In a twitter post then a blog post, Studio Toei reveals “Operation 0706”, which happens to fall on July 6th this year. The event will occur simultaneously in Paris, France during Japan Expo, in Los Angeles and Shanghai during Anime Expo, specific places throughout Japan and other yet unannounced world-wide locations. The first 10 minutes and 40 seconds of the 4th and final Evangelion movie (all the footage up to the first title card), titled “”Shin Evangelion Gekijōban AVANT 1”, will be screened at the event.
Additionally, Toei will release a free Evangelion smartphone app on July 1st called “EVA-EXTRA”, the same name designated for the magazines related to the new movies that contain extra content, and is said to contain more information about “Operation 0706” as well as special content on the day of July 6th. The iOS/Android app will also have all of the previous seven EVA-EXTRA booklets available digitally as well as some other related bonus material that’s exclusive to the app.
『シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版』0706作戦、始動 7月6日に最新映像公開。 『シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版 AVANT 1（冒頭10分40秒00コマ） 0706版』をパリ・JAPAN EXPOステージから、日本各地、ロサンゼルス、上海へ世界同時上映。 また、7月1日に公式アプリ「EVA-EXTRA」リリース。#0706作戦pic.twitter.com/s1vpjhCW3x
— evangelion_official (@evangelion_co) June 24, 2019
This will be the first time we’ll see any actual footage from the last movie so expect the internet to be flooded with blurry/shaky mobile phone videos of the 10+ minutes of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 on July 6th, until the footage is officially released at some point later. Exciting times. (Note: a short teaser was shown with Mari, but we don’t know if that was actual cuts from the finished movie).
So the day has finally come and the world is treated to a release of the 26 episode original series and the Death True2 and End of Evangelion movies. It’s available in multiple languages for both audio and subtitles. As anticipated, we’ve got a whole new English dub cast:
Shinji – Casey Mongillo Misato – Carrie Keranen Asuka – Stephanie McKeon Rei – Ryan Bartley Gendo – Ray Chase Ritsuko – Erica Liundbeck Fuyutsuki – JP Karliak Kensuke – Ben Diskin Kaji – Greg Chun Toji – Johnny Yong Bosch
Episodes 21-23 appear to be the Director’s Cuts (New Production Cuts) which are longer and contain additional scenes, as well as some redrawn cuts. None of the episodes or the movies appear to be in HD, though. The translation was done by Studio Khara’s in-house translator, Dan Kanemitsu, and the subtitles were edited by David Fleming.
The one other glaringly noticeable difference is the lack of “Fly Me To The Moon” in any of the ending credits at the end of each episode. Also, the song is missing in the episodes that happen to use it as background music. In the Japanese Netflix region release, the song is there in both the ending credits and the episodes, which lead some to believe this was a licensing issue or some kind, either the lyrics/publisher or the specific versions of the songs. The Wrap posted an article stating:
An individual with knowledge of the production told TheWrap that Netflix worked with the Japanese studio that made the original anime series when licensing the 26-episode show for a new English-language voice cast version. “Fly Me to the Moon” was among a “few select” assets the streaming service was unable to obtain for all regions, due to the way the song was priced for global rights.
The Wrap: “Why Netflix Cut ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ From ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ Credits”
So instead, the rest of the world outside of Japan are treated with the piano version of Rei’s theme while we watch the credits for 15 seconds before Netflix auto-play’s the next episode. A lot of people are complaining about this omission.
We’re sure to see a ton of criticism about the new voice actors. There’s a lot of flak coming from the German, Spanish, and Italian dubs (where they translated “Angels” to a literal “Apostles”). Anime, and especially Evangelion, fandom is like that. This is going to be one of those rare dub vs dub debates that will surely be as heated as any of the sub vs dub ones in any fandom. But just like with the new theatrical releases, this will surely bring in new people to the fandom who will have a lot of questions and perhaps some new interpretations of their own due to the new interpretation/direction of the English dub.
