Now I am wondering why EVA Mark.06 belongs Mark series, since is piloted by Kaworu in EVA 2.0, yet others Mark series EVAs are automatus pilots.

I think that all units produced by SEELE are named "mark". "Mark" is like "unit" in german.

Raikyu wrote:"Mark" is like "unit" in german.

Not quite; it's more to the tune of [number]th generation, and is far from exclusive to German; all the way back in WWI, the British tanks were also called Mark [number]

But yes, the Mark.XX Evas are simply produced by Seele/Neo Nerv

It's also interesting that Mark.04 takes the place for Unit 04. When all the Evas are disappearing in 3.0+1.0, Mark. 04 appears instead of Unit 04.

Maybe Mark refers to Evas that are autonomous and don't have pilots? Mark.06 originally had a pilot, but the final intent of Seele could have been for it to eventually become fully autonomous. Kaworu piloting it at the end of 2.0 could have just been due to the fact that it was an emergency and they hadn't yet had time to finishing putting in a Dummy Plug because stopping the Near Third Impact that was occurring took immediate priority at that moment.

Melkor wrote:Maybe Mark refers to Evas that are autonomous and don't have pilots? Mark.06 originally had a pilot, but the final intent of Seele could have been for it to eventually become fully autonomous. Kaworu piloting it at the end of 2.0 could have just been due to the fact that it was an emergency and they hadn't yet had time to finishing putting in a Dummy Plug because stopping the Near Third Impact that was occurring took immediate priority at that moment.

In 3.0, it was mentioned that Mark.06 became autonomous at some point.

However, the Advanced Ayanami series seem to pilot Mark.09-12. So, it doesn't seem Mark refers to autonomous Evas.

Konja7 wrote:It's also interesting that Mark.04 takes the place for Unit 04. When the all Eva are disappearing in 3.0+10, Mark. 04 appears instead of Unit 04.

If I'm not mistaken, "Unit-04" was actually called as "Evangelion Next Gen Testbed-04". Maybe it was a prototype of the actual Mark. 04.

Edit: I confirmed that I was indeed mistaken. It was called Unit-04. We can only assume that the design was similar to one of the mark. 04.

I like the autonomous theory. I should point out that just because the Vessels have pilots doesn't necessarily mean they're not autonomous! In 3.0, Mark.09 is perfectly capable of operating on its own, given it keeps doing its thing after Rei Q is locked out of the controls and even continues fighting Unit-02 after she's fully ejected. It's possible the "pilots" serve some other purpose than actually piloting the Vessels -- Fuyutsuki does call the Advanced Ayanami Series "sacrifices to the Vessels of Adams."

Another apparent difference between the Marks and non-Marks is that they appear to have Fruit of Life characteristics built-in, rather than needing to consume an Angel to get them. Classic angel behaviors like levitation, for example, are (mostly) universal among the Marks. Mari even calls the Mark.04s "mock angels." This might go hand-in-hand with autonomous operation -- Angels don't generally have pilots either, and if an Eva becomes an Angel while a pilot is inside, the Pilot would seem to likewise become that selfsame angel (Asuka and Unit-03 both become the Ninth, Kaworu becomes the Thirteenth while the only apparent angel activity is happening to Eva-13).

Edit: The more I think about this, the more convinced I get, actually. The first "Mark" that shows up is Mark.06, who SEELE refer to as the "true Evangelion." Its pilot is (or was) an Angel, and when it gets chopped open 14 years later what comes popping out but the Twelfth Angel? There's a strong association between the Marks and Angels.

Raikyu wrote:If I'm not mistaken, "Unit-04" was actually called as "Evangelion Next Gen Testbed-04". Maybe it was a prototype of the actual Mark. 04.

the theory I subscribe to is that the Mark.04s were constructed out of the core mass left behind by Unit 04's explosion

Anchorhead wrote:I like the autonomous theory. I should point out that just because the Vessels have pilots doesn't necessarily mean they're not autonomous! In 3.0, Mark.09 is perfectly capable of operating on its own, given it keeps doing its thing after Rei Q is locked out of the controls and even continues fighting Unit-02 after she's fully ejected. It's possible the "pilots" serve some other purpose than actually piloting the Vessels -- Fuyutsuki does call the Advanced Ayanami Series "sacrifices to the Vessels of Adams."

Another apparent difference between the Marks and non-Marks is that they appear to have Fruit of Life characteristics built-in, rather than needing to consume an Angel to get them. Classic angel behaviors like levitation, for example, are (mostly) universal among the Marks. Mari even calls the Mark.04s "mock angels." This might go hand-in-hand with autonomous operation -- Angels don't generally have pilots either, and if an Eva becomes an Angel while a pilot is inside, the Pilot would seem to likewise become that selfsame angel (Asuka and Unit-03 both become the Ninth, Kaworu becomes the Thirteenth while the only apparent angel activity is happening to Eva-13).

