Official videos’ beautiful, unexpected scenes promise a finale worth waiting for.

Last Monday, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the ultimate endpoint of the Evangelion anime narrative, finally made its way to theaters. The film’s debut came after nine months of coronavirus pandemic-related delays, and roughly eight and a half years of waiting since the penultimate entry in the series, 2012’s Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo.

But while the wait for Thrice Upon a Time was a long one, it took far less time for copies of the film, recorded on cameras by pirates inside theaters, to start showing up online. Over the weekend, Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno’s Studio Khara posted a notice and warning regarding the illegal uploads of the films, spelling out the specific legal offenses with “Recording movies in theaters is a crime according to the Act on Prevention of Unauthorized Recording of Films. The uploading of unauthorized recordings of films to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc., is also a copyright infringement. Copyright infringement violates the Act on Prevention of Unauthorized Recording of Films and the Copyright Act” along with a reminder that such crimes can carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and 10 million yen (US$96,600) in fines.

“It is our company policy to take strict actions against those committing such crimes” Khara declares, and the company says that it will be coordinating its response with distributors Toho and Toei, two of the largest entertainment media organizations in Japan. It’s also worth noting that while Khara’s website is typically written only in Japanese, the piracy warning is a tri-lingual one, in Japanese, English, and Chinese, which suggests the company’s promised legal action against unauthorized online distribution of Thrice Upon a Time is one that they’re willing to pursue on an international scale.

Meanwhile, and minor visual spoilers ahead, Khara itself is willing to give fans a more revealing look at the movie, posting two new preview videos from Thrice Upon a Time’s “third act,” the first of which features some serious sakuga showoff-level animation of Shinji working a fishing reel.

Even more unexpected: the second preview, showing Rei (Assumed Name) having taken up…traditional rice farming?!?

▼ You may need to click on the embedded tweet’s posting time in order to get the video to play.

Both scenes are filled with startling amounts of lush scenery and natural beauty for Evangelion, and the amazingly polished animation for such mundane activities seem to hint at some deep thematical significance for them, showing that Eva is going to be full of surprises right up to its end.

Source: Studio Khara via Jin, Twitter/@evangelion_co via Otakomu
Images: YouTube/株式会社カラー khara inc.official
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