I wanted to start a new thread for this, but this one's clearly on-topic so I guess I'm stuck following the rules.

Anyway, current thoughts: I really, really hate this soul recycling business. The only mention we have of it in official material at any level of canonicity is the CI blurb referring to Kaworu's "birth", and AFAICT we have no reason to believe that's anything but a singular event. There's no mention of recovering the souls of the dead, no mechanism apparent for doing it, and no indication it was done with anyone else. It's just a bit of fanon liberally applied to explain things like Kyoko's soul, Unit 03 and the MPEs, and Rei. But there's nothing, absolutely nothing to it. Making matters worse is the fact that every salvage operation we've seen in the actual show has been a dismal failure -- Nerv couldn't recover Yui after her CE, they couldn't restore Kyoko after her CE, and they couldn't get Shinji back after he was absorbed in ep. 19 (he came back of his own accord, after a month of failure on Ritsuko's part). All of this, and we're supposed to believe these people can just pluck Rei's soul out of the aether (or her charred remains) and implant it in a new body? Please.

Obviously, Rei is Rei. She has Lilith's soul, or a portion thereof. That is indisputable at this point. But if we dismiss the recycling BS how did she recover it after each death? IMO it's simpler than we've imagined: Nerv went back and did what worked the first time around. Every time a Rei died they went back to Lilith and siphoned off a portion of her soul, possibly augmenting the result with memory uploads or whatever we see happening in TD at various points. That's it. No soul recycling, no fanwank, just what we see on the tin.

"But wait!" you say. "How did all those Rei souls get into Lilith in ep. 25 and EoE?" This is why the recycling business started, of course; it was imagined as a vehicle for transporting Rei bits where they needed to be to make the events we see onscreen work. But the problem is that we already have a mechanism for that: Lilith herself can gather souls from anywhere in the world, as we see in EoE. We know she can do this at any point in space (well, Earth space at least), and thanks to Kaji we know she can do it up through at least the recent past as well. So why wouldn't she do that with the fragments of her own soul? Rei I dies, Lilith brings her back. Rei II and Unit 00 die, Lilith brings them back. Rei III merges with Lilith in EoE, and bam, there are her other incarnations. It's simple, it addresses the relevant points, and it doesn't involve any fanwank. It also handily explains how Adam's soul got into Lilith for EoE: Kaworu goes splat, Lilith collects his soul, the end. So much simpler than Nerv recovering the soul and somehow implanting it into Gendo's hand! And, given all the alternate scenarios we've seen in NGE 2, it's consistent with the notion that all souls are involved in whatever endgame comes about, be they Lilim or Angel. So of course Lilith would collect Adam's soul, since it's a human soul.

"Not so fast," the recyclers say. "What about chibi Rei in 25? She's explicitly labeled 'Rei I' in the episode's script! Explain that!" Well, okay, I will. :) Here's the problem with that bit: Rei I is present at the time. She has lines before and after chibi Rei's sequence, and of course the seiyu is the same throughout. If Rei I is there, why would we assume chibi Rei is also Rei I? She isn't actually talking during that sequence; rather, Rei I is talking while chibi Rei is onscreen. There is, again, absolutely no need for soul recycling here. And when you think about it, that whole sequence makes a mockery of the idea anyway: if Rei I and chibi Rei are the same, why are both present? If Rei III is a fusion of Rei I and Unit 00's soul why are both of them present? Why the heck are two and a half Rei Is present when the whole point of the scene is that these different identities are all Rei? And, if we accept soul recycling, how did Rei II get into the mix? The only way it can work is with another soul split, but if we're gonna go that route why not rely only on that mechanism instead of bringing another into play?

Of course, this leaves the origin and identity of chibi Rei up in the air. If not Rei I who's inside of Unit 00? To my mind there are two possibilities. The first is that there was no soul for Unit 00, and that Rei herself did what Kyoko and Yui presumably hoped to do: she created an eidolon of herself within the core of the unit and synced with that. And why not? Kaworu could clearly do that with soulless Evas from his gene line, so why wouldn't Rei be able to do the same? As Kaworu said they are the same, so there's no reason their capabilities wouldn't mirror one another in this regard like all the others. Rei's obviously not very good at it since her soul's been wrecked and all, but it still seems the sort of thing that would be consistent with the Eva mechanics seen in the rest of the show.

Don't like ghosts? Okay, fine. The other possibility is that Unit 00's soul was another split from Lilith, one that took on characteristics of Rei via synchronization. I'm not as fond of this idea since it involves another soul split; without it there are no real soul splits needed, since Lilith's soul just hops around from one body to another (leaving her welcome home in EoE a product of her subconscious, as described previously in the thread). But if you're inclined to think Rei's soul was divided initially (something else we know to be possible thanks to the precedent of Kyoko) and don't find the idea troublesome otherwise the split idea works. It's kludgy, but it works.

