Why does dead people in NGE not always dissolve into LCL?
I mean supposedly the AT Field is all that holds human Bodys together, see EOE, and this is generated by a Soul.
So when a human dyes its generally assumed that his soul has left the building.
So when someone gets killed the AT Field vanishes and that should mean that his body should dissolve instantly, right?
So why does that not happen?
Where is the error in this reasoning?

Souls don't leave the body in the NGE setting, so that's where your logic breaks down. Bodies only break down in the presence of an anti-ATF (or a Contact Experiment or an absurdly high sync ratio, I guess).

Bagheera wrote:Souls don't leave the body in the NGE setting, so that's where your logic breaks down. Bodies only break down in the presence of an anti-ATF (or a Contact Experiment or an absurdly high sync ratio, I guess).

Sure they do or how else would they be able to wake up Rei III or Rei II for that meter?

PS: Besides a corporal soul defeats the purpose of having one in the first place

TraxXavier wrote:Sure they do or how else would they be able to wake up Rei III or Rei II for that meter?

We know they don't because we see Rei collecting souls from dead bodies in EoE. This isn't a matter of speculation, it's right there in the movie.

...What "meter"?

Presumably the soul remains within the flesh until the body has undergone sufficient levels of decay. This would add an interesting irony to funeral traditions insistent on making the body last as long as possible.

@ "Corporeal soul defeats the purpose", there are countless ideas about what a life force is and how it would work, so NGE can do whatever it likes and be right.

Reichu wrote:Presumably the soul remains within the flesh until the body has undergone sufficient levels of decay. This would add an interesting irony to funeral traditions insistent on making the body last as long as possible.

Sounds plausible, but than it would mean that the soul is attached to the entire body and not just to for example the brain. Otherwise cutting a hand of someone would result in a plop event.
Than the next question arises what with people which got an organ transplant?

And another thing that comes to my mind...
what's up with all these soulless Rei clones, shouldn't they be unable to exist in the first place if they don't have a soul to keep them together? Or Lilith's body?

TraxXavier wrote:Sounds plausible, but than it would mean that the soul is attached to the entire body and not just to for example the brain. Otherwise cutting a hand of someone would result in a plop event. Than the next question arises what with people which got an organ transplant?

I'm pretty sure the entire Lilin body functions as a soul container in NGE. This seems to be born out by the fact that the entire body is melted in order to free the soul within, plus there is no indication that Lilin have a discrete soul-holding structure like a core.

When it comes down to it, we don't actually need an explanation, since what we see is what we get. Severed body parts remain intact, therefore something is keeping them intact and what that something is doesn't particularly matter. But admittedly it is an interesting puzzle to work on just for fun. It's probably not the best place in the body-soul-ATF relationship to start poking, since there are various other things that aren't well understood that might have easier answers. It occurs to me that there have been previous discussions on this very topic that might contain some still-relevant ideas.

what's up with all these soulless Rei clones, shouldn't they be unable to exist in the first place if they don't have a soul to keep them together? Or Lilith's body?

It's speculated that at least some of Lilith's soul is still in her body, since Rei is told "Welcome home". But whether there is or isn't, there are many other examples. Evas are born soulless and most, being discarded failures, stayed that way. Adam's embryo has no soul. The Angels' corpses presumably don't (the core being the container for the soul, and the destruction of which is required for the Angel's death). One thing all of these have in common that Lilin don't is, presumably, being comprised of matter with a higher energy frequency. Whether this plays any role, I'm not sure.

The body-soul-ATF relationship presents a bit of a conundrum when it comes to how life originated. If it's actually true that "traditional" life can't exist without an ATF, then how in the world could it have ever evolved in the first place? Souls are empty slates without bodies to live through -- a raw soul would have no "self" and thus no ATF -- but if there can be no body without a soul or an ATF then... buh?? So I gotta ask, is the ATF actually critical to LCL holding any solid shape, or is it, instead, an emergent property of the soul-body symbiosis -- one that can, under certain circumstances, act against its owner?

Maybe they turn into tang when their ATF is disrupted by unnatural means. Like other ATF or anti ATF iterfering.

