I just got an ad on instagram for this book called Anime Architecture.

This is pretty self explanatory. I'm not sure if it's new, but I'd never seen it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKgnGDblhIp/?igshid=11zt8kvezq6wy

I've seen these sketches and that book in somewhere before, I always suspected it was organic, after all it looks like a womb (figuratively of course).

If you think of it in a more simple way, the liquid, which is always keeping it filled up is obviously LCL or something of that sort, is organic. So from that viewpoint, that thing is biomechanical. :P

In a more theoretical way, the artist does say that Rei was born from it. Only machine can't give birth to an organism, even if you say cloning or test tube babies, which still undergo biological procedures throughout most of the the part. He also explicitly states of the upper part of the thing being not filled with machinery. So if it's not something mechanical, it has to be organic, right? The outer layer is made out of metal, protecting something that's organic and fragile inside. Basically what our skull does, except the skull is made out of metal.

Apart from that, isn't that thing supposed to fill the role of the dummy plug of the original series by replacing it, which was obviously organic from some extent, at least a minimal?

The idea that Rei's tank actually being a eldritch biomechanical horror hidden by mundane metal plates and tubes is genius.

I think the "giving birth" part might just refer to how this is how they fire up new clones, but, very interesting.


The OG series incarnation had a 'spine-like' part.