This approach, overall, means that Rei's personas are explained without the need for soul recycling on the part of Nerv, and that the distinct personas seen in 25 and EoE are not only explained, but expected to be present. Of course they'd be different personas, since they represent different phases of Lilith's soul's life as a Lilim. And chibi Rei isn't a fully realized personality because she's an eidolon/imprint of Rei II, not a separate, fully realized identity. All of this follows from the basic premise. Granted the eidolon idea is a bit of fanwank but we're stuck with that no matter what theory we pursue since there's clearly something in Unit 00 and there's no way to make that work without some amount of fanwank. The recycled soul idea by contrast, has to do a lot of tap-dancing to make the idea work, and even then it doesn't work without assuming a split for Rei II. IMO that's clumsy and inelegant, while this alternative is simple, consistent with what's seen in the show, and effective.

Thoughts?

Making matters worse is the fact that every salvage operation we've seen in the actual show has been a dismal failure -- Nerv couldn't recover Yui after her CE, they couldn't restore Kyoko after her CE, and they couldn't get Shinji back after he was absorbed in ep. 19 (he came back of his own accord, after a month of failure on Ritsuko's part). All of this, and we're supposed to believe these people can just pluck Rei's soul out of the aether (or her charred remains) and implant it in a new body? Please.

In complete fairness, all of those examples regard the soul being in a still living vessel and retain some form of consciousness, and for atleast two of those examples (Yui and Shinji), the soul in question was actively insisting on staying put.

AuraTwilight wrote:In complete fairness, all of those examples regard the soul being in a still living vessel and retain some form of consciousness, and for atleast two of those examples (Yui and Shinji), the soul in question was actively insisting on staying put.

Fair cop with Yui, but I don't think we can say that with Kyoko. AFAICR she was not trying to escape from Seele the way Yui was. She almost certainly didn't want her soul torn in half in the process. If there was a way to come back she probably would have done it.

'Course, the point is that Nerv has shown no proficiency whatsoever in this regard. That makes the notion that they have some closet industry of soul collection going on in the background a little far-fetched, don't you think?

Fair cop with Yui, but I don't think we can say that with Kyoko. AFAICR she was not trying to escape from Seele the way Yui was. She almost certainly didn't want her soul torn in half in the process. If there was a way to come back she probably would have done it.

Right, when I said "two out of three of those cases" I meant Shinji and Yui. Kyoko, yea, who knows.

Of course, given the way her soul was split, who knows how coherent the maternal part of her soul was?

'Course, the point is that Nerv has shown no proficiency whatsoever in this regard. That makes the notion that they have some closet industry of soul collection going on in the background a little far-fetched, don't you think?

Pretty much everything about how NERV operates is far-fetched, so honestly I can take it or leave it. I have no problems with your thesis, though, it was just that one part I addressed that sort of bugged me, since it was tangential at best and misleading at worst.

Aozora wrote:I thought she said Rei's mind/heart was false, not her soul.

I know it's from back on the first page, but I thought I'd address this just in case it's brought up again. In Japanese they use the word Kokoro, which can be roughly translated as mind, heart or soul. I think a more close description would likely be essence in this respect. So the word is fairly interchangeable. I'm not saying this use it in this example, but if there's a discrepancy like this, might want to look out for this work in the script.

AuraTwilight wrote:Right, when I said "two out of three of those cases" I meant Shinji and Yui.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry, brain fart on my part.

Pretty much everything about how NERV operates is far-fetched, so honestly I can take it or leave it. I have no problems with your thesis, though, it was just that one part I addressed that sort of bugged me, since it was tangential at best and misleading at worst.

Fair point.

My understanding is that Rei, Kaworu, Adam, Lilith and the angels are made of Particle-Wave Matter, while the Lilin are made of Regular Matter (basically LCL).

As Ritsuko explains PWM in angels is arranged in a way that resembles Lilin DNA in over 99%.

Here is where I think is the key, all lifeforms (Lilith and Adam based) are composed of: a type of matter, DNA that arranges that matter and a soul, so:

Kaworu is made of PWM from Adam's body during the contact experiment but instead of being arranged with Adam's DNA like its resurrected body (the Adam embryo) is arranged with the Lilin donor's DNA, thus it's a Lilin body but composed of PWM instead of regular matter (LCL).

Also Adam's whole soul was put inside Kaworu and the embryo was soulless, at least this is what SEELE says to Kaworu in the lake scene, that Kaworu is the one and only soul of Adam and that Gendo has his body.

