So, this is something that I've been sort of curious about, but I can't quite wrap my head around the concept...

As we've seen in the show, it's certainly possible to do some soul swapping from one type of body with a different type of soul.

For example, Kaworu and Rei are "human" bodies with Progenitor/Seed being souls within them. The Evas are the inverse of this with Angelic bodies (Or Lilin - Unit 01) with human souls residing within them.

Here's my question (and yes, I realize that this verges almost completely into fanfic type territory), could it be hypothetically possible to take a progenitor body or a clone of one (in this case, lets say the Adam sample from NGE), place a human soul within it and reduce its ego border in such a way that is augmented into a more of a human size/shape/form etc.? In other words, is it possible, based on the pseudo science/meta biology/mechanics presented in NGE to create what is basically a miniature version of an Eva Unit and present it as a human being (to some extent, this creation would be an inversion of what Rei and Kaworu are)?

As silly as this question sounds, I think it could interesting to explore as a thought experiment.

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. Nerv would just have to figure out a way to inhibit the Unit's growth so that it's human sized once fully developed. The first draft of Episode 24 actually featured a next generation Evangelion prototype called α Eva which was only 5 meters tall. Maybe they already can do that, but there's not much need for a human sized Eva when all the things it will be fighting are gigantic.

That's interesting, could you provide a link to that information? Thanks!

Sure thing! Here you go!

SawItAtAge10's hypothetical seemed a bit more specific, from what I could gather -- requiring that the Eva be both Lilin-sized and Lilin in appearance while still, somehow, being an Eva. At which point, I don't really see how this would be an "inverse" of what Rei and Kaworu are. To me, it sounds like it would amount to pretty much the same thing, with the possible difference that it wouldn't be all that powerful and so why bother at all.

What do I mean? Well...

Classified Information wrote:C. Confidential Information
An Eva is a vessel for a soul that has abandoned human form, and a magnification of the ego, i.e., the embodiment of a large human being. Attempts were made to operate Evas, but souls were not placed within them, and the insertion of a soul was essential. The soul that enters an Eva is called a pilot. However, it takes more than a pilot to make Eva move. Perhaps the pilot cannot properly utilize the Eva's capabilities.

"Abandoned human form" is a bit misleading, since the Evas in and of themselves are human (going by NGE's own convoluted Definition 2), so we can perhaps assume this passage to more specifically mean that an Eva is, "a vessel for a soul that abandoned its original limited human form in order to become embodied as a giant human being". Any which way, the text seems to imply that being in the Eva is what magnifies the soul's ego. The boost in A.T. Field potential that allows for psychokinesis and so forth can probably be attributed to a combination of two things:

(A) The vastly increased body size, which results in "ego magnification".
(B) The fact that Evas are made of higher-energy matter than Lilin are (being green to blue on the wavelength scale, while Lilin are probably red-orange or orange; I can explain this concept more if necessary).

If this is the case, you would probably receive some benefits from putting a Lilin soul into a tiny "Eva", but they would not be anywhere near as pronounced. How, then, does this explain Rei and Kaworu? They're in high-energy (created from a Seed of Life's flesh), Lilin-shaped vessels. The reduced size seems to have negligible effects on their ATF strength, as demonstrated in episode 24 (Kaworu's ATF is the most powerful ever detected... until it's outdone by Rei's). My go-to explanation for this would be that the "ego magnification" that their souls received from residing within Seeds of Life for billions of years did not instantaneously vanish when their souls were placed in smaller vessels.

I've played around with a post-3I fanfic scenario wherein Kyoko attempts to return to her Lilin body, but, because her soul was significantly reshaped by her time as an Eva, she is now trying to be something that she no longer is, resulting in physical and mental instability. Since this is Kyoko, I suppose the latter would be a given anyway, but we're talking the usual Eva inclination toward "primitivisms" on top of her already shattered and badly sutured psyche. (Think Guts from Berserk's ongoing conflict with his inner Beast of Darkness, except in Kyoko's case The Beast is her Eva self rather than a hellhound. No, this has absolutely nothing to do with anything from the new movies; please banish the thought from your minds.) Her ego is unable to reconcile the various conflicts, and she ultimately ends up unable to remain a Lilin, and instead turns into... well, it gets pretty fucking weird. As expected from the Reichu. (I still might eventually write something in this vein, so if you feel inspired by the idea and want to play with it too, just drop me a line so I don't find out about it later and cry myself to sleep repeatedly.)

Reichu wrote:

How, then, does this explain Rei and Kaworu? They're in high-energy (created from a Seed of Life's flesh), Lilin-shaped vessels. The reduced size seems to have negligible effects on their ATF strength, as demonstrated in episode 24 (Kaworu's ATF is the most powerful ever detected... until it's outdone by Rei's). My go-to explanation for this would be that the "ego magnification" that their souls received from residing within Seeds of Life for billions of years did not instantaneously vanish when their souls were placed in smaller vessels.

