EVA-00's Soul

[Bagheera]

But isn't it just a little too convenient that the maternal part of Kyoko's soul ended up in Unit-02? That's just the part that was needed.

Perhaps, but it is what it is. I mean, that's the one part of it all that isn't speculation, since it's spelled out in the CI.

If Nerv didn't do it on purpose, it must have been a conscious choice by Kyoko. Besides, why should a contact experiment alone divide a soul? I find deliberate soul division a lot easier to believe that an Eva's core just deciding to vacuum up part of a soul for no particular reason. Why didn't the entire soul transfer over?

We're told explicitly in the show that Kyoko's CE was a failure, and in the CI that her soul was torn in half as a result. Deliberate soul division just isn't in the cards in her case since it's directly contradicted in multiple canonical sources.

As to why it failed the way it did: I can only assume she was trying to improve on Yui's attempt, and was only partially successful. My suggestion here is merely that Rei's attempt was yet another effort to improve on Yui's effort, and that it worked out better than Kyoko's did.

The mechanisms of soul handling in Eva are a fine area for handwaving. Attempting to make sense of it all in a way that doesn't send you crazy is pretty much a lost cause IMO.

It's a lot easier to handle if you assume no one ever does it deliberately and that Nerv barely knows what they're doing -- they just throw shit at cores and hope something sticks.

[pwhodges]

that's the one part of it all that isn't speculation, since it's spelled out in the CI.

The CI: in canon terms, the top tier of retconning, perhaps?

[Reichu]

thewayneiac: My personal fanwank for that is that the Eva was trying for Kyoko's whole soul, but, because she resisted the process, Eva-02 only got away with the part it prioritized most, i.e., the aspect of the soul related to motherhood. IMO, the reason that mother's souls ended up becoming Nerv's "Eva standard" at all is because of something intrinsic to the Evas themselves. Like, say, the FAR only wanted a certain kind of person to be capable of entering a Seed, and designed the Seeds to accept moms only; and this feature was passed onto humanity's Seed clones. Gehirn discovered the Mother limitation by accident and were forced to work around it.

[pwhodges]

Work around it in what respect? If they have mothers' souls in the Evas, aren't they working with it?

[Reichu]

Work around it in what respect? If they have mothers' souls in the Evas, aren't they working with it?

I'm not really sure I understand. If the Eva forces you to feed it a mom's soul before it can do anything, Gehirn/Nerv would have been forced to develop their piloting scheme for Evas around that. You can say they're working "with it", I guess, but it amounts to the same thing and it doesn't change the fact that it's a limitation. If the Evas didn't have this bias, perhaps other combinations could have used, e.g. father-child, sibling-sibling, lover-lover, etc. Had the initial concept of imprinting a copy soul onto the core worked, they could have even gone with replica!self/self.

I wonder if it means anything that even the first two individuals used for the soul imprint shenanigans were mothers. Of all the people you could use for a dangerous experiment, use the parents of very young children.

[Javik]

The general understanding is that part of Lilith went into Rei I and then into EVA-00 (and then presumably back into Lilith); and then another part into Rei II

Previous related threads

http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/70/EVA-00s-Soul/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14153/Theory-Regarding-the-Soul-of-Unit-00-Quite-Complex/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14661/Another-theory-and-analysis-of-Eva-00s-Soul/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/10710/Rei-I-Unit-00-Theory-Discussion/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/12718/Unit-00s-soul/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/5056/Eva00s-Soul-is-Not-Alonein-piloting-orami-fanwanking/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/488/Whose-soul-is-inside-of-Eva-Unit-00/?
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/1179/In-response-to-Whose-soul-is-in-Unit-00/?

Thing is none of these really relate to my question. I think it's pretty well established that the soul in Eva Unit 00 is Rei I's. But what is the nature of that soul? Is it the piece of soul that was Lilith's or was it Rei I's own soul. The thing that cause confusion here is what Ritsuko and Maya say during the testing of Unit 00 and 01 in episode 14.
http://i.imgur.com/nYVY2kW.jpg

If the fragment was Lilith's how would this work? How would a soul of Lilith be compatible with the soul of Yui. Even if it were it would have to be just as compatible with Unit 02, but Misato says they aren't. If it were some kind of soul Rei I herself possesed then it would make sense because Rei was a clone of Yui so it's possible their souls were similar. But on the other hand Ritsuko claims that clones are just empty souls and don't posses souls. But of course she could be wrong and it could just be her human arrogance.

