My Hong Kong blu-ray arrived faster than I expected. First off, I've tested the region coding and it's locked to zone A, so any of my fellow zone B bretheren without a multi-zone player will have to wait for the Australian blu-ray in July. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the English subtitles: they're good. I don't know if it's the same translation that was used for the cinema release anywhere, but it's an articulate take on some seriously complex dialogue that flows well. While there are also Chinese subtitles, these are thankfully separate tracks instead of being displayed together, as sometimes happened on old DVDs. I noticed maybe half a dozen typos (nothing major) and one missing line of dialogue, which is about what I'd expect from a US or UK anime release. More significantly, none of the frequent on-screen signage is translated. This makes for a cleaner presentation, but means that many of the politicians remain nameless. It didn't affect my ability to follow the story though. Let's face it, most movies of this type don't bother to tell us the exact job titles of every minor character; Anno was just doing it for style and effect in most cases.
The video transfer looks good; I didn't notice any compression artifacts. However, it's a little dark and there's not much detail in the blacks. Since most of the movie is well lit and in daylight it's not much of an issue, but it's noticeable during the Who Will Know scene in the middle, eg. it's difficult to make out specific buildings in the wide shot of Godzilla approaching the centre of Tokyo that was used near the end of trailer #2. I don't want to overstate this--we're not talking anything close to Godzilla 2014 levels of darkness here--you can see what's happening just fine, but it's noticeable in that scene and in a lack of detail to black hair and dark clothes. I tried boosting brightness on my TV, and it's not a calibration issue, there's just no extra details in those blacks.
Also, the Hong Kong blu-ray appears to have been derived from the cinema master rather than the Japanese blu-ray master. Not a major issue, since I believe only a few effects shots were finessed for the home release, but the HK blu-ray has the original version of the following shot, for example:
https://youtu.be/qammqRhMdeo?t=26s I guess this explains how it managed to come out so soon after the Japanese blu-ray.
Anyway, aside from a few quirks, I'm happy with this release. The translation is good and I like that it includes both the Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA Japanese audio tracks. I might double dip if Madman or Funimation put out a stellar release, but if they just do a bare-bones offering I wouldn't mind sticking with this one.