A new Evangelion series is on the way, and NieR auteur Yoko Taro will be penning it, with that series’ composer Keiichi Okabe also providing the music.
The news was announced via the official Evangelion website as part of the iconic anime series’ 30th anniversary celebrations. We’re using machine translation for the article announcing the Evangelion revival.
Yoko Taro will be scripting the series, with production being handled by CloverWorks and Rebuild of Evangelion outfit Studio Khara. Keiichi Okabe, who’s written music not only for NieR but also for its predecessor series Drakengard (as well as Hyrule Warriors and more), will be on composition duties.
NieR‘s Yoko Taro will revive Evangelion, it’s been announced.
Direction will be handled by Rebuild of Evangelion‘s Kazuya Tsurumaki and Chainsaw Man‘s Toko Yatabe, but beyond the staffers mentioned, we don’t know much else about the new Evangelion series, including whether it’ll be a reworked version of the original or an entirely new story.
What we do know, however, is that Yoko Taro has spoken in the past about how Evangelion influenced his work, and it’s not hard to see how; like Evangelion, Taro’s work combines high-octane action with deep philosophical themes (and, some might say, similarly nonsensical endings).
Whether or not production of the new Evangelion affects Taro and Okabe’s work on NieR remains to be seen. It’s worth noting that a new NieR game hasn’t been released for around nine years; the last was 2017’s NieR: Automata.
However, there may be cause to hope on that front. In a recent trailer announcing 10 million sales for the game, a closing message simply read “NieR: Automata to be continued…”, suggesting that more NieR (and perhaps even more Automata) could be on the way.
We’ll likely have to wait a little while before we get more information about Yoko Taro’s plans for Evangelion, and, indeed, his plans for NieR as well. Stay tuned for more.
