Ask John: What Is Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel?

Question:
Hi. I was wondering what “Iron Maiden/Steel Girlfriend” is. I know it’s part of my favorite anime, Evangelion, but I don’t even know if it’s an anime, a manga, or some other kind of anime-related form of media. I also don’t know what it’s about. Could you give me some information on it?

Answer:
Relatively little known to many anime fans, the video game Shin Seiki Evangelion: Kotetsu no Girlfriend, translated as both Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel and Evangelion: Iron Maiden, is an original Evangelion side story. First released for the PC in February 1998, versions soon followed for the Sega Saturn in March 1998 and Playstation in April 1998. The game consists entirely of still frames accompanied by background music and spoken dialogue by the original television series voice actors. The game is text intensive, like most anime-style “adventure” games, requiring the player to occasionally select one of multiple choices to lead to different paths and one of three different endings.

The Girlfriend of Steel story involves a new transfer student named Mana Kirishima entering Shinji’s school and quickly latching on to him. At the same time a new Angel is detected in the mountains nearby Tokyo-3. Is it merely a coincidence that the two visitors appeared at the same time, or something more sinister?

Although they are difficult to find through the Gainax homepage, the official English language Girlfriend of Steel sites for the console version and Windows version of the game are still online. The Japanese version of the console port official page includes a pair of Flash previews of the game not available on the English language page.

Gainax is currently developing a Kotetsu no Girlfriend 2 game for release on May 16, 2003, as part of the Renewal of Evangelion project. The second game is an expansion of the “alternate universe” Evangelion seen briefly in original TV episode 26 in which Rei Ayanami is a new transfer student to Shinji’s school and Misato Katsuragi is a high school teacher.

Answer updated on February 12, 2003