In the case of Rei it's basically the same, she's made of Lilith's PWM arranged into a Lilin body using Yui's DNA, it seemed that at least the 1st Rei body was created during Yui's salvage attempt, it also seems that around this same time they created all the other 14 Rei empty bodies that we see in the aquarium.

How the soul was placed inside Rei or Kaworu? there seems to be two possibilities:

SEELE/NERV has the ability to move souls around, this seems a bit sketchy specially considering the issues they had with the contact experiments and the failed salvage operations.

The souls are like attracted to available bodies with the same type of matter or DNA pattern, a prime example of this is when Kaworu gets killed by Shinji his soul seems to end up in Adam's embryo, was it purposely placed there or it simply went there on its own since it was the only compatible body that was available?

If we evaluate the events using the auto-soul-placement hypothesis:

1) Adam's body was destroyed so the soul went to Kaworu, the embryo was created either after Kaworu's "birth", or at the same time but Kaworu's body was closer (or simply the soul got split)?
2) Yui's body being tanged by the CE her soul could only go to eva-01's core being it the closest/most compatible body
3) The salvage operation, let's take into consideration that eva-01 body was still attached to Lilith when Yui's CE and salvage operation were carried, this explains the creation of a body using Yui's DNA and Lilith's PWM (probably by mistake, they wanted to rearrange the LCL not the PWM) and at this point Lilith having two bodies (Marshmellow and Rei 1) her soul got split (maybe this is what Ritsuko means when she says that Rei was the only one "born" with a soul all the other bodies are empty).
4) Kyoko CE was different since Kyoko's body didn't get tanged so by having two bodies available her soul got split between her and eva-02, when Kyoko committed suicide either NERV did a CE between her corpse and eva-02 to reuinite her soul or when her body eventually decomposed (or instantly after her death) her soul was released and went to eva-02 on her own.
5) When Rei 1's died the only available body around (or at least the closest one) was eva-00, either the other Rei bodies weren't created yet (I guess the 14 Rei bodies were all created at the same time or close by), it's a matter of proximity (Rei bodies 02 to 14 were deep in Terminal Dogma and eva-00 was in central dogma where she died), they performed a CE with Rei 1's corpse and eva-00 (this is my guess judging by Ritsuko going to recover Rei 2 corpse after eva-00's self destruct) or souls within PWM bodies behave differently than souls within LCL bodies (they are released when the body dies instead of staying within the corpse until it finally decomposes).
6) Realizing how the soul jumping/splitting worked they went on and repeated the salvage experiment in Lilith+eva-01, creating the other 14 Rei bodies and having Lilith's soul split again and thus Rei 2, or my guess that they performed a CE with Rei 2 empty body and Lilith or Lilith+eva-01.
7) When Rei 2 and eva-00 die, they need Rei 2 corpse (Ritsuko recovers it) they don't need eva-00's remains (Ritsuko orders them to be destroyed) so the Rei 1's soul within eva-00's core seems to behave the same as an Angel's core, when destroyed the soul is released (reuiniting with the 1/3 within Lilith), and Rei (even being composed of PWM) by having a Lilin corpse the soul remains within the body (EoE when Rei 3 body is falling apart comes to mind too) so they make a CE (or Rei 2 soul simply returns on its own, but this would contradict Rei 1's soul in eva-00's case) between Rei 2's remains and Lilith (reuniting Lilith's soul) and then again split it with another CE between Lilith and the empty Rei 3, this most likely explains Rei 3's higher awareness and that we see the 3 Rei incarnations in EoE, meaning that Lilith's soul was split in 3 pieces. It also could explain Kaworu saying to Rei 3 that they are the same and confirming that Kaworu also has half of Adam's soul (the other being inside the embryo) and Rei 3 having half of Lilith's soul too.

I'm seeing the CE as a sort of link between two souls and bodies, when one of the bodies is empty the soul splits between the two.
Lilin (LCL) bodies are said to need the soul to keep its shape so even after dead they keep the soul until they decompose (it says so on the wiki) and Angel bodies release the soul when the core is damaged... My guess is that both release the soul, its simpler that way, and the souls either return to their respective chamber of guf or reunite with a split soul somewhere, the exception seem to be Lilin bodies made of PWM (Kaworu and Rei) these seem to require a CE post-mortem otherwise there wouldn't be need for Ritsuko to recover Rei 2 remains and for Rei 1's soul to be inside eva-00 you would need to make a CE between Lilith and eva-00 and it wouldn't be Rei 1's soul, Rei 1's would go back to Lilith's and then re-split instead of going directly to eva-00. It's why I propose that Rei 2's body to be CE with Lilith's and then split again into an empty Rei 3, otherwise there would be the need of a CE between Rei 2's remains and Rei 3, and I haven't seen anything that indicates that CE can be done between 2 Lilin bodies or 2 angelic bodies, only 1 lilin and 1 angelic.

