Look! A shirt with the best pilot

[Foodistasty]

http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Tees/WebExclusives/Evangelion+Kimoto+Girls+T-Shirt-10235657.jsp
LOOK EVERYONE LOOK <3 IT'S THE BEST PILOT ON A SHIRT!

[Sailor Star Dust]

Polyester? :( Why can't it be cotton?

Still, nice to see an official/fitted girl's Eva t-shirt, for once.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Pretty sure this isn't official.

[CJD]

You seemed to have posted the wrong link. You said best pilot but all I see is Ayanami.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Pretty sure this isn't official.

Hot Topic has printed/licensed official Sailor Moon shirts recently, so I'm thinking it is.

[delispin25]

NOOOOOOOO!
GODDAMMIT! FUCKING HOT TOPIC, YOU FUCKING RUIN EVERYTHING! GODDAMMIT!

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Hot Topic has printed/licensed official Sailor Moon shirts recently, so I'm thinking it is.

Did they go through Viz or whatever for that?
I'm pretty sure no one in the west has Eva merchandising rights.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Doesn't Great Eastern Entertainment/Animation have the rights? They also have rights to various Sailormoon goods.

Edit: For the lazy

Eva http://www.geanimation.com/infoonly/characters_list.aspx?CharacterID=225

Sailor Moon http://www.geanimation.com/infoonly/characters_list.aspx?CharacterID=236

( http://geanimation.tumblr.com/ and https://twitter.com/geanimation, too)

[CJD]

Why is all their Eva shit sold out...

[Sailor Star Dust]

It's more of a listing of what they sell. Try Amazon or RightStuf to buy things.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Well at least GE has somewhat legit looking copyright notices on some of their products. Still shady looking, especially with a site that clearly hasn't had an overhaul in over a decade

Either way my personal policy will remain to buy directly from Japan and not give filthy gaijin middlemen any money.

[Sailor Star Dust]

That's probably wh they use Twitter and Tumblr. Trust me, they're legit. ;) I have merch of theirs from 10 years ago and have newer ones today.

As for that Rei shirt, I'm assuming Hot Topic knows better than to sell bootleg stuff but I dunno.

[AR-99]

Why is all their Eva shit sold out...

Only resellers can order from GE Animation directly.

That Rei shirt is a GE design and they have an Asuka too.

I have a couple Eva merch that GE has put out but their stuff is not the highest quality. Would likely get it if I wasn't paying retail though. The one thing I am happy with is their Asuka button. Would not wear a Rei button but they could have used a much better image.

[CJD]

Shame. See that Asuka daki they have is the one I saw at Otakizzle, but from what I've seen the only version of it available is the same as the one that was there: the image is printed directly onto the pillow instead of on a pillow case. I can't even find a high res version of it to get a custom one made, either.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Aww... I thought it was gonna be Touji.

[AR-99]

Still shady looking, especially with a site that clearly hasn't had an overhaul in over a decade

They are straight outta Compton.

I can't even find a high res version of it to get a custom one made, either.

Those are based on the blister packaging for the Pajamas Time figures. Found a high res scan of the Asuka one (can PM you the link) but not the Rei one.

[CJD]

Hahah nice I have that fig. Do pm pls, maybe I can work with it to get something worthy of my waifu.

[AR-99]

Since Great Eastern came up in this topic, I noticed that they too arose in ANN's latest Answerman column. Here's the relevant discussion:

InvalidName asks:

Right Stuf's Shawne Kleckner's comments about anime merchandise on last week's ANNCast, particularly merch for mid-tier franchises and not just big hits, reminded me of the company "Great Eastern". I saw their name and logo on a Cowboy Bebop wallscroll I bought at Anime Weekend Atlanta a decade ago and assumed they were an importer, but looking at their Facebook page, I gather they're more of an actual licensor/manufacturer. What can you tell us about this company?

Great Eastern Entertainment is a company that I didn't know a lot about either, but I know they've been around forever, and I occasionally hear about them acquiring new merchandising rights for anime shows. I reached out to their CEO Kent Hsu, who was nice enough to spend some time on the phone with me to fill in some cracks.

Great Eastern was started in 1995, when Hsu -- a lifelong manga addict who owned a gigantic Chinese-language manga store in Southern California -- tried to strike up some licensing deals to become a manga publisher. The companies he approached rebuffed him -- they already had distribution strategies in place -- but suggested that he might try his hand at the merchandise market instead. As it so happened, Hsu's family in Taiwan had been doing manufacturing for decades, and had connections everywhere in that world. So that's what he did.

As of today, Great Eastern is the leading manufacturer of licensed anime and manga merchandise for the US market, with offices and manufacturing in Los Angeles, Taiwan and in Mainland China. It's still a fairly small outfit -- only 80 people --despite having hit licenses for shows ranging from Naruto and Bleach to Free! and Hetalia. The company keeps a low profile. They maintain the Facebook page you linked to, as well as a Twitter account, but they don't bother getting a booth at anime conventions. "If I went to Anime Expo, of the 200 or so booths there, probably 70 are selling my product. I wouldn't want to compete with my customers like that," Hsu explained.

He needs the support of retailers, since bootleg merchandise is rampant, still accounting for 85% of the market, he estimates. Most consumers can't tell the difference, and many retailers love the lower costs. "Bootleg manufacturers have complete freedom. They don't have to get approvals, they don't have to pay royalties, and they can move a lot faster. They also can manufacture a lot more at a lower cost and sell worldwide, where we can only sell in North America."

Still, things are good these days, despite the limited retail space given to anime products, and the virtual firehose of new shows constantly coming out of Japan. Hsu can only juggle around 200-300 shows at a time, but he constantly bids on new shows, just to stay an active participant. Product is sold online and through specialty shops, as well as through stores like Hot Topic, Books-A-Million, TransWorld and Hastings. But with over 2,500 products available, no retailers can carry it all. Product lines range from keychains and T-shirts to wall scrolls, posters, headbands, bobblehead figures, towels and nearly anything else you can think of.

Hsu is still a fanboy, and still reads a lot of manga (though it's mostly seinen stuff these days). He's also trying to expand into non-anime properties too (with dedicated non-anime staff -- last time he tried this, he realized he didn't care about non-anime stuff and let the product lines wither). But his overall goal is still trying to make cool stuff that makes fans happy, to the extent he's allowed to by licensors, at least. "I really wanted to make a Death Note notebook, but the licensor wouldn't allow it," Hsu lamented. "They were too worried that someone would get their name written in the notebook and then get murdered, and somehow they'd get sued for it." Which, sadly, IS something I can totally see happening.

TL;DR

They have been around since 1995.

"As of today, Great Eastern is the leading manufacturer of licensed anime and manga merchandise for the US market, with offices and manufacturing in Los Angeles, Taiwan and in Mainland China."

"[Hsu] needs the support of retailers, since bootleg merchandise is rampant, still accounting for 85% of the market, he estimates. Most consumers can't tell the difference, and many retailers love the lower costs."