artwork & attention to detail is simply amazing. & it's yours to buy too, for the low low price of 1.24 million yen (~14,000).

But I'm sure many fanboys were actually eying the life-size figures of Rei & Asuka instead. Designed to be the same size as the girls if they were real life, the attention to detail again is amazing. Asuka especially looks astonishing, with her hair alone looking fantastic. Both of them were on sale as well, with the asking price being the lower amount of 430,000 yen (~$4,800). & you know what? I would actually consider buying the Asuka one for that amount. o_O Check out a bunch of close-up pictures of each here:

http://en.gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20090917_eva

A bit more caught up now, here's the August 2009 issue of Megami Magazine! & what better title to grace the cover right now than Rebuild of Evangelion? Rei, Asuka, & newcomer Mari are all dressed in their swimsuits. Unfortunately, for the fourth issue in a row now, there was no giant pullout poster. There were a few extras to make up for it though, such as a pseudo pencil board thing that had the girls of K-On on one side & the magazine cover of the Eva girls on the other. & speaking of K-On, there was a little mini book for the series as well:

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Above you'll find an exclusive look at the preview for Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0, which was shown at the end of 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance. It's a cam-corded video, & a pretty bad one at that, but at least it's something. Between the bad quality & the fast moving footage, it's pretty hard to tell what's going on in the preview. There is however one very noticeable spoiler towards the end. Leave it to Asuka to make wearing an eye-patch look hot. =b Still a pretty weird change, though.

Below, you'll find an amazing trailer for a movie called RoboGeisha, from Noboru Iguchi. After that is the latest trailer for one of his other new films, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein girl. Plus, a look at a new Ultraman film- with 50 Ultra-men!

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Anime Expo was a bit quieter this weekend when compared to years past. There weren't tons of new announcements made by every company, but FUNimation did have the most things going on.

In terms of new licenses, they've FINALLY gotten the DVD rights for the first 13 episodes of DragonBall, something they've been trying to get for the past decade. Now that they have those, Funi will start re-releasing the entire DragonBall series in remastered season sets, similar to what they've done for DBZ & GT. Season 1, the first 31 episodes of the original series, will be released on September 15. They also got the anime adaptation of the Nintendo DS game "Sands of Destruction" (World Destruction: Sekai Bokumetsu no Rokunin). Both Funi's season set & Sega's American release of the game will hit in Spring 2010. Finally, in a very up the the wire last second announcement, they cleared the rights to Production I.G's Sengoku Basara. Funi also stressed that they haven't lost the One Piece DVD license & DVD sets will continue to come out. They also stated that they don't have the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 movie yet.

FUNimation confirmed that they plan to launch ShoDojo.com, a brand new online anime community site to take the place of their now defunct animeOnline. Thousands of streaming anime episodes will also be a part of the site, meaning they're probably planning it to compete with Crunchyroll.

FUNimation also announced the dub cast for Slayers Revolution. & they're keeping most of the original cast! Best news I've heard all con. The fabulous Lisa Ortiz will resume her role as the lead character Lina Inverse, & most of the others will also be the same. The only exception is Xellos, who will now be voiced by the (relatively speaking) newcomer & extremely talented Michael Sinterniklaas. He will also direct the dub. Pretty interesting how FUNimation, which is located in Texas, is letting all the recording for this series go to New York. Especially considering Zelgadis' VA no longer lives there & has since moved to join the California voice actors. The main cast:

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After nearly two years of waiting, Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance finally debuted in Japanese theaters this past weekend. The film opened at the #1 spot in the Japanese box office, earning over 512 million yen (~$5.3 million) in its first weekend. It was shown on 120 screens (versus the first film's 84 screens), but earned about twice the amount the first film did in its first weekend back in 2007.

A preview trailer for Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 was shown at the end of the movie, which has been titled "Q quickening." The English subtitle for the film hasn't been revealed yet, but will likely include "(Not)" in it somewhere. As for the second film itself, plenty of websites have written up summaries of the film. While 1.0 was mostly the exact same as the TV series, 2.0 begins to change things drastically. & with all the surprise twists in the second movie, 3.0 looks like it'll be nothing at like the finale of the anime series. At this point I'm going to share my thoughts on what I've read, so beware of massive spoilers after the jump.