The angels are made of PWM. We speculate that Adam and Lilith are as well, but that isn't confirmed anywhere. Claiming Kaworu and Rei are is well into fanwank land.

Bagheera wrote:The angels are made of PWM. We speculate that Adam and Lilith are as well, but that isn't confirmed anywhere. Claiming Kaworu and Rei are is well into fanwank land.

Whatever they're made of, it seems to be fairly improbable matter that doesn't generally obey the laws of physics; mostly I'm referring to Lilith's marshmallowy body, which seems solid at first but later demonstrates the ability to phase through solid objects and increase in size exponentially. There's no real evidence for Kaworu and Rei being made of PWM though, other than that spectrum scanner Ritsuko uses on Rei during her checkup in Episode 4.

Bagheera wrote:The angels are made of PWM. We speculate that Adam and Lilith are as well, but that isn't confirmed anywhere. Claiming Kaworu and Rei are is well into fanwank land.

But Kaworu is an angel durhu-*shot*

We had Gendo stick his hand IN Rei, I'd say that points to the clones at least being constructed from Lilith's biomass. Rei I I'd make no such bets on.

Anonymous_Evafan wrote:We had Gendo stick his hand IN Rei, I'd say that points to the clones at least being constructed from Lilith's biomass.

Don't you know that he was only looking for his car keys?

Anonymous_Evafan wrote:We had Gendo stick his hand IN Rei, I'd say that points to the clones at least being constructed from Lilith's biomass. Rei I I'd make no such bets on.

Not as compelling as it might be given that Lilith was weakening ATFs at the time. IIRC that was also the point where the MPEs were spreading their anti-ATFs, so . . .

Huh? That was before Rei returned to Lilith for anything to happen.

-checks-

Oh yeah, that was the first scene in ep 26. Sorry, it's been awhile. Even still I'm more inclined to chalk that up to ATF shenanigans rather than anything to do with Rei's composition.

How about the fact that she instantly regenerated her arm after absorbing Gendo's

^That must have been because she absorbed Adam.

Gendo says her body is falling apart is because of her unstable AT field, and it seems pretty clear that this is the reason he's able to stick his hand inside her.

Ask yourself why would Adam allow a normal human body to regenerate like that and why does it look like the bubbly mess on Lilith where she was regenerating?

Great Genius Shinji-Sama wrote:Character design put to the side for a moment; if it's Yui's DNA then why does Rei have blue hair and red eyes, and not Shinji's (not to mention Yui's) brown hair and blue eyes? One theory I can think of is that Gendo possibly gave her contacts and dyed her hair so no one knows its a clone of her, except the people who made her. Or more realistically it was simply mutated somehow, possibly due to Lillith's soul.

Before Contact Experiment with Eva-01 by Yui, Yui made a wedding card with an angel with blue hair. Perhaps Yui, during Contact Experiment, materialized the idea of her daughter like that, and that's why Rei was 'born' that way.

Aside of this, I hold the next theory:

• Rei I, had more of Yui's soul than the others, as it's a direct creation of Yui (perhaps Yui felt jealous of Akagi while "alive", so that's why Rei I was cruel to Akagi).
• Rei II, had less of Yui, but her attachment to Gendo can be justified with this (Yui said that when she understood Gendo, she saw that he was sweet, but little people do understand Gendo [I do know that Naoko and Ritsuko also felt love for him, but this is also something unexpected]). Shinji also told to Rei II that she is "like a mother", and Yui had an intense will to become mother even during her investigations.
• Rei III shows little attachment to Gendo, because she is less Yui now, perhaps even 0. Also, during 3rd impact, Rei sometimes identifies herself as Lilith, and not Rei, meaning that her soul is now more filled with Lilith's than Yui's.

Perhaps this loss of Yui's soul happened because Rei's soul is somehow rescued from her dead bodies and transfered to a new body, with loss in the process.

I have not thought about how can souls being fragmented. I know that Kyoko Zeppelin had a fragmented soul, indicating that there is no need of a full soul for a body to work consciously (with consciously I mean; Rei container bodies work, but they cannot feel anything for example). So, I don't know if Lilith soul fills the 'soul' void left by the lost Yui's soul fragment.

The only connection any iteration of Rei has is superficial in that she has the same form as her. Her soul is all Lilith, either whole (as seen witH Rei I and III) OR fragmented (between Rei II and Unit 00).