After an extremely long wait, the final “Rebuild of Evangelion” film has finally landed a release date in Japanese cinemas. Crunchyroll is reporting that Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time will release on January 23, 2021, bringing an end to the long-running anime series.
The original series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, ran from 1995 until 1996 in Japan, and was followed by the (extremely grim) feature-length End of Evangelion in 1997. It was later followed up by the Rebuild series, which 3.0+1.0 is the final entry in. The movie is written and chiefly directed by series creator Hideki Anno.
A new trailer has also surfaced, which you can watch below (and, if you’re anything like me, get a bit emotional about). The trailer debuted ahead of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba THE MOVIE Mugen Train in Japanese cinemas.
The Rebuild series of movies–which seemed like a remake series at first, and soon transformed into something else entirely–began with 2007’s Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone. It was followed by 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance in 2009 and the tellingly-named 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo in 2012.
When the rest of the world will get to see it is anyone’s guess–there was a three year gap between the Japanese release of 3.0 and its US DVD debut, so it could be a while still. Netflix now has the rights to stream the original series and End of Evangelion, but the Rebuild movies are not on the service.
It’s unclear whether an English dub of this fourth movie will happen, and if it does, who will voice the characters–the original actors, or the cast of Netflix’s new dub.
3.0 ended on a cliffhanger, and fans have plenty of questions–such as why the film has such an odd name. 3.0+1.0 was originally due to release in 2020, but it was delayed due to the coronavirus.
