Eva Monkey Truer

This is just too weird to escape mention. On June 6th, Bandai Namco Games will be providing a program for PS3 owners in Japan that will create a live real time updated news channel, hosted by one Misato Katsuragi. Using the voice synthesis from the Cellius software, and some quantum magic, it will even talk to you in Misato’s voice. You can even customize the set and her attire. How’s that for a crazy promo?

Sources: ANN, Kotaku, and Mainichi.

So I was minding my own business, listening to the Future Synthpop channel on Digitally Imported, an internet radio station that I’ve been listening to for a number of years, and this song comes on, and at some point, I hear a female voice cut in saying “We are the eighteenth angel, the other angels are just different possibilities…”. With cat-like reflexes, I hit the volume key on my keyboard repeatedly to hear Allison Keith’s Misato from The End of Evangelion more clearly. The song in question is Love As Blood (Implant Remix) by Icon of Coil, an EBM band from Norway. And as I said in another entry recently, it’s peculiar and wonderful how Evangelion connects things together, and how you find it in the most unlikely and unexpected places. I obviously cannot put the song up in its entirety, but here’s an excerpt for your edification. If you want to hear the whole thing, you’ll have to buy it or steal it. Either way, I won’t judge.

It’s weird to think that ten years ago, I had to scavenge for Evangelion on VHS tapes in various specialty stores. Because of the difficulty, I had to eventually resort to buying damn near half the series at Otakon one year. Nowadays, Evangelion can be bought from nearly any video retailer, and even at some Wal-Marts. That degree of availability ultimately means two things. Firstly, that as a commodity, the series is profitable, and secondly, that it has earned a sizable amount of popularity.

So it comes as no surprise that it would be included in IGN’s Top 100 Animated Series feature. But number 10? Out of like every animated series ever? I mean I love Eva and all, but that’s pretty unusual, particularly for a list that includes only a handful of anime series.

I enjoyed flipping through the list, despite the annoyance of the feature being split up into separate pages instead of like 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc. Gotta love those websites that get paid for impression-based advertisement.