Evangelion Unit-01 Type F

Ritsuko Akagi engineers the Type F Equipment to cure the chronic weaknesses the Angel war exposed: thin protection and sluggish mobility. Though the added plating raises the unit's weight considerably, a newly developed propulsion device driven by the A.T. Field delivers more agility and more defense than the bare frame ever managed. The configuration debuts in the Neon Genesis Evangelions video game and returns in the opening chapters of the ANIMA novel.

Formally the armor is the AFC Experiment, a field deflection control testbed. Engineers hoped artificial deflection of A.T. Fields would harden Eva defenses and perhaps even yield flight, the way Mark.04A rides its field into space. Flight never comes, but the suit enables field-assisted leaps of tremendous range, letting the armored giant outmaneuver lighter units despite its bulk; jump jets tucked into the knee shields sharpen its footwork further.

SEELE reads such power in an experimental machine as a portent of rebellion at NERV's Japanese headquarters and demands its firearms be curtailed. The hands are rebuilt into a shape that cannot grip large guns, leaving only a Progressive Dagger in the shoulder pylon, but NERV secretly manufactures a modification kit restoring heavy firearm capability and slips it into service disguised as an Eva transport arm during the defense of headquarters.

Two signature weapons define the fit. The Progressive Dagger stored in the pylon runs longer and thicker than Unit-01's usual blade, closer to a mountaineer's machete. The Impact Bolt, carried on both shoulder pylons, is a high-output electrical antiphase weapon: a small black orb, a virtual image born of the interplay between the A.T. Field and normal space, floats before each pylon, and the very real potential difference lashes distant targets with whip-like bolts of lightning.

In ANIMA the unit sorties when the Mass Production Evangelions descend on NERV headquarters, fighting while Asuka and Unit-02 are consumed by the Instrumentality attempt. Three years later it launches against the rogue EVA 0.0 flown by Quatre and takes catastrophic damage from her cannon; Shinji dissolves into LCL, Yui cedes total control of the Evangelion to her son, and the merged machine regenerates and evolves. Facing the Unit-0.0 Mutant, Shinji balloons a spherical A.T. Field to dozens of times its normal size, flinging thousands of cubic meters of lake water skyward as a frozen bowl 1,200 meters tall; readings at the center plunge from roughly 1,000 degrees Celsius to minus 200, the ice resists melting, and NERV Japan's scientists argue over whether they witnessed adiabatic cooling or direct manipulation of particle mass.

The Mutant later ambushes the unit mid-pursuit of the Angel Carrier Type-2. Its shot punches through the Type F plating, carves a notch from the core and the S² Engine, vaporizes the entry plug whole, and exits at the back of the neck. Hauled into Cage 2 at NERV Japan, the wreck begins to liquefy, skeleton, organs, and muscle blurring together; flooding the bay with LCL fails to arrest the decay, and the volatile S² Engine keeps generating power without control, forcing evacuations around Hakone. The Type F fit also headlines several pachinko adaptations, where Shinji's Impact Bolt lands the killing blow on the Tenth Angel and, in one premium release, the Magorox Exterminate Sword rescues Mari's Unit-08α from the Fourth Angel.

Shinji Ikari pilots the unit in both the game and the novel, with Yui Ikari as the resident soul until she hands the machine over to him entirely. Ikuto Yamashita created the design for the video game and later drew it wearing a visor in the published ANIMA volumes; NERV Japan lettering marks the armor. Sister conversions include Unit-00 Type F, its Allegorica variant, and Unit-02 Type F, and the design crossed into the Super Robot Wars series in 2005 and again in 2019, with later appearances layering the armor over the Rebuild version of the base Eva.