See now, this opens up a whole other can of worms... I've always found the whole "clone of Yui" thing a tad confusing because the Reis are more like clay molded from Lilith's body to look like Yui (those little legs from the upper half Unit 01 was cut from). Now, what you said about the correlation between soul size/power level makes sense. However, this seems to be contradictory when it comes to Akira, Adam, and Kaworu, since, in that case, it'd be Adam's flesh molded in Akira's image to create Kaworu(s) (multiple Kaworus/K-quarium are something else I'm considering). Anyway, maybe Kaworu was surprised that he and Rei ended up looking like something in the shape of a Lilin and not literaly (except Rei since she's really cut from Lilith branches -- see how this is very confusing?) as lilin.

Anyway, the creature I'm describing would be something created from Adam with a human soul placed inside with its ego reduced so it looks human BUT surely (please correct me/steer me in the right direction if I'm wrong) the Angelic biology itself would come in handy if need be with regards to AT field activation and other powers.

I may have confused myself more than necessary with this post.

As best I understand it, Rei's creation went something like this:

(A) The salvage process for Shinji is described as, "reconstructing his body and anchoring his psyche within it." We know that the Shinji plan was taken pretty much directly from the one for Yui. So, they attempted to reconstruct her body (somehow) and coerce her soul back into it. However, as we know, Yui wasn't budging from the Eva's core. As a result, a "vacuum" was created by Gehirn's attempt at physical reconstruction. Lilith, being still connected to Eva-01 at the time, ended up filling this void. Since Lilith's "Chamber of Guf was empty", the only soul that could be used was that of Lilith herself.

The result was not Yui, but a(n embryonic?) Yui-shaped entity with Lilith's soul.

(B) At some point, Lilith's body is "seeded" with the genome of Rei 1, and her totipotent cells develop into dozens of Rei clones. Similarly to Eva-01, these are left attached until they reach the desired stage of growth (Eva-01 is fully grown; the Rei clones are adolescent). The successful ones are removed upon "ripening" and placed into a tank for safe-keeping, and the failures left behind as a reminder of where Rei came from.

--
I've noticed that both Eva-01 and the (likely) Rei legs are both attached to Lilith's lower torso. The significance of this, to me, is that this is approximately where Lilith's womb would be. Though the idea of these entities having traditional reproductive organs doesn't sit right with many, I think the presence of certain customary female features is rather heavily implied by Lilith's perpetual pelvic oozing. LCL is Lilith's usual “birth medium”, and the show draws heavy analogues between LCL and amniotic fluid, so for it to literally come from her womb is apt. Similarly, Eva-01 and the Rei clones growing out of Lilith's uterine area is much more symbolically poignant than them just growing from any odd place.

(Since I don't get to mention this often: I've actually speculated that Eva-01 isn't made from Lilith's lower body per se, but is instead an overgrown baby that remained attached post-birth via a prolapsed vagina acting as makeshift umbilical cord. Baby then proceeded to siphon out Mommy's least necessary biomass, starting with the legs, and finally stopping with the right arm. Gehirn, not quite expecting such a delightful mess, just left the two of them attached for Eva-01's early experimental phase, and figured out how to separate them later.

…As one might expect, this idea never really caught on. Maybe I just need to draw better pictures of it. :p )

In the case of Kaworu and the gene donor (who may or may not be Dr. Katsuragi), I'm... uh... not entirely sure what's supposed to be going on there. They tell us that the “DNA that dived” (not a mistranslation) had gone ahead and “physically fused”. Since I'm a filthy-minded human being, this always sounded to me like a weird euphemism for conception. Because, well, what are spermatozoa but little capsules of DNA that “dive” into the deep waters of the female reproductive tract until one of them fuses with an egg? Was Kaworu less a product of Lilith-type “DNA seeding” and more a product of... um... the more usual kind of “seeding”? Not to imply that the donor actually had intercourse with Adam, since that would be silly, but rather that whatever happened, however it was made to happen, the result was literally sexual reproduction. Hence, for the origin of NGE's “Anti-Christ” character, we fittingly have a grotesque inversion of God impregnating a woman: a man impregnating “God”.

I suspect this idea is too weird for most people, so presumably you'd want to go with the more mentally sanitary option. That is, the Katsuragi Expedition make Adam's body react to introduced genetic material the same way Lilith's apparently does, by generating a lovely little tumor-clone (or would that be clone-tumor?).

Er, wait... there's something I'm forgetting to address, isn't there? Ah!

