On Friday evening, Netflix announced the beloved 90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion will come to the streaming platform at the tail-end of spring. All 26 episodes and two movies, The End of Evangelion and Evangelion: Death (True)2, will be available to watch June 21.
The news arrived after Netflix's official NX account (for sci-fi and related genres) tweeted a tantalizing teaser on Friday afternoon. (Is a teaser for an announcement of a release date for a 20+ year old cartoon an excessive amount of hype? Without question. Yet here I am writing this, and here you are reading it, so the algorithm massagers over at Netflix must be doing something right.)
For everyone asking “Neon Genesis Evangelion when?” https://t.co/5cUGJq68xb pic.twitter.com/ON8bi4pKGV
— NX (@NXOnNetflix) March 22, 2019
The out-of-nowhere tweet prompted speculation amongst fans that some or all of the episodes would be available to view on Netflix tonight, immediately following the trailer. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case.
A landmark series that spawned a genre all its own, Evangelion follows a group of Japanese high school students tasked with piloting gigantic weaponized robots (the titular Evangelion) to defend what's left of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo from a series of hostile alien invaders known as Angels.
Here's the teaser trailer revealing the date, drawn from episode 9, "Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!" In it, our protagonist Shinji Ikari must work together with the prickly Asuka Langley Sohryu (who hates Shinji almost as much as he hates himself) in order to take down the seventh Angel by enacting their attack in perfect synchronicity.
While the show's single-season, 26-episode run starts off with the kind of slice-of-life tropes familiar to those with even the faintest interest in manga or anime, things rapidly take a turn for the brooding and batshit after a few episodes. Even after all these years, it's still a completely unique series it's impossible to feel indifferent about. Whether you end up loving or hating it, anyone with even a slight interest in anime should check out a couple episodes of Evangelion this June.
Are you looking forward to binging Neon Genesis Evangelion on the last day of spring? Were you (like us) thinking all the episodes could drop tonight? Let us know in the comments!
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Jen Glennon is a wide-ranging enthusiast of pop culture, who covers film, television, gaming and broader social trends. She particularly enjoys ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
