Extended Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time preview will include never-before seen footage from the franchise finale.

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the fourth and final Rebuild of Evangelion anime movie, is scheduled to finally open next week. However, while there may be only a few more days of waiting left until the premiere, many individual fans’ wait to see the franchise’s conclusion is going to be quite a bit longer.

For starters, with coronavirus vaccinations having begun only very recently in Japan, many people are still avoiding movie theaters. In addition, despite Evangelion’s immense popularity with anime fans around the globe, there were extremely long gaps between the Japanese and overseas theatrical releases for the first three Rebuild movies, which only saw international theatrical releases after their home video releases in Japan, with more than a three-year wait for the North American release of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo.

But if you can’t make it to a Japanese theater, or even Japan, you can still see the beginning of Thrice Upon a Time this weekend, as creator Hideaki Anno’s Studio Khara will be streaming the movie’s opening segment for free on YouTube, starting at the stroke of midnight on March 8 (Japan time).

▼ Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time special preview

Though the above video is currently the movie’s already-revealed trailer, at midnight on March 8 it’ll begin showing the first 12 minutes, 10 seconds, and 10 frames of Thrice Upon a Time. Eva fans with sharp memories may recall that an extended preview of the film’s opening was also screened in 2019 at Anime Expo in Los Angeles and Japan Expo Paris, but the new preview includes an additional one minute, 30 seconds, and 10 frames of animation that has never been shown before.

Should you want to make your whole weekend about Evangelion, Amazon Prime Video Japan’s official YouTube channel will be streaming, for free, the first three Rebuild movies as special simultaneous viewing events with celebrity presenters from the Japanese entertainment industry, starting with Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone on March 5 at 8 p.m….

…followed by Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance on March 6 at 10 p.m…

…and finally Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo on March 7 at 9:45 p.m., which will also include the extended Thrice Upon a Time preview at its end.

As for the full Thrice Upon a Time movie, it’s scheduled to open in theaters on March 8, though with talk of extending the coronavirus-related government-declared state of emergency in the Tokyo area, yet another delay wouldn’t be the biggest shock.

Source: Studio Khara via IT Media
Top image: Studio Khara
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