Mr. Tines wrote:There has been a suggestion made, that I think holds some good narrative appeal.
I always preferred the theory that the donor was Misato herself, if only because it makes a good explanation for why Dr. K felt the need to drag her straight to fucking Antarctica (just so he could keep an eye on her? really?)
We don't know when the Rei clones were produced, but the fact that they're all the same age as Rei II at the time of their destruction suggests that they were all created at the same time (and the fact that Rei I first appears at age four or five suggests that that's the age all of them started at, for whatever reason). Rei II could have been sitting in the Reiquarium without a soul for four years, aging in a relatively normal manner, before they fished her out and started expecting her to live like a human.