Unit-01 and the Fourth Angel are ready to rumble.

We’re as bummed as anyone about the latest delay for Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. This Saturday was supposed to be opening day for the grand finale of the anime franchise, but worsening coronavirus infection numbers in Japan have caused the movie’s release to be pushed back indefinitely.

As a result, we won’t be able to spend the weekend watching the titular giant robots fighting on the big screen. We will, though, be able to see an Eva fight in our home.

The Paper Nano papercraft series has kits that let you assemble all sorts of real-world landmarks, but there’s also one that lets you build a part of Tokyo-3 in miniature scale. Of course, the prime sight to see in the Eva setting is an Evangelion-vs.-Angel brawl, and that’s just what you get with the Paper Nano Evangelion: Angel Attack set.

The sheets are laser-cut, but you’ll still need a craft knife to completely remove them, along with some glue/adhesive and a pair of tweezers. On the plus side, you hardly have to apply any pressure on the knife edge to get the pieces to pop out.

Starting with the cityscape, there’s actually a lot of variety and detail to Tokyo-3’s architecture. So instead of just dull boxes, you get chamfered corners, windows, and a wide variety of shapes.

Moving on to the antagonist in this fight, the Angel here is Rebuild of Evangelion’s Fourth Angel, who’s nearly identical to the Angel Sachiel from the original anime TV series (though Sachiel was technically designated as the Third Angel, because nothing is ever simple in Evangelion).

In contrast to the three-dimensional buildings, the Angel and Eva are flat. However, adding the Fourth Angel’s core and detail pieces quickly give it the feel of a fully realized invading space monster.

As for the star of the show, protecting Tokyo-3 from the Fourth Angel is Evangelion Unit-01.

Compared to the Fourth Angel, Unit-01 is even more complex. While its image colors are generally thought of as just purple and green, the giant robot also has yellow and black accents, all of which are separate pieces. That intricate design means that some of the components are extremely small.

▼ Unit-01’s head next to a 10-yen coin, which is about the size of a U.S. quarter.

▼ That tiny speck of green on the tip of the tweezers? That’s not trash – it’s another piece.

The very last piece to put into place is the Eva’s eye, which in terms of color and size sort of looks like a sesame seed.

▼ Now we wish someone would bring back the Eva burger.

The kit also comes with two pre-prepared environmental pieces, giving you a sky backdrop and a street sheet to stand everything on, and now all that was left to do was to put the combatants and buildings in place!

▼ We can practically hear the Eva soundtrack playing in our heads.

The kit’s assembly difficulty is rated as a three out of a scale of five, and we didn’t run into any major problems putting it together. The whole thing took us about four hours, half of which we spent on the Eva and Angel, and half on the buildings. Since there are a lot of buildings to put together, we recommend not doing them all at once, but bit by bit, taking a break from them to put together the Eva and Angel, to keep the process from feeling monotonous.

Oh, and there’s a cool surprise contained within the street sheet.

Part of it is made of a reflective material, so that when you shine a light on it, you get the effect of Unit-01 and the Fourth Angel duking it out in the middle of the night with a spotlight on them.

The Paper Nano Evangelion: Angel Attack can be purchased online through the Evangelion Store here. It’s priced at 1,848 yen (US$17.85), which is almost exactly how much a movie ticket costs in Japan, so with the Thrice Upon a Time delay odds are a lot of Eva fans have just about that much extra cash to spend.

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