Central Tactical Command Room

The Central Tactical Command Room, often shortened to the Command Center, serves as the operational heart of NERV Headquarters. Nearly all combat against the Angels is run from this chamber or from a mobile equivalent. The space itself is enormous: a rectangular hall of great height dominated by a tiered tower at its rear, a holographic terrain and energy projection at its center, and a huge display wall at the front. It sits within Central Dogma, and the version seen in the Rebuild of Evangelion films matches the television original almost exactly.

Behind the scenes, the production staff drew on tokusatsu control rooms from shows such as Ultraman and the British series Stingray. Ikuto Yamashita and Kio Seiji handled the design, though Hideaki Anno rejected the early sketches and faxed over his own, asking for a spacious room modeled on the flight deck of a wartime Japanese aircraft carrier. Seiji's trench concept with six mobile MAGI platforms went through many revisions; moving parts and curved surfaces were cut as too difficult to animate in perspective, escalators and a rear screen were added, and Kazuya Tsurumaki pushed for further simplification before the final look was locked in.

Authority inside the room flows from top to bottom, quite literally. Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutsuki occupy the tower's summit beneath the engraved NERV emblem, yet they usually leave the actual battle calls to Misato Katsuragi one level down, where she works alongside Ritsuko Akagi. Misato's orders pass to three bridge technicians whose stations bristle with phone lines, oversized keyboards, and layered holographic readouts. Two single-person lifts carry senior officers up the tower in seconds.

Below the Command Center proper sit three Coordinated Analysis Centers, each holding a red brick-shaped housing for part of the MAGI supercomputer; CASPER-3 is physically raised out of one of them in Episode 13. Two Vice Command Centers near the front wall appear to handle secondary duties such as logistics, communications, observation, and damage control. Zeruel demolishes the room in Episode 19, forcing the staff into an identical backup facility in Episode 20, and in Episode 21 the chamber becomes the site of Naoko Akagi strangling the first Rei before ending her own life on a MAGI block below.

Command belongs to Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutsuki, though operational decisions almost always fall to Misato Katsuragi, whose orders the two men rarely question. Ritsuko Akagi provides the technical voice on the floor despite formally heading Project E, and her disagreements with Misato occasionally boil over, as in Episode 16 when a provocation earns her a slap. The bridge itself is worked by Shigeru Aoba, Makoto Hyuga, and Maya Ibuki, the trio who translate every order into action at their consoles.