All 26 episodes will be available world-wide as well as Death True2 and The End of Evangelion. We know from previous updates online that they planned to redub the entire series (and have confirmation for different languages as well). There will surely be a lot of discussion around the new dub, which Amanda Winn Lee confirmed would not involve any of the original lead cast. So here’s looking forward to a large chunk of the Evangelion fandom simultaneously watching the original series at roughly the same time, around the world.
Not to read too much into this, but at least it’s a sign that things are still moving in the right direction. Khara and the staff have been pushing the 2020 release date pretty hard, even selling merchandise with “2020” in it, so I think that at least this is a sign that the release is still on schedule.
“AVANT” is a word that refers to the beginning of a movie. (※: In “: Break”, the opening scene where Mari fights with the third apostle was called “Avant”.)
The script that appears in the photo is supposed to include “Avant 1”, “Avant 2” and “A part”, which are the opening stages of the movie.
In addition, you can also check handwriting that seems to be a supplement to the lines of the three people, “Kita” (Midori Kitakami), “A” (Asuka), “Shi” (Shinji).
It looks like the original Neon Genesis Evangelion series finally has a distributor in the west in Netflix. Starting next Spring (2019), Netflix will be streaming all 26 episodes of the original series as well as Evangelion: Death (True)2 and The End of Evangelion. The stream will be available across the world in 190 different countries
It’s not clear which version of the series (or the resolution) will be streamed, but the newest Platinum version, possibly including the director’s cuts of episodes 21-24, are probably a good bet. High definition versions of the original series have aired in Japan so it’s possible we’ll get a 1080p stream. It’s also unknown if the stream will only be available in Japanese language audio or if there will be localized versions for the different markets the stream will be available in. Could we see a return of ADV’s old English dub?
Either way, this is a pretty big deal since the original series hasn’t had a western license holder since ADV’s lapsed in kind of a messy way after it shutdown in 2009, and all signs pointing to it ever getting licensed again to be very slim.
Official Netflix trailer:
Along with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Netflix will start streaming Ultraman (April 1, 2019), Rilakkuma and Kaoru (April 19, 2019), 7Seeds (April 2019), and Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac (Summer 2019).
We can now see it in 1080p glory and start dissecting all of the details from Mari’s new plugsuit to the changes made to Evangelion Unit-08. After seeing it in good quality, it’s clear that this is more than the teasers that we saw at the end of each film, which looked more or less half-finished while this teaser clearly has some polish to it.
As noted in the previous post, there was a short teaser for Evangelion 3.0+1.0 (Final) that screened before Hosoda’s new film, Mirai no Mirai. The teaser has leaked on Youtube a few times but they look like they’ve been taken down pretty swiftly. It looks to be about 20 seconds long, starts with a couple of studio logos and distributors, then about 11 seconds of Mari in a slightly revamped Evangelion Unit-08 flying through the air above the red colored oceans shooting machine guns. The trailer ends with the Evangelion 3.0+1.0 logo and a “2020”.
Here’s some screenshots:
The 11 or so second cut has lot of action so a lot of the handcam video was blurry or unclear. We do clearly see an Evangelion Unit-08 with what looks to be extended arms as shown in these drawings:
Additionally, it’s kind of reminiscent of the short “Next Time” teaser we saw at the end of Evangelion 3.0 with what appeared to be a combined Evangelion Unit-02 and 08 fighting what appeared to be mass produced Evangelions.
It’s been a pretty slow couple of years between announcements and newsworthy tidbits, but we’ve finally arrived at a new release date for the fourth and final new Evangelion film. We’ve known that the film was in production but weren’t sure if it was in some limbo or what the progress was. Now it seems Studio Khara feels confident in a year 2020 release of the film in Japanese theaters.
It’s been reported that at the screening of Hosoda’s Mirai no Mirai, a teaser was shown before the movie on Friday that revealed that Final will have a release date of 2020. The official website hasn’t been updated with this information yet.
The Evangelion teaser was apparently unexpected as a lot of people have been tweeting the news but it’s great that we finally have a date to look forward to. The official site and social media accounts would probably be giving us more updates in the days to come.
UPDATE (7/20/2018): The official Evangelion website published a <a href=”http://neweva.blog103.fc2.com/blog-entry-5560.html”>news post</a> making this official.
