PGNeon Genesis Evangelion

Evangelion EVA-01 Test Type

Bandai's first and, for decades, only Perfect Grade treatment of Eva's flagship unit, sized to match the ambition.

MechaGrade Score

3.9/5

EVA-01 · 1/60 · 1997

GradePG

Scale1/60

Released1997

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This 1997 kit was Bandai's first attempt at bringing the Perfect Grade format, built for Gundam's biggest, most detailed kits, over to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it released the same year as The End of Evangelion, carrying that film's tie-in branding on the box.

At 1/60 scale it's the largest, most substantial EVA-01 Bandai has ever put out, and the accessory sprue backs that up: rubber parts for cabling and cord detail alongside both waterslide and sticker decal sheets for the sensor and warning-label work an Eva demands.

Best for: Serious Eva collectors who want the biggest, most flagship-tier EVA-01 on the shelf and don't mind a vintage-tooling, time-consuming build

The full review

What it is

The PG EVA-01 Test Type is Bandai's 1/60 scale flagship kit of Shinji's Evangelion, released in 1997 alongside The End of Evangelion and branded to match. Perfect Grade as a format means the largest, most involved kit in a given lineup, and the box contents back that up: a plastic sprue, rubber parts for the cabling and cord detail an Eva's design calls for, and both waterslide and sticker decal sheets to handle the dense sensor and hazard-marking detail the show's Evas are known for. It's built to be the definitive, largest-scale version of the unit rather than a quick weeknight project.

The catch

This is 1997-era tooling, so the engineering underneath doesn't have the panel-line depth or joint refinements a modern PG carries, and by design this is a long, involved build rather than something you finish in an evening, PG kits generally are. I'll also be direct about a real limitation here: I could not find a meaningful spread of contemporary English-language build documentation for this specific release to draw hands-on complaints or praise from, so what's above and below leans on the kit's verified spec and its place in Bandai's catalog rather than secondhand build reports I can't confirm.

Who it's for

Worth it if you want the single biggest, most substantial EVA-01 Bandai makes and you're prepared for a genuinely long build session with vintage-era engineering underneath. Skip it if you want a quick, modern build, the RG Evangelion Unit-01 (launched 2020) is Bandai's current answer for that, non-scale but built on far newer tooling and finished in a fraction of the time.

The build story

What the build is actually like, and the engineering worth knowing about.

As a Perfect Grade, the parts count and build time both sit well above a standard MG or RG. The rubber components handle cable and cord detailing that plastic alone wouldn't sell convincingly, and between the waterslide sheet and the sticker sheet there's a real amount of decal work involved in finishing the sensor and warning-label detail an Eva design calls for.

This was Bandai's first Perfect Grade treatment of any Evangelion unit, and for years remained the only one, the format didn't return to the franchise until the RG Evangelion line launched in 2020 at a much smaller non-scale size. That makes this kit's scale and part complexity a genuine outlier rather than the norm for Eva kits generally.

Lore & trivia

01EVA-01 houses the soul of Yui Ikari, Shinji's mother, and serves as the flagship unit and cover mecha for Neon Genesis Evangelion as a franchise.
02This kit released in 1997, the same year as The End of Evangelion, and its packaging carries that film's branding rather than the original TV series alone.
03It's the only Evangelion unit to ever receive a Perfect Grade kit; every other Bandai Eva release, before or since, has used a non-scale or Real Grade format.
04Unit-01 is mainly piloted by Shinji Ikari throughout the original series and the two films it appears in.