Finally, Manga explained the deal with the End Of Evangelion DVD's. Now, if they had just been up-front about this from the beginning, all of that ill will could have been avoided. Why don't people just talk honestly about things from the beginning? With this statement from Manga, we can finally stop talking about the technical issues and focus on the movie. Thanks to ANN for the full story.

"First off, Keith acknowledged that some of the DVDs were in fact defective and explains the actual defect. Of aproximately 70 000 End of Eva DVDs produced, one batch of about 5000 did not press correctly, resulting in the second layer being somewhat off-center. Depending on the DVD player, this resulted in anything from some minor skipping, to the second part of the DVD?aeing completely unplayable.

Since only 5000 out of 70 000 DVDs were defective, chances are that any DVD received in an in-store exchange would not be defective. However, in the case that the replacement disc is also defective, Manga set up the mail in exchange program.

As mentionned above, some people have issues with paying to ship a defective DVD back to Manga. Keith explains that Manga's offer of a free Virus vol.1 DVD with all exchanged Eva discs is their way of compensating customers for the shipping cost."

And what an awesome movie it is. I bought it and my disc had no technical problems at all. It's heartbreaking and thought-provoking and it's just an amazing-looking movie in general. I won't really give this movie a full review, because if you have any love in your heart for Evangelion, this is pretty much a must-see. If you haven't seen Evangelion, you definitely need to watch the whole series first in order to understand the movie at all, and to avoid spoiling the series for yourself.