Tokyo-3

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New Tokyo-3 City (第３新東京市, Dai-san shin Tōkyō-shi^?) is the fictional city where most of the Evangelion franchise story takes place. It is the home of most of the characters, NERV, and the Evangelion Units.

History

Old Tokyo

Main article: Old Tokyo

Tokyo-2

Main article: Tokyo-2

Tokyo-3

Composite shot from Episode 4

New Tokyo-3 City (第３新東京市, Dai-san shin Tōkyō-shi^?), commonly known as Tokyo-3, is located above the GeoFront, with buildings of that can retract into the ground for safety, and other buildings that contain the launch ports and weapons caches for the Evas. It is projected to replace Tokyo-2 as capital of Japan, but was designed to intercept all incoming Angels to Japan. The city is defended by numerous missile buildings around it while rows of machine gun cable cars are stationed in the outskirts and missile batteries are built to the side of the mountains . It was built in the location of pre-Impact Hakone, approximately 80 kilometers southwest of Tokyo-1. In Episode 01, Shinji is picked up in the neighboring city of Atami^WP, 25 kilometers away.

Tokyo 3 superimposed on real-world Hakone

Tokyo-3 was heavily damaged by the attack of the Angel Zeruel, though repairs on NERV HQ and much of the city were worked on later. However, soon after Rei was forced to self-destruct Unit-00 to destroy the Angel Armisael, a large swath of the city was destroyed. During the attack by JSSDF forces, the Invaders systematically take out sensor posts and the missile stations and proceeding to invade the Geofront Base below while a N² Bomb exploded in the city destroying it entirely and leaving the Geofront open to the sky, though NERV HQ (located deep beneath the area of the blast's effect) survived the explosion.

Rebuild of Evangelion

Orbital view of Tokyo-3 at the beginning of the Third Impact

In Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, Evangelion Unit-00 and Unit-02 coordinated a N² missile attack on the Tenth Angel while inside the GeoFront, the detonation of the N² missile destroyed most of Tokyo-3 and left the Geofront exposed to the open air. Mark.06 used this opening to descend into the GeoFront and stop Evangelion Unit-01 from initiating Third Impact at the conclusion of the movie.

In Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, Tokyo-3 can be seen when Kaworu shows the results of Near Third Impact to Shinji; all of life is destroyed, covered with a reddish substance and sprinkled with bits of beings resembling Evangelion Unit-01. The atmosphere of the city seems toxic to humans as Shinji is forced, unlike Kaworu, to wear a suit to visit it.

Transformers Mode “EVA”

The alien Autobots arrive on Tokyo-3 to answer a distress call when a Angel attacks. After a Angel got possessed by Starscream and become Angel-Scream Misato transforms Tokyo-3 to deploy Unit-01 which Optimus Prime compared it to Metroplex. After Optimus Prime scanned Unit-01 to gain it’s size and color to fight Angel-Scream Misato has Tokyo-3 shift and change under Angel-Scream to throw off his balance while chasing the Autobot Bumblebee.

Tokyo-3 Defenses

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Tokyo-3 1st Public Junior High School

In the original series, the battle configuration of Tokyo-3 is rather limited, with civil buildings retracted and little to no defensive emplacements within the city besides the missile buildings and machine gun-equipped cable cars and vertical launch systems at the hills and mountains nearby, forcing NERV to rely on JSSDF for defense most of the time with their ineffective rows of battle tanks armored cars, mobile rocket and artillery MLRS platforms and other modern warfare equipment.

Later into the series, NERV presumably received a major boost in funding, allowing the establishment of vertical cruise missile launch towers which were used in a combined NERV/JSSDF attack on Israfel.

Rebuild of Evangelion

Topographical map of the city

In the films, the battle formation of Tokyo-3, alternatively called Combat Formation, is now much more extensively shown than the one in the TV series, with many new designs of defense emplacements stationed in the City.

Defenses within the city are multiple VLSH structures and many Type C flak towers armed with many 127mm gun turrets, many more Type C flak towers and carousel car parks armed with patriot missiles are used as improvised anti-air emplacements, towers arranged in two rows each armed with four large-caliber machine guns are lined in the outskirts of the city to intercept Angels.

Further out of the city are sensor posts and defensive emplacements to the side of the mountains and hills armed with rows of dual gun turrets and heavy artillery weapons, and fixed artillery buildings armed with large battleship-grade gun turrets.

Notes

Comparison on Hakone travel guides

This comparison provides a overhead view of the lake. Notice it getting red at the time of the Sixth Angel's death.

Tokyo-3 is loosely based on the real-life Japanese town of Hakone^WP, though its more modern and dense facilities were built anew. Hakone in real life is a resort town of only 10 thousand population with heavy tourism - including from Evangelion fans, and is also often featured in other anime, films and games for its famous Lake Aishi/Ashikonokoto, its hot water springs, mountain roads used in motorsport, and proximity to Mt. Fuji, which it shares a national park with. Pen Pen being a penguin is a direct result of the show being set in Hakone, as Sadamoto suggested the idea of a "hot springs penguin" to fit the scenery.

The Hakone city hall is aware of this, and has done more multiple publicity campaigns featuring Evangelion since 1995. One of the maps featured in this article was published in an official tourism website. Japanese media have produced numerous features on this, and this is even mentioned in official travel guides. It held several events centered around Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance in 2019 and 2011, "Evangelion X Hakone Town", which enjoyed high success. In 2020, it had planned a six-month long “Evangelion-ization” event where most of the city was decorated in Evangelion themes, both in response to renewed international interest after the 2019 Netflix release and in anticipation of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time, which at the time had a scheduled launch date in June of 2020. It also hosts an EVA STORE since 2012, which sells many exclusive Hakone-themed products.