Hello to all watermelon lovers!

Reposting from my post on r/evangelion -

u/ryxxar9 on reddit wrote:
Recently, I came up with a theory regarding the psychological state of Rei Ayanami. I've always thought that she can't be so withdrawn and rejected without medical intervention. I remember the moment when Shinji entered her room to give her the pass; there were pills on the table, and her room was full of pills and other medical items. Could she be taking protectors? Antidepressants, protectors of her personality and emotions developed by NERV for pilots like her? Maybe the theory is a bit far-fetched, but I don't have other options. It can't be that she is like this without medical intervention. If every clone is like this, did they all receive such pills? I have no other explanation for such withdrawal. (I'm ready to discuss and add your ideas to this theory, My first theory)

[Reformatted to be easier on the eyes -- staff]

Well, I mean, there are people with psychological profiles that aren't too far off from Rei. So, it's possible to be liker her and that's all.

I always assumed the pills were to keep her biological integrity. I'm not sure if it's suggested that she stops taking them, but I always took her arm falling off unprompted in EoE as being a direct result of not having taken the pills recently enough.

Axx°N N. wrote:Well, I mean, there are people with psychological profiles that aren't too far off from Rei. So, it's possible to be liker her and that's all.

I always assumed the pills were to keep her biological integrity. I'm not sure if it's suggested that she stops taking them, but I always took her arm falling off unprompted in EoE as being a direct result of not having taken the pills recently enough.

Yes, such people exist, but they are not far from Rei, they can still show minimal emotions, here it is possible to compare with the emotional exhaustion of Ikari, he also did not show much emotion, he had a player and his own thoughts and reflections, even such people with a psychological profile have thoughts, when Rei seems to have none, she almost does not answer people, she lives for one thing, to carry out an order, and it seems to me that this is possible only with the intervention of some kind of medical means, or something worse

If you really think that Rei has no thoughts and no feelings, you clearly haven't been paying attention to the show and would do well to rewatch it one of these days.

IMHO her behavior makes perfect sense if you consider things from her POV: She knew from the start that the world is going to end, everyone treats her like a tool & doesn't really consider her a real person, she grew up all alone in a cold sterile lab probably being subjected to painful experiments & generally neglected & not getting to experience any of the good things of life or normal relationships. She didn't have any family or parental figures, unless you count Gendo, who is, well, himself, not exactly warm & loving. (so to some extent one might assume that she largely copied his distant, stoic mannerisms - she still emotes a whole lot more than him, all things considered.) Sometimes nice in a kind of superficial, barely there way, which is why she has some loyalty/attachment to him, but at the same time she has no illusions that she isn't special to anyone & can be replaced as the drop of a hat. She can't quit or run away because she wouldn't survive very long since she's an artificial hybrid mixture of angel & human (which is also probably why she needs to take those pills to stay alive)

She knows that no matter what anyone does, the world is inevitably going to end and it doesn't really matter what anyone does, she has no choice but to play her part and nothing else that gives her any sense of purpose or connection to anything. Basically whatever she does is meaningless & matters to no one, no one realy cares, she has no choice etc or at least that's how she sees/experiences it.
That could easily lead a person to become resigned & fatalistic & basically go along with the motions and endure whatever comes, not caring what happens to them or evem hoping that it will all be over soon.
If everyone treats you like a thing & like your thoughts & feelings don't matter for as long as you existed, it won't be long until you start thinking of yourself as a thing & seeing your thoughts & feelings as not mattering as well.

ppl who love to rant about how "Rei isn't a real person" seem like they have little empathy for ppl different from themselves/ give me the impression that they're the sort who would have bullied the weird loner kid back in school, which, speaking as a former weird loner kid, doesn't impress me.
Different emotional processing styles are like the one thing that it's ssomehow still ok to dehumanize & judge ppl for, and you see it everywhere all the time, with real people not just anime characters.

