AAA Wunder

The AAA Wunder, short for Autonomous Assault Ark Wunder, serves as WILLE's primary aerial battleship across Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time. The enormous winged vessel functions as the floating headquarters of Captain Misato Katsuragi and her crew. Its name is the German word for "miracle", pronounced "Vuhn-der".

The final film exposes the ship's hidden origin. NERV laid it down as the NHG Buße, lead ship of the Guardians of Guf class, and WILLE stole it before completion, repainting and reconfiguring the hull into its familiar look. Every NHG airship takes an Evangelion as its master, which explains both why Ritsuko calls Mark.09 the ship's original master and why NERV builds Mark.09-A to attempt a retrieval. Left unfinished, the Wunder lacks the Opfer type beam weapons of its sister vessels and mounts rail guns instead. "Buße" translates from German as "penance", and a keel plaque bearing that name survives beneath WILLE's blue overpainting.

Flight defines the vessel. It sustains powered flight indefinitely and, through an extraordinarily dense and malleable A.T. Field, hauls whole fleets of surface ships, shield vessels, and even Evangelion units through the sky beside it; it can also leave the atmosphere and operate in space. An N² reactor originally drove the ship, but after Operation US recovers Evangelion Unit-01 from orbit, WILLE installs the awakened unit in a containment chamber as the new power plant. Damaged wings bleed a blood-like fluid, hinting at biology somewhere in the structure. Computing runs through the Magi Achiral, hundreds of small linked units housed in a cylindrical chamber, a sharp contrast with NERV's single three-part Magi. Before combat the bridge rises, rotates, and locks into the ceiling much like an entry plug seating into an Eva, then pressurizes with LCL gas while its walls become external displays.

In 3.0, Misato demonstrates the reborn ship by wiping out the Mark.04 Nemesis series, and later rams Evangelion 13 to blunt Fourth Impact, sealing it inside the field. Mark.09 boards during that battle, wrecks several rail guns, and nearly seizes control before its destruction returns the helm to Misato. In the finale, the Wunder carries deep space seed pods designed to scatter Earth's natural life beyond the planet, pods that need the ship to lift them out of the atmosphere. When another NHG airship deals it crippling damage, the crew evacuates in Nekozame-class orbital assault craft, pill shaped pods that sprout four screw-driven fins and, despite the name, carry no weapons. Misato stays aboard alone; the ship's spine converts into the Spear of Gaius and reaches Shinji when the Wunder plunges into the eye of Evangelion Imaginary, annihilating itself in the process.

Misato Katsuragi commands the ship, with Ritsuko Akagi as deputy commander. The bridge is crewed by Shigeru Aoba, Makoto Hyuga, Maya Ibuki, Sumire Nagara, and Hideki Tama. Sakura Suzuhara serves as medical officer, Koji Takao as head engineer, and Midori Kitakami as assistant engineer.

The vessel also carries WILLE's Evangelion pilots: Asuka Shikinami Langley with Unit-02 and its variants, Mari Makinami Illustrious with Unit-08 and its variants, and, in the final film only, Shinji Ikari as pilot of Unit-01.