New Evangelion Unit-02 designs

The Decemeber issue of NewType Japan promises some new sneak peeks of Asuka’s Evangelion Unit-02 which we’ve only been given a brief glimpse of in the preview at the end of the first movie. NewType has released a television commercial featuring another, more detailed, glimpse of the new Evangelion design. You may remember from the preview that Unit-02 can be seen with what looks like 2 horns, harking back to the more original designs where director Hideaki Anno based the Evangelions on Oni. We can now clearly see that the new design does indeed have small horns. Another cursory glance shows that the body design is very different from the 2 previous designs of the TV Series and the End of Evangelion movie, almost (probably coincidentally) taking some design cues from Gainax’s Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. Aside from the horns, the head also looks slightly different, having different spacing for the eyes.

Even with these design changes, this is still easily recognizable as Unit-02 and most people will not mind the changes, eventhough it seems more drastic than the changes to Unit-01’s design. Let’s look forward to some scans from December’s NewType and to see the new Evangelions in action in the next installment of the Rebuild movies next Summer.

Update: We have an image from NewType showing the full torso and arms of Evangelion Unit-02. Admittedly now, after seeing the entire torso, the design changes look less drastic than what could be extrapolated from the smaller image from the TV commercial.