How does Evangelion 3.0+1.0 end the story?
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, released in Japanese cinemas in March 2021 after two pandemic delays, is the fourth Rebuild film and the ending Anno built the series to reach. It opens in an unexpected register, with the surviving cast living quietly in a survivor village, before the plot returns to the confrontation the whole continuity has circled: Shinji against his father Gendo, who in this telling receives the fullest explanation he has ever been given.
The climax is structured as a series of conversations rather than battles, staged inside a surreal anti universe where the films literally move through the sets and styles of the franchise's own history, including the television series' sketch like final episode aesthetic. Shinji's resolution is to refuse the choice his father and SEELE built for him, neither merging all souls nor resetting the world for one person, and to wish instead for a world without Evangelions, in which the cast can grow up unneeded by any machine.
The closing scenes show the characters as adults in an ordinary world, an ending readers and viewers consistently describe as the opposite of 1997: where The End of Evangelion closed on estrangement at the edge of a ruined sea, 3.0+1.0 closes on departure, work and daylight. Anno has framed the film as his farewell to the franchise, and its final credits complete a story that had been open since 1995.
The film was a major commercial event in Japan, becoming the highest grossing Evangelion film, and its home video releases carry the revised 3.0+1.01 and subsequent versions, so collectors should check version numbers on Japanese and English discs exactly as with the earlier Rebuild entries. A short companion manga chapter by Khara staff, Evangelion: 3.0 (-120 min.), was distributed to Japanese cinema audiences and is now a sought after paper extra.
