Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

Don’t read the comments or reviews, just fuckin watch it. Not for the Evas, not for the fights or the quality of the animation, watch it for the best delirious poem around, This is not anime or entertainment whatsoever, this is pure art.

In 2015, Hideaki Anno said anime as an industry is dying and only has about 5 years left, then it might go through a resurgence.

*jump ahead 3 years*

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 is finally announced for release in 2020. OH FUCK. Anno is going to kill the entire industry by releasing the final Evangelion movie. The madman will do the deed himself. Just more of what you'd expect from the master.

This is honestly pure art. One of the best anime films ever made.

Worldwide release on August 13th on Amazon Prime (multiple dubs & subs), hopefully the same English dub that was used for the previous films & not the Netflix dub for Neon Genesis: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-07-01/amazon-prime-video-to-stream-final-evangelion-film-on-august-13/.174666

God even after all these years I still love this batshit crazy show. Great animation, awesome fights, well fitted plugsuits, nice fan service, Shinji being a little bitch in the beginning, this movie has it it all. I really enjoyed how they wrapped up the whole story, didn’t think they could pull it off.

I hope you're in a better mood when you sit down to watch this than I was. [spoiler]Even though 3.0+1.0 ties up everything on a happier note[/spoiler] I'm left feeling pretty damn sad.

“Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time” definitely went above my (low) expectations, but still left a bitter taste in my mouth. Overall, the film is extremely cinematic, well-balanced, full of thoughtful, little details, self-referential notes as well as tons of fan service. Each character gets their own spotlight, and for once, they even attempted at closing all story arcs on a positive note. If Hideaki Anno was still fighting his way out of depression when working on the original series, he is now a happier man who found healing through the love of his wife (referenced multiple times in the film). Honestly, I still prefer the pessimism of the original, but it would make no sense to have history repeat itself again. After all, the film itself acknowledges that it’s not the same characters, not the same director, not the same audience anymore, and that it’s now time to go back to reality.

The ending felt satisfying indeed, but looking back, I can’t help noticing how needlessly and helplessly convoluted the story to that point was. Robots kick each other asses, catastrophes continue one after another, untold background stories of certain characters suddenly arise, but the mechanisms behind are poorly explained, to the point that the original felt straightforward and crystal-clear in comparison. I like hermetic storytelling and elaborated plots, but the answers are supposed to be in the film instead of being supposedly omitted for the sake of fan theories and speculations.

The first two movies, tracking the original show closely, manage to somewhat keep the atmosphere of the original while improving the visuals but I think the fourth movie (and the third one, to a certain degree) is so far removed from those that you realize it's been 20+ years since. The mood has changed considerably. While I am glad that [spoiler]Shinji got a happy ending[/spoiler], the rest was just a step down IMO. I especially disliked the ugly CG fights that had zero weight and stakes, yet there were so many of them.

To add something positive here, I liked the village section a lot. Maybe because it was such a contrast to the rest of the movie and it wasn't just non-nonsensical vistas one after another and it showed how people cope with what happened.

Too much. Evangelion was about characters, not about explosions and robot wars.

At this point, Evangelion's Earth has gone through so much world destructing "Impacts" that it's lost all it's shock value. Although a once in forever event happening happening so many times in a couple decades does mean there is still realism left in the series.