Amazon is bringing the conclusion to the Rebuild of Evangelion film series — adaptations of the beloved anime Neon Genesis Evangelion created by Hideaki Anno — to Prime Video on August 13th. Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.01 Thrice Upon a Time came out in Japan in March but will be making its global premiere on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories, Amazon says.
Alongside the final fourth film, Amazon will also stream the other films in the series, Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone, Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance, and Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo. The company hasn’t said when those films will be available on its service, but hopefully in time to catch up for Thrice Upon a Time’s August release. You can watch a trailer for the new movie below:
[embedded content]
The Evangelion “Rebuilds” are an interesting mix of reworked moments from the original anime and entirely new plot lines and character backstories that only appear in the film series. If you caught up with Neon Genesis Evangelion when it came to Netflix in 2019, there are lots of interesting departures and fully animated Eva battles to discover in the Rebuilds. Plus the show and films’ darker psychological themes probably hit too close to home for anyone who’s had a mini-existential crisis during the pandemic.
That Amazon managed to snag Thrice Upon a Time and its predecessors seems like a pretty big knock against Netflix’s anime empire. Most streaming services are now trying to have some kind of anime strategy, either through the acquisition of other platforms or just by throwing money at popular creators. Netflix missing out on scooping up more Evangelion to go with the series and original two feature films it already offers is a loss. More mechs for Bezos, I guess.
