After more than a decade since the first film came out, the final Rebuild of Evangelion film is almost upon us. To remind fans that it actually is arriving on June 2020, Studio Khara has released the first teaser trailer for Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0.
For anyone who’s only familiar with the original series or its Netflix release, Rebuild of Evangelion is a series of four films that reinterprets the show. They make some of the characters a bit better-adjusted while adding a few more characters to the cast.
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The first couple of films loosely adapt the first half or so of the anime. The second film does eventually deviate from the original, setting up the wildly different third film, while screwing up the characters even more along the way.
The third film, 2012’s Evangelion 3.0 (or 3.33 as the home video release is called) dumps any pretense of being a remake the original show. It takes place after a significant time skip, moving the series in a completely new direction, while setting up the fourth and final film.
This fourth film almost never happened. Creator Hideaki Anno relapsed into depression during production on 3.0 leading him to almost give up completing the series. Anno ended up taking a break from Evangelion, working instead on Toho’s Shin Godzilla with Gainax co-founder Shinji Higuchi, before finally returning finish Rebuild.
As for the teaser itself, it doesn’t directly tell the viewer anything, though there are likely a few hidden clues in it. It opens with a heavily armed Eva Unit-02 diving past a flying aircraft carrier into what seems to be a swarm of red, Eva-sized bodies. It then cuts to shots of Asuka and Rei, while quickly flashing some sort of serial number on screen.
Viewers then get treated to a quick shot of Rei, Asuka, and Shinji walking under what seems to be a giant sized set of arms, probably from the same Eva-sized bodies seen earlier. The teaser then ends on a long panning shot of the flying Eva-powered battleship, the AAA Wunder, surrounded by the same swarm of bodies, before flashing the other cast members (and a quick shot of a crucified Eva-01) accompanied more mysterious serial numbers.