Hello,

the localized version of the 1.0 and 2.0 CRC was announced almost 2 years ago and infinitely delayed (so you know it was an official Evangelion product), and it has now finally released in Italy.

I am yet to get my copy delivered, but there is confirmation of what was expected: it's actually based on the 2019 softcover re-release, meaning that it does not include the storyboards and most importantly the interview section.
The storyboards were published separately, but the interviews have not actually been re-printed in any format since the 2012 reprint of the original CRC books.

Oh cool. I imagine this will make them very easy to translate. Thanks for reminding us, heh.

EDIT: Wait, no interviews? Really? They have no plans to release them?

Too bad it's not the interview parts. But either way, good for you. Here in Germany we haven't gotten anything Evangelion merch related since the mid 2000's.
Anyway, I have the Japanese boxsets of the first two CRC's, desperately waiting for Groundworks to continue and release the third and fourth one already!!

FelipeFritschF wrote:EDIT: Wait, no interviews? Really? They have no plans to release them?

I got my copy and I can confirm they are missing.
Comparing it with the first release of the CRC this is the exact same material with the exception of the storyboards and the interviews, so it's based on 2nd version of the CRC books released in Japan (as also mentioned in the credits at the end, "originally published in Japan in 2019").
Same content, same fonts, same bonus poster included.

Some photos of the 1.0 book:



The 1.0+2.0+2.22 pack also comes with a pretty neat hard box, too bad mine got damaged during shipping



I'm not sure what khara plans to do with the interviews at this point. 1.0 and 2.0 interviews' never got re-released in Japan after 2012 and they never published any interview for 3.0 and 3.0+1.0.
The 30th anniversary of the series is next year, so maybe they will release them as part of the anniversary celebrations.

I imagine they will indeed be re-issued... in Japan, possibly in China, possibly in Korea. A western release seems unlikely, not at the least because it means translating a few hundred pages for what is a very niche market (not even just Eva itself, but the kind of people who care about the interviews specifically). There are so very few licensed translations of Eva material in the West, and usually they are very short texts as part of something bigger, so the precedent isn't very good.