Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Asunji_Yuko » Fri May 19, 2023 2:53 pm

Okay, let's talk about Rei Ayanami.

She apparently was made from 'salvaged remains' of Yui Ikari after her soul was absorbed into the EVA-01. And this was accomplished by using Lilith......somehow?

I have several questions...

1. Whose soul does Rei Ayanami contain? Is it Lilith's, since she was made from combining Lilith and Yui's soulless remains?

2. Since all modern humans are descended from Lilith, don't all of them have Lilith's soul inside them to some degree? If so, where does their own personal soul come from? Or are these one in the same?

3. If everyone's personal soul is technically a part of Lilith's soul, how is Rei's different from Yui's, or anyone else's, for that matter? Is a unique soul created when a human buds off of Lilith, like when a human is conceived? Like asexual reproduction of Lilith's soul? Whereas sperm fertilizing egg would be sexual reproduction of Lilith's soul.

I really wish Anno put more detail into this. It hurts my brain.

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Postby Archer » Fri May 19, 2023 10:05 pm

1. The common interpretation is that Rei’s body is a hybrid of Yui and Lilith’s DNA, and that Rei’s soul is either a fragment or the entirety of the OG Lilith’s soul. I choose to believe that it’s the former, because then it makes the question of “whose soul is in Unit 0?” much easier to answer (e.g. another fragment of Lilith’s soul).

2,3. Rei’s soul (or soul fragment) was taken straight from the source, normal human souls are grown organically with no chemical fertilizer. Like you know that passage in the Bible about man being made in the image of God? Rei’s soul isn’t some cheap imitation of divinity filtered through hundreds of millennia of human evolution, it’s the real deal.

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Re: Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Sefirot Tree Of Life » Wed Jun 07, 2023 5:37 pm

Rei was absorbed from the "Salvaged remains of Yui". Yui was absorbed into Eva Unit 01, so the only logical conclusion is that the LCL she was dissolved in was used, and it possibly had her DNA. Nothing else makes sense.

Rei's body is made out of Particle Wave Matter, which is the same substance the Angels, Evangelions, and Kaworu is made out of.

1: Rei's body has Lilith's Soul, just like Kaworu has Adam's

2: No. Why would they have Lilith's soul? Each lilin has their own soul. They were stored in the Chamber of Guf in Instrumentality/Third Impact.

3:I don't like saying "You're overthinking this" because I think its demeaning when people put a lot of thought and effort trying to understand something, but you're overthinking it because these questions don't make sense. It hurts your brain because they are incorrect - they don't make sense and the answers lie in simpler solutions.

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Re: Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Asunji_Yuko » Thu Jun 08, 2023 3:51 pm

View Original PostSefirot Tree Of Life wrote:Rei was absorbed from the "Salvaged remains of Yui". Yui was absorbed into Eva Unit 01, so the only logical conclusion is that the LCL she was dissolved in was used, and it possibly had her DNA. Nothing else makes sense.

Rei's body is made out of Particle Wave Matter, which is the same substance the Angels, Evangelions, and Kaworu is made out of.

1: Rei's body has Lilith's Soul, just like Kaworu has Adam's

2: No. Why would they have Lilith's soul? Each lilin has their own soul. They were stored in the Chamber of Guf in Instrumentality/Third Impact.

3:I don't like saying "You're overthinking this" because I think its demeaning when people put a lot of thought and effort trying to understand something, but you're overthinking it because these questions don't make sense. It hurts your brain because they are incorrect - they don't make sense and the answers lie in simpler solutions.


Okay there's one more thing
Supposedly, Rei I's soul is in EVA-00 and so this must be a different soul from Rei II/III. How can Lilith's soul occupy two different bodies at once?

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Postby Sefirot Tree Of Life » Thu Jun 08, 2023 6:19 pm

View Original PostAsunji_Yuko wrote:
View Original PostSefirot Tree Of Life#940979 wrote:Rei was absorbed from the "Salvaged remains of Yui". Yui was absorbed into Eva Unit 01, so the only logical conclusion is that the LCL she was dissolved in was used, and it possibly had her DNA. Nothing else makes sense.

Rei's body is made out of Particle Wave Matter, which is the same substance the Angels, Evangelions, and Kaworu is made out of.

1: Rei's body has Lilith's Soul, just like Kaworu has Adam's

2: No. Why would they have Lilith's soul? Each lilin has their own soul. They were stored in the Chamber of Guf in Instrumentality/Third Impact.

3:I don't like saying "You're overthinking this" because I think its demeaning when people put a lot of thought and effort trying to understand something, but you're overthinking it because these questions don't make sense. It hurts your brain because they are incorrect - they don't make sense and the answers lie in simpler solutions.


