Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time closes the four-film Rebuild of Evangelion series; the musical repeat sign in its Japanese title can be read as End Repeat or simply End. Hideaki Anno wrote it and directed alongside Mahiro Maeda, Katsuichi Nakayama, and Kazuya Tsurumaki, with khara producing, Shirō Sagisu scoring, and Hikaru Utada's One Last Kiss as the theme. Japanese theaters finally screened it on 08 March 2021.

The road there was long. Announced for 2008, the film sat in limbo through Anno's depression after 3.0, his detour to direct Shin Godzilla, legal battles with GAINAX, and two pandemic postponements. Production resumed in late 2016 with a live-action-inspired workflow the staff called pre-visualization, drawing animation before storyboards, plus heavy motion capture and CGI. The budget reached 3.26 billion yen, and an NHK documentary tracked Anno's exacting, sometimes agonized process across 1,214 days.

WILLE descends on a core-converted Paris, where Mari's Unit-08 holds off swarms of Mark.44 Evangelions long enough for Maya's team to activate an Anti-L system that restores the city and unlocks caches of NERV parts. Elsewhere, Shinji, Asuka, and the Rei clone wander ruined Japan until they reach Village-3, a settlement of Third Impact survivors. Toji, now a doctor, is married to Hikari with a baby daughter; Kensuke works as the village handyman. Their patience slowly draws Shinji out of a catatonic spiral, while the clone learns farming, asks for a real name, and finally dissolves into LCL when her body fails. Her death, paradoxically, pushes Shinji to stand up.

He boards the Wunder with Asuka as Gendo steers the Black Moon toward the Second Impact's Antarctic epicenter to begin an Additional Impact. In the battle that follows, Asuka unleashes the Ninth Angel sealed in her eye only to be absorbed as Evangelion 13's new Angel pilot, and Gendo, transfigured by Nebuchadnezzar's Key into something beyond human, shrugs off bullets. Misato takes a shot meant for Shinji and grants him what he asks: to face his father inside Unit-01.

Their duel unfolds in Minus Space, a realm without physics rendered as shifting sets from across the whole franchise. Fighting solves nothing, so Shinji simply talks, and in shared memory Gendo confronts the grief and self-loathing behind his scheme, embraces his son as a child, and departs. One by one Shinji frees Asuka, Kaworu, and Rei, then chooses not to remake the world but to write Evangelions out of it, a wish Rei names Neon Genesis. Misato sacrifices herself and the Wunder to forge the spear that makes it possible, and Yui, emerging at last, takes the blow in Shinji's place as every Eva vanishes. In the epilogue an adult Shinji, meeting Mari on a train platform, runs with her into a station rendered in live-action footage of Anno's hometown.

The finale drew the strongest notices of the series in the West: Rotten Tomatoes shows a perfect 100 percent from 17 reviews with an 8.7/10 average, and its Metacritic score of 84 denotes universal acclaim. Japanese ticket sales reached 10.28 billion yen, roughly 93.67 million dollars, and the film swept three categories of the Tokyo Anime Film Festival's 2021 edition: animated film, original work and screenplay, and director.

A corrected cut, 3.0+1.01, hit theaters on 12 June 2021 accompanied by the prequel manga EVANGELION 3.0 (-120 min.), and Amazon streamed the film worldwide from 13 August 2021. GKIDS brought it to North American cinemas in late 2022, the 3.0+1.11 home video edition followed on 08 March 2023 with the bonus prequel EVANGELION 3.0 (-46h), and 30th anniversary Blu-ray boxes collected the whole saga in December 2025. Anno framed the film as his last Evangelion work while hoping new creators would carry the franchise forward, though he has hinted that other corners of the story may yet be revisited.