Zeruel, the 14th Angel, and Its Place in EVA Shokugan History

Zeruel Neon Genesis Evangelion Wafer Sticker (EVA2-19N)

What Shokugan Wafer Stickers Are

This sticker belongs to a product category called shokugan — a Japanese term combining the words for food and toy. In the wafer sticker format, a thin cream-filled biscuit and a separately sealed sticker come packaged together in a single blind pack. You didn’t know which sticker you’d get until you opened the wrapper, which made completing a full series a genuine pursuit. The format was a fixture of Japanese convenience stores and candy shops throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s.

The product code EVA2-19N offers some readable clues. “EVA2” most likely identifies the series name or marks a second release in a run of Evangelion wafer sets. “19” is probably the sticker’s number within that set, and the trailing “N” is widely understood in Japanese trading card and sticker culture to mean Normal — the base rarity tier, one step below R (Rare) or SR (Super Rare). These readings are consistent with standard shokugan coding conventions, though confirming the exact meaning would require examining the original packaging.

Zeruel and the High Point of Episode 19

Neon Genesis Evangelion ran from October 1995 through March 1996, directed by Hideaki Anno and produced by Gainax. The series used mecha anime conventions to explore psychological and philosophical territory that was unusual for the genre at the time, and its cultural impact has continued to grow in the decades since.

Zeruel is the 14th Angel — one of the most recognizable in the series, both in design and in narrative weight. Its appearance is distinctive: a dark body, ribbon-like white arms that look almost paper-thin but carry devastating cutting force, a red core at the center, and white and orange accents. The sticker reproduces that design against a hexagonal grid background, with the label “14th Angel” printed in the upper right corner.

Zeruel appears in Episode 19, which is widely regarded as one of the series’ defining moments. In that episode, Zeruel defeats multiple Evangelion units in sequence before triggering the uncontrolled awakening of Unit-01 — a scene that fans and critics have continued to discuss for thirty years. The number 19 also appears in this sticker’s product code; whether that reflects the episode number or is coincidental is not confirmed.

A Format That Never Left Japan

Neon Genesis Evangelion has built a large international following, and that audience expanded again after the series became available on Netflix worldwide in 2019. The Rebuild of Evangelion theatrical series, released from 2007 onward, has kept the franchise active for successive generations of viewers.

Wafer shokugan, however, were produced for the Japanese domestic market only. They circulated through convenience stores, candy shops, and supermarkets in Japan and were not distributed through international retail channels. For collectors outside Japan, items like this sticker represent a category of merchandise that was made in significant numbers at the time but has always been genuinely difficult to access from abroad.