Anyway, the creature I'm describing would be something created from Adam with a human soul placed inside with its ego reduced so it looks human BUT surely (please correct me/steer me in the right direction if I'm wrong) the Angelic biology itself would come in handy if need be with regards to AT field activation and other powers.

I'm not really clear on what you mean by “ego reduction”. In NGE terms, the A.T. Field is the actual manifestation of the ego. Reducing the ego doesn't magically make somebody smaller in size; it's just makes their A.T. Field weaker, and eventually might cause them to lose physical form altogether. In contrast, “ego magnification”, as described in the Classified Information, results in a stronger A.T. Field.

I'm not sure what “Angelic biology” is supposed to refer to, either. The core? The S² Engine that's inside the core? For the most part, biology just isn't a thing that matters to Angels (as in, Adam's Children). When you can be whatever your mind can imagine, there aren't a lot of hard and fast rules. The biggest one seems to be, "as long as your core is intact, you can survive any amount of physical punishment". (Like the magical girls in Madoka with their soul gems, except NGE did it first.)

Reichu wrote:Not to imply that the donor actually had intercourse with Adam, since that would be silly, but rather that whatever happened, however it was made to happen, the result was literally sexual reproduction.

Now there's some crackfic material. Dr. Katsuragi has an affair with Adam!

Rei seems to be sickly and needs constant maintenance, and End seems to imply that her AT Field is weakening and cannot sustain her body anymore, whereas Kaworu has been around for even longer and appears to be perfectly functioning. Is that because he is S2 powered and she isn't?

I think the FoI might have come from a similar place. Mark.06 fused with Lilith while carrying its payload of not-Armisael and impregnated Lilith with a bunch of pseudo-Adams that then burst out of her while she was growing. For whatever reason, they weren't ripe yet and stopped dead in their tracks.

BlueBasilisk wrote:Dr. Katsuragi has an affair with Adam!

Hence Kaworu...

BlueBasilisk wrote:Now there's some crackfic material. Dr. Katsuragi has an affair with Adam!

*nervously eyes the link in her signature as sweat slowly drizzles down from her temple*

I'll, uhhh... I'll just leave this here. (Comment over here if you feel the need.)

Rei seems to be sickly and needs constant maintenance, and End seems to imply that her AT Field is weakening and cannot sustain her body anymore, whereas Kaworu has been around for even longer and appears to be perfectly functioning. Is that because he is S2 powered and she isn't?

Is Rei actually "sickly"? She's recovering from some very serious injuries at the start of the show, but once she's recovered I don't recall any indications offhand of poor health. There are those mysterious pills, but we don't actually know what they specifically do; there are a number of ideas. Rei's ATF weakening in EoE could be a context-specific thing. If I were to try connecting the dots, I'd refer back to what I said here...

Rei seems to realize on a fundamental level that her existence is "wrong", and that she should be someone and somewhere else. The clones don't have souls, but they have access, via LCL link-up, to the Rei personality data in the dummy system's "central brain". This explains why they destroy themselves when allowed to: they are giving expression to Rei's own destrudo, unfiltered and unhinged. When Rei is staring at their remains in episode 25', is she, perhaps, making the connection -- that it's her own desire for nothing that dismembered the clones? And, realizing that this force exists within herself and can take shape, she starts to fall apart, just like her spares?

It's been suggested that the purpose of the pills is purely to keep Rei's destrudo in check. This sounds about right to me -- it's simple and it ties in neatly with everything else.

On the topic of Kaworu, I don't think we know enough about him to say that he has a stability that Rei is lacking. I've wondered -- not entirely jokingly -- if his weird exuberance when he first shows up at Nerv HQ might be at least partly on account of him being totally high on happy pills....

I think the FoI might have come from a similar place. Mark.06 fused with Lilith while carrying its payload of not-Armisael and impregnated Lilith with a bunch of pseudo-Adams that then burst out of her while she was growing. For whatever reason, they weren't ripe yet and stopped dead in their tracks.

This provides a delightfully vile explanation for Lilith's disemboweled state. However, my brain has one major monkey wrench to offer: if the possessed Mark.06 is responsible for the failures, why do the finished-looking ones look like Eva-01? We can take this to the relevant Rebuild thread if need be.

I bumped the old FoI to continue that discussion.

Sickly probably wasn't the best word to use, but Rei takes the pills, uses her tube, gets check-ups from Ritsuko...it seems like she needs regular maintenance to keep it together. It could very well be like you said and they need to curb her destructive tendencies so she doesn't fall apart or off herself while nobody's looking. Rei II didn't like it, but she felt a bond of loyalty to Gendo which gave her existence a purpose. Rei III didn't feel that loyalty and she was the "current" Rei when the clones died. You're right, that does make sense!