GirlfriendOfSteel

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A computer game set in the universe of NeonGenesisEvangelion, which tells a side-story introducing a new character Mana, who becomes friends with Shinji and rivals with Asuka. It used the official animators and voice-artists from the series, and looks rather pretty.

It was released for PC, PlayStation and Saturn, in Japanese. Only. There was an English translation done of the PC version by some fans, at some point, which AlexChurchill found eventually. The game itself plays like... well, like an extra episode of Evangelion anime, sometime around the middle of the series. It's very much in the VisualNovel style - it spends about 50% of the play time in voiced but mostly non-animated cutscenes. The gameplay for the rest is basically non-existent ("wander round following the heavy hints to which location will trigger the next plot event"), and only one decision you make has any effect on the plot you see. The game is a bit schizophrenic as to what it wants to be... it has little bits of animation and full voicing, which is more than a lot of VisualNovels? manage; combined with the linear story make it feel more like an anime episode than a game. But it doesn't have any FMV and the animation is very sparse, so it falls flat compared to actual anime episodes.

Ignoring the ambiguity about what medium it wants to be using, however, the story is rather cool. It's very Evangelion, in a whole variety of ways: it keeps up both the high-school hijinks and the dark military secrecy; whilst being inherently about romance (see the name), the romance is kept quite understated; the feeling of the endings fit Eva's style well; and the game is a little confusing at the "main" ending... which just makes it even more like Eva, really.

The sequel, "Girlfriend of Steel 2nd", is confirmed, although still in Japanese-only. [This page] has some info and shots. This one is set inside the alternate universe from episode 26. It features Shinji, Rei, Asuka and Kaoru as classmates... there's no sign of Mana.

It seems that (amongst other pairings) any two out of Shinji, Asuka and Kaoru can get together, depending on the player's choices.

The game is also known by the name "Iron Maiden", apparently an alternate translation of the Japanese name.

CategoryAnime CategoryComputerGames