Even though it wasn’t particularly surprising, we’re still processing the information that Evangelion 3.0+1.0 is being delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The delay didn’t come with an updated release date, meaning that we’re going to be waiting for an indefinite amount of time for the final Evangelion Rebuild movie to reach us all.
While it’s not necessarily a solution by any means, Studio Khara has all given fans in Japan a bit of a consolation gift on the Khara official YouTube channel today in the form of the first 3 Rebuild movies uploaded in their entirety. It didn’t take fans long to notice that the movies went live as within a period of 3 hours each upload had over 30,000 views on YouTube and the topic was trending on Japanese twitter. This turn of events is incredibly surprising as this sort of thing really doesn’t occur in Japan very often. With the recent lockdown everywhere in the world due to COVID-19 there has been a rise in content being uploaded to the platform, but so far much of it has come in the form of concerts and other types of live performances, not anime & films.
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The Evangelion Rebuild movies have long been available to rent on YouTube in Japan, so streaming itself isn’t a foreign concept to Khara as a studio, but for them to make the content available for free is a massive show of good faith to the fanbase who will have to wait with bated breath for the final entry to arrive. Funimation holds the rights to the rebuild movies in the west so any streaming availability ultimately rests on their licensing agreement & business itself, and these uploads are in Japanese without English subtitles, but if you’re looking for your Eva fix in the meantime you can always stream the original series & movies on Netflix.