The Japanese city of Hamamatsu announced on March 23 that its “Shin Hamamatsu Project,” an initiative designed to attract visitors by installing a massive 6-meter statue of Evangelion Unit-01 from Neon Genesis Evangelion, has amounted to an economic impact of 1.1 billion JPY (roughly $6.9 million USD). Costing 52 million JPY ($327,000 USD), mayor Yusuke Nakano says “the results have exceeded expectations” (source: Asahi Shimbun).
Sections of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time take place in Village-3, a small town near the destroyed Tokyo-3. Considering the fictional town is based on Hamamatsu, tourists flocked to the local city hall to catch a glimpse of the statue. Approximately 51,800 people in total visited Unit 01, with a majority of 34,700 coming on weekends and public holidays.
Based on a survey conducted by the city, those who visited the statue included not just locals, but foreigners hailing from neighboring Asian regions like Taiwan and mainland China, to Western countries like the United States, Brazil, Germany, and even France. Those in City Hall also noticed that the nearby parking lot wasn’t overly crowded, which suggested that the visitors also explored the rest of the city (as was the intention of the project).
The city also noted high sales of collaboration items at restaurants, which amounted to approximately 8 million JPY ($50,000 USD) and an increase of participants in the guided tours of the Tenryu-Hamanako Railway stations (which inspired some of the locations in Thrice Upon a Time) by 1.5 times the previous year.
Hamamatsu is already hard at work preparing more Neon Genesis Evangelion-themed attractions for the next fiscal year. In addition to new collaboration menus and products, a new “Mosaic Culture” will allow visitors to create Evangelion-themed art using flowers.
Related: Evangelion: giant Lance of Longinus replica to pierce the ground of a park in Japan