Okay there's one more thing
Supposedly, Rei I's soul is in EVA-00 and so this must be a different soul from Rei II/III. How can Lilith's soul occupy two different bodies at once?


Yeah I don't know lol

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Postby AuraTwilight » Fri Jun 09, 2023 9:57 am

View Original PostAsunji_Yuko wrote:
View Original PostSefirot Tree Of Life#940979 wrote:Rei was absorbed from the "Salvaged remains of Yui". Yui was absorbed into Eva Unit 01, so the only logical conclusion is that the LCL she was dissolved in was used, and it possibly had her DNA. Nothing else makes sense.

Rei's body is made out of Particle Wave Matter, which is the same substance the Angels, Evangelions, and Kaworu is made out of.

1: Rei's body has Lilith's Soul, just like Kaworu has Adam's

2: No. Why would they have Lilith's soul? Each lilin has their own soul. They were stored in the Chamber of Guf in Instrumentality/Third Impact.

3:I don't like saying "You're overthinking this" because I think its demeaning when people put a lot of thought and effort trying to understand something, but you're overthinking it because these questions don't make sense. It hurts your brain because they are incorrect - they don't make sense and the answers lie in simpler solutions.


Okay there's one more thing
Supposedly, Rei I's soul is in EVA-00 and so this must be a different soul from Rei II/III. How can Lilith's soul occupy two different bodies at once?


A common interpretation is that Rei I's creation was an accidental creation of a failed attempt to salvage Yui, and thus she only has a fragment of Lilith's soul.

Afterwards, they just kinda repeat what they did. So Rei II has another Lilith soul-shard, and Rei III a third.

Recall that when Rei floats up to Lilith and says she's home, a silent voice in text responds "Welcome back."
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Re: Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Asunji_Yuko » Fri Jun 09, 2023 1:57 pm

View Original PostAuraTwilight wrote:
View Original PostAsunji_Yuko#940988 wrote:
Okay there's one more thing
Supposedly, Rei I's soul is in EVA-00 and so this must be a different soul from Rei II/III. How can Lilith's soul occupy two different bodies at once?


A common interpretation is that Rei I's creation was an accidental creation of a failed attempt to salvage Yui, and thus she only has a fragment of Lilith's soul.

Afterwards, they just kinda repeat what they did. So Rei II has another Lilith soul-shard, and Rei III a third.

Recall that when Rei floats up to Lilith and says she's home, a silent voice in text responds "Welcome back."


Ok, then that makes more sense. Though I think Rei II's soul was passed onto Rei III due to the latter's reaction to Gendo's glasses.

Per the Classified Information (CI), Second Angel, section D.:

"Lilith had no soul. Moreover, its soul has been residing within Rei. Many copies of Rei's body were made, but that is the reason why only one of Rei herself can exist at any given time. Even though Rei was copied from Yui's flesh, this was not the case for her soul."

Lilith's soul must've been split and we know that can happen based on how Kyoko Zeppelin-Sohryu's soul was split until she hanged herself.

Where humans aka Lilins get their souls isn't answered in the CI. I don't see anything about the Chamber of Guf or anything else about it. I guess that means souls are spontaneously generated in all humans.

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Postby AuraTwilight » Sat Jun 10, 2023 12:11 pm

View Original PostAsunji_Yuko wrote:Ok, then that makes more sense. Though I think Rei II's soul was passed onto Rei III due to the latter's reaction to Gendo's glasses.


Well, Rei III has all of Rei II's memories that were backed up. She'd then be able to notice the discrepancies and look at things in hindsight because, as a new being, she doesn't have Rei II's emotional attachment to Gendo.

Indeed, in her two weeks or whatever of existing only Shinji gave her kindness and made a point of doing so on her first day of being aware.
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Postby thewayneiac » Mon Jun 12, 2023 10:39 am

The interpretation we worked out here is:

Yui deliberately went into Unit-01 during her contact experiment. (See her lakeside conversation with Fuyutsuki.)

The attempt to salvage her was only partly successful; they got a young Yui clone body, albeit made of Lilith matter, but Lilith's soul instead of Yui's. (My own opinion is that Yui shoved Lilith's soul into Rei, in effect saying "I'm busy, use this soul" but there's no proving that.) Some fragment of Lilith's soul was left behind to say "Welcome home".

When Rei I was murdered her soul was split between Rei II and Unit-00.

When Rei II self-destructed Unit-00 the entire Rei I soul was available to be put into Rei III, explaining her change in attitude despite only missing her memories since the last backup. i.e. The rebellious portion of her soul that went berserk and went after Ritsuko because it sensed her connection to Naoko had been returned to her. This is what gave her the ability to betray Gendo and let Shinji control Third Impact.

