speaking at a press conference commemorating the completion of Shin Godzilla, Anno’s used his opening remarks not to talk about the kaiju film he’d just completed, but to address the fans of Evangelion, saying:
“To start with, there is something I’d like to apologize for. To the fans of Evangelion, I am truly, truly, truly sorry for having kept you waiting.”
[...]
“The only way for me to describe Evangelion is to say that it is my soul. I make it by scraping off pieces of myself, and I made three [Evangelion] movies in a row like that, putting everything I could into them and not thinking about what would come next.”
How bad was it? Anno described his emotional state as:
“After finishing [the third Rebuild movie], I thought I’d never create anything again.”
--Quelle...