The New Evangelion Anime Crossover is Really Weird

Especially if you overthink it.

Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion is an anime about a boy obsessed with Japan’s various bullet trains who becomes the pilot of a bullet train that can turn into a giant mecha. With it, he fights mysterious monsters that appear across Japan.

…And a recent episode was a crossover with one of the most famous anime of all time: Neon Genesis Evangelion–complete with the original voice actors returning. So let’s go through and break this down, step by step.

But before we really get into this, it’s important to note that I am not a regular viewer of Shinkalion. It’s basically an anime geared towards selling toys to it’s young viewers–and build a whole new generation of train otaku in the process. So I’m not exactly its target audience. But Evangelion? As a child of the 90s, that one is right in my strike zone. Like many others, it was key in turning anime into an obsession that’s lasted decades. Needless to say, there’s few things I wouldn’t wade through for a taste of Evangelion.

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The episode begins with Hayato on an excursion to one of the rare places where the various bullet trains reach their top speed, hoping to get a few good photos to add to his collection. Of course, as his tiny robot companion warns, standing out in the midday summer sun taking pictures without even a hat to protect him isn’t exactly a good idea. So Hayato passes out for a moment. When he comes to, he sees not a normal bullet train racing down the tracks, but the 500 Type Eva (with the music from Evangelion episode 9, Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win! playing as we see a glimpse of Shinji in the cockpit).

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Interestingly enough, this was a real bullet train. With a special paint job and an appropriately themed interior, this train ran until May 2018. So obviously, Hayato is more than a little surprised to see it. Hoping to grab another look after it zooms past, Hayato dashes through the woods only to emerge on a road overlooking a massive city: Tokyo-3.

Stunned, and further proving that Hayato might just be on the short track to a darwin award, he steps out into the street only to barely avoid being hit by a passing car. And who is in said car? Asuka’s friend, the class president of Shinji’s class, Hikari. With her in the car are two never-before-seen-on-screen characters, her sisters Kodama and Nozomi.

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Now, this is a little bit of bullet train humor. Running south from Tokyo, there are three different bullet train services. Nozomi is the fastest and has the least stops. Kodama is the slowest with the most stops–with Hikari falling in between. Thus Hikari’s older sister is Kodama and the younger is Nozomi.

Strangely oblivious to the pun, Hayato nonetheless discovers that the three are bullet train maniacs just like him–and they take him to their secret Bullet Train viewing spot. There he takes a picture of Hikari which prompts her two sisters to tease her about how she already has feelings for someone else. While not mentioned by name, this is certainly Shinji’s friend Toji. Hayato, on the other hand is taunted by his robot friend quoting the famous Evangelion line “you mustn’t run away.” Of course, as a little kid, Hayato is completely oblivious to the whole situation.

At this point, the three girls drive Hayato to the train station so he can head home. But when they ask what route he plans on taking, they are shocked at his reply: the bullet train. In the world of Evangelion, Tokyo proper was destroyed in the year 2000 and now sits completely underwater. Thus, there are no bullet trains running through the area and Hayato should have to go the long way around on normal train to get home.

The two oldest girls jump to the obvious (read: insane-yet-somehow-correct) conclusion that Hayato is from a parallel world. But before they can say anything, a giant monster appears and begins to attack Tokyo-3.

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Now, up to this point, this world has seemed to more or less be the world we know from the Evangelion anime, but from here on, we start to see how different it is. There is no sign of Nerv as an organization in this world. Instead, Shinkalion’s Shinkansen Ultra Evolution Institute seems to fill that role–though with a strikingly Nerv-esque layout to their mission control room. Misato and Shinji are simply members of the Kyoto area branch of the organization.

This, of course, means that instead of Eva Unit 01 as we know it, we get the 500 Type Eva bullet train–which transforms into a giant robot that’s strikingly similar to Eva Unit 01. However, while the robots and organizations are pulled from Shinkalion, the “giant monster” is 100% Evangelion.

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Simply, it is the amalgamation of nearly every Angel fought in the Evangelion TV anime. And more than that, it even has an AT-field–something that Hayato’s Shinkalion has no way to breach. Luckily, that’s where Shinji and the 500 Type Eva come in.

