Mass Production Evangelion

Mass Production Evangelions (エヴァンゲリオン量産機, Evangerion Ryōsanki) are the last Evangelions ever built, debuting in The End of Evangelion. SEELE ordered them constructed covertly at seven NERV facilities around the globe, Germany and China among them. Within the story they are almost always called the EVA Series, a slightly confusing label since that term technically covers every Evangelion in existence.

The design strips the standard Evangelion down to essentials. White armor with black detailing on the arms covers a frame that recalls Unit-02, but the shoulder pylons are absent, extra venting rings the armpits, and the back trades its charging port and full-length entry hatch for broad circular plates housing folding wings. Nine finished units exist, indistinguishable from one another.

Every unit carries an S² Engine, freeing the series from cables and battery limits, though unlike Angels they never exploit their organs to regenerate. Their huge mechanical wings retract fully and appear to work in concert with A.T. Field levitation, since genuine winged flight would be impossible at their mass; aloft, they hover much as flight-capable Angels like Ramiel and Zeruel do, wings spread but serving no obvious purpose. In place of living pilots, each unit answers to a dummy plug patterned on Kaworu Nagisa's thoughts, sidestepping the panic, rage, and sympathetic pain that would degrade a human pilot's performance. Their sole armament is a set of gray, club-like Heavy Spears that twist and reshape on demand into blue-gray copies of the Spear of Longinus.

Twelve units through Unit-16 were originally planned, but SEELE compressed the schedule to launch Third Impact the moment the final Angel died, leaving three unbuilt. The nine completed machines spearhead the assault on NERV Headquarters in Episode 25', tasked with neutralizing Evangelion Unit-02. Asuka savages all nine, yet never destroys a single core, so the units revive, kill Unit-02, and in Episode 26' conduct SEELE's ceremony, using Evangelion Unit-01 to set Third Impact and the Human Instrumentality Project in motion. Each fell in a distinct way first: Unit-05 punched clean through the torso, Unit-06 cleaved from shoulder to chest, Unit-07's head snapped backward, Unit-08's leg severed at the knee, Unit-09 broken in two after a skullbuster, Unit-10 riddled with spike volleys through the head, Unit-11 stabbed through the crown with a snapped Progressive Knife, Unit-12 bisected at the waist, and Unit-13 impaled by the fist driven through Unit-05. Units 05 and 06 were German-built and Unit-08 came from China. Some cuts in the film seem to show their wounds healing, but this is a continuity error; later shots confirm the damage persists.

The manga retells their role with forearm blades added to the design. There, Unit-01 rises from the Geofront and downs them a second time, but with their cores untouched they reactivate to begin Third Impact; after Shinji rejects Instrumentality, their petrified husks fall from the sky, some frozen with Rei's many faces or headless, and years later scholars study the ruins without ever learning what they are. In Neon Genesis Evangelion: ANIMA, Kaji leaks SEELE's invasion plan in advance, and the nine units are wiped out by the upgraded Unit-01 Type F and Unit-00 Type F; technology salvaged from the wrecks feeds the Super Evangelion and the three EVA0.0 units, while the Angel Carriers later emerge as their successors. One external S² organ built from a Mass Production Evangelion's spine even regenerates during the Longinus Curtain mission, nearly killing Rei Cinq before both are annihilated in a cross-shaped blast. In the game the Iron Maiden 2nd, Kaworu Nagisa himself takes one into battle.

Ikuto Yamashita drafted a 1996 concept for the units that lost out to Takeshi Honda's final design; the rejected version was later made canon in ANIMA, described as a different developmental stage with fully formed sensory organs, back-mounted graviton armatures for extended operation, and enough output to wield a tin staff resembling the Angel Carriers' weapons.