Rebuild of Evangelion

Rebuild of Evangelion, officially titled Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition, comprises four anime features made by the team behind the original series. The tetralogy stands apart from the continuity of the television show and its 1990s films. Planning starts in late 2002, and the official Evangelion website announces the project on 05 October 2006 with working titles, returning staff, and a pitch promising familiar material rebuilt through 3DCG and current digital techniques alongside completely new story elements.

Hideaki Anno writes and oversees the whole project as chief director, working outside GAINAX through a production company and studio he founds for the purpose. In a statement displayed as a poster in 50 Japanese cinemas on 17 February 2007, he frames the undertaking as a push against stagnation in the anime industry, an attempt to reach the young viewers who drift away from the medium, and a retelling of a story about a boy who keeps standing back up. Kazuya Tsurumaki, Masayuki, Mahiro Maeda, and Katsuichi Nakayama direct individual entries; Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Atsushi Nishigori, Hidenori Matsubara, and Moyoco Anno contribute character designs; Ikuto Yamashita and Takeshi Honda supply the mechanical work; Shinji Higuchi and Tomoki Kyoda storyboard the first film.

The first three entries present an alternate telling of the television storyline, and the finale delivers a wholly new ending. Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007) runs through Operation Yashima, the assault on Ramiel that closed the show's introductory arc. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009) reaches the confrontation with Zeruel, though its story has already diverged sharply from the original by that point. Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo follows in 2012, and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time concludes the series on 08 March 2021.

Two structural changes mark the retelling. Kaworu Nagisa, held back until the closing stretch of the television series, appears from the very first film. Mari Makinami Illustrious, a pilot created for these movies, joins the cast in the second entry. The line also includes two short prequels to the third film, EVANGELION 3.0 (-120 min.), a one-shot manga later adapted as an OVA, and the OVA EVANGELION: 3.0 (-46h), both released to home video on 08 March 2023.

The first three Japanese titles swap the usual katakana spelling of Evangelion for the archaic characters we and wo, a change with no effect on pronunciation, and style each numeral zero as the empty set symbol, a mark the ancient Romans also used for dead gladiators on mosaics. The fourth film restores the standard spelling and prefixes a katakana "Shin" whose meaning stays deliberately ambiguous: it can read as "new", as "true", or as something else entirely. In mainland China, trademark law leads the official distributor to keep the classic series name for the film series, producing a fused title for the finale that joins the old and new brandings.

In November 2025, khara's official X account reveals how modest the first concept was: a compilation re-edit of the television series that would alter only the ending, from Episode 20 onward. The earliest rough outline builds toward a duel between Kaworu's Eva and Shinji's, in which Shinji kills Kaworu after Kaworu has slain Gendo Ikari, who had fused with Asuka and Adam along with Unit-02.