After Kaworu was killed his soul was salvaged into the Adam embryo in Gendo's hand. Thus when Rei absorbed Gendo's arm she was united with Adam's flesh and his soul. She then returned to Lilith, got welcomed home and created the "forbidden union of Adam and Lilith".
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Postby AuraTwilight » Mon Jun 12, 2023 12:24 pm

My only caveat with the above is I don't see any need to salvage Kaworu's soul into the embryo; the combining of flesh seems to be what's necessary, Gendo has no way to emotionally control Kaworu like he does Rei and doesn't need the competing will, and Rei is just gonna collect all souls on the planet anyway.
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Postby thewayneiac » Mon Jun 12, 2023 1:16 pm

View Original PostAuraTwilight wrote:My only caveat with the above is I don't see any need to salvage Kaworu's soul into the embryo; the combining of flesh seems to be what's necessary, Gendo has no way to emotionally control Kaworu like he does Rei and doesn't need the competing will, and Rei is just gonna collect all souls on the planet anyway.


We know she has acquired Kaworu's soul at some point because she manifests him when she is trying to find out what Shinji wants. I suppose you could argue she collected it the same time she acquired Misato's and Asuka's souls for pre-instrumentality, but I still think it's more likely it came with the embryo.

Besides, Adam and Lilith are both made of PWM; you'd be combining two of the same thing if it were just the flesh. So the question is: do the seeds of life and of knowledge reside in the flesh or in the soul?
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Postby AuraTwilight » Tue Jun 13, 2023 12:27 pm

She takes Kaworu's form as GNR, but that doesn't necessarily mean Kaworu's soul is there. After all, she appears as everyone's desire when she comes for them.
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Re: Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Asunji_Yuko » Tue Jun 13, 2023 1:40 pm

View Original Postthewayneiac wrote:
View Original PostAuraTwilight#941014 wrote:My only caveat with the above is I don't see any need to salvage Kaworu's soul into the embryo; the combining of flesh seems to be what's necessary, Gendo has no way to emotionally control Kaworu like he does Rei and doesn't need the competing will, and Rei is just gonna collect all souls on the planet anyway.


We know she has acquired Kaworu's soul at some point because she manifests him when she is trying to find out what Shinji wants. I suppose you could argue she collected it the same time she acquired Misato's and Asuka's souls for pre-instrumentality, but I still think it's more likely it came with the embryo.

Besides, Adam and Lilith are both made of PWM; you'd be combining two of the same thing if it were just the flesh. So the question is: do the seeds of life and of knowledge reside in the flesh or in the soul?


Well, given that the PWM of different angels is distinct in terms of its configuration, just like chemical life is (like DNA), it wouldn't really be the same even if it's just the flesh.

But yeah, I don't know the answer to that. I don't think even Anno knows.

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Postby MsenjaKagami » Tue Jun 13, 2023 7:19 pm

View Original Postthewayneiac wrote:The attempt to salvage her was only partly successful; they got a young Yui clone body, albeit made of Lilith matter, but Lilith's soul instead of Yui's.

So I was thinking about this a little while back, and more or less came to the same conclusion as to the connection between the original salvage operation and Rei's 'birth'. However, after looking through the salvage operation episode I noticed there's a hole: in the Netflix English subs, Ritsuko says "My mother witnessed it firsthand, but I only know about it from our files" in regards to the original, 'failed' salvage operation (in the Platinum subs the translation is phrased with less certainty: "It seems my mother was here, but I only know the data.") however we later see that Naoko clearly doesn't recognize Rei I, nor is she aware of her origins based on the scene where she searches Gehirn's files regarding her and finds nothing. Are we assuming that Naoko simply wasn't present for the part where Rei was "born" while still being there for the salvage operation (as in the salvage operation was part of her birth, but not the exact moment she came into being as Rei Ayanami) or that Ritsuko was just mistaken and the version of the translation where she was less certain is the more correct one?
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Re: Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Kendrix » Fri Aug 25, 2023 7:32 am

The most likely explanation is that the salvage operation produced some grotesque strips of scrambled hybrid meat which was then used to make Rei. (whereas Naoko was under the impression that they threw the results in the incinerator)

Though there is also that line in the ep 23 DC where Fuyutsuki says that Rei was "the product of his despair". It might be that he wouldnt accept that it flopped, took over from Naoko, ran another procedure & the result was Rei.
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Re: Rei still makes me scratch my head

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Postby Mackerel » Mon Sep 04, 2023 1:11 pm

im honestly still confused on literally everything regarding this series lmao, not a clue what the difference is but i think its a little like the clone troopers in starwars y'know? sure all the reis/yui clones/whateverthefuckwasgoingonthere might look the same but they're all unique people, atleast thats my view on it


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