cody727kirby wrote:Oh, awesome! Thank you for the pictures, looks like a great book. That's nice that it came in so early for you. May I ask where you purchased it?

Ebay.co.uk had an entry from a company called Wordery. They have their own website, as well, of course.

[url]https://wordery.com/the-essential-evangelion-chronicle-side-a-weve-inc-9781926778570[/url]

I misremembered the price a little (confused with another purchase the same day) - but it's still a third off, as well as available ahead of time..

Finally got caught up with this. Thanks for the Amazon.jp links! I wound up ordering several books through them, though who knows if they'll go through -- most sellers only ship to the Kanto region, and since I'm unwilling to use a third party service due to expense that left my options pretty limited. But I think I managed to get all the books I wanted, so my fingers are crossed!

Anyway, I also appreciated the bits on Kaworu from Side B. I really hope a thorough reading of that book will let me resolve 24' in my own mind; I've long suspected that 24' required really careful translation, by a native speaker, to catch the nuances in the script and resolve the apparent conflicts it offers, and if Side B happens to draw attention to that I'll be happy.

Anyway, thanks for the reviews! They were helpful in telling me which books I wanted and which I didn't.

IME refusals to ship from Amazon.jp sellers show up when trying to place the order.

pwhodges wrote:IME refusals to ship from Amazon.jp sellers show up when trying to place the order.

Yes, I got a bunch of those. I kept trying until one went through, and I managed to find one in every case, but I won't know for sure until the order confirmations come through.

Edit: And it just came through! Yay!

pwhodges wrote:[url]https://wordery.com/the-essential-evangelion-chronicle-side-a-weve-inc-9781926778570[/url]

I misremembered the price a little (confused with another purchase the same day) - but it's still a third off, as well as available ahead of time..

Thank you pwhodges, just made my day. Looking forward to getting my hands on this one.

pwhodges wrote:Ebay.co.uk had an entry from a company called Wordery. They have their own website, as well, of course.

[url]https://wordery.com/the-essential-evangelion-chronicle-side-a-weve-inc-9781926778570[/url]

I misremembered the price a little (confused with another purchase the same day) - but it's still a third off, as well as available ahead of time..

Hmmm. Amazon's a bit cheaper, but ordering now still means I'll get it a couple of weeks early. Definitely worth it. Dunno 'bout Side B; it's substantially more, and they don't seem to have a delivery date yet. Guess I'll hold out on that one, see what happens.

Thanks for the info!

Bagheera wrote:Hmmm. Amazon's a bit cheaper,

When I ordered Amazon.co.uk was offering the book at RRP (£29-99). It's now reduced the price to £20-99, which is still £1 more than Wordery. The Atlantic probably makes a difference, though. I notice that Wordery claims to offer free world-wide delivery (though how slow that would be in different places I cannot say).

pwhodges wrote:When I ordered Amazon.co.uk was offering the book at RRP (£29-99). It's now reduced the price to £20-99, which is still £1 more than Wordery. The Atlantic probably makes a difference, though. I notice that Wordery claims to offer free world-wide delivery (though how slow that would be I cannot say).

Wordery was $30 and change, and offers worldwide shipping within ten days. Amazon.com was $26 and change, and ships in two days (for Prime customers, which includes me). Not sure why Amazon.com is offering it for less than Amazon.uk, since it should be the same edition; that's kinda weird.

But Amazon is still pre-order, so you'll get it sooner from Wordery!

pwhodges wrote:But Amazon is still pre-order, so you'll get it sooner from Wordery!

Oh yes. That's why I switched my orders!

OT: LE, do you have this book? It seems to be an Eva encyclopedia of sorts, and I can't help but think it would be a wonderful resource if one actually understood Japanese.

Huh. That reminds me of one of those explaining Eva's mysteries books that I mentioned here, but could be something different I suppose.

Ooh, lots of discussion going on here! Awesome! I just love conversations about Evangelion books.

AR-99: Sounds like you've had some really interesting shopping adventures in Japan. I hope that I'll get to go there someday!

pwhodges: Sweet! Thanks for letting us know about Wordery. Heh, two of the example photos you posted included images that I was thinking of scanning for my review of the Side A book. Great minds think alike.

Bagheera: I'm glad that my book reviews have been helpful for you so far! Out of curiosity, which books did you order? As for the Evangelion Yougo Jiten (Evangelion Terminology Encyclopedia), as SSD mentioned it appears to be one of those unofficial books about explaining Eva's mysteries. However, according to the reviews on Amazon.co.jp, apparently it's one of the better ones... includes explanations of psychological terms used in the show, translations of the German words that flash by when Asuka gets mind-probed by Arael, and lots of other stuff as well. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have much in the way of illustrations, so it's probably not something I would get unless my Japanese reading skills advance further. (Although I will say that doing translations for the book reviews has been good practice for me!)

Literary Eagle wrote:Bagheera: I'm glad that my book reviews have been helpful for you so far! Out of curiosity, which books did you order? As for the Evangelion Yougo Jiten (Evangelion Terminology Encyclopedia), as SSD mentioned it appears to be one of those unofficial books about explaining Eva's mysteries. However, according to the reviews on Amazon.co.jp, apparently it's one of the better ones... includes explanations of psychological terms used in the show, translations of the German words that flash by when Asuka gets mind-probed by Arael, and lots of other stuff as well. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have much in the way of illustrations, so it's probably not something I would get unless my Japanese reading skills advance further. (Although I will say that doing translations for the book reviews has been good practice for me!)

