Evangelion: 2.22 Sells 319,000 From Day One

Sure enough, a new sales record for Japan has been set. With 195,000 Blu-ray Discs already sold yesterday (the remaining 124,000 being DVD copies), the home video edition of Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance has dwarfed even the "Michael Jackson's This Is It" documentary film's record Blu-ray sales in Japan, of 122,000 copies. Furthermore, it completely obliterated the former anime record holder for Blu-ray sales - Gundam Unicorn's first volume, which only sold 56,000 copies in the first week; let alone the first day...



A question still begs itself, however: whatever happened to the other 500,000 pre-orders, from those "over 800,000" that had been received by early May? Or, rather, conveniently estimated by King Records - the film's home video distributor in Japan. It's possible that some have switched their pre-orders from this Japanese version, over to that recently announced Honk Kong version. It's not only cheaper, but even has multiple audio tracks and subtitles, including English subs. The only downside being that it'll be released one month from now, on June 25.

As is often the case with such anticipated titles, some Japanese stores broke the street date for Evangelion: 2.22 and released it a day early. The folks from Gigazine went to one such store and took plenty of pictures, 'cause it happened; and they also felt "quite lucky" to get an Asuka filmstrip with their Blu-ray copy.


P.S. The first progress report video was posted by the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park, for their life-size statue bust of an Evangelion unit that's in the making, for a July 23 public debut.