REI

 

rei's room

seiyuu: Megumi Hayashibara

rei talking.

"She's like your father," Dr. Akagi said to Shinji Ikari. "She's not very adept at living."
ikari talking

Rei Ayanami, 14, First City Junior High School, Eighth Grade, Class A.

 

 

FIRST CHILDREN

rei with gendou ikari.Rei Ayanami showed up at Gehirn in 2010. Ikari introduced her as the child of an acquaintance. She is the most capable of the EVA pilots. She operates EVA 00, the prototype, which was produced at Gehirn as an experimental model.

She was the first of the test subjects chosen in accordance with the Marduk Report for Project E. She is the designated pilot of EVA Unit 00. Her past has been eradicated. All of her personal records have been erased.

"You won't die. I'll protect you."

Her importance to NERV and to the Human Instrumentality Project is undeniable. In fact, though Shinji is the protagonist, Rei is as central a figure and as necessary to the story.

Rei is the pinnacle of human technology and seemingly soulless, without identity, a worker bee. She is what is feared most about technological advances, that the essential humanity will be lost in the pursuit of pure science.

Yet, part of the reason she was created was out of humanity's most basic need, most basic desire -- love.

"No, I am happy. Because I want to die. I want despair. I want to return to nothing. But I can't. He won't let me return to nothingness yet. He won't let me return yet. I still exist because he needs me. But when everything is over, when I am of no use anymore, he will abandon me. I've prayed for the day he would abandon me. But now ... I fear it."

Humanity's evolution requires Rei.

sad rei in school uniform. Unit 00 went berserk within NERV HQ twice. The first time was during an activation experiment with Rei as pilot, attacking the glass before Commander Ikari, and the second time with Shinji as pilot, attacking the glass before Dr. Ritsuko Akagi.

Mental instability on the part of the pilot was believed to be the primary cause of the first episode. As Ritsuko Akagi reported, "Her mind became more disturbed than anticipated."

But Rei wasn't the cause.

eva00 carries an n2 mine.Because the EVAs are biomechanical organisms, the entry plug had to be made viable for human use. Dr. Naoko Akagi's mental and psychological imprints were used as a pattern for the entry plug. She could not give Eva 00 a soul, but she could offer a model for nurturing the pilots and an intelligence separate from the pilots. Dr. Akagi, a mother, made contact with the Lilith, the mother of all humans, inside Eva 00.

Unfortunately, Naoko Akagi wasn't the best of mothers. Her own daughter hated her and Naoko had a tendency to chose her personal needs over her child's. Unit 00 tried to attack two of the people Dr. Akagi most resented, her daughter and her lover.

It was during this incident, that Commander Gendou Ikari rescued Rei, opening the hatch of the entry plug with his bare hands. Shinji Ikari later rescued her in much the same fashion, though her EVA had been nearly destroyed protecting him.

According to Rei, the bond she shares with Unit 00 serves as a bond to all humankind.

"Are you Commander Ikari's son? . . . . Don't you have faith in your own father?"

ikari rescues rei with bare hands ikari rescues rei with bare hands

Naoko Akagi: "I am getting angry! I'll ask the Chief (Ikari) to scold you."
Rei I: "It's the Chief who calls you that. That hag is stubborn, that hag is now useless."
Naoko Akagi: "You are useless, because there are substitutes even if you die. Rei, you're the same as me."

naoko akagi strangles rei 1.Rei I died at five, choked to death by a jealous Dr. Naoko Akagi. She was far more talkative than the other Rei's. And that is why she died. She taunted the love-struck doctor into destroying her. In so doing, Naoko Akagi learned the truth about Rei's maternity and destroyed herself. So Rei is a little bit Yui Ikari.

Rei II is a kind girl, loyal, decisive, and quiet. But she's always alone. She hasn't managed to acquire any friends since she started at the junior high in the seventh grade. Her heart is split between father and son. As she protects both. She cares about both.

Touji: "Oh, Ayanami, if you're looking for Shinji, he isn't here. . . You know, it's pretty rare for you to be concerned about someone else."
Rei: "Really? I'm not sure I understand."
Touji: "You care about Shinji."
Rei: "Do I?"
Touji: "Maybe that's true."
Rei: "Yeah, you do."

Because of loyalty and love, Rei II sacrificed herself. So, Rei is a little bit Evangelion.

rei's red eye.Rei III is the last of her kind. In a fit of jealousy, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi destroys all of the Rei's swimming around the LCL (or Eva amniotic fluid). There will be no more replacement girls or parts for Rei. And she knows this. Perhaps this knowledge defines her change in attitude.

"Are these tears? I am seeing these for the first time, but it doesn't seem to me to be the first time. I. Am I crying? Why am I crying?"

rei with unit00 behind her, surgical gauzeShe preserves herself. She is no longer as kind nor as loyal as Rei II, though she remains decisive. She has her own ideas about who she is and what she wants to become. She has not spent nine years of her life basking in the warm glow of Gendou Ikari's affection. She doesn't connect with him, but with Shinji Ikari instead.

She realizes her composition. Unlike Rei II, she doesn't go on thoughtful journey's about what she maybe. She knows and she uses that knowledge.

Rei possesses a fake soul and a fake body. She is an object pretending to be human.

"I became myself through the instrumentality of the links and my relationships with others. I am formed by interaction with others. They create me as I create them. These relationships and interactions serve to shape the patterns of my heart and mind."

lots of reis.Someone else is her true self. She suppresses that hidden facet of herself, because if the other She emerges, she might cease to exist. Rei fears that she will become nothing; that she will disappear from the minds of others if the other She truly exists.

Before Rei III and Kaoru, the concept of the AT Field was limited. Before Rei III the truth of Lilith-Adam-Eva was too deeply obscured to understand or even to hope to understand.

And Rei is a little bit Angel.

It seems Rei's come in 3s just like Impacts.