Lieutenant Colonel Kasuga

During his lakeside introduction Kasuga hides behind dark sunglasses and a blue ball cap, dressed to pass for an ordinary angler. Beyond that disguise, the novels leave his features largely to the reader's imagination.

Kasuga is unflappable and quietly sharp. Caught staking out NERV territory by a child pilot, he chats with her rather than retreating, hears out her tactical ideas, and gently suggests the matter belongs with an adult. His humor runs dry: he deadpans to Toji that the military is holding his family hostage, the family in question being his dogs Azuchi and Momo. The proverb he offers Toji, that doing good for others means doing good for yourself, is a fair summary of how he operates.

Rei Six discovers him in Volume 2 pretending to fish on Lake Ashi with his dog Azuchi beside him. She startles him by pointing out that a man trying to blend in should have skipped the rod, since the lake holds no fish, and warns that trouble is brewing underground. Their talk ends when sniper lasers converge on Azuchi from the surrounding hills; Kasuga calls the dog back and slips away without NERV Japan's security or intelligence agents ever locating him.

Soon after, his unit's machine, the Akashima, crosses the caldera rim while the JSSDF insists its only activities are disaster relief. Wary of their movements, Toji sends Rei Six out to the sniping position on Komagatake aboard Evangelion Unit-00 Type F, where she recognizes a squad insignia bearing a dog design on the mecha's armor. The standoff dissolves when the Angel Sandalphon attacks instead: fire from the Angel's Backbone misses its mark, retaliatory fireballs strip layers of armor from Unit-00 and hurt Rei Six, and the fight turns only when a precisely placed shot displaces a mass of lake water that slams into Sandalphon and sweeps it away. The resulting vortex sends Lake Ashi pouring down into the old Geofront, and the Angel, bleeding heat, finally disintegrates in an explosion of steam.

Following the incident at the Valley of Human Bodies, Kasuga and Toji speak aboard a giant transport plane, the JSSDF now supplying the muscle needed to recover downed Evangelions from terrain no heavy machinery could reach. The battle at the drained lake also prompts the Japanese government to seek an investigation run jointly alongside NERV Japan, cooperation intended to cement the relationship between the two organizations.