Super Evangelion

The Super Evangelion debuts in the novel Neon Genesis Evangelion: ANIMA as the next stage of Evangelion Unit-01, with Shinji Ikari serving as both its pilot and the soul inside it. Misato Katsuragi comes up with the name, and NERV's engineers classify the machine as the third stage of the Unit-01 technology line.

Its birth is violent. While Shinji fights in the Type-F configuration of Unit-01, Rei Quatre's Unit-0.0 Mutant fires into him at point-blank range. The crew believes the pilot dead, yet a vision of Yui appears before Shinji, and his body and spirit dissolve into the Evangelion itself. The wounded unit then reconstructs its own frame, and what emerges from that self-repair is the S.EVA. The bond runs so deep that the machine effectively functions as a second body for Shinji.

Visually, the familiar purple and neon green of Unit-01 survives the transformation, now broken up by orange accents across the frame. Because the plating descends from the F-Type Equipment, the silhouette reads heavier and far more ornate than the original.

Much of the redesign exists to accommodate the S² Engine that Unit-01 consumed. Heat-management systems first trialed on the Stage 2 Specification's Type F gear reach maturity here, helped along by parts and techniques borrowed from the Mass Production Evangelions; in practical terms, Unit-01 and the S² Engine finally operate as a single organism. The head also changes: instead of a transparent eye cover, the forehead of the helmet slides down over the eyes, and vision switches to backup cameras set into the cheek armor.

Flight comes from the Vertex system, a pair of compact wings mounted at the hips. Where the UX-1 Allegorica relied on graviton technology, the Vertex bends the density of the surrounding air with an A.T. Field, an application once shelved during Type F development because no field strong enough could be sustained. Lift therefore demands concentration from Shinji and the Evangelion together; if either falters, the unit drops. Its first activation inside the cage twisted and shattered everything beneath it, and during the first real flight Maya Ibuki had Shinji extend the retractable wings, trading responsiveness and mobility for the stability that finally tamed the unit's tumbling. Fitting the flight gear also recolors the green trim into a blue aviation camouflage.

Hardpoints and a rail system let the S.EVA swap loadouts by mission. Its recorded weapons include the Powered 8 pallet rifle, the KEG-46R Yamato Rebuild, the Neyarl guided artillery cannon, the Azumaterasu, the SRM50, the paired field splitter swords Kesara and Basara, and a Stage 3 progressive knife carried in the forearms rather than the shoulder pylons. As a Stage 3 machine it still fields Stage 2 equipment as standard. Later experiments in particle-transfer power delivery, treated as Stage 4 of the program, feed directly into the Evangelion Final Model, a sleeker successor with black detailing and a folding flight backpack descended from the Vortex unit.

Shinji Ikari is inseparable from the Super Evangelion in every sense: he pilots it, his soul inhabits it, and the machine rebuilt itself around him after the Rei Quatre ambush. NERV's technical department maintains and upgrades the unit, reworking its planned Stage 3 modifications after the spontaneous self-regeneration forced a redesign.

Misato Katsuragi supplies the unit's name, while Maya Ibuki christens the flight wings. She picks the Latin word vertex, a reference to the rotation point of the sky at the celestial poles, but a clerical mix-up later swaps in the English spelling, so the flight setup becomes popularly known as the Super EVA Vortex, or just the Vortex EVA. An early rough draft of the air-combat gear, dubbed Turbulence equipment, would have bundled artillery and sword-fighting attachments alongside the wings. The unit also reached store shelves: Bandai's Chogokin Super Evangelion figure launched in Japan on March 27, 2010.