C.T.1290 wrote:The whole thing about clones being programmed just treats them more like machines instead of real people, and I think that’s the one issue I have with them. It’s like Rebuild has made Asuka into some soulless doll, just like how Rei is. So it’s like their feelings towards Shinji isn’t real, just artificially engineered, just like how they are.
I think they should have just have Asuka as a normal human being with a face and identity of very own instead of just some man made copy created as a result of a lab experiment. They really dehumanized her by making her into some sort of thing, and later as some Angel hybrid freak.
As said above, there are no indication that the Shikinami line was programmed with feelings for Shinji, Asuka only mentions the Ayanami line (besides the wouldn't be any interest for Gendo to have Asuka with feelings for Shinji, in his plans she's just here to fight the Angels).
But the thing that puzzles me the most is that I don't see why they added that bit for Rei II and Rei Q, what was the point?
To explain why they came to be attached to Shinji? But that already can be explained by all the time they spent together and the ordeals they got through (for Rei II), and for the fact that he was the person who first made her understood that there was a world beyond her orders and later by the Suzuharas telling her about him (Rei Q).
To say that actually those feelings are fake and thus that their relationship doesn't have any "real" worth? Rei Q immediately shot that thought down when Asuka revealed it to her, and decided that since this programing feels real to her and make her happy, then she's okay with it.
It's like the revelation in 3.0 of Ayanami being Yui's maiden's name in NTE instead of a random name, or the line "If it's a boy, Shinji. If it's a girl, Rei." repeated both in 1.0 and Thrice. I can't shake the feeling that they wanted to go somewhere with all this, but ultimately didn't (for lack of time?), and it just stays as weird trivia.
Konja7 wrote:Rei II wanting to protect Shinji from the pain (the Eva) seems to me an aspect that is traditionally associated with motherhood. This is a wish that she mantain after the 14 years timeskip.
Also, Rei II tries to improve the relationship between Gendo and Shinji by cooking a dinner.
It's true that references to Rei representing a mother in NTE are less obvious than NGE, but NTE still always try to generate a connection with Yui (in 3.0+1.0, it's pretty clear in the Instrumentality).
The thing, personally I took her cooking of a diner as being framed as a reciprocity to Shinji taking care of her through 1.0 and (especially) 2.0, inquiring for her health when she disappeared for several days (for her secret recalibration) or preparing a meal for her everyday (and I don't think that we can say that Shinji is a father figure for Rei for that). It's also put parallel to Asuka's own attempt at cooking for him (and Asuka
definitively can't be taken as a mother figure to Shinji), and Rei's invitation wasn't just for Shinji and Gendo, but she also gave to nearly everyone in NERV (Ritsuko, Misato, Asuka...) as a show of her growing desire to bond with people (already hinted when she greeted everyone in class, to everyone's surprise).
For her desire to protect Shinji from the pain of piloting (first by trying to kill Zeruel by herself, then by staying inside EVA-01), it's immediately rebuked by Shinji himself who goes back to pilot to save her when Zeruel devours her, and even after the timeskip when the first thing he asks when he sees Asuka deployed is to request to also be deployed to help her. The way Rei phrases her motivations when Shinji reaches her in Zeruel's core in 2.0, it looked more like she saw herself as a tool easily replaced with no intrinsic value to herself (thanks Gendo) and thus that the best she can do is to offer her life for the benefits of those she cares about, which Shinji vehemently denies when he rescues her.
As for the connection with Yui, there are indeed instances of them in NTE, but they all pertain to Gendo, like when he briefly sees Yui's face on top of Rei when she invites him to the diner in 2.0, or in Thrice when he admits that he always searched a trace of Yui in Rei, and gave up in her once he realized that there were none. But there are no instances that I remember of Shinji linking Rei to Yui. Even when Fuyutsuki reveals Rei's origins to him in 3.0, when his first words when seeing his mother's face for the first time (thanks Gendo) is "Ayanami?", the focus of the conversation - and source of Shinji's anguish afterwards - is that he didn't saved her rather than her origin as a clone of his mother, in fact the fact that she's a clone of Yui never enters in considerations in his later interactions with any of the Reis.
In fact, Shinji doesn't even seems to have strong feelings about her disappearance in NTE, unlike in NGE where the shadow of her absence constantly hanged above him and colored part of his interactions with Rei. He doesn't even have any contact with Yui until the last minutes of Thrice, and there wasn't even a conversation, only Yui taking his place as sacrifice to rewrite the world.
I don't know if it's a consequence of Gendo tampering with his memories when he was little or not.