Is that what they...
Is
that what they're calling it these days?
Ah, damnit, always too late with my lame puns...
and tomorrow the final Chapter begins
...it says "Yesterday" for me, so new Chapter today...? ;P
How did everyone first get acquainted to the EVA series?
First touches were probably a video game magazine that covered other things from Japan here and there, and aside from a few minor bits here and there (and covering the N64 game) had an article about it once - though that didn't really go beyond "these are the characters, they use these "EVA"s to fight these "Angels". Curious, but didn't think too much about it.
Then actually watched it on TV (or rather recorded it and watched later) around 2000. A channel here used to have "Anime nights", were they showed several movies and OVAs from like 1-6am. Most of that was pretty medicore to outright bad stuff, but was my first introduction to more mature anime. Not in
that sense, but generally "cartoons" not mainly targeted at children... Well, not
just in that sense, they did actually once do a (softcore) "Hentai night" and their stuff often had at least quite a bit of fanservice. So when once they didn't go for movies or OVAs but decided to show NGE, spliced together, over 3(?) such nights, well, my expectations were more than subverted, going from medicore fun rides to heavy-hitting Evangelion.
Ending happened, didn't understand, looked stuff up on early internet, saw even more stuff that I understood even less, learned about EoE, became a little obsessed on getting my hands on that fabled more detailed ending (seriously, no idea through how many versions I went of that. First one didn't even have subs.)
Funnily enough, as big as a fan I was at that point, fanfics didn't came into play until later. I don't quite remember how I got into those, but the first fics I read were actually from another fandom and only then I wondered, hey, maybe there are stories like that for NGE as well? Not sure if it was the first, but I eventually came across a page that had German translations of some classics like Child of Love, and most particularily Higher Learning, which really got me hooked.* Binge read through everything on FF.net that seemed mildly interesting to me (ah, the times when you still had time for something like that) and eventually figured to write my own and the rest is history.
(* with a bit of unfortunate case of "don't meet your heros", the translator of those stories who essentially got me into the whole thing, did not seem to like me/my stuff at all. When I translated the first "Ikaris" chapters, she (or at least someone using her name) left some of the most negative, if not outright hostile reviews I ever got. Not sure if she took my friendly little jab at CoL wrong
and way too much to heart, but years later, on another page, posting the T2t translation, she did it again, so whatever I did must have really peeved her...
)
ed:
when I got the 2001 Limited Edition DVD box set by OVA Films.
Subtitles were the only thing we had before the Platinum version by ADV Films; and they were glorious!
Oh yeah, still have those. The entire series squeezed on 3 DVDs with expectable quality. But it was NGE on DVD so the best thing evar! (didn't the company get into trouble for them too? That they didn't actually have the license for that release?)