I got 2015, End of Evangelion, Shin Seiki Evangelion Settei Shiryoushuu, and Shin Seiki Evangelion Settei Shiryoushuu for Maniacs. The others were either stuff I already had or stuff that was of no interest (2nd Impression, Kaworu, etc). I also got that encyclopedia I talked about, though since it's unofficial and largely text that seems to have been a mistake. But twelve bucks, so no biggie.

^Cool, I hope you enjoy your purchases! Concerning the encyclopedia, if it turns out to have more illustrations than the reviewers made it sound, please let us know if there's anything good!

Biggest advice I have is, you actually don't need to be as fluent as you think to get around. I managed with basic words and phrases picked up over the years and Google Translate. Having a pocket mobile wifi is a godsend. Any doubts about going based on your fluency, fuckit, just go sooner rather than later.

I went with Pacset Tours, which does Japan-only tours. The guides/owners are awesome and going with them demistifies a lot of the conceptions you may have about going to Japan. I should note that I was on their Third Impact Tour last October, so I owe that thread an update when I can carve out the time. And speaking of books, I bought so many I had to spend $90 to ship the lot back EMS because my check in and carry on were fit to bursting. As to why EMS, it was $2 cheaper than SAL and would get there in 4 days vs. 2 weeks. Would do it all over again and again and again!

Literary Eagle wrote:^Cool, I hope you enjoy your purchases! Concerning the encyclopedia, if it turns out to have more illustrations than the reviewers made it sound, please let us know if there's anything good!

It has no illustrations to speak of. It does seem to be a very good encyclopedia -- it even has English headers at various places -- but most of it is Japanese text. I was surprised to find it is quite small. I was likewise surprised to find that 2015 was quite large. I expected the reverse to be true in both cases, but so it goes.

Also, was really surprised to order these Monday and get them today. That's pretty speedy, and it's free shipping (Amazon, yay!)! By contrast, my copy of Chronicle Side A was ordered at the same time, and only shipped today. Very sad . . .

I posted my twenty-eighth review today! My English copy of Side A hasn't arrived yet, so instead today's review is for Groundwork of Evangelion Vol.3. This book features production sketches from episodes 20 to 26 of the TV series, including some stuff from the Directors' Cut versions. This is a nice book for people who are interested in how animation is made!

Moving on to replies...

AR-99: Thank you for the advice! That's very reassuring to know!

Bagheera: I'm glad those orders arrived so quickly for you! I hope you enjoy 2015, and thanks for letting us know about what the encyclopedia is like.

Also, thanks again to everyone who has contributed feedback, questions, or other discussion to this thread. It's really fun and encouraging to see so much conversation about Evangelion books.

NEW POST

Augh... Okay, so in addition to this week being pretty crazy in terms of real life stuff, today I just received an e-mail saying that something went wrong with my order of The Essential Evangelion Chronicle: Side A, meaning that I still can't review the English version of the book. Sorry for the delay, folks! To make up for it, I am currently scrambling to put together a different Evangelion book review... in fact, not just one review, but two reviews! One of these books is a new interactive e-book that just came out this month, with videos and other cool stuff, so I hope you'll enjoy it. Stay tuned!

***NEWER POST (May 30, 2015)***

As promised, today I have updated with not just one new book review, but two new reviews! One of them is an interactive e-book that just came out a few weeks ago. It's really fun to use! I hope you enjoy the new reviews...

For my twenty-ninth review, I did Groundwork of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo #01, which focuses on production sketches and animation key frames for the first half of the Evangelion: 3.0 movie.

For my thirtieth review, I did E-SAKUGA Evangelion: 3.0 #1, which also focuses on production sketches and animation key frames for the first half of the Evangelion: 3.0 movie, but it's an interactive e-book with videos and other cool features. Awesome!

Feedback is appreciated, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Dang it, LE, quit making me wanna go out and buy an iPad!

I posted my thirty-first review today! This time, it's Groundwork of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo #02, which focuses on production sketches and animation key frames for the second half of the Evangelion: 3.0 movie. Some pretty nifty stuff is included in this book, such as "enshutsu shuusei" (production/direction corrections), showing changes that came up during the production process!

As for my next review, that will be The Essential Evangelion Chronicle: Side A (yes, finally!). Sorry for the delay... something went wrong with my order, so I only received it this week. To make up for the wait, I'll try to include stuff that will be interesting even to people who already received their copies of the English version. For one thing, as many of you may have heard by now, the English version has a misprint, so some text is covered up by a picture. Since I also have the French version, I'll be able to provide the missing text, as well as pointing out any other major differences between the English and French versions. Oh, and I'll also talk about the significance of a particular date provided by the timeline in the book, and what it means for attempts at figuring out dates for the major events that take place during the show. If you have suggestions on anything else I should bring up in the review, feel free to post about it here!

Damn, Asuka, that was like Soryu's MP Eva battle levels of enjoyment...Thankful they altered her expression, since the translated line (translated in various ways) in that sequence isn't clear to some folks, either.