T•RIDEN•T Land Cruiser

T•RIDEN•T Land Cruiser 雷電 (LAND CRUISER T・RAIDEN・T) and 震電 (LAND CRUISER T・SHINDEN・T) are robots in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Iron Maiden. The pilots are Keita Asari and Musashi Lee Strasberg, with Mana Kirishima being an extra pilot.

Profile
Six back thrusters allow ground gliding, and hydrojet allows water gliding and underwater activities. The large legs that support the huge mecha are folded during gliding. There are no fixed armaments, but optional weapons can be equipped in each part. As optional equipment, a cannon at the tip of the nose and a medium-range missile launcher on the pylon part of the shoulder are installed. A pair of arms extending from the base of the nose allows for close combat, but the strength is not very high. It is powered by a thermonuclear reactor. The cockpit is on the nose and is equipped with a life-saving capsule for emergency escape. The maneuverability was one of the problems and it could damage the pilot's body, for that reason, one of the plans was to steal EVA's data to improve the flight control system. It is known that two machines were created, the Shinden and Raiden.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Iron Maiden
The combat robots developed by Japanese Strategic Self Defense Force for a future conflict, in the game events, the pilots are going under training at young age to be able to pilot it masterfully in the future. It is expected for them to finish their training at 20 years old.

Both Keita Asari and Musashi Lee Strasberg escape from the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Force with the mecha in tow to the Hakone region, getting NERV involved in the incident. Raiden is destroyed, and its pilot seriously injured, after falling over the edge of a waterfall. Shinden initially escapes detection by hiding in Ashinoko during the day, but it is lured out when Mana is used as bait. After being taken down by the EVAS in a joint operation between the JSSDF and NERV, it is annihilated with an N² bomb.

Name
Its name is never said in the game where it appears. But in the book Sore o Nasumono: Neon Genesis Evangelion Concept Design Works, in the section dedicated to Ikuto Yamashita, the concept of the robot is called the T-RIDEN-T LAND CRUISER. Yamashita says:

Since the creation process was finished, I finally gave the notes on the official names: "Shinden" and "Raiden". Because I wanted a class designation in the original name, the "Mu" from "Gamu" (the mecha's temporary name) was added to "Raiden" as "T-RIDEN-T Class Land Cruise".

It is a typical wordplay in Japanese: the second kanji of Gamu (臥矛), Pronounced mu or hoko, means "halberd" or "spade", and sansa no hoko (三叉の矛) Means "trident". Additionally, the word "trident" is pronounced "to-rai-i-den-to" in Japanese. We therefore find the word "raiden" between two syllables "to".