Hi everyone. Was going to make an account to ask this here, turns out I had a near unused one from ages ago, lol.

Was just curious about this. Has any supplemental material, or any material in the movies themselves, indicated if the Rei we follow through these movies, the one Shinji starts the Near Third Impact to rescue, was Rei 2? It seems everyone assumes so since she was the second Rei in the show, and you'd assume you need a Rei 1 to have existed so her soul can be placed in the Eva; but the second half of the Rebuilds clearly shows that we can't assume the general mechanics of the Evangelions are the same as the show, and without that, I don't remember anything stating she's the second Rei. Ritsuko's mother was removed from the story altogether, so it's dubious if we still get her killing Rei 1; Asuka gets an entirely different backstory, and Anno stated Rei's scenario is different in these movies, too, so it's got me wondering if we're even given any indication that the Rei we see isn't the first Rei to have existed in the first place.
But I'm not in as deep as people would be in an enthusiast forum, so I can very easily believe there's some indication I missed, forgot, or if not in the movies themselves, then in some interview or art book. Hoping if there is, someone can point me in that direction!

"Rei II" is written on her choker in some part of HA. That's why we know she is the second one. That doesn't mean Rei I was killed by Naoko like in the original show. But there was another one before her.
Anno did say he wanted to put Naoko in the movies at some point, but she had to be cut due to time constraints. So maybe she was meant to kill Rei I like she did in the original show, but that idea was left in the cutting room floor. Or maybe it has nothing to do with that. I mean, Gehirn doesn't even exists in NTE, so this entire section of the story would have been changed either way.
I guess we will never know. Same with Rei 3-5...

Here you have:

BernardoCairo wrote:"Rei II" is written on her choker in some part of HA. That's why we know she is the second one. That doesn't mean Rei I was killed by Naoko like in the original show. But there was another one before her.
Anno did say he wanted to put Naoko in the movies at some point, but she had to be cut due to time constraints. So maybe she was meant to kill Rei I like she did in the original show, but that idea was left in the cutting room floor. Or maybe it has nothing to do with that. I mean, Gehirn doesn't even exists in NTE, so this entire section of the story would have been changed either way.
I guess we will never know. Same with Rei 3-5...

You're completely right. We could confirm there was a Rei I, but we may never know how she died.

My curreny theory is that Gendo didn't know Rei I would need the LCL baths to survive (as Rei I was the first), so she just died like Rei Q.

I would say he "programmed" the Ayanami series to be like this. He used this to his advantage in Shin. The death of Rei VI was part of his plans according to Fuyutsuki. Plus, Asuka is not like that. Which probably means the two series had different goals for him.

AsukaShikinami10 wrote:Here you have:

Thank you!

Man that's, that's very easily missable lmao

I wonder if we can also then assume Rei 1 is in the Eva- I really get the feeling that in the NTE we're not meant to take "soul inside of Eva" to be something mandatory but rather something that happened exclusively to Unit 01- but knowing my luck there's probably some other background detail somewhere in the billion screens going "Rei 1 is in Unit 00 dummy" lol

The KKM wrote:
I wonder if we can also then assume Rei 1 is in the Eva- I really get the feeling that in the NTE we're not meant to take "soul inside of Eva" to be something mandatory but rather something that happened exclusively to Unit 01

There is a sequence in Evangelion 2.22 were we can clearly appreciate the extraction of Eva-02's core. If you look carefully to it, it is an artificial one as opposed to the one Unit-01 has.



Now if we go ahead to NTI, when Shinji pulls out Unit-00's core from the 10th angel (held in Unit-01's right hand in case you can't perceive it well in the image), it seems to be a real core like Unit-01's. It has no inorganic material surrounding it as the one from Unit-02.