This is largely a paraphrase of this Minna no Eva Fan (the most prolific Evangelion fanblog/unofficial news source in Japan, in case you didn’t know) post, with some things added and some things omitted for the sake of understanding! This is aimed at people who haven’t been following along closely and now have even less of an idea of what the fuck is going on than those who have been, lol. Anyway,

Last Friday night (the 5th of September), Evangelion 3.0 aired during NTV’s Friday Roadshow. They’ve been doing an Eva film festival type thing for the past few weeks, and they wrapped it up with the airing of 3.0. In the past when they aired 1.0 and 2.0 for the first time on TV during the Friday Roadshow, the previews at the end of the movie had updated stuff. The preview for 2.0 and the end of 1.0 replaced the footage in the preview with the final footage that was actually going to appear in the movie, and the preview for 3.0 that they showed at the end of 2.0 replaced the original preview with footage of Asuka in space.

So, everyone was assuming that they’d replace the preview for the next movie with some kind of new preview when they aired 3.0, but instead what we got was this.

(well, to be specific, it was a screen that said “NEXT” and then it cut to the “EVANGELION:3.0+1.0” logo, but that picture is close enough lol)

They promptly updated the official Evangelion website as well (http://www.evangelion.co.jp/)

Before the update it looked like this:

And the official site after the change:

Note how where it says :FINAL in the bottom right in the first image has changed to say :3.0+1.0

However despite the change in the text, if you click :3.0+1.0, it still takes you to http://www.evangelion.co.jp/final.html like it did before. (That page hasn’t had any changes, btw)

If this picture is new to you, it’s actually just the image shown at the end of the preview shown at the end of 3.0. It says “Next: New Evangelion Theatrical Version :||”

This is really old news, but there’s actually quite a lot going on in the title in that image. (I’ll put this in a block quote so that you can skip past easily if you already know what’s going on with シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版:|| haha)

First of all, while here in the West up till now we’ve been referring to the next movie as “Final” or “4.0 (lmao)”, in Japan they’ve been largely referring to it as シンエヴァ (“Shin Eva”, which means “New Eva”) from the start of the title. It might seem like a vague way to refer to the movie, but it’s actually rather specific, because the titles of the previous three movies are written in a rather different format. Here’s the first three movies: ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:序 (Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Jo)

ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:破 (Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Ha)

ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:Q ((Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Q) And now Final, シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版:|| (Shin Evangelion Gekijouban:||) If you have a basic knowledge of Japanese, the differences should be obvious haha First of all, they’ve changed the position of the words. “Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: *blah*” has become “Shin Evangelion Gekijouban:||”. Secondly, “Shin”, which was previously written in kanji (新=new), is now written in katakana. There are a few different “shin” words in Japanese, and “shin” being written in katakana opens up the possibility that it’s actually a different “shin” now. (I feel like that sentence didn’t make sense, sorry..)

It meaning “true” is the most notable possibility, I think. Thirdly is the way “Evangelion” itself is written. Traditionally, Evangelion has always been written as エヴァンゲリオン (evangerion), however with rebuild specifically, they’ve been spelling it as ヱヴァンゲリヲン (wevangeriwon)

This is kind of a bizarre way to spell it, because “we” and “wo” are archaic and rarely used letters. “Wo” is used in Kaworu’s name though, obviously lol.

Anyway, with the fourth title they’ve gone back to the old エヴァンゲリオン spelling of Evangelion. Kinda intriguing, huh? And last of all is the :|| part. This is a musical symbol that indicates that you are to go back to the beginning of the piece and repeat from there (unless there is another repeat symbol, in which case you repeat from there). As expected of the master Mr Anno etc etc.

OK, let’s go back to this picture again

See how the “N” has that drop shadow thing going on? That mirrors the style in which the English titles are shown in each movie.



Heres’s a picture from Minna no Eva Fan comparing how the English and Japanese titles are displayed in the DVD/Bluray version of the movies

And now the two titles we have for Final:

So, it’s possible that “EVANGELION:3.0+1.0” is the English title to “シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版:||”

What’s ALSO worth mentioning is that this is not the first time this 3.0+1.0 thing has come up.

About a month ago was the Kamakura Lantern Festival. Mr and Mrs Anno always go along and draw something on a lantern, Mr Anno usually drawing some kind of Eva related thing like this

And this time, he left this image…

If you’re wondering why people are only freaking out about “3.0+1.0” now, it’s because when that lantern came out no one really had any idea what it was meant to mean haha..

This “無在原点” phrase is quite mysterious because no one is really sure what it means… “無在” is a made up word, you see (just what you’d expect from the master Mr Anno…). It potentially means something roughly along the lines of “non-existence” though. “原点” means origin/the starting point.

Minna no Eva Fan speculated on what they think it might mean at the bottom of this post: http://neweva.blog103.fc2.com/blog-entry-3203.html

(pls excuse my shitty attempts at translating..)

Considering the meaning of the Kanji… The origin does not exist.

The original does not exist.

The beginning does not exist. Doesn’t it give off this kind of feeling?

Also related to the next movie is this: Peaceful Times(F02)petit film

A lot of people know about it already since it’s pretty old but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

If you look at around the 2:53 mark, they flash by some storyboards that look like they take place right after the ending of 3.0 rather quickly.

http://neweva.blog103.fc2.com/blog-entry-2723.html <- You can have a look at the storyboards that flash past there

“OK BUT…..WHAT NOW, ALYSHIA? WHAT NOW”

Minna no Eva Fan speculate on some dates where new hints/info could come out in that post I linked at the start

And um…..yeah!

This post is kinda messy…sorry about that….. but I hope I helped bring someone up to speed….!