Shiro Tokita

The source material records no description of his features; he presents himself as the public face of Japan Heavy Chemical Industries, the private company behind Jet Alone.

Tokita is a showman with a needle ready for his rivals. Fielding safety questions about his robot's nuclear reactor, he flips the criticism around, mocking NERV for fielding a weapon steered by a pilot's fragile heart, one that can slip its leash and run wild. The bravado has limits: once the crisis turns real, he quietly hands Misato the means to stop the machine rather than hide behind procedure. The Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga adds a warmer thread, revealing a friendly college rivalry with Yui Ikari, to whom he perpetually finished second in the class rankings.

At a ceremony in the old center of Tokyo celebrating Jet Alone's completion, Tokita takes questions ahead of a live demonstration. Ritsuko Akagi presses him on the risks of an onboard reactor, and he answers with jabs at NERV's own dangerous, pilot-dependent weapon. The demonstration then goes wrong: reactor pressure climbs, shutdown commands fail, and the walking machine heads for meltdown. Lacking the authority to wipe its programming himself, Tokita is told a formal request must be filed first, so when Misato decides to board the robot on her own he slips her the deletion password, "HOPE." Carried in by Unit-01 in a radiation suit, she finds the password useless thanks to sabotage of the main computer, but at the last second the responsible virus runs its course and the control rods re-engage.

The Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga expands his part. He invites Yui's family and Shinji's friends to tour the unfinished Jet Alone, where sabotage again forces a frantic mainframe reboot; the password fails until Gendo unexpectedly karate-chops the computer, which promptly accepts it. A later news clipping shows the robot completed and successfully deployed, to Yui's private annoyance, and Tokita gifts her tickets to a promotional film of Jet Alone battling a Sachiel-like monster, which she pawns off on Rei and Shinji. His name comes from a character in the novel Ai to Gensou no Fascism.