in Japan in April 2009. It also inspired official merchandise, including model railways, clothing, keychains, action figures, tenugui, notebooks, sculptures, food and watches. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Tokyo Electric Power Company invited Japanese people to conserve electricity, and an unofficial campaign begun under the name "Operation Yashima" (Yashima Sakusen) on Twitter. The Twitter hashtag #yashimasakusen110312 went viral, while #84MA (pronounced Yashima) reached about 50,000 tweets in two days. According to The Anime Encyclopedia, while the real Yashima Operation Evangelion became part of the mass media; its writers Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy noted that the franchise was probably at the high point of its 21st-century popularity at the time, having reached a wide audience in Japan. In 2019, the Yashima Operation also inspired a "Nerv" disaster app after Typhoon Faxai hit the Kantō region. In 2020, an event dedicated to Yashima Operation was announced in the city of Hakone, the area where the fictional city of Tokyo-3 is imaginatively located; new merchandise articles on the series were also announced. During the event, organized on two dates (March 28 and May 23), a live performance of "Cruel Angel's Thesis"'s singer Yoko Takahashi was planned, but the dates were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the Governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike asked the city to turn off lights after 8 pm to discourage going out at night and fight Coronavirus. The media associated her request with Operation Yashima, ushering in another Twitter trend. The website Final Fantasy Dream compared Sister Ray, a weapon that appeared in Final Fantasy VII, to the Positron Rifle used by Shinji during the Yashima Operation. In Eureka Seven, male protagonist Renton Thurston wants to make female co-protagonist Eureka smile; writer Dani Cavallaro regarded his desire as reminiscent of Rei's smile in "Rei II". British band Fightstar published a song named "Shinji Ikari", which contains the line "I grow old after one shot", which Japanese website Anibu described as a possible reference to "Rei II". The Nippon Professional Baseball team Hanshin Tigers used the OST "Decisive Battle" during the matches after Operation Yashima, a choice that attracted attention in the Japanese media. The same OST was used in the third episode of the Japanese TV series Rikokatsu. Rei's line "You won't die, because I'll protect you" is also parodied in a Nisemonogatari'' episode. References Text was copied/adapted from Episode 06 at Evangelion wiki,