UK Release of Evangelion 3.33 Delayed Until ‘Potentially’ Next Year

We knew it could happen and unfortunately it has, but due to circumstances outside of ‘everyones’ control, especially Manga Entertainment UK, the UK DVD & Blu-ray release of Evangelion 3.33 has now been pushed back until ‘potentially’ next year.

According to the UK Distributor an ‘exact’ reason for this delay can not be disclosed to the public, but judging from their twitter account, it seems like it was a choice made by the Japanese studio or license holders of the film, rather than a technical glitch.

I wish I could tell u why Eva3 has been plagued by delays, but for the time being I am not at liberty to discuss this publicly, I can tell you that as one of the biggest anime licenses in existence, the IP owners are extremely hands on with every face of the movie’s distribution, packaging and presentation.

Of course the film being delayed again wasn’t the only bad news, as Jerome from Manga Entertainment continued to explain that a 2014 release of the film will become highly unlikely due to the ‘disc masters’ from FUNimation not arriving in time and that they would need several weeks, if not months, in order to prep the film for release, such as packaging, disc authoring and BBFC checks.

Funimation cannot deliver master tapes to us until 21st October, so there’s no way we can release Eva 3.33 before the end of the year. We need at least 16 weeks to author, BBFC cert the DVD and blu-ray.

On behalf of Manga I’d like to apologize for these unacceptable delays. It really is out of our control. I am very grateful for your patience and support.

Regards, Jerome (Manga Ent Ltd)

So there we have it, Evangelion 3.33 will not be seeing a UK release this year, that is unless someone in Japan changes their mind and agrees for everyone to go-ahead with their ‘english’ release plans, but in the meantime we will just have to wait and see what happens.