Ready to experience “The End of Evangelion” on the big screen?
GKIDS, the producer and distributor of some of the very best animated features from around the world announced that it will bring “The End of Evangelion” to select theaters nationwide for event screenings on March 17 and 20, in its original Japanese language with English subtitles. This marks the first time that the film has been screened in North America. You can get your tickets now.
Originally released in 1997, “The End of Evangelion” served as an alternate ending to the original “Neon Genesis Evangelion” series, which concluded the year before with a more abstract, controversial conclusion that was partially impacted by the production running out of money and creator Hideaki Anno suffering from a mental breakdown.
“The End of Evangelion” remade the final two episodes in spectacular fashion, with Anno sharing directorial duties with Kazuya Tsurumaki. “The End of Evangelion” is noticeably different from the series, in terms of tone and content. The movie is more graphic and much darker than the show, with more violence and one of the main characters sexually assaulting another. But it also feels like a natural evolution; nothing in the film was designed purely to shock.
In the years since the release of “The End of Evangelion,” it has regularly been heralded as one of the greatest animated features ever and helped to inspire the “Rebuild” cycle of features that would follow.
If you’ve never seen “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” it is a strange, hugely engrossing saga that follows a young boy named Shinji, who is picked by his vindictive father to be a part of a program to pilot giant living mechanisms called Evangelions. Full of biblical allusions, psychological depth and some of the most mind-blowing animation you’ll ever see, “Neon Genesis Evangelion” has become one of the most celebrated animated series of all time and all of the subsequent material has been even richer and more involving.
In 2022, after years in obscurity (and shortly after the series debuted on Netflix), GKIDS released all twenty-six episodes of the original series, along with the movies “Evangelion: Death (True)2” (made up of reconstituted episodes) and “The End of Evangeion.” They also released the final “Rebuild” movie “Evangelion: 3.0+1.11 Thrice Upon a Time” in theaters and on Blu-ray.