In the end all 3 pilots were unfortunate kids who were neglected & are willing to endure crazy amount of awfulness because they think being a pilot is their only shot at being worth something or being important to others (the Tv ending very directly parallels them, too, making all 3 say similar lines etc.) it's just that because of their different personality types they also had very different styles of coping with it. Rei has just completely resigned herself to her fate to the point of completely giving up on anything, Asuka made up some story about being a hero to feel like she has a sense of agency and is someone who matters rather than a disposable pawn (& utterly breaks when that illusion is shattered), & Shinji's somewhere in-between & makes a big show out of being ambivalent about it hoping someone will take pity on him.

IMHO "Rei has no feelings" is as much of a no-reading-comprehension take as "Shinji is a whiny pussy" or "Asuka is just a noisy bitch"

I personally believe that Rei is not emotionless or lacking emotion but rather the reason why Rei seems apathetic and stoic throughout the show is to highlight her social isolation and her inability to form meaningful connections to the other people in her life paralleled to Shinji who also struggles with the same. I also agree that the pills she takes are to prevent her from literally falling apart as we see in EoE. To me her main character arc that we see throughout the series is her learning to express her emotions and empathy to the other characters. As in Rei I, she is very reserved but still clearly feels emotions as when Shinji denounces his father Rei slaps him in disapproval. In Rei II she says she pilots the Eva because she has nothing else showing that she doesn't believe she herself has any purpose or identity other than being what others expect of her. Though she does warm up to Shinji with the smile, it says that she does care about him but doesn't know how to express those more intimate feelings. Rei III is the culmination of everything set up in Rei I and II as she sacrifices her life for Shinji believing to them she is replaceable. Furthermore, we can see how her attitude changes toward Gendo later on as she realizes that he doesn't view her as person with autonomy but rather as a tool to get what he wants, payed off perfectly in EoE. So I can understand where the interpretation that Rei doesn't appear to have emotions due to some outside force comes from on a surface level but to me it's much more interesting to view it through what the actions and thoughts of the character say about their personality and emotions/feelings.

This might not answer the intended question but it is a related question.

I sometimes wonder what exactly Rei knows. What has she put together and what has she been told?

One thing I do not believe is that carrying the soul of Lilith means she can remember Lilith's life before crucifixion or whatever; she seems surprised (at least to me) when she says "I'm home." I do however believe that she remembers her life across all three bodies.

Does she know as much about herself as Kaworu knows about himself? I don't think so. And while we're at it, do people ever wonder whether he is a clone or how Adam's soul for into him?

Darth Plato wrote:This might not answer the intended question but it is a related question.

I sometimes wonder what exactly Rei knows. What has she put together and what has she been told?

One thing I do not believe is that carrying the soul of Lilith means she can remember Lilith's life before crucifixion or whatever; she seems surprised (at least to me) when she says "I'm home." I do however believe that she remembers her life across all three bodies.

She is definitely aware that she is a clone hence why she says "I must be the third one" but I think it would be impossible for her to remember everything from her previous incarnations given that they are clones and not one single unified entity. I mean, why would she not remember sacrificing herself in episode 24?

Because her soul transfers to the soulless clone. It's also how she knows how to talk and walk and everything.

I suppose it could also be partly downloaded from the dummy plug system, but if we are in a world where souls can transfer, I would assume that soul brings information to the new body. So uploading details from the dummy plug shouldn't be necessary. This is a unified character with continuity of soul.

On the other hand, I don;t think she remembers her prior existence as Lilith, if that's what it means for her to have the soul of Lilith. But perhaps Kaworu remembers his life as Adam. These are interesting questions to me.

I agree with you that her core soul transfers from body to body. I just don't think she retains her memory of her previous lives. Ie; death is like a hard reset for her mind. She knows vaguely who she is supposed to be problably as a result of her programming, but doesn't just pick up where the other left off. I don't think Rei 3 really knows who Shinji is for example, besides being the other pilot. I think it's what really makes her death so impactful, maybe not in physical form but internally.