The 500 Type Eva transformation sequence that follows lasts a full 90 seconds–exactly the amount of time needed to play the entire opening theme song to Evangelion. Together, Shinji and Hayato combine weapons to create an AT-field-piercing lance, and after Shinji strips said AT-field away, Hayato blasts the monster, destroying it in one shot.

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The monster defeated, Hayato returns to say goodbye to Hikari and her sisters. There it is revealed that he has figured out that this “is just a dream”–that he is not in his world. He knew it from the moment he saw the train map at the station. However, he still wanted to say goodbye to them before he woke up. Shinji likewise comes by to bid Hayato farewell and, after getting on Evangelion’s iconic train and riding into the sunset, Hayato wakes up near where he started, suffering from heat stroke. While his robot pal remembers nothing, Hayato is happily shocked to discover that his photo of Hikari remains.

So, this leaves the question. How does this all fit into Evangelion? The world Hayato visits is clearly not the one from Evangelion’s TV anime or it’s movie reboots. However, the people and places are the same meaning it’s a close parallel world–one that’s more Evangelion than Shinkalion anyway.

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My (admittedly insane) hot take? This Shinkalion crossover is 100% Evangelion canon. I think we’re smack dab in the middle of the 1997 film The End of Evangelion here, folks. For anyone who needs a refresher, in The End of Evangelion the world comes to an end with all life on the planet perishing–with the exception of Shinji who finds himself in the position of deciding whether the world is left lifeless, is remade into a human paradise, or becomes something in between.

Now, I’ve always ascribed to the line of thinking that the The End of Evangelion and Episodes 25 and 26 are both happening at the same time, with the former being what’s happening in the real world and the later what’s happening in Shinji’s mind. Of course, by the time the shit hits the fan, what is real and what isn’t is a relative concept. In a very real way, Shinji is God–or at least a very flawed human trying to cope with having the powers of a god. He can create worlds with a thought–and does.

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In Episode 26, Shinji creates an ideal world for himself: a world where he and his friends are normal students (and not mecha pilots) and where he isn’t racked by the emotional pain of his previous existence. In The End of Evangelion, he likewise recreates his apartment along with Asuka.

So, who’s to say that those are the only two worlds he tried out when recreating the world. Perhaps when he tells Hayato that “This is my world,” he means it in a deeper sense–that this is a world he actually made. A world where he was a more traditional mecha hero protagonist.

After all, the Shinji we see in Shinkalion appears to be much more confident and stable than any we’ve seen in the Evangelion TV anime or films. He doesn’t get hurt when his mecha takes damage, the enemies are defeated easily, and with nothing in the way of damage/loss of life. It’s exactly the kind of world a person who doesn’t want any emotional anguish would make.

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And then there’s Asuka and Rei. The pair has a grand total of two lines apiece, but it’s clear that they know more than they should: They know about Hayato, despite never interacting with him. Moreover, they decide to simply watch rather than interfere when he runs off to fight the monster with Shinji.

This choice to not help defend the city is an odd one given their characters. It’s like they know their world is fake–that it’s nothing more than Shinji’s hero-fantasy playground–so it’s fine to sit back and do nothing. As there is no meaningful danger, they’re far more interested in this interloper from another reality–one that can pilot a giant robot at that.

But the real kicker is that, in the end, Asuka and Rei both follow Hayato to his world–escaping the Shinji-made world. Of course, it’s likely they are tied to him–he is literally their God after all–so any escape is temporary. Still, for them it is a vacation from being pawns in Shinji’s endless world creation–and how better to start a vacation than by hitting up the local cuisine?

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So in the end, this Shinkalion/Evangelion crossover is one weird 24 minutes of TV. It’s silly, random, and pretty much nothing but an endless stream of Evangelion in-jokes. This is more than a little strange given that Evangelion is a 20+ year old anime and one aimed at a demographic more than a bit older than Shinkalion’s–i.e., no young kid watching Shinkalion week-to-week is likely to have seen Evangelion. There’s no way they’d understand the myriad of references.

However, for anyone who has seen Evangelion, it’s more than a little fun to see this homage of the anime reimagined with transforming trains. And if you love overthinking things as much as I do, this one is a real treat.

Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion airs on TBS in Japan. It is not currently streaming in the West.

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