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This week's column actually has much more in the way of American movie trailers, but everything featured here should still be of interest to anime/Japanese movie fans. Kicking things off is FUNimation's brand new English dub trailer for Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0! They've done a great job at it, so I can't wait to see the English version. Unfortunately, even though Funi announced that they'll be giving the film a limited theatrical run, I wont be able to catch it on the big screen. It is VERY limited. In fact, most of the theaters they're listing are in Canada. You can see if you're luckier than me by checking out the theater list in the link below.

There are still a few Japanese trailers here today, including one for a film called Air Doll (about a sex doll that come to life) & a new trailer for the freakish Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. & after that, some American-made but pretty cool stuff.

http://www.funimationfilms.com/events.html

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DokiMajo Plus:

Now that E3's over with, let's take a look at some of the exciting gamees that are just coming out or just announced. A big Japan-only one is the third DokiDoki Majo Shinpan game for the DS. This time they look to be expanding upon just touching young girls' bodies, with more gameplay being involved. But don't worry, there's still plenty of touching going on as well. Though compared to the more recent KimokawaE for the DS, DokiMajo now seems very mundane in terms of perverseness.

Below you'll also find videos for the latest Haruhi game for the DS, as well as the brand new Idolmaster for the DS. Yup, Idolmaster is going portable. There's also Evangelion's Misato reading the news, the scary Ju-On (Grudge) based game (for the Wii of all systems), an Astro Boy Movie game shown at E3, & more:

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To help promote the upcoming Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 film, Bandai Namco Games will start putting up a software on the Japanese Playstation 3 that allows gamers to watch a news program hosted by a CGI version of Eva's Misato. The "Misato Katsuragi News Project" will launch on June 6 will offer up to date news on the stories of the day, such as politics, the economy, sports, & of course anime. The software uses an advanced voice synthesizer that makes it seem like Misato really is delivering real time news.

PS3 users also have the option of customizing the NERV News 24 studio backdrop, as well as Misato's clothes & hair. It doesn't seem very likely for this awesome sounding idea to make it over to America, unfortunately.

Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-27/eva-misato-hosts-realtime-show-on-ps3s-in-japan

Anime Boston was held this past weekend in, well, Boston. FUNimation was on hand to make no less than two big announcements. The first was about a new license- Spice & Wolf! Kadokawa USA actually licensed the title for an American release last summer, but were looking for a distributor to take care of the dubbing & DVD releases for it & other titles (the others currently remain without a distributor). For fans of the series, Funi has stated that the official romanization of Horo/Holo's name is Holo. The license is only for the first season, with the second season premiering in Japan this summer.

FUNimation's other announcement was for the dub cast of the Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 movie. While most of the roles have been recast with Funi voice actors, the voices of Shinji, Misato, & Gendo will be the same as ADV's dub of the Evangelion television series. Actually the voice of Gendo is the one used in ADV's Platinum redub of the series, as the original VA left the industry some time ago.

Probably the most disappointing change for fans is that Amanda Winn Lee wont be returning to voice Rei Ayanami. & while I would prefer to have as much as the original English cast come back as possible, with the exception of Shinji & Misato, it really doesn't matter what the other characters sound like. Shinji & Misato have iconic voices in the dub & are impossible to replace, but the same doesn't really hold true for everyone else. & yes, that includes Rei. Sure she's a major character, but considering how quiet & soft spoken a character she is, her voice just isn't that memorable & is relatively easy to replace (of course Rei fans might argue otherwise).

One other iconic voice that is impossible to replace is that of Asuka, who doesn't appear in the first movie. The fact that so few of the original actors came back makes me a bit worried that Tiffany Grant might not be back as Asuka. But considering that dub Asuka IS Tiffany Grant, I can't see how FUNimation could get anyone else but her to do the role. Funi, you better do it!

Interestingly enough, Greg Ayres is back for Rebuild 1.0, but NOT as Kaworu, which he played in ADV's Platinum redub. Rather, he's now playing the role of Kensuke. Quite an odd decision, but considering that he only played Kaworu in the redub & not the original English dub, perhaps Funi believed it didn't matter as much to make a change. A change they most likely felt was for the better. (Having Jerry Jewell voice him actually fits pretty well, IMO, & is a closer match to Kaworu's original dub voice.) The entire cast list below:

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Apparently Japanese cellphone companies are trying to target otaku as their next source for money. In the past week, two different cellphones modeled after those seen in anime have been announced. Firstly there's this extremely cool looking phone based off the phone used by Akira in Eden of the East. I mean just look at this thing. Gorgeous! It's being made by NEC, but not much else is known right now.

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