Evangelion Provisional Unit-05

Evangelion Provisional Unit-05 breaks the humanoid mold that defined Units 00 through 03, a departure its unfinished, stopgap nature may explain. Stationed at Bethany Base, its whole reason to exist is standing guard over the sealed Third Angel and recapturing or killing it should containment ever fail. The upper body still resembles a Production Model Eva, with V-shaped torso armor and a conical helmet lit by a glowing yellow visor, but everything below the waist is prosthetic: four appendages tipped with cogwheels serve as legs, each carrying two thrusters for vertical ascent beyond Bethany's Styx shaft and a pair of covered drills that bite into the ground for traction and braking. A three-point aiming laser sits in every drill tip, and the axes of all four limbs can swing to any direction while the drills work.

The arms are equally mechanical, a claw on the left and a right limb mounting a fixed spear that conceals a second claw Mari later reveals. Power arrives continuously through pantograph rigs atop the shoulder pylons, labeled 1st and 2nd Current Collector on the status displays, drawing from a catenary network strung along the base's corridor ceilings the way a trolleybus would; no umbilical socket exists anywhere on the unit. Twin light sources glow in each pylon where weapons would normally rack. Light grey covers the biological portions and green the prosthetic ones, with glowing yellow details scattered across the frame.

Its full official designation, a seal-guarding specialized, limited-use local specification weapon, spells out how narrow its mission is. The sole armament is the Anti-Angel Extermination Weapon Spear of Longinus Basic Type, a pseudo-restoration melee spear whose glowing gem near the tip punches straight through an A.T. Field, as its duel with the Third Angel demonstrates. The unusual configuration locks the unit out of all standard Evangelion weaponry. Because deployment comes on no notice, the pilot wears special gear with tubes at the wrists and an oversized helmet, and the forced synchronization runs rough enough that the claws never reach full power. As internal reserves run dry, the head splits open to expose a mouth with six pairs of teeth in each jaw.

The unit fights exactly once. In the opening scene of Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, Mari Makinami Illustrious takes it out against the Third Angel breaking free inside the European/Russian Bethany base, cycling through everything the platform offers: cogwheels, thrusters, claws and the spear. With power nearly spent she crushes the Angel's core; her entry plug ejects onto an escape jet as the Eva detonates behind her in the usual rainbow, followed by the Angel's own cross-shaped burst, leaving two crosses standing near each other. Floating in the water afterward, Mari praises the machine and tells it goodbye. Its image returns only at the close of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time, dissolved with every other Eva by the Spear of Gaius.

Mari Makinami Illustrious is the only pilot ever seated in Unit-05, and the soul inside it goes unidentified. Hideaki Anno planned the unit as CG from the beginning, which is why the script labeled it provisional from the very first draft. His early pitch of caterpillar treads that shift to bipedal motion was refused by designer Ikuto Yamashita, who felt it would resemble Shin Getter-3, steering the result toward four-wheeled movement that could drift and convey speed. The lance grew out of Anno's wish to avoid small hand-held weapons while evoking the Lance of Longinus, and the trolley power feed was Yamashita's idea, underlining how specialized the unit's operation inside the base was. The version glimpsed in the Evangelion 2.0 preview differs from the final build, wearing a slightly different color scheme and a second spear where the finished left claw sits.