Neon Genesis Evangelion - Platinum Collection 4

ON the Mark   April 5, 2008
Number four. Just as good as 1 through 3. NO NOT BUY THESE OUT OF ORDER. it will make even less sense.

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Amazing quality   December 23, 2007
I bought this item to help complete a collection of the series. I was wonderfully surprised with the condition the item was in.

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Interesting   August 25, 2005
This dvd in my mind is not as exciting as the other dvds, yet it still sheds some light on certain characters.

In the first episode, we learn about Misato and her past. There is also an extremely cool scene in which the evas must stop an angel coming to earth. I think one of the more interesting scenes of the series is when the three kids are sitting on a cliff watching the sky without the illuminated city. The creator must of thought about this scene for a while, as it is perfect.

The second episode talks about Ritsuko alot. The magi are introduced, yet they aren't really made to seem that important later in the series.

The final episode is not particularly interesting to begin with because it is a recap of things you will have already seen. The end of the episode talks about Rei a little bit, and that is important for later.

If you loved the first three dvds, my review isn't going to stop you from buying this one. If you haven't seen the series yet, do yourself a favor and watch the entire series. I have talked to some people who didn't like the first dvd or saw a few episodes in the middle. Once you watch them all, you can truly appreciate the series.

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Getting Better & Better   April 25, 2005
This series continues to grow on me as I watch it. Volume 4 contains three episodes, 12 - 14, in the continuing saga of the giant Eva mechas' battle against the ruthless and mysterious "angels" bent on destroying the remnants of humanity left on Earth.

Episode 12 - We learn something about Captain Misato Katsuragi's past, and the reason she joined N.E.R.V. The ninth angel Sahaqiel is plummeting to Earth. The only way the Evas can stop it is with their bare hands?!?

Episode 13 - More character development, this time for Dr. Ritsuko Akagi. We learn it was her mother who developed the three supercomputers known as the "Magi." The tenth angel Ireul appears right inside command headquarters as a computer virus.

I applaud the presence of strong female characters such as Misato and Ritsuko in this series.

Episode 14 - An odd combination of a recap episode. Recaps the battles with all the Angels thus far. Recap is punctuated with glimpses of the mysterious organization known as Selles, that seems to have some power over N.E.R.V. and Commander Ikari. We also have a strange poetic, monolouge by Rei. Like I said, an odd episode.

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This is becoming an awfully boring serie. (6 of 10 Found this Helpful)   February 9, 2005
And once again another volume in the Platinum series has been released but unfortunatly its beginning to look as if this series, which started of very promising, can't fullfil the expectations which were created over the past releases.

This is still the Platinum release which offers an enhanced release of the original Evangelion series. It features better picture and sound quality - the sound even has been remade to meet 5.1 surround requirements - but all the extra's which one can expect from such a release are beginning to look much less special than they once did.

At first the number of episodes has been reduced from 4 to 3 (featuring episodes 15, 16 and 17), thus its getting at the same level of the original release. But all the extra's themselves are becoming mere re-runs of things already seen in the past as well! I really expected much better from ADV, especially when you take a look at another release of an outstanding Anime series; Robotech. This too is undergoing a re-release right now but when comparing the original boxed release of Robotech - Macross saga (3 boxes containing 3 dvd's each (2 episode disks and one special contents disk)) with the current Evangelion Platinum series the winner would still be Robotech; won by variation in every account.

So; apart from the 3 episodes on this disk it has a 12 page booklet, features an animatic of episode 15 (the same thing we've seen on disk 2), a commentary with Tiffany Grant (we've already met her on the previous 2 releases) and Matt Greenfield (we've heard and seen him on the previous release as well) and a "documentary" about (what a surprise) "That little red haired girl" where Tiffany Grant shows us her Evangelion collection (toys, posters, etc.).

Now; don't get me wrong here. This is a decent release with 3 cool restored Evangelion episodes, lets not lose track and forget that in the end its all about the cartoon itself. But having said that I simply cannot deny that this release is starting to look like a product which centres around a company and a few persons and totally seems to ignore what this is all about. While I consider the documentary about Tiffany's collection not that bad it would have been more interesting to focus on where those toys came from, get more into the hype called Evangelion. And although its nice to listen to yet another commentary I think that an interview with the original Japanese artists of the serie would have been more interesting. Allthough its nice to have the clean opening and ending on every disk so far it would also have been interesting to get into the shock which Evangelion has managed to create with episode 16. Even if they would have gone into that little extra detail about how the show was almost cancelled; showing us the warnings which have been send back then...

To summarize: ADV is making a decent collection but I can't begin to wonder if all the extra's are meant to be about the Evangelion serie or are mere there for the fame and glory of ADV and its co-workers. I'm not denying that they're doing a very nice job when it comes to the DVD releases and creating extra dubs. But please let us not forget that this serie is originally Japanese, with Japanese voice actors and a very rich history which goes back much longer than the people of ADV.

Is this disk worth it ? I suppose so. Still; if you don't care much about extra stuff like animatics, commentaties and such I'd seriously consider the orginal release. Although I think this collection is good fun, *nothing* can beat an original.

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