[NemZ]

The fact that it looks like Rei suggests it was part (or all, by some theories) of Rei1. Pretty sure the script says as much as well.

Why Ritsuko might have thought Shinji would be compatible while Asuka isn't is rather a big question. It would make some degree of sense if she knew that Rei was a clone of Yui, but it's unclear if she knows that or not.

Personal headcannon: Rits was led to believe that her mother is in 00 and that the original Rei was created as a combination of Naoko and Gendo's DNA, makng her Rei's half-sister and Rei's dad's girlfriend.

[Javik]

The fact that it looks like Rei suggests it was part (or all, by some theories) of Rei1. Pretty sure the script says as much as well.

Why Ritsuko might have thought Shinji would be compatible while Asuka isn't is rather a big question. It would make some degree of sense if she knew that Rei was a clone of Yui, but it's unclear if she knows that or not.

Personal headcannon: Rits was led to believe that her mother is in 00 and that the original Rei was created as a combination of Naoko and Gendo's DNA, makng her Rei's half-sister and Rei's dad's girlfriend.

She didn't "think" they were compatible, they were testing the units and they just were compatible. It wasn't a theory. I recommend checking out the sequence in episode 14 right after Rei's monologue/poem.

[NemZ]

Clearly she did think it was at least possible or they wouldn't have bothered with the experiment in the first place. Though of course it was also an excuse to gather data for the dummy plug system, which presumably doesn't work on 02.

[Monk Ed]

If the fragment was Lilith's how would this work? How would a soul of Lilith be compatible with the soul of Yui. Even if it were it would have to be just as compatible with Unit 02, but Misato says they aren't. If it were some kind of soul Rei I herself possesed then it would make sense because Rei was a clone of Yui so it's possible their souls were similar.

"Personal data" is probably the data of the pilot, not the Eva. At this point in the show, Evas have not been revealed as "people" in any meaningful sense. The "Eva's personal data" is probably the personal data on the Eva('s memory systems), not of the Eva. This is further supported by at least one other use of the term in the show clearly referring to data that is related to the pilot:

Rei:
I'll pilot Unit 01.
Dr. Akagi is already prepared to rewrite Unit 01's personal data files.

In other words, what makes the compatibility test possible (allegedly) is that Rei and Shinji are so similar. As many have noted for years .

Another distinct possibility is that a lot of this crap is just cover, or simply wrong. Things went in an unexpected direction between Shinji and Unit 00, after all.

It's all actually quite confusing and I'd like to give it further examination, because why would the personal data between 00 and 01 being similar matter if they can just reconfigure it anyway? They even do that right before Shinji's test in the same episode!:

RITSUKO (OFF):
What about Unit 00's personal data?

IBUKI (OFF):
Already reconfigured. Currently reconfirming.

Unless what the statement that the patterns were similar is really meant to suggest is that Rei is similar enough to Shinji to fool the Eva (i.e. Yui's maternal instincts), or something like that.

[Reichu]

Though of course it was also an excuse to gather data for the dummy plug system, which presumably doesn't work on 02.

The dummy system was in fact installed on Eva-02.

RITSUKO:
This is the dummy plug prototype.
Rei's personal data has been loaded into it,
but it's not really possible to digitize a human mind and soul.
Ultimately, it's a fake, an imitation.
Just a machine that emulates a pilot's thinking process.

IKARI:
It'll transmit a signal pattern to the Eva.
As long as the Eva believes there's a pilot and synchronizes, that's enough.
Load the data into Unit 01 and Unit 02.

[NemZ]

That doesn't make any sense at all. 02 would need a plug compatible with it, so a plug based on a kaworu, or a clone of Asuka...

or maybe the rest of kyoko's soul?

[Reichu]

Guess it makes sense in-universe, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. The dummy system data that's on-board Eva-02 is referenced again on Ritsuko's little handheld when she "destroys Rei".

