East Japan’s premier hot spring town, the real-world Tokyo-3, wants you to bathe in LCL.

With the chill in the air getting increasingly chilly, we’ve been spending more and more time looking for hot springs to warm ourselves up in. Japan is spoiled for choice on that front, though, since there are hot springs all across the country, each touting its therapeutic waters and relaxing atmosphere.

However, there’s only one hot spring in Japan that can offer you an Evangelion bath, and that’s Yunessun. located in the Kanagawa Prefecture town of Hakone. Just 90 minutes from Tokyo by train, Hakone is east Japan’s premier onsen (hot spring) destination, with beautiful lakeside scenery and views of Mt. Fuji. It’s also the real-world site of Tokyo-3, the primary setting of Evangelion, since in the anime’s world the original Tokyo, as well as its replacement Tokyo-2, have already been destroyed.

But a relocated/renamed Tokyo isn’t the only unique aspect of the anime’s world. In Evangelion, the planet’s oceans have turned crimson following the cataclysmic alien-triggered explosion known as the Second Impact, and so Yunessun’s new attraction will be a Second Impact Bath, with appropriately blood-red water.

Unlike many Japanese hot springs, where bathing is a single-sex, completely naked affair, Yunessun allows bathing suits in its open-to-anyone baths, of which the Second Impact Bath is one. As an additional salute to the landmark anime, the water will also run red at Yunessun’s Rodeo Mountain water slide, and the facility will be decorated with Eva artwork.

The tie-up is part of the 2020 Meet Evangelion Hakone campaign, and the Second Impact Bath and water slide will be available from January 10 to March 31. That doesn’t mean the Eva fun will come to an end, though, since Yunessun is already promising that when the Second Impact Bath bows out, it’ll be replaced by an LCL Bath, LCL being the breathable liquid by which Evangelion pilots mentally synch with their giant bio-robots (LCL is also said to smell like blood, by the way).

Considering how startling even a single-person-tub-sized Evangelion bath can be, a full-scale hot spring is sure to make an even more memorable canvas, so Yunessun’s new baths are sure to draw plenty of Eva fans, and if you’re going too, you’ll want to keep an eye out in the parking lot for those awesome Eva Unit-01 Hakone license plates.

Related: Yunessun, 2020 Meet Evangelion Hakone
Source: Press release
Top image: Odakyu
Insert images: Press release
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