Evangelion Unit-04

Unit-04
{{{japanese}}}
Model Type	Production
Pilot(s)	Unknown
Soul(s)	Unknown
First Sortie	(never seen on-screen)

Creation

Unit-04 is the fifth Evangelion completed, the third "Production Model" Evangelion. Eva 04 and its sister unit, Eva 03, were constructed in the United States of America. Eva 04 was constructed at NERV's second branch base (NERV-2) in Nevada, while Eva 03 was constructed at NERV's first branch in Massachusetts.

Unit 04 was used as a test subject for NERV's new artificial S² Engine design. At the exact moment that Unit 04's S² Engine experiment was scheduled to begin, NERV's entire second branch base, along with everything else in an 89 kilomter radius, simply vanished in a flash. Ritsuko Akagi and the NERV technicians stated that it was not entirely clear what happened. One possibility was that all matter surrounding the base was instantly converted into energy, vaporizing everything. Another possibility is that the S² Engine accidentally opened up a Dirac Sea pocket dimension, similar to the one that the Angel Leliel sucked Eva-01 into, and Eva 04 along with the entire NERV-2 base was sucked inside of this new Dirac Sea. Sabotage (probably by SEELE) was considered a possibility, but there was nothing to overtly suggest this. Further, when Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutsuki are speaking privately, they speak as if SEELE reacted in shock to Unit 04's disappearance and that it genuinely was an accident. In any event, it was never determined exactly what happened to Eva Unit 03 and NERV-2. The immediate result was that the United States government panicked at the loss of the base, and demanded that Eva Unit-03 be transfered from their soil to Japan as soon as possible.

Evangelion Unit-04 never actually appeared on-screen at any time during the course of the series, however, production art released by GAINAX depicts Eva 04 as being physically identical to its sister unit, Eva 03. According to this material, Eva 04 was colored silver, with black and red detail. Unit 04 does make appearances in various Evangelion spinoffs such as video games, etc.

Purpose

Ostensibly, like all the Evangelions, Unit-04's stated purpose is to defend Tokyo-3 and the whole world from the Angel threat. It was also used as a testbed for NERV's attempts to create an artificial S² Engine for use in the Eva Series.

Abilities

Eva 04 never even physically appears on-screen, so any new abilities it may have been designed with are unknown.

Soul

The soul of Shinji Ikari's mother, Yui Ikari, resides in Eva Unit 01, and the soul of Asuka Langley Soryu's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, resides in Eva Unit 02. It is stated that Shinji's school class is actually a secret pool of potential Eva pilots, all grouped into one place. Also, it is gradually revealed or implied over the course of the series the mothers of all of Shinji's classmates are dead (Kensuke Aida directly states this, and Hikari Horaki and Toji also heavily imply this). Thus it seems to be implied that there is some connection between all of the potential pilots having "dead" mothers.

The pilot of Eva Unit 04 is never specified. Shinji Ikari is the "Third Child" and when Eva Unit 03 was readied for use (after the loss of Unit 04) its pilot, Toji Suzuhara, was designated the "Fourth Child". Given that there was no designated child number between Shinji and Toji, it seems that in all probability Eva Unit 04 simply did not have a pilot assigned to it yet when it disappeared. For example, work on Eva Unit 01's construction lasted for years before Shinji Ikari was assigned as its pilot.

Thus, it is heavily implied that the soul inside of each Eva is the soul of the pilot's mother (i.e., the soul in Eva-03 is probably that of Toji's mother), but it appears that a pilot was not yet selected for Eva 04, so it cannot be determined what soul was used in its creation. For that matter, it is not entirely clear at what point in the construction process the soul would be "inserted"; that is, if Toji was honestly "selected" as a pilot only after NERV-2 disappeared, the soul of his mother would have been inserted into Unit-03 when its construction was almost fully complete. However, if Toji was always intended to be the pilot of Eva 03, years in advance, his mother's soul would already have been inserted into it years before (as was the case with Shinji and Asuka's mothers). Therefore, if Eva 04's pilot had honestly not been selected yet, the matching soul would also probably have not been inserted yet. But the other scenario is that one of Shinji's classmates was already selected, years in advance, to pilot Eva 04 and their mother's soul was already present inside of it.

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Evangelions

Evangelions (general)

Failed Evangelion Prototypes | Simulation Bodies

Eva-00 | Eva-01 | Eva-02 | Eva-03 | Eva-04 | Mass Production Evangelions (Evas 05~13)

Rebuild of Evangelion: Mark.04 | Eva-05 | Mark.06 | Eva-08 | Mark.09 | Eva-13

Eva 8+2 | Mass Production Evangelions | Failures of Infinity

Other: Extracanonical Evas