A Staple In Weirdness: 9 Most Baffling Evangelion Merch Collaborations

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a revolutionary anime series, one that deals with heavy topics and has been the center of heated debates for nearly three decades. But the plot alone is not the reason why Evangelion is so popular. The marketing team did everything in its power to make Eva as visible as possible — and it paid off: the amount of various Evangelion-themed products is astounding.

We briefly covered some of the examples of weird by useful NGE merch in our list, but this time we are going to expand on Eva-themed goods that make us raise our brows in suspicion and disbelief.

Trust us, there are a lot of weird things that rock EVA-o1 colors and have characters from the show promoting them: throughout its almost 30-year history, NGE has created more than 4,000 merchandise and collaboration goods.

Shinji and Kaworu Lingerie

Lingerie is not the weirdest type of merchandise for the anime series, but the characters that were chosen for this specific collaboration are pretty questionable.

You have a show where two of the main characters are girls, so why did you decide to model sets of frilly lingerie with two male ones in mind? Color-wise, they represent the schemes of Shinji's and Kaworu's plug suits, a lighter blue with red trimming for Shinji and a dark blue with white details for Kaworu, and the quality seems nice, but still, why?

Shinji and Kaworu Body Sprays

These are not heavy perfumes but lighter body mists, and they followed the release of mists designed with Rei Ayanami, Shinji Ikari, and Asuka Langley in mind, but the difference in these is that they are sold in pairs, while the previous mists were available individually. Now, Japanese companies often release character-themed perfumes, but this specific collaboration doesn't let you separate Shinji and Kaworu. The smells are pretty fun: Shinji's labeled as "Blue Musk" and has heavier undertones, while Kawory's "White Citrus" is more refreshing and light.

Schick Razors

One of the biggest Evangelion ad campaigns was for Schick razors, and it featured Ikari Gendo shaving his beard in some of the promo materials. The NGE-themed imagery covered not only boxes that housed the razors but the razors themselves, and also Schick offered some razor stands with Rei or Asuka, created in collaboration with Kotobukiya.

Unit-01 Version of Optimus Prime and Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion

Two wonderful mecha crossovers happened in the NGE history; first one was with Transformers — based on the web novel series Transformers Mode "Eva" in which Optimus Prime scanned Unit-01 and gained its color scheme and abilities a toy was released, MP-10 Convoy Mode "Eva" which is practically a recolored version of the original Optimus Prime.

Another one is a shinkansen train toy that transforms into a robot. This toy, named Evangelion-01 Shinkalion Z 500 Type EVA, is based on an actual shinkansen train that coursed between Hakata and Osaka for four years in celebration of the series' 20th anniversary.

Evangelion Bucket

It's a metallic bucket, one that resembles the metallic buckets that fried chicken chains sell their food in, or the ones that are common in the hardware stores. It was dubbed "American Style" bucket and was adorned with the NERV logo and the character cards with their names and the numbers of the units they pilot. It doesn't have any additional gimmicks; it's literally just a bucket.

Eva-colored Pentax Cameras

Back when phone cameras were still bad and people were much more interested in special devices for photography, Pentax released special versions of their Q10 mirrorless camera. Hardware-wise they were not different from the regular Q10s, but their bodies were adorned with the colors of Units 00, 01, and 02.

Japan Racing Association campaign with Units turned into horses

This is one of the most bizarre-looking collaborations: characters of NGE in here pilot their Units like in the original show, it's just the units are not humanoid-like robots but giant mecha horses. Non-pilots are overseeing the races and providing all the crucial information, making the event feel as tense as the battle of actual Units.

Units-colored True Wireless Earphones

That's one of the useful albeit weird collabs: Final Audio released their first wireless headphones and made them NGE-colored. They're pretty good specs-wise, have decent battery life, and, despite the blocky design, sit in the ears comfortably. The only downside is that this crossover didn't have a Unit 00 version — only 01, 02, and 06. Later, though, the Rei-colored version was released.

Curry-finding phone application

You can (not) forget your daily dose of curry. A curry chain CoCoIchi (Curry House CoCo Ichibanya) and a Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) decided to collaborate with Evangelion characters and created an app that would help the user to locate the nearest curry-fueling station. The app also added a little bit of a gaming element to the curry-devouring process, allowing users to earn points and win some NGE-themed prizes, like jackets or plates.