News in the Evangelion world has been slow and mostly filled with small blurbs or new merchandising. However, Megumi Hayashibara, the voices of Rei Ayanami, Yui Ikari, and Pen Pen, is releasing the first new album in seven years which will include a handful of songs from the Evangelion sound track and CR Evangelion Pachinko. There will also be two newly recorded songs including one written by Hayashibara.
It looks like there’s also a limited edition BD that includes music videos.
Tracklist:
“Tsubasa” (Mardock Scramble The Third Exhaust theme song)
“Sanhara ~ Seinaru Chikara~”
“Come sweet death, second impact”
“The Image of black me”
“SKY5”
“Usura Hi Shinju” (Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju OP)
“Imawa no Shinigami” (Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju OP)
“Osorezan Revoir” (newly-included song)
“Dilemmatic triangle opera AYANAMI Version” (newly-included)
“Shuketsu no Sono he~ Second Impact~” (newly-included/CR Evangelion X insert song）
“Mou Hitori no Watshu MEGU Version” (newly-included)
A little bit over fifteen years ago, I started an ambitious little fan site called Eva Monkey that you may be familiar with. Through much of my college experience, I spent far too many late nights tinkering with code and generally trying to build the “ultimate” Evangelion fan site, neglecting my studies in the process. The irony is that all that misappropriated time led to an unexpected career in web development. Upon graduation, however, I think my endeavors with Eva Monkey had taken their toll on me, as I had lost the passion for discussion and analysis of the work. I wasn’t able to accomplish what I set out to do with Eva Monkey, and so, it made sense to merge with EvaCommentary.org and form a new entity, EvaGeeks.org. After which, I had meant to go into semi-retirement. In the end, Eva got the better of me, and sucked me back in. So much for that.
The idea for Eva Geeks was that of a communal effort, where any one person shouldn’t be burdened with operating and maintaining a large site, as I was prior to transferring the Eva Monkey Forums to Eva Geeks. Nowadays, we’d call that crowd-sourcing, I suppose. Still, Eva Geeks remains a group effort, where anyone can get involved. And I’m pleased to see some of the terrific and indispensable resources that have been generated by the community. I find myself pointing to various wiki articles here on Eva Geeks on a regular basis.
I think something needs to be said about a fan site or community that manages to not only survive, but be active for a span of ten years, especially with the current state of the web. Fan sites, fan communities, and web forums seem to be much less common places these days, with social media platforms like Twitter, sites like Reddit, and services like Discord fulfilling much of the needs of the various pockets of pop culture fandom. To have weathered that paradigm shift, as well as the years of inactivity of the Rebuild film series should tell you something about the strength and importance of the Eva Geeks community. In particular, I’m pleased and proud to see that the forum that I started back in 2004 is not only still alive and well, but has accumulated over 850,000 posts! It may be a few years from now, but I eagerly look forward to the day when the forum community breaks a million posts.
Right now, you could say that Eva Geeks is in a bit of a quiet phase. The activity of any fan community ebbs and flows with the developments of the property that it is dedicated to. And so, I look forward to the details, speculation, discussion, dissection, and debate that Evangelion 3.0+1.0 will bring as its release comes within sight. With the anime long completed, and with Sadamoto’s manga completed, it will be interesting to see what direction the franchise will take with the completion of the Rebuild series. I don’t expect a franchise as significant and lucrative as Evangelion to die out anytime soon.
I look forward to the future of Evangelion, and the future of Eva Geeks. Here’s to another ten years!
In a twitter post then a blog post, Studio Toei reveals “Operation 0706”, which happens to fall on July 6th this year. The event will occur simultaneously in Paris, France during Japan Expo, in Los Angeles and Shanghai during Anime Expo, specific places throughout Japan and other yet unannounced world-wide locations. The first 10 minutes and 40 seconds of the 4th and final Evangelion movie (all the footage up to the first title card), titled “”Shin Evangelion Gekijōban AVANT 1”, will be screened at the event. 
So the day has finally come and the world is treated to a release of the 