Seele refers to Mark.06 as "The True Evangelion", and Fuyutsuki remarks that they're trying to "create an actual God, not a fake one" this time. I think this 100% refers to it having the FoL, and it's interesting how it finishes construction soon after the Nerv-02 accident. My working theory is that once the artificial FoK experiment was successful and Seele were confident that they could mass-produce it at will, they sabottaged it and caused the "accident" to destroy al the data so they alone would be in possession of it. This is backed by neither Gendo/Fuyutsuki nor Kaji knowing whether it really was an accident or who was behind it: that only leaves Seele as the suspect.

I've long been wondering why the pattern blue Mark.04s, 44A's, etc. aren't indentified by Wille as new angels. I now think every pattern blue signal has a definitive "signature" (this is what lets Wille recognize the angel in Asuka's eye as a repeat of 9th, instead of assigning a nonexistant new number), and all the artificial FoK Evas share the (known) signal of testbed Unit-04 (see this comment of mine regarding Kaworu being identified as the 13th).

Anchorhead wrote:Edit: The more I think about this, the more convinced I get, actually. The first "Mark" that shows up is Mark.06, who SEELE refer to as the "true Evangelion." Its pilot is (or was) an Angel, and when it gets chopped open 14 years later what comes popping out but the Twelfth Angel? There's a strong association between the Marks and Angels.

I think the Mark.06 simply got infiltrated/consumed by the 12th angel; there's nothing in the autonomous Evas that makes them more prone to associate with angels. The 12th didn't develop inside the Mark.06; Asuka was already aware of its existence from the events of Third Impact. When the 12th finally exits the Mark.06, all that is left is skin and armour!

DantesInferno wrote:I think the Mark.06 simply got infiltrated/consumed by the 12th angel; there's nothing in the autonomous Evas that makes them more prone to associate with angels. The 12th didn't develop inside the Mark.06; Asuka was already aware of its existence from the events of Third Impact. When the 12th finally exits the Mark.06, all that is left is skin and armour!

Indeed. What I mean to get at here is that contamination by an Angel is one way of making an Eva autonomous -- see Unit-03, Eva-13, and Mark.06. I've long assumed that the mysterious modification done to Mark.06 to make it autonomous was the 12th Angel itself, since, like the Ninth, it's a full-body core that has some apparent "contamination" abilities. And we know SEELE were experimenting with ways to control Angels as far back as the Third, what with the entry plug in its spine.

Total spitball, though. I don't know for sure that it's anything more than a coincidence that the Marks are largely autonomous -- I think having the FoL (or a recreation of it) has gotta be the primary thing, since it's so consistent across the board.

Incidentally, the DMYSYS also seems to have core texture, or something similar to it... controlling an Eva doesn't seem to be something you can do with machines alone!

Anchorhead wrote:I've long assumed that the mysterious modification done to Mark.06 to make it autonomous was the 12th Angel itself, since, like the Ninth, it's a full-body core that has some apparent "contamination" abilities.

Mark.06 is a full-body core? I thought only the Adams' Vessels (9 through 12) were full-body cores (but it's very early in my time zone and I'm still half asleep ).

Anchorhead wrote:Indeed. What I mean to get at here is that contamination by an Angel is one way of making an Eva autonomous -- see Unit-03, Eva-13, and Mark.06. I've long assumed that the mysterious modification done to Mark.06 to make it autonomous was the 12th Angel itself, since, like the Ninth, it's a full-body core that has some apparent "contamination" abilities.

If by autonomous you mean "no pilot" (as opposed to, no power cord), yeah, by all means. I mean, the Mark.06 was FoL-enabled from the start; they definitely did something to it so it didn't have to be piloted by Kaworu anymore, and injecting the 12th fits the bill (another possibility would be a dummy plug-based solution).

Anchorhead wrote:And we know SEELE were experimenting with ways to control Angels as far back as the Third, what with the entry plug in its spine.

Totally missed that entry plug part. Too bad Amazon Prime doesn't have a frame-by-frame playback functionality.

Anchorhead wrote:Total spitball, though. I don't know for sure that it's anything more than a coincidence that the Marks are largely autonomous -- I think having the FoL (or a recreation of it) has gotta be the primary thing, since it's so consistent across the board.
Incidentally, the DMYSYS also seems to have core texture, or something similar to it... controlling an Eva doesn't seem to be something you can do with machines alone!

Yes... and so do the Seele monoliths. I think Reichu hypothesized the dummy system had something to do with souls trapped inside a coffin (see the logo) or something, I forgot...