An updated version of the final Evangelion film hits Amazon Prime next month
Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon A Time, the fourth and final Evangelion movie, will finally come to America
Initially released in Japan in March of this year, the fourth and final film in the Rebuild Of Evangelion series will make its way stateside next month. *Takes massive breath* Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon A Time hits Amazon Prime on August 13. Speaking via video chat at Comic-Con@Home, Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno explained how the team updated and revised the film for its global release.
“Creation does not have an end,” said Hideaki Anno. “Our staff is determined to work on projects as long as there is time. So we want to maintain the quality and improve it if time allows us.”
“We complete our work because there is a time limit, or deadline,” he continued. “We stop working because of a deadline. If we have more time after the deadline, we’ll all be excited and eager to upgrade it. We wanted to show our audience the best version of our work, and since we had more time, the staff took the initiative to revise the film. This does not largely affect the content of the story itself. We upgrade it technically, so it might not be something that everyone will notice. Even so, we still want to improve the technical quality in detail.”
The first Evangelion movie premiered in 2007 when Anno said he and his team came up with the ending. “This was planned from the beginning, and although the details, or the way of depiction have changed the basic points are the same,” he explained. This is the fourth film in the series. The others include: 2007’s Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone, 2009’s Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance, and 2012’s Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo.
Anno gave fans a hint as to what he would be doing after Evangelion. He emphasized that he would be focusing on live-action movies next. “It took 16 years to finally end the series. I’m really relieved. When I realized, I had turned 60. Now that I’ve turned 61 this year, from now on, I plan on making some new live-action movies instead of Eva. For animation, it’d be great if I have a chance to do it again after I take some live-action shots.”
Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.01 Thrice Upon A Time and 3 previous Evangelion films will be available on Amazon Prime on August 13. Check out some new footage of the film here:
As The A.V. Club’s Sam Barsanti noted earlier this month, this is not the end of Evangelion. He writes: “Of course, true NERV heads know that The End Of Evangelion isn’t really the end of Evangelion, as that’s been playing out in series creator Hideaki Anno’s Rebuild Of Evangelion movie series, which—at the risk of saying too much—is a… remake of the original series.” Still, the movie was a massive hit in Japan, and fans worldwide have been waiting, like, forever for it, so let’s not ruin it.
Watch Hideaki Anno’s full Comic-Con@Home interview and hear host Tim Kash say “Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.01 Thrice Upon A Time” over and over below.