Ask John: Will the Evangelion TV Series Ever Hit Blu-Ray?

Question:
Why do you think that Evangelion TV has not been re-released on blu-ray yet? Fumimation has been releasing the movies and has announced a lot of titles being rescued.

Answer:
The Internet is full of speculative reasoning for the absence of a Blu-ray release of the 1995 Shin Seiki Evangelion television series. I’ve read undocumented claims that series creator Hideaki Anno considers the original series no longer relevant to contemporary viewers. I’ve read speculation that the series hasn’t reached Blu-ray due to its original limited production values not transferring well to high definition. I’ve seen speculation that the series hasn’t hit Blu-ray yet because ownership of its master rights is convoluted. In the absence of a seemingly clear and definitive explanation, my own guess is another explanation entirely. I suspect that studios and distributors presently associated with the Evangelion franchise are fully invested in the current Rebuild of Evangelion franchise and don’t want to dilute or compromise consumer focus on that particular franchise. The four planned Evangelion Rebuild movies are big business right now, and distributors including Toho and King Records want consumer interest to be focused squarely on the new quadrilogy. Another release of a 19-year-old show would require new contracts, fresh rounds of royalty payments, plenty of behind-the-scenes work, and a partial shift in consumer attention away from the current franchise to 19-year-old animation. An archival Blu-ray release, particularly for the Japanese market, is rather probable eventually, but I don’t anticipate seeing a Blu-ray release of the original TV series or movies until at least parallel with the debut of the fourth Rebuild film, if not some time after the release of the final new movie.