Japan and trains go together, they’re a common sight and practical means of conveyance, and while most are pretty unassuming there are more than a few colorful and distinct trains running around. One of those is the Neon Genesis Evangelion-themed 500 Type Eva Shinkansen, which began running last November.
2015 marked the 40th anniversary of the Sanyo Shinkansen, the Shinkansen route which runs from Fukuoka on Kyushu to Osaka on Honshu and it was also the 20th anniversary of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a 1995 show about teens piloting giant biomechanical spawns of unholy science and fighting blasphemous hellspawn and I’m going to stop now because it only gets weirder and makes less sense from there. Recently it’s had a “Rebuild” series of movies that condenses the narrative into theatre format and I really wish they would hurry up and finish the last one.
For this reason Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno and mechanical designer Ikuto Yamashita came up with a “rebuild of Shinkansen” that brings together two of Japan’s most hardcore nerd groups- train enthusiasts (an understatement) and anime fans (again, understatement). Of course that meant I had to ride this train before leaving Japan and did so on a trip to Hiroshima.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I got to the station. I arrived at Fukuoka’s Hakata Station half an hour early and hung around the train platform for twenty minutes before my train was scheduled to arrive. I had reserved a seat on the 500 Type Eva train, technically the 6:36 a.m. Kodama 730 from Hakata to Shin-Osaka, three days earlier but wasn’t sure what the crowd would be like. Though the train was decked as if it was the main robot, Eva-01, and covered in purple and green from end to end on the outside, only two unreserved cars were refurbished with the show’s theme as well as the “cockpit.”
There were few other people on the platform, but most notably there was a photographer. The first time I shot a train at a station in Japan I kept expecting security to show up and question me but because train fans are quite common no one thinks anything of it when a guy has a tripod-mounted camera shooting all the incoming bullet trains.
We both had our cameras working as the purple nose appeared from the darkened tunnel ahead of us. Its bold coloring really makes it stand out compared to most of the plain shinkansens riding the rails right now. When it pulled to a stop and the doors open most passengers hoped into their reserved cars but a group of us took the time to shoot the train or take pictures with it. Boys, girls, young, old, liking novelty trains and/or anime doesn’t really seem to have demographic.
The 500 Type Eva Shinkansen is really just a fresh coat of paint and a hell of a makeover to turn an old train into a novelty. Built in 1997, The 500 Type is almost as old as the show and is the shinkansen version of a local train as it hits every shinkansen stop making it take longer than any other bullet train to get around.
This was part of why I wasn’t sure what to expect on the platform. I figured a lot of nerds would ride this for the same reason as me, potentially meaning I wouldn’t get a seat in one of the two unreserved cars and therefore defeating the purpose of taking the slow train. On the other hand, it was a really early weekend train and it was the slow fast train.
On most trains the unreserved cars tend to feel shabbier and less comfortable than the rest of the train but it’s the opposite here. Freshly redecorated and meticulously detailed, they feel new and the colors just make it inviting. Little touches are everywhere from the NERV logo slapped in places both obvious and subtle, the welcome scroller, which I didn’t originally notice, being customized and the train jingle edition of “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” playing whenever we approached a station.
Window shades too were an added detail that showed how far they went with the makeover. Most blinds had the 500 Type Eva logo, but others were “AT FIELD DEPLOYING,” and a creepy few had Gendo Ikari and his evil glowing glasses staring back at you. Y’know, in case you felt like falling asleep here would be too easy.
Given that it’s dressed like the Eva-01 a friend later asked what would happen if this train got angry and started attacking other trains. I told him that I shudder to think about it as this is the only train that deploys AT Fields according to its window shades. If you can’t trust a window blind for honesty, who can you trust?
I was a little worried I’d be the weirdo with the camera out and shooting the car but that fear was alleviated when everyone had their cameras or phones out and shot the car. Ultimately it was never more than a third full, but even after the novelty should have worn off it didn’t and I stayed the whole trip here instead of my reserved seat. Most others seemed to do the same.
The refurbishment doesn’t end with just the passenger cars but there are more little bits in the between car sections, the passage area with bathrooms and smoking rooms, as well so it was worth wandering about the train to see what more was added.
Show-branding aside, part of the Eva car appeal is the color scheme. The purple, green and grey seem to make for a relaxing atmosphere and made for a nice contrast to the usual dull train colorations. Also, that “Cruel Angel” jingle should be standard, it just works as a train jingle.
Still, I didn’t come to just sit in a seat. Car One is the “cockpit” and has both some show related models and a unique Eva pod-type game. To enter this car, as of February 2016, though this supposedly will change in a month or so, is strictly by lottery. You get a reserved seat three days or more in advance and if selected you can come in the front car and play the game.
I’d read about this and the write up made it sound like the lottery was just to play the game but the car was still open for visitors. So there was a bit of a misunderstanding that led to a Google-translate conversation between me and a long-suffering stewardess. The short version is that there was a bit lost in translation and word choice that caused confusion as she said I had to reserve for the room and I was asking how I do that since I got a reservation. A second stewardess realized what the misunderstanding was and explained it wasn’t a reservation but rather a lottery for the whole car. (Side note- their uniforms, still standard JR shinkansen type, are colored to match the train)
They were quite nice though, and later on invited me to check out the first car not long before my stop. I had thought there would be more but there’s just a pair of models, a stand-up Rei and write ups on the wall about shinkansens. The models were really neat as they had regular scale trains along with the towering Eva 01 in the same scale.
After about 90 minutes the jingle played letting me know it was time to get off at Hiroshima, another story in itself, and I thanked the staff for a pleasant trip. Riding the shinkansen generally means wanting to be somewhere faster, but I found it quite pleasant to enjoy this leisurely bullet train ride.
At the station there’s another 500 Type Eva quirk and that’s in the gift shop. There are shinkansen-specific gifts in most every station, but this one train has its own section and there are also station specific souvenirs. Before walking out of the station I had my Passmo rail pass in Hiroshima’s unique pass holder.
While I wouldn’t recommend this train to people with somewhere to go fast, I do think any fan of the show or unique trains should ride it once just to enjoy the novelty and say you did. Though when I told my collaborator about the train ride he asked not if, but how much, screaming Shinji there was. When I told him there was none he decided this train wasn’t very Evangelion at all.