[Bagheera]

That doesn't make any sense at all. 02 would need a plug compatible with it, so a plug based on a kaworu, or a clone of Asuka...

. . . or a clone of Rei, with the data for the soul of Lilith, the mother of all humanity, who can presumably sync with any Eva just like Kaworu can. Personally, I think Anno left Asuka and Unit 02 out of the cross-compatability experiment because he didn't want to tip his hand that early in the game, or maybe just wanted to leave his options open if he hadn't quite sorted out the details of the endgame just yet (lots of people assume he just made the story up as he went along, but I think it's more likely he knew what would happen but didn't know how to present it effectively; not really the same thing).

Also, I don't recall anyone saying Asuka wouldn't be compatible with Units 00 or 01, nor that Shinji or Rei wouldn't be compatible with Unit 02. When Asuka asks about it Misato just says she doesn't know anything about Unit 02's compatibility, and that's the extent to which it's addressed. So, while Asuka likely wouldn't be compatible with Unit 00 or 01, it's easily possible Rei would be compatible with Unit 02. But we have no way to know for sure, because Anno.

[NemZ]

. . . or a clone of Rei, with the data for the soul of Lilith, the mother of all humanity, who can presumably sync with any Eva just like Kaworu can.

I was under the impression he could only do that because 02 was grown from an Adam sample. Presumably so was unit 00, which is why they needed to put part of Rei in there for her to use it... otherwise if this was true there would have been no reason for her to be split at all.

Now I have no idea what the hell is going on.

[Bagheera]

I was under the impression he could only do that because 02 was grown from an Adam sample. Presumably so was unit 00, which is why they needed to put part of Rei in there for her to use it... otherwise if this was true there would have been no reason for her to be split at all.

You're confusing controlling the Eva directly with syncing. Kaworu can do the former only if the soul within lets him. But he can also sync just fine with the soul within, as we see during the sync test in 24. They're two different things.

Rei has never demonstrated any ability to control an Eva directly, but then it probably never occurred to her (or anyone else) to try.

Now I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Most souls can only sync with relatives (specifically mothers), Seed souls can sync with any soul (hence cross compatibility experiment, Kaworu's sync test, and the dummy plugs), and Seed souls can presumably control their own flesh if they don't have to fight another soul to do it (Kaworu and Unit 02). That's how I see it, anyway.

[NemZ]

You're confusing controlling the Eva directly with syncing. Kaworu can do the former only if the soul within lets him. But he can also sync just fine with the soul within, as we see during the sync test in 24. They're two different things.

Who's to say Kyoko wasn't hiding herself the whole time he was there, and that synching IS how he controls it directly? You're inventing distinctions where they don't need to be made.

Most souls can only sync with relatives (specifically mothers), Seed souls can sync with any soul (hence cross compatibility experiment, Kaworu's sync test, and the dummy plugs),

But Rei is in a way Yui's daughter, and she's talking to herself in 00... can't get much closer of a relative than that.

[Bagheera]

Who's to say Kyoko wasn't hiding herself the whole time he was there, and that synching IS how he controls it directly? You're inventing distinctions where they don't need to be made.

Not really. If she's hidden away there's no one to sync with, and it's fairly clear he's not controlling the Eva in the same way the pilots are (since he's, y'know, outside and all). The distinction's already there.

But Rei is in a way Yui's daughter, and she's talking to herself in 00... can't get much closer of a relative than that.

She's Yui's daughter biologically (sort of), but her soul is no more connected to Yui's than anyone else's. There's no reason Rei should be able to sync with her any more than Shinji should be able to sync with Kyoko . . . unless Rei is able to sync with anyone. And given the premise of the dummy system that certainly appears to be the case.

[NemZ]

I don't agree but I really don't have a better answer to explain this either, so I'm just going to go back to being confused in silence about this whole 02 dummy plug thing.

[Reichu]

Things are confusing and obfuscated enough with the dummy system and how it works that I'm in the same boat as NemZ here.

I'm not sure how Bagheera has decided that Kyoko wasn't hidden away when Kaworu did the sync test but suddenly decided to do so by the time the Ode to Joy segment happened. Unless the suggestion is that having Kaworu inside her was the thing that traumatized her, which I suppose I can understand, but that contradicts the notion that Arael Did It.