Also there may be some form of delay in soul leaving the body. Not necesserily dictated by decay. Like in some RPG fantasy settings, it can be that once body dies, soul is attached to it for a while and then starts slipping out until it completly loses connection and passes on. It works that way in Dragon Age if I remember correctly. And that span of time between death of a body and soul leaving it fully is a window when resurection magic can be used to bring people back, but not after that. It may explain why some people had been tanged post mortem in EoE and have a chance at resurection, while others didn't.

Well, I think there are a few viable models:

1. The effect of an AT-Field on a body has a hysteresis, i.e. once the field is switched off its effect on the matter remains to some extent; eider permanently or slowly decaying. So to put the body into a state of effectively not being influenced by a AT-Field you eider need to apply at least a week Anti AT-Field or wait long enough. That later case would somewhat fall together with observed body decay.

2. The absence of an AT-Field is not enough to make bio matter go PLOP; for that an Anti AT-Field is needed. That would also resolve the issues with how live could come to be in the first place. The AT-Field and soul would be a later on added adaptation to increase the structural integrity of the early live forms.
This option to some extent may be seen as in conflict with the EOE scene where Rei drops her left arm, but given what Ikari was planing and subsequently doing its a fair assumption to say that here Rei probably generated some Anti AT-Field to make this heart touching procedure possible in the first place.

TraxXavier wrote:This option to some extent may be seen as in conflict with the EOE scene where Rei drops her left arm, but given what Ikari was planing and subsequently doing its a fair assumption to say that here Rei probably generated some Anti AT-Field to make this heart touching procedure possible in the first place.

I don't think an AATF was involved; the bridge crew would probably have picked that up!

When Rei's arm falls off, Gendo says, "There's no time. Your A.T. Field can no longer hold your shape." Before he begins merging with her, he says, "Release your A.T. Field, the barrier of your heart."

So, two different things going on here. For reasons unknown, Rei's ATF is undergoing failure, with the result that she's beginning to spontaneously undergo dismemberment, rather like the clones in the tank (and, eventually, like GNR when HIP comes to an end). The clones may be informative here. I'm not sure they have ATFs in the truest sense of the word, but they might have at least a vestigial sense of self. (One could surmise that they're all connected to the dummy system's "central brain" via LCL linkage.) This may make some sense of how they undergo "destrudo release", that thing Ritsuko mysteriously triggers that results in the clones' destruction. Destrudo is basically the death instinct, the self-destructive impulse, so it's implied that "releasing" it causes the clones to destroy themselves.

Rei's failing ATF in EoE may similarly involve an overloaded destrudo. While her inner monologue isn't provided, it's strongly implied that she has resolved to die soon. For an easy one: when we see her soaking in the Sephirotic Tree, her clothes are neatly folded up next to her, which is a suicidal signature (also exhibited with Asuka in episode 24). This does make me wonder if any mechanism is in place most of the time to keep Rei's destrudo sufficiently suppressed. Gendo doesn't seem terribly surprised that she's falling apart, but it's only because they're about to abandon their bodies (so he thinks) that it doesn't matter. Any time prior to this, it would be extremely undesirable behavior, no? :p I think it's been suggested that Rei's pills normally keep her mentally stabilized (for a certain definition of stable, I suppose), so... maybe she just stopped taking them?

Tracking back a bit, the second thing, Gendo telling her to "release your ATF". This must be what allows him to merge with her, since Rei's flesh clearly doesn't act like this any other time. (If it did, the boob-touching incident in episode 05 would have turned out ... much different.) This act of "releasing" her ATF does not, we see, cause Rei to spontaneously fall apart, but it does leave her exceptionally vulnerable; her body no longer keeps her soul safe and separate from others, demonstrated quite vividly by Gendo's right hand.

On the subject of dismemberment, EoE does make a point of showing Rei melt down corpses in their entirety. A soldier's dismembered hand is the first thing we see turn into LCL, I believe. This would seem to definitely indicate that the person's ATF permeates their entire body even if it's in multiple pieces, otherwise the various pieces would not be effected by an AATF. I wonder if a hysteresis concept is actually necessary, considering NGE does play around with dimensions beyond the fourth... From what very little I understand of how those work, it might actually be possible for a vessel to seem dismembered to us, whereas the soul behaves on a level that lets it retain its connections to everything. I'm really not sure how to best explain these bizarre thoughts. They hurt my brain.