Gigantic 81-foot Evangelion statue goes up in Shanghai

Recreation of anime’s Unit-01 sets very specific Guinness World Record.

Last month, lovers of giant robots everywhere were saddened to hear that Tokyo’s full-scale Gundam statue will no longer be displayed after March 5. But it seems the universe needs to maintain balance, and so another massive recreation of anime machinery has been put up, this time representing the Evangelion franchise.

While Evangelion is one of the most influential animated series to come out of Japan, this gigantic statue of Evangelion Unit-01 was first displayed at last summer’s ChinaJoy digital entertainment trade show in Shanghai, as part of the promotion for Chinese software developer Heitao’s Evangelion mobile game.

▼ ChinaJoy 2016

Impressive as it was then, the statue is even more towering in stature in its new location elsewhere in the city, since it’s now gripping the Spear of Longinus, the immensely powerful piece of anime weaponry which almost took a real-life trip to the moon.

Not only does this create a more dramatic scene, it boosts the total height of the statue. While the top of the Eva’s head is 13,2 meters (43.3 feet) off the ground, the tip of the spear’s shaft is a dizzying 24.8 meters (81.4 feet) above the pavement.

The Evangelion series is infamous for its aversion to making concrete statements about its events and characters, and that vagueness extends to the specs for Unit-01. In the anime, no official height is given for the machine, which prevents us from judging whether this statue is “full-scale” or not. However, the 24.8 meters of the statue qualified it to be officially recognized as the largest Evangelion by the Guinness World Records association, and for that, we think its planners and builders deserve a heartfelt “Congratulations!”

Sources: Jin, Game Watch, Anime News Network/Jennifer Sherman, Minna no Eva Fan
Featured image: Twitter/@Hobby_Log



Credit:
at 18:05

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