Over the years, the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise has loaned its characters and story to a multitude of different projects and advertisements that aren’t even remotely connected to the original universe. With this said, it really shouldn’t surprise me that two very famous Japanese pop culture icons, Godzilla and Unit-01, would eventually be paired together in some fashion, but even I didn’t think this was going to be how it happened.
On October 16th, a new promotional video was released on the official Fields YouTube account, which features the unlikely team-up of the famous kaiju and the anime icon, Unit-01. If you’ve never heard of Fields, you might be led to believe that they posted this video in order to promote a brand-new anime project. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In actuality, Fields is a manufacturer of pachinko games and this video is promoting their latest model, which will debut in Japan later this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa2eNz_YheM
For those of you who are curious about what is happening within the 90-second video, here is a very rough breakdown of the events: Godzilla appears causing alarm, Unit-01 is sent out to defend the city, and the two lock up in battle. Unfortunately for both of them, Godzilla’s rival, the three-headed Ghidorah, shows up and interrupts their battle, causing them to divert their attention, especially considering that for some reason, Rei Ayanami, has kind of fused with the enemy kaiju. In an effort to save (?) her, Godzilla and Unit-01 form an alliance that sees the original kaiju zapping the robot and giving it the power to sort of take on the form and powers of Godzilla. Oh yeah, Kaworu shows up too for some reason. Yes, it is a little convoluted, but when you’re trying to combine two entirely different franchises into something that is at least semi-coherent, you can’t really expect Shakespeare.
For my money though, the coolest aspects of this video were some of the smaller details which might escape the notice of audience members (which is understandable because Fields squeezes a lot into those 90 seconds). First off, there are two theme songs attached to this project. The first one is titled “Teardrops of hope” performed by Yoko Takahashi which long-time fans will recognize as the singer for the original TV theme song. The second theme song is performed by Megumi Hayashibara (who, incidentally, reprises her role as Rei for the game) and is titled “Shuketsu no Hate ni” (which translates to “At the End of the Gathering”).
Unfortunately for overseas fans, pachinko is not a game that is widely popular outside of the country, so there is zero chance of this collaboration being localized and released overseas. If you want to see the entire story of how Godzilla and the Evangelion characters work together to save Rei, you’ll have to travel to Japan and seek out a pachinko parlor.
Source: SoraNews24
