Evangelion Unit 8+2

Evangelion Unit 8+2 exists only in the next-film preview shown after Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo. At first it looks like two Evas welded together at the midline, but close inspection tells a different story: the body is Unit-08β's throughout, with one half simply repainted in Unit-02'β's colors. The genuinely hybrid portion is the head, where salvaged remains of the destroyed Unit-02'β, including two of its monitor eyes and half of the crescent forehead armor, are grafted onto Unit-08's structure on the right side, with the helmet's jawpiece reworked as well. One of Unit-02'β's shoulder pylons also replaces the original on the left. Because the underlying frame is intact Unit-08β, the armor configuration and the placement of green surface lights match that unit exactly; the abrupt split between the halves is what created the misconception that two whole bodies were merged.

Nothing official pins down the unit's capabilities, though the preview presents a fighter that excels at close range, and mating the ruined Unit-02'β to the mostly whole Unit-08β may have granted unspecified improvements; fan speculation includes a possible Double-Entry System. In its lone appearance the Eva stands in the ruins of Tokyo-3 against an army of green-colored Mark.06 units, carving several down with a Magorox Sword and finishing others barehanded. The footage ends with the now swordless unit leaping skyward to reveal a horde of Mass Production Evangelions raising enormous A.T. Fields around the fallen Black Moon. None of this survives into Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time; early preview material suggests the concept was superseded by the new Unit-08 β-ICC and New Unit-02α designs, with the damaged Unit-02'β instead fused with Jet Alone. A later re-cut of the preview shown after 3.333 drops the Unit 8+2 scene entirely.

No pilot is ever named and the soul within is unknown, though the components imply WILLE ownership. Designer Ikuto Yamashita has said the post-credit sequence and its content came out of a mentorship class with animator Ichiro Itano at Studio Khara's 3D CG group. In 2021 he published several rejected proposals, written as 2+8, among them a dinosaur-like form wielding a large sword, likely a beast mode, and a Getter Robo-inspired concept combining elements of Unit-02, Provisional Unit-05 and Unit-08 into three interchangeable configurations. A beam cannon fixed to the slanted shoulder pylon, which would have been the first fixed firearm in animated Evangelion, never made it past animation testing. Appearing in merchandise but never in a completed film, the unit shares phantom Evangelion status with Unit-04, and an early CG layout for the Neon Genesis scene of 3.0+1.0 shows it was once considered for inclusion there.