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Evangelion rumour false
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Anime News Network spoke with representatives of both Manga as well as ADV today.
According to Manga the rumour is just that, a rumour and absolutely false. Manga has taken it's time with this one, part of the reason is that Manga wanted to get all the original VAs from ADV's dub of the Evangelion TV series. Lining up the original VAs of course was a little difficult and has caused them some delay. In response to some fan enquiries Manga has mentionned some undisclosed legal issues which have added to the delays.
ADV pointed out to us a fact that many of you already know, as the original owners of the licence for the Evangelion TV series in North America they had first dibs on the films. However due to ammount of money that the Japanese owners asked for the rights to the movies ADV decided to pass on the opportunity. According to what we were told today this is still the case, if the Manga were to lose the rights for some reason ADV would still not be interested in picking them up.
There are two notes that I would like to add to this, first of all, these are official company responses from ADV and Manga, and as is always the case there may be differentiations between the official and the real stories. However, in the meantime I will trust the official responses from the people who know best over the unooficial news from someone who is really an outsider to the licensing issues.
The second item I would like to point out, is that VA's are outsiders to the industry, as much as we all love them they can not be regarded as entirely reliable sources of information about any pre-production information. Sure they have contacts in the industry, but so does the receptionist at Urban Vision. This isn't to say that Anime News Network, or any other Anime news site shouldn't post the rumours that come from VAs, but just that they should be